Just as Durango got its first taste of real winter weather, the city put its on-street bicycle racks away for the season. More than anything, though, that extra bit of attention to the racks served to highlight what a popular and successful program the on-street bike parking has become.
And why not? Everybody wins.
Moving the racks for the winter is simple common sense. Plowing snow downtown is a priority, and if the racks were left in place, they would be in the way.
It also stands to reason that usage would decline. While Durango has more than a few hardy souls who ride their bikes year-round, that is not nearly the number who enjoy riding in the warmer times. And with that, the racks will return in May.
All this started as a pilot program in 2010. The first on-street rack was in front of Carver Brewing Co. That proved so successful that three more were added in June in front of Maria’s Bookshop, Mountain Bike Specialists and Gazpacho’s Cantina.
The program is a public-private partnership. Businesses apply to the city for a rack. If approved, a business pays a $200 per year capital improvement fee for five years, which largely offsets the $1,300 cost of the rack. The business also pays for the installation of the rack and pays the city what it could have expected to collect from the parking meter and associated fines. Any needed replacements are covered by the city.
The public response to the racks has been overwhelmingly positive. Merchants and their customers like them. Bike riders have a convenient place to park, and the on-street location of the racks keeps the sidewalks clear for pedestrians. Downtown parking may even benefit. And all that comes at little or no cost to the taxpayers.
For merchants, the benefit is obvious. More of their customers can park right in front of their business. That is especially important for downtown as a whole as the demographics of bike riding expand to include more and more of the public. Driven by concerns for the environment, fitness, traffic and increasingly economic, that trend can be expected to continue.
Another possible gain could be to motorists. Installing bike racks on the street eliminates a parking space and, in that sense, reduces available parking. Without the convenience of the racks, however, it is certainly possible that two or more of the 16 riders who can park their bikes in each rack would have driven instead. If so, the net effect could be to bring fewer cars to downtown. It would be a minor effect, but one that could be at least as meaningful as the loss of one space and one that could help ease parking.
Having the racks in the street also is much more orderly than having bicycles locked up willy-nilly to parking meters, trees or what-have-you. It makes walking the sidewalks easier and safer. And it contributes to an over-all sense of a more orderly downtown.
Increasing the bicycle ridership also affects traffic. In some areas – north Main comes to mind – that can be a problem for riders and drivers alike. But downtown, the effect is to calm traffic a bit in an area where that is welcome. The speed limit on Main Avenue downtown is 25 mph, but often there is little reason or opportunity to go that fast. Which is just as well; drivers also are watching for pedestrians and beckoning storefronts.
The city is taking applications from business for bike racks for next year. Public comments are welcome as well.
Durango’s downtown bicycle racks are a happy example of how little things can make a big difference. It is an effort to applaud.
Descending out of La Plata Canyon.
From the Blog, "Prairie Break"
by Panayoti Kelaidis
Senior Curator and Director of Outreach at the Denver Botanic Gardens
One of the Worlds Top 5 Botanical Gardens!
A cloudy, blustery day in October is hardly the time to visit or photograph a garden, but there are those who are up to the task! I had visited Lisa and Drew Bourey's gem of a garden a half dozen years earlier (in September that time) and was anxious to see it again. Like all plantsmen's gardens, this one is multidimensional: I can only imagine what it must be like in the magical months when there are hundreds of flowers everywhere. But autumn has its compensations, like the heavy fruit set on the Pyracantha espalier!
Durango is not just in Southwest Colorado, it is a beacon in the Southwest! I think this may be one of the great gardening climates, judging by the astonishing array of plants not just in the Bourey garden, but everywhere. What impressed me most about this area is that the plants LOOK good right now after a very hot summer: the cool nights at the relatively higher elevation are no doubt part of the reason. And more reliable snow cover. I love the melting tones of the zinnia with the casual purple Amaranth (Lisa had cut the giant purple amaranths the night before: they had predicted 23F and of course it didn't freeze at all!)...
This is, of course, a modest sized lot in a city neighborhood: my pictures just catch a few glimpses here and there: I love the way the Snow in Summer Euphorbia (E. marginata) picked just the right spot to come up!
This is a native around Denver, and yet we hardly ever see it in gardens hereabouts. I was surprised to find it grown in Kazakhstan, and in Europe it is a popular passalong plant: and here it is growing with debonaire charm on the West side of the divide...where it isn't native!
