Nervous to ride a bike in the city? The new ‘Bike Playground’ is for you
When I ride my bike on the city streets, I’m not always sure what’s expected of me. Do I use hand signals? Can I use the sidewalk when there’s no shoulder? If I’m making a turn, should I be in the turning lane?
I’m not alone – there are many of us who don’t know what to do on a city street when riding a bike. But now we can learn in a safe environment. At 11 a.m. on Jan. 20, the Bike Playground at the Arbor Glen Outreach Center will be officially open for use.
[Related: Cyclists vs. motorists: 5 things to know when you’re sharing the road]
Teaching bike safety on a miniature city street
Last year, Dick Winters with Mecklenburg County Public Health pursued the concept of Safety Town – a place to learn traffic, bus and bicycle safety. Winters wanted Charlotte to have a playground with a focus on bicycling safety.
With a grant from the Knight Foundation, the Bike Playground was created on two basketball courts. It is a miniaturized version of a city street with painted signs, crosswalks and other familiar markings.
“This is just part of that overall initiative to teach bicycling safety education within Mecklenburg County,” Winters said.
Common elements such as left turns, two-lane streets, stop and yield signs, crosswalks and lane direction arrows have been painted on the ground to mimic city streets.
“Essentially you are recreating all the common elements of the street to teach what you do in the street without being in the street,” Winters said.
Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation has committed to training recreational specialists how to teach bicycling education through the League of American Bicyclists certification program.
The Bike Playground is free and open to the public from sunrise to sunset. The recreation center will manage the space and has plans to provide information that explains what the Bike Playground is and how best to use it. Soon groups will be able to reserve the playground for special classes and events.
Need to learn how to ride a bike?
Remember when your mom or dad ran alongside as you pedaled on your bike, holding the back of your seat to give you stability? And they let go even after you begged them not to.
Ben Cooley owns Bicycle Sport in Myers Park, and as a parent to two boys, he knows how hard it is to teach your own children to ride a bike. DC Lucchesi of Well-Run Media, Cooley and Winters started “Teach Kids to Ride” three years ago in a school parking lot – a free program to teach people how to ride a bike. They use a striding-to-gliding-to-riding method, which uses a balance bike or a bike with its pedals removed.
For the first event, they advertised with a few yard signs.
“We weren’t sure if anyone would show,” Cooley said. “It rained unbelievably hard, and it was freezing cold and we still had 20 kids show up.”
This interest, even in inclement weather, showed Cooley and his comrades that learning how to ride a bike was important to the community. Eventually, they changed the group’s name to “Learn to Ride” to include the adults who were also asking for instruction.
Learn to Ride hosts workshops five times a year at locations throughout the county. They partner with Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation and teach 150 or more people at each event.
The Bike Playground will add another dimension to the bicycle training.
“Not only will we be able to teach people to ride a bike, we’ll teach them what to do once they know how to ride a bike,” Cooley said. “You have to ride a bike the correct way.”
Volunteers with any level of bicycling experience are always needed to help hand out helmets, take off bike-pedals and teach people how to ride. Learn to Ride has volunteer information on its website.
The next Learn to Ride event is 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 20 at The Bike Playground at Arbor Glen Outreach Center, 1520 Clanton Road.
Photos: Vanessa Infanzon, Michael C. Hernandez
This story was originally published January 15, 2018 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Nervous to ride a bike in the city? The new ‘Bike Playground’ is for you."