Dallas' Former Bike Czar Tells Newbie Riders to Go Play in Traffic

Comments (0) By Kimberly Thorpe Thursday, Nov 26 2009

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Summer swerves to miss broken and uneven pavement. He rings his bell before overtaking a parked postal truck; the letter carrier looks up at him. He extends his left arm and moves into the left lane of Easton Road briefly before turning onto another residential street. "This is typical of a bike route. It's a low-volume, residential local street that parallels a major thoroughfare," Summer says. He's on Bike Route 280, which parallels Garland Road.

He insists that the bike route system is not for vehicular cyclists but for people who don't have the confidence to ride on major thoroughfares. He continues to distance himself and the bike route system from a vehicular cycling ideological paradise. "Our system drove him nuts...because it was so convoluted," Summer says, recalling a time John Forester visited Dallas some 15 years ago. "Because it twisted and turned and used all these back streets." Summer laughs before continuing the memory: "Forester said, 'Why don't you just get on the big street?' Because not everybody's going to do that. It's the real world, John."

Danny Fulgencio

P.M. Summer, Dallas’ former bike czar, gears up for a ride on the city’s mean streets. Traffic doesn’t faze Summer, who is a “vehicular cyclist,” meaning he insists that his two-wheeler be treated like any other vehicle on the road