I forgot to ask which Carex this is...but I think it is particularly enhanced with the lush, green spread of Geranium magniflorum in front of it. Lisa made much use of this woefully neglected Plant Select offering, which warmed the cockles of my heart (I collected this with Jim Archibald in the late 1990's on Joubert's pass)...
Two enviable specimens: a gargantuan blooming Sedum cauticolum, and next to it one of the biggest Pelargonium endlicherianum I have ever seen: I would love to see that one in bloom! Plantsmen's gardens are above all about plants themselves, their intrinsic majesty and beauty, but these gardens are also about juxtapositions and combinations and a story. In this case, Lisa has decades of experience with plants a nursery manager at a local garden center, as the leading landscape designer in Durango. Her husband, Drew, obviously shares much of her enthusiasm, and is no horticultural slouch! He takes the initiative with the large collection of succulents scattered throughout (check out his blog: you can see evidence of his and Lisa's formidable photographic skills)...and read about a man who lives his dreams!
A few more vignettes from here and there in the garden: isn't this a great way to show off the seedheads of Allium christophii?
A cloudy, chill October morning, yet this garden entranced me: I could tell that Lisa and Drew and their kids have endless fun there. Despite the small size in square feet, it really seemed endless in its convolutions: what a great place for kids to grow up! I doubt I have seen more great plants superbly grown in such a small area, nor more imaginitive design. I nominate the Bourey garden as the epitome of the Colorado garden: rich, varied and lovely year around!
To read more from Panayoti Kelaidis, go to his blog "Prairie Break".
While they were meant as tokens of gratitude to be dispensed during PBP proper, some slipped away before I took the start. In particular they connected me to the pivotal controle town of Loudeac in Brittany. This magnetic attraction began before the ride, grew stronger during the ride, continued after the ride, and promises to continue doing so.
But we also wanted to cycle a bit of the course. My chain had done some sort of a Triple Salchow in transit and despite my own and the efforts of several vastly more qualified individuals refused a return to normal. So I was delighted when I walked into Cycles Mace in Loudeac to find a native son who spoke Canadian.
Jeff was a gem and was riding PBP as was Claris, the proprietress of Cycles Mace. The local Loudeac cycling club, drawing from a population of no more than 10,000 inhabitants was fielding 45 riders. This impressed as the San Francisco Randonneurs, drawing from a population region of between 5 million and 10 million, had only managed to equal Loudeac’s participation!
Several hours later I returned to find the Cycles Mace had solved the puzzle of my chain. When I asked the cost of the repair they would not accept payment. But the owner and the mechanic were delighted to receive the SFR magnets.
During PBP, 450 kilometers into the ride, I rolled into the Loudeac controle and gave the controle worker and her interpreter SFR magnets. As I left the controle on the exciting bumpercar/cyclocross course I heard the mechanic who had saved my chain yelling at me. When I stopped he came over and we hugged as he asked how his repair was holding up and I inquired about Claris and Jeff.
Time passed.
Somewhere after Druex I came upon a rider who was going too slowly to finish on time. He stared intently at his bottom bracket and it hit me that he was suffering from Shermer’s Neck. He spoke only Japanese but I motioned for him to pull over. I flipped his handle bars up and ran an inner-tube thru his helmet and around his shoulders. These improved his situation dramatically.
Up the road a bit I found a rider in a similar fix. He was French and spoke a fair amount of English. Patrick was from Loudeac as I learned when I asked him where he’d got his Cycles Mace cap. His aging Peugeot was not a candidate for bar flipping as all the bolts were rusted tightly. I went to work on making his helmet fit properly and attaching an inner tube to his helmet and shoulders. Apparently I was a tad too zealous as Patrick asked if I was trying to kill him.
Time was running out so I suggested Patrick follow my wheel to the finish. We worked out basic signals and made our way towards the finish as the grains drained the hourglass.
On our way we came across two fellows from the same club, The Haute Alps of Somewhere. One had Shermer’s Neck but knew what was happening as he’d had it in 2007. He couldn’t rotate his bars due to the cables but had fashioned an ingenious, artistic, and ineffectual cervical collar out of newspaper and plastic bags. He declined my inner-tube invitation but joined our “Shermer’s Neck Pace Line.”
As we proceeded at a slow and careful pace through the suburbs our gruppo grew as many riders had so very little left that they had slowed to a Shermer’s Neck speed.
We finished on time. The Japanese rider thanked me with the poignant, profound, and profuse thanks with which people of his culture transfer affection. I gave him and Patrick a magnet. I will see them again, this I know.
