Sign Warning of 10 Percent Grade
On Thursday we rode the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail in Northern Michigan. The trail has at least 4 climbs with gradients greater than 9 percent.
After climbing out of the saddle up a very short 11-grade hill, we rolled on to the next one. The hills are all marked in advance with markers like the one at the very top of this page.
After our 40 km out-and-back from Empire to Glen Arbor, we went swimming at the beach in Empire. The sand was soft and not hot and the water was clean, clear, cool and overwhelmingly refreshing.
At the halfway point in Glen Arbor, we walked down the main street a couple of blocks to a bakery cafe. I ordered a triple espresso to propel me over the hills awaiting us. My dear companion had a cold brew. We sat out on the front porch and watched people.
I’ve added science to my four square of intersection crosswalks with transportation, health and environment to better understand active transportation and its users.
The relatively recent addition of highway lanes and triple-decker by-passes in Green Bay shows a disturbing reactionary planning policy.
In many places there are at least seven lanes for each way of traffic. In our time of dangerous climate change a city of just over 100,000 people needs progressive planning policy that takes gas-combustion cars off of roads instead of inviting many more.
Policy should also place people in zero-emission trams, trolleys, buses, bicycles and walking. Vehicular transportation causes at least 50 percent of climate change and concommitant damage and death.
I recently reported a violation related to deadly and harmful emissions coming from the exhaust pipe of an outdated, rusty Silverado.
A warden from the WI DNR said he could understand my “frustration” but couldn’t mandate restriction of the deadly and harmful emissions because there was no state statute in WI requiring him to do so. This has to go to the legislature in the form of a request for a public safety bill.