The downtown BID did provide formal feedback on RTD after last August's
event (others may have also). I didn't see their document until last
week, but I found their concerns legitimate, and I would support some of
the changes they requested, including holding one event in a different
location. RTD can and should be business-friendly. That said, bringing
people into our downtown, especially suburban families who may not
otherwise venture there regularly, has enormous value, including value
to retail businesses that can't be measured in one day's sales figures.
It is unclear to me how BID's feedback was processed and if changes were
specifically rejected by the RTD planning team, or if the feedback never
even got to them. I was not part of those discussions, so I have no
first hand knowledge.
Certainly there is time to make changes for a second event this year, so
outright cancellation seems capricious and premature. I support
experimentation rather than cancellation. Robbie and others weighed in
on the announcement timing, so I won't pile on (I've already done my
share over the past two weeks).
By the way, I think some media have tried to frame RTD as by and for the
bicycling community, and therefore the current controversy is bikies vs.
drivers or bikies vs. business or some such. I think such framing is
both factually incorrect and needlessly inflammatory. RTD is for
everyone, and we've all seen plenty of people run, walk, skateboard,
wheelchair or just sit and have a picnic in the median of E. Wash. Maybe
it shouldn't even be called Ride the Drive, maybe "quiet breathing day."
In addition to our shared passion for bicycling, I think many people on
this list share a goal of reducing the negative effects of our culture's
motor vehicle addiction. (As evidenced by the many posts that don't
directly involve bicycles.) For me, that's a lot of what RTD is about.
The biking is fun, but there's real enlightenment when people see how
wonderful even paved spaces can be when you remove the motors, and that
gets them thinking about what those motors are doing to us. It also
helps them discover how much land is consumed for transportation. That's
where real advocacy starts.
Mark Clear
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