 Welcome to In The Studio. I'm Maria Contreras-Tebbett, the director of the bike campaign. And today my guest is Zane McDonald. And we're here to talk about the high shift to cycling. Zane, you're exactly the kind of person we love to meet because you yourself were new to Davis. And what did you think about all these bikes when you moved here? Yeah, Maria, I'm happy to be here. Thank you. It was really a shock to come to Davis. I'm initially from West Virginia, a little bit more of a rural section of the nation where everybody gets around in pickup trucks. It's really, it's the popular thing to do. It's the cool thing to do. And that's expensive. That's a difficult way to get around. And not only is it expensive in just fuel, but it's expensive in time. It's difficult to find a place to put your vehicle. There's a lot of congestion when you have all these large vehicles on the road. And you have to earn the money to pay for those large vehicles. It's a really expensive thing. And so as a student in college, I went to Marshall University. I kind of got tired of paying all of this money to operate this big truck to get around. And so I started making a transition to biking. And it was difficult. There was very little infrastructure. And there was a lot of social stigma around being a biker in this college town. And so coming to Davis and experiencing what it's like here in Davis is really phenomenal to have the social acceptance for cycling. It's really exciting. It's really exciting to get to go out and not only bike on great infrastructure, but to bike in a community where other people want you to bike and where people are proud that you're a student and that you're advocating for other cyclists by cycling yourself. So it's really exciting. It's a great place to be. How did you pick UC Davis as a place How did you pick UC Davis as a place to come to? I came out to UC Davis because I was interested in studying transportation. And so I started looking through some of the literature and some of the big work that was being done throughout the nation really in transportation studies and in energy studies. And all of the great research was coming out of the Institute of Transportation Studies, ITS Davis. And so I was immediately attracted. And so I visited Davis. I came out in 2014 for a visit and immediately fell in love with the city. I felt like I was home. I saw all of the biking happening. I saw all of the fresh food and all of the open-minded people. And I fell in love instantly. And after the application process, there was no question. There was no question why I was headed. We feel very lucky to have you here with us. Many people don't know about the Institute for Transportation Studies and their part in the world actually doing studies and research that affects and impacts all kinds of things, including papers that are presented at the Paris Climate Accord. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, the ITS is really influential on a small scale just at the community level for Davis and then all the way out to a global scale. And some examples of these. Dr. Susan Handy was very influential in 2014 in the Fifth Street Road Diet. And that was something that happened just on a community level for bikers to narrow down Fifth Street, to slow down traffic and to implement different street design measures so that it was safer for people to bike. And it was extremely successful in reducing the number of accidents for bikers on Fifth Street. And then we go out to statewide legislation where you have people like Dan Sperling working for the California Air Resources Board helping to craft a lot of legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And then we have researchers working on a global scale to look at things like Dr. Lou Fulton looked at the impacts of cycling on a global scale and where cycling is at right now and what cycling looked like in the entire world moving all the way forward to 2050. Wow, I'm excited. I'm excited. And I love the fact that cycling is one of the least expensive changes that anybody can make, whether it be individually within their own household, within our communities and creating more complete streets. Can you give everybody a little bit of a description of a complete street? Of course, yeah, a complete street is this idea that everybody owns the roads, that the road is not a place for cars and then the cars invite bikers to be on the road and the cars invite people to skateboard on the road. The complete street idea is that we can have our band practice on the street and we could coordinate off and say no cars here for the next two hours because the marching band needs a big open place that is safe that they can practice. And we're gonna shut this area down and we're gonna have a grilled cheese festival. And we're gonna let the bikers on the road. We're gonna use the road for everybody. It's a complete area for the entire community to interact. It's not just a place for cars. It's not just a place for bikes either. It's a place for everybody. Absolutely, and complete streets, and my understanding is anytime new streets are being designed or reconfigured, my understanding is from places like Los Angeles to Washington DC to Chicago, they're changing streets. So instead of having four, six lanes of car traffic, there's going to be a dedicated lane for regional transit for the different types of buses and where people travel together. And a safer lanes where people on bicycles or scooters or skates or whatever can also be on. And we take into consideration also people that are walking because nobody wants to be able to have to go across six lanes of traffic to get to the other side and in fact, as our generations keep aging, they can't get across the street in enough time because the streets are too big and the traffic is too fast. You kind of brought up the topic of open streets like Ciclovia, which we hope to see more and more of. I have yet to see one happen here in Yolo County. I think Woodland does them occasionally where they shut down streets and people just have a really good time doing things other than driving in the streets. So that's a great way of celebrating that streets are for everybody. So tell us a little bit about your area of research, what you've been doing and I believe it's called the steps program. Yeah, so I work with the steps program. It's the sustainable transportation and energy pathways program. And there I look at the nexus, the overlap of transportation and energy. And this isn't just cars using gasoline as an energy source, but this can be people needing to transport themselves through active transit like walking or biking. And so within steps, I have done research looking at the possibility for a global high shift to cycling. And here we looked at the position of cycling right now in the entire world and how policies were impacting cycling and then what were different techniques that we could implement in different communities to try and encourage cycling. And it turned