After riding a bike around UMKC and around the neighboring areas I can definitely say that I feel safer riding on the sidewalk when I’m on main streets but when I’m riding on side streets where there is much less traffic and the vehicle speeds are lower I don’t mind riding on the street. I feel this is partly due to when growing up as kids we were always told to ride out bikes on the sidewalk, so that’s what we did and what I had become accustomed to.

Overall, biking can be fun, a good exercise, and a good way to get around the city, but for me and the distances I have to travel on a daily basis it sadly isn’t practical for my everyday life. When comparing biking around campus to walking around and the surrounding areas was very very similar to how I experience the campus and surrounding areas while walking. These are both very different experiences than driving is, driving you are enclosed in your little bubble (or big bubble) and you’re shut off from the outside world, when walking or biking you get to experience a completely new aspect that you may not normally get to. You are able to feel the warmth of the sun, the smell of the freshly cut grass or the flowers and the trees, as well as being able to hear all of the sounds from the birds chirping to the the zoom of the cars driving by missing out on all of these elements.

I can envision a more bike-centric UMKC and perhaps part of Kansas City, but only in the more densely populated areas such as downtown, northeast, westport, and maybe the plaza. As for the rest of Kansas City I’m not able to picture it as well due to the suburban sprawl that encompasses the city and how far away many destinations are and especially how far necessary locations such as grocery stores are from many neighborhoods. This isn’t helped by how over-built for cars many of our main streets and highways are, our main streets and highway systems feel like they are built for triple the amount of traffic and cars that we have in the city and all of this “open” space on the roads allows drivers to be careless in a sense because they will almost always have room to correct a mistake that if done in a city like Chicago or Dallas or Houston would lead to a multiple car pile-up. This is also another reason I cant see Kansas City as a whole being more bike-centric, we have seemed to adopt a style of driving that is rather careless and dangerous and until that can be solved then the streets are not safe for cars or bikes.