Photo by Jeff Denny

If you haven’t heard it yet, BBC World Service was recently in our city to record a big feature story on our attempts to rise above our infamous last-place ranking. They spent several days cycling around the city and interviewing everyone from folks on the street to Mayor Funkhouser, Councilmember Ed Ford, and Bike/Ped Coordinator Deb Ridgway .All three gave very good interviews that were frank about current conditions yet optimistic for the future. It is a pretty good report, although it is quite heavy on the fear and mayhem aspect of riding in traffic.

To be honest I think they have focused a bit too much on an older generation who have some well-entrenched perceptions of what it is like to bicycle here. It paints a picture where cycling is still a very unusual idea, despite a significant shift in attitudes over the last few years.  It’s too bad they didn’t spend a Friday evening in Westport, where it is quite common to see 30-40 bikes parked around the neighborhood and and almost constant stream of cyclists whizzing down the street.  They also spent a lot of time at the City Market which is surrounded by a sea of parking.  If they had ventured to some of the neighborhood grocery stores or farmers  markets they would have seen full bike racks and folks loading bike trailers with groceries.

I was disappointed that they picked up on the old meme that Ed Ford is anti-bike, because that is old news.  Despite his long-stated reservations about on-street bicycling, Councilmember Ford is coming around to the idea of bicycling as a form of transportation.  He was actually a big champion of the recent ordinance that legalized pedicabs in Kansas City. So can we please retire this old perception?

All in all I thought the BBC piece was quite good.  It could have used a bit more balance, but it did do a good job of showing the good and bad of bicycling here in Kansas City.

Listen to BBC One Planet – Cycling in Kansas City
(MP3, 30 minutes, right-click to download)