I cannot help but still be excited about it. I don't even live in Benicia or Martinez and I'm excited about it. Yesterday, I was in Benicia for work--yes, with a company SUV. After my meeting, though, I took a little detour to find the entrance to the new bike route. And I found it with no trouble, just up Park Road from the Benicia Arsenal. I took my lunch out on the bridge for a walk.
In a couple of weeks, some friends and I are planning a ride which may take us from Berkeley and across the Zampa/Carquinez Straits bridge to Vallejo, thence to Benecia, and back to Martinez and home. This ride was not even an option, just a little more than a year ago before the new bike route opened. I have a house in Oakland and I work in Sacramento--this bridge is a MAJOR piece of the jigsaw puzzle for me to connect these dots by bike--which I sometimes do. The Carquinez Strait bridge is beautiful but it means riding through hilly Vallejo to the other side of a bridge with no BART station in sight. Right across the Benicia bridge, the North Concord BART station isn't too far.
I can just imagine the options that having this link open provides for people living on both sides of the Strait. It's hard enough to make a living without owning a car when you have freedom of movement. The opening of the bridge creates a lot of new potential for people living on both sides of it.
When I was standing on the bridge, yesterday around one o'clock, I saw one cyclist whiz past me all festooned in spandex. With no panniers and no shoulder bag, she didn't look like she was headed to a board meeting and probably wasn't on her way to staff the counter at Starbucks, either. The ride was probably recreational--as most of the bridge's current use probably is. If we were to open the Richmond-San-Rafael Bridge tomorrow, the story would be the same. It takes time, you know, to get a job and it takes a while people to take full advantage of opportunities like this. Mark my words though, now--five or ten years from now, there will be a rush of bike commuters on Benicia's new bridge each morning and evening. People will be riding that bridge from Benicia to catch BART every morning to go into Oakland or the City. I'd bet somebody's doing it right now! If you're that somebody--GOOD SHOW, you're the vanguard!
The first time I rode from Oakland to Sacramento was three years ago--even in that short time I have seen the opportunities increase noticeably for those of us who seek to get around with automobiles. The first time I rode that ride, it meant tossing my bike over a barbed wire fence to get from Vallejo to Fairfield. One day soon, McGary Road will be open too.
"Take the right onto McGary Road--which is technically closed, but the fence can be climbed." Bikely.com
It would be easy for me to say that I need my car because I cannot get around by bicycle alone. There are places one cannot get to by bike. But that's just because we have designed so much infrastructure for fifty years thinking only of autos. More of us riding our bikes and demanding bike routes will lead to more options for cyclists, more reward to being a cyclist, and more cyclists.
Let's ride!
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