If you find yourself at the corner of Crotona and East Tremont Avenues in the Bronx next week, look for a bicycle painted white. It’s a ghost bike, placed in memory of Meg Felice Charlop. Charlop was an activist who worked to open up green spaces in the Bronx and make her community more friendly to alternative forms of transportation until her bicycle was struck by an automobile last month. Charlop died on her way to work, leaving a family and the effort to promote clean transportation behind.
A memorial ride of bicycles will push off from the Valentine-Varian House in Bainbridge Oval Park (at Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx) at 1 pm this Saturday, April 10, and follow the daily route to work Charlop took on her bicycle. The ride will stop at Crotona and Tremont Avenues, where the ghost bike will be placed in Charlop’s memory.
The Ghost Bikes movement is international and is involved in planning a ride of silence in locations across the U.S. and around the world to commemorate people killed as they ride their bicycles. This year the Ride of Silence will happen on May 19.
This may be the mode of transportation for the future (at least for short commutes). i was always impressed by the old pictures of millions of Chinese commuting by bike each day and wondered why it didn’t catch on here. With oil becoming increasingly expensive, this may be the ride of the masses sooner than we think: it would help fat Americans pare down some weight, it’s a great workout, it’s environmentally friendly (the CO2 we expire is orders of magnitude less than that put out by autos), and it allows people to talk to each other at stops (rather than the isolation or cell phone distractions of our current system).
When I lived in Holland we biked everywhere. We drove our car maybe once a month at most. It was awesome! I wish that would catch on here but I dont see it happening. Everything is so spread out
I was struck by the presence of bicycles when I visited the Netherlands in my teens, Jacob. I still have memories of running alongside a host friend’s bike to jump on the back and be taken for a ride.
It’s true that we’re spread out as a nation, but it’s also true that most people here live in places where population density is high (a mathematical necessity explained well by Scott Feld in his paper “Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do”). If the bike lanes are put there to keep people safe, there’s no reason why people can’t ride their bikes in most big American cities. It would cut down traffic jams, it would reduce the number of ozone days, and people wouldn’t have to drive to the gym three times a week to attend spinning class on an… exercise bike!