Safe Cycling and Fractured Routes Trouble Burlington Cyclists

Erin Bucchin points out over Lake Champlain.

This article contains work from students in UVM’s Environmental Journalism course. Thank you to Sophie Acker, Quinn Bisbee, Caitlin Boyarsky, Olivia Buchler, Jonas Camera, Lindsay Foxwell, Leah Golding, Emma Graham, Tanner Hopkins, Kate Kampner, Abby Minton, Julia Odwyer, Lindsay Renk, Kate Rosegard, Phoebe Swartz, Amelia Veleber, and Meredith Williamson. This round-up was edited by Mark Johnson and Cate Phypers.

Reporters with UVM’s Community News Service interviewed 14 regular Burlington cyclists. Here is what they found.

A lack of safety and disconnected routes are the major concerns for Burlington bicyclists who’d rather rely on two wheels than four.

The Queen City is considered bike-friendly, particularly with the presence of a large student population, but cyclists say more needs to be done to make it a safer and a more practical experience. If done successfully, the improvements could make the city more bike-friendly, attract more tourists and boost the economy.

“The big thing for me is that there’s a lot of disconnect – so if you want to get from A to B you might be okay for part of it,'“ according to Hadley Markoski, a cyclist for almost 20 years and a Winooski based web designer. 

Markoski said some of the infrastructure changes Burlington has made to help drivers have made the situation worse for bikers, such as the recent addition of a roundabout on Route 7 heading south from the downtown.

“[The city continues'] creating these paths to nowhere and if you want to keep going, you have to take your life in your own hands,” Markoski said.

Safety is such a concern for Markowski that she rides with “as many lights as possible” and equipped her bike with a horn to warn drivers. Those safety precautions have “saved me so many times in Burlington,” she said, adding that cyclists shouldn’t have to take such extreme measures to assure their safety. 

Environmental Journalism students, Abby Minton and Leah Graham, with local cyclist, Stuart Lindsay.

Local advocates point to many European cities as models for what Burlington should follow. For example, Stu Lindsay, a member of the Burlington Walk/Bike Council, said a town in the Netherlands banned cars to make the city more bike friendly. According to Lindsay, people flocked to the city to live there and the tax base increased. Lindsay and a friend started a valet bike parking program in Burlington to help ease the growing concern cyclists have around thefts, especially while attending events on the waterfront, including a farmer’s market and concerts. He got the idea for this ‘valet’ service while visiting the Netherlands.

“We parked 100 bikes the first year and the year before COVID, we parked 9,000,” Lindsay says. “That’s a paradigm shift. Why should you expect your bike to be stolen? We charge the same price for rich or poor, young or old. It’s free.” 

Implementing incentives and making Burlington a comfortable place to bike is an effective way to make the transition to a walkable/cyclable city. The city already has a popular bike path along the waterfront, but advocates said the city can do more. Lindsay said in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, the motto is “to spoil the cyclist.”

“The way you’re going to get somebody to ride is to give them the amenities, whether it’s proper bike lanes, signaling, or foot rails at intersections. It’s taking ideas and massaging them into our community and seeing how they fit in,” Lindsay says.

Others see practical reasons to promote bicycling as the primary source of transportation in Burlington. For one, it’s cheaper than owning a car, said Marty Gilles, a local cyclist.

“Burlington's not so big that you need a car to get most places,” Gilles says. “And cycling is healthy and good for the environment, and a more fun way to get around.”

Lindsay believes transforming Burlington into a cyclable/walkable city involves a mindset shift. “We should look at this as an incubator of what the world is going to become, not how it is. You see a lot of ideas that seemed visionary back then, but then come to pass. If the administration here looks at capitalizing on funding available, through either the state or federal money, they can do an awful lot.”

To Lindsay, the ideas to improve and promote more cycling can be large, like adding more bike lanes, or small, like installing foot pads at intersections so bicyclists can more easily stop or  adding waste baskets in locations that are easily accessible for cyclists. More funding is needed, activists say, but the changes don't have to be expensive, particularly when measured against the costs of building more and more roads.

It doesn’t have to be a million dollar idea; The key is to focus on constant improvement,” Lindsay said. 

Environmental Journalism students at UVM Bikes!, the bike co-op on UVM’s campus.

But for now, the Queen City has a ways to go, like most major areas in the United States.

Gillies says the city’s streets were clearly designed for car travel, not bike travel. 

“There's never any problem for a car to get from point A to point B, but there's a lot of trips that I take where I'm doing things that are pretty illegal just because there's not a safe way for me to get around,” Gilles says. “We’re not there yet. And no one really is.”

Cold weather can be an issue, too, but cyclists can also easily adapt, according to Abby Bleything, an avid cyclist and UVM’s Sustainable Transportation Program Manager.

She lives in Winooski with two kids, but still doesn’t let much prevent her from cycling year round. She primarily cycles during the non-winter months, but doesn’t let winter stop her.

“I’ve figured out what gear I need to stay warm on my bike. Mostly I wear what I am using to ski on the mountains, so it wasn’t like I had to purchase specialty gear for my winter bike rides,” she says.

Bleything says cycling with small children in the dark might sometimes be impractical over long distances, but they live near the school and their workplaces.   “We purposefully chose to live in a location that is walkable and bikeable and near the public school so that we would not be reliant on a vehicle” Bleything states.

“Staying connected with people in college on campus mattered a lot to me and biking became a huge part of that,” said Erin Bucchin, University of Vermont (UVM) Class of ‘21 and Employer Relations & Operations Specialist in the Career Center. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in March of 2020, Bucchin was an on-campus student who moved to off-campus housing in downtown Burlington. She cited cycling as her outlet for exercise, mental health, and joyful movement. 

No matter where someone bikes, safety should be a top priority to allow for the rider to enjoy their time outside and reach their destination. For Bucchin, “[biking] is the thing that makes me the happiest.”