out to be very enlightening at the different communities around the world and how they were incorporating cycling into their culture. And some big success stories we saw were like in Denmark where they're implementing cycling interstates where people are purchasing these low cost lithium ion electric bicycles or even just very lightweight road bikes and they're moving between cities on these wide multi-lane, very safe bike interstates that are just for cyclist walkers to get around with. Other interesting things we've seen in Columbia, we're seeing a lot of car free cities and zones in cities that are car freeze on certain days of the week. And this helps people that are not necessarily comfortable getting out in traffic on their bike to go out, know there's gonna be no traffic, know there's gonna be a lot of other bikers and then go out and just try moving around their block. Put some air in your tires and grease your chain up and it gives you a reason to go out with your kids and know your kids will be safe on the street and get comfortable biking. And then there's some more pessimistic cases where we see in a lot of developing countries like India and certain parts of Central Africa where it's really frowned upon to own a bike and there's the social stigma that the poor operate bikes and that the disadvantaged communities are the ones that have to rely on bikes. And often in these communities, there's a lot of poor infrastructure that makes it difficult to operate a bike and difficult to keep your bike in good working condition. The tires deteriorate quickly and the frame takes a beating on these hard roads. And so it's really interesting the way different communities have chosen to interact with cycling and the way different communities are choosing to interact with cycling in the future. The Netherlands is continually making greater and greater areas within their big cities car free. And a lot of the communities initially, especially the business owners are very scared that they're going to lose a lot of business because people can't park there. But in all actuality, as soon as they make these streets car free, the community flocks there. It's a fun place to be. It's a fun place to be where there's a lot of street vendors and people are walking and you can be safe in your public space and business skyrockets. Business goes through the roof and it's so interesting to see how some communities have embraced cycling and gotten all those benefits and other communities have chosen not to do so. Well, we have the macro situations going on in places like Holland, the Netherlands and we see that in Davis when we try to introduce the idea that we should have less car parking, people get pretty scared. They get scared that this is going to hurt business and yet time and time again in cities all over the nation and the world, we see exactly what you're talking about which is more people flock there than we become a community where people want to come and see what we're doing and come and join us. And I just envision people coming from the Bay Area and coming from Sacramento on the train, maybe bringing their bikes or renting bikes after they get here and enjoying our farmers market and a wonderful place to be. Like Holland, we're flat. Unlike Holland, we've got great weather and it doesn't rain that much. So give me those first impressions again. You just got here from the East Coast coming to the West Coast. You're now in Davis. Were there any unusual things that you saw that you didn't recognize or know how to manage on a bike? The things that struck me the most when I first got to Davis was definitely the infrastructure. I was amazed at how connected the community is to their bikes and through their bike lanes. The Davis Bike Loop is a great example of this. You're so capable to move from point A to point B on your bike. And that really helps you overcome a lot of the big barriers to biking like going grocery shopping. It's really intimidating the first couple of times you have to tote some gallons of milk around on your bike. And if you have a proper bike lane and the cars are looking out for you and you're in a nice, flat, safe spot, it really helps you overcome those challenges. And so I would say the things that struck me most were definitely the community's approach to biking and the way the community has invested in biking with the infrastructure that we see in Davis. And we have lots of great role models of things that we might not have seen in other cities. We have Dutch bikes here, what's called the buckfeets. I've seen several families that have three children in the front of their bike and they just look so happy. Nothing makes me happier than seeing an entire family up on bikes because it sends a message to everybody that this is a great place to ride a bike with your family, which is so much more interesting and engaging than taking your kids someplace dark to watch a movie and eat popcorn. So we love seeing this. And I really appreciate your views and perspectives and I'm hoping that we're going to be able to include you in many of the projects that the bike campaign is involved in. We're producing a new transportation guide and bike map. One of the things that we all need when we get to town, how did you best, what tools did you best use when you first arrived to figure out how to get around? Was it your phone or what worked for you? I found the thing that worked for me the most were the locals. There's no substitute for interacting with people to learn how to best get around. And I think if you talk to anybody in Davis that has been here for a little while, you can really start to learn from them the best way to get from A to B in a safe way, on a good bike path. And it's because they know, it's because they've done it and that's because the community really has embraced this way of getting around on a bike. And so I think that's the number one way to do it. The next best way is definitely your phone. There's a lot of interconnected ways to get around and most of them are on Google Maps from my experience and so it's a very useful tool to help you navigate the intricate bike network in Davis. The key being to keep in mind the rules of the road. I think that's another very important thing for people coming into Davis to realize is that if you're on a bike on the road, then you're interacting with everybody else on that road in such a way that you have to follow every rule that every car has to follow. Absolutely. And so you cannot be texting and driving and you should be wearing a helmet, all of your proper safety equipment. You can't cut lanes, you can't go against traffic. It's another part of being a bike-friendly community is being an educated biker. Absolutely. And it's really important for anyone watching our in-the-studio program today to understand that we all have rights and responsibilities when we're out on the street. And thank you for joining us. I'm Maria Contreras-Tibet, the Director of the Bike Campaign. See you next time.