A Campus without cars, a beautiful thing!

The first morning in Davis I woke up early for a little run to get my bearings around town. I had stumbled upon some security gates and immediately thought I was in DC already (heading there next week for the National Bike Summit), but I was wrong, I had just entered the campus of UC Davis. These gates were not so much security gates but a means to allow only buses, service and emergency vehicles onto the campus. The importance and value of these gates did not come into play until yestereday when our group was cycling through campus to go to a volunteer fruit harvest picking event (volunteers pick fruit from permissioned homes and donate this food to shelters, we happen to be doing it on bikes with trailers). Previously we had been on campus only before or during class times, today we entered during the unchaining of the bicycles and what a beautiful site, bicycles everyone, riding to their destinations, cars were not an option, and smiles of concentration were overwhelming. Could this be the future of JMU? Think of the traffic reduction that would occur in Harrisonburg.

Ever seen a traffic circle for bicyles? I had not scene it in action until yesterday and it was an orchestration of beauty. Riders would entered these traffic circles and then travel clockwise and then exit depending on their destination. I felt much more safe (but one must pay attention)with these thousands of cyclist (some traffic circles have counts of over 1000 riders in 10 minutes)then on a campus of cars with folks texting and phoning.

As we, along with other cyclist, came to the point to make contact back into the town of Davis we came to the first installed (In Davis and maybe the US)traffic signal just for bicycles (I am sure Thanh has photos of this on her ealier post). How this works: all the cyclist from campus come to a single point at this intersection, the traffic signals have a set of light for cars and a seperate signal for bikes. When the bike signal (actual bike graffic on light cover) turns green all these scores/hundereds of cyclist enter the intersection and head in their desired direction (North, East or West) while cyclist from this respective directions funnel to this entrance of campus, more art in motion.

Today we are heading to Sacremento to see how a larger City (350,000) with older infrastrutue is learning to incorporate bicycles into their transportation system. Tonight will be our last evening together on this trip (I will be departing a day ealier then everyone else), hopefully we will be able to get together and figure out a plan to bring all this information back to Harrisonburg to share with citizen, community members and City Staff.

Off to the Farmers Market.

Thomas