Jim Durham: Cycling as Transportation for All

Cycling, nationally, tends to be male-dominated and recreational. In Alexandria, West End resident Jim Durham wants to see more women and children on the road, cycling access to destinations such as work or the grocery store and—when feasible—more bike lanes.

“I’d really like to see both long- and mid-term plans with immediate steps that will facilitate more riding,” Durham told Patch. “So, what that translates to is riding safely, as transportation for all. That’s the most important thing, if we can make cycling something that is transportation for all ages and all people, to move it from a male-dominated recreational activity, which is fine, but for where we need to go as a city is to give people more opportunities to get out of their cars.”

Durham, who retired last year from Systems Planning and Analysis Inc. in Alexandria and has since thrown himself into civic activity, is the vice chairman of the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. He has been a recreational cyclist for years and formerly commuted by bike to Ballston, where he worked for a government contractor.

Durham pointed to a national transportation survey that found 50 percent of all trips are less than 3 miles—a very bikeable distance—and 40 percent are less than 2 miles.

“You get less than 2 miles, and you have a walkable distance, certainly a bikeable distance is the 2 to 3 miles, where people can do their grocery shopping, get to school, get to a transit station if they have a further distance to go to work,” he said. “And I want to see that in schoolchildren, and I want to see it in people, as they say, of all ages.”

Alexandria’s climate change and energy policy sets a goal of reducing motor vehicle miles travelled by about 5 percent every five years, Durham said. “I don’t know how you do that if you don’t include multimodal options. And to me, bicycling is one of them, walking and bicycling.”

Encouraging cycling also includes adding more bike lanes in the city. Bike paths along parks and trails, like Holmes Run, are great, he said, but cyclists also need to be able to get to destinations such as work or schools. That means cyclists need to be able to use streets safely.

Surveys, Durham said, show a percent of people already ride, some people will never ride and that 60 percent would ride but see some impediment—usually safety.

“We still need to connect the greenways pieces,” he said. “Those are important pieces, but they’re sort of planned, some of them in progress and some planned for future years.

“The next most important step after that is to create bike lanes where we can, because that increases the perception of safety, and improving the perception of safety will allow more children to get out in the streets, allow more parents to think it’s OK for their children to get out in the streets. It will frankly allow more women to get on the streets.”

Nationally, three out of every four cyclists are men. Women tend to be more sensitive to issues of safety, which is why more bike lanes can lead to more female cyclists.

Adding bike lanes doesn’t necessarily mean widening streets, Durham said. Sometimes vehicular travel lanes can be narrowed, or sometimes a vehicle lane can be removed. If nothing else, sharrows—lane markings that depict a cyclist and arrows—can be added.

For more information, visit the Alexandria Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee’s webpage, the BPAC Google group or the BPAC Facebook page.

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