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I like to drive. I like cars.

2
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I'm sure all of you in this room do too.

3
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But I'd like to ask you a question,

4
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that is, what happens
when you don't have any more;

5
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that is the same situation
that I found myself in.

6
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I didn't have any, I lost my car.

7
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So I realized at that point

8
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that I was going to have
to do something else.

9
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I was gonna have to walk or use the bus

10
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or dare I say it, use my bike.

11
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It's pretty much when I started to realize

12
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that Lexington, the community I live in,

13
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has a wonderful array of facilities.

14
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When I say facilities, I mean bike paths.

15
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It can also mean some other things,
but we're talking about paths.

16
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And I realized that we have a lot of
really good infrastructure in Lexington.

17
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But we also sometimes
don't really succeed very well.

18
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I found myself in many situations
where I thought

19
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wow, this is really dangerous.

20
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This is not, this is not cool.

21
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So let me think,
why do people ride their bikes,

22
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why do people choose
other forms of transportation?

23
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And I realized that,
for me, it was because I had to.

24
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I found myself in situations
where it was the only choice I had.

25
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But then I also found
how much I enjoyed it,

26
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how healthy it was and all other benefits

27
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that come along with riding a bike,

28
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especially like getting
everywhere pretty quickly.

29
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Did you know that on average in Lexington,

30
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it takes you to drive 25 miles per hour,

31
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it doesn't matter if you go 80
to make that green light

32
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you will still gonna get there
in the same time:

33
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from Hamburg to downtown,
you can get there in 30 minutes.

34
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That's about the same as with a car.

35
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So I decided that
I needed to start to rethink the order.

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the hierarchy of speed,
as I call it, of transportation.

37
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It doesn't mean that we value the car
or the bus or the bike or walking,

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as any of them being higher.

39
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I needed to rethink how I thought
about my transportation.

40
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Because right now,
we kind of value the car the most

41
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and everything else
just seems kind of ancillary.

42
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So 90% of people,
they drive their cars to work

43
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and only 0.6% ride their bikes.

44
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But yet, 70% car rides and car trips
are less than 2 miles.

45
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You can travel 25 mph
on average on the bike

46
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just the same as you can in a car.

47
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There's no reason to,

48
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the bike suddenly becomes just
as important or just viable as a vehicle.

49
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So when we start to balance
our decision-making process

50
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for how we decide what vehicles to use,
bike, walking or cars, specifically bikes,

51
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then you start to think more critically
about how you're getting somewhere

52
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and choosing the right form
of transportation.

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It's about, not riding because we have to

54
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but it's about riding because you want to.

55
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And that made me think also,

56
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what kind of people
are riding their bikes,

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because that's kind of important.

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If you have people who ride all the time
and then you have people who don't,

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how do you get better infrastructure?

60
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What takes lots of people riding,
more people riding?

61
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And so I thought, who is this audience,

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who are the people who are not riding?

63
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It made me think about basically
everyone, who is riding or not?

64
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So first you have this person.

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This person is just everyone:

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a college student, a co-worker,
just everyday life.

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And then you have, of course,
the hipsters who ride to anything.

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They ride on the snow,

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they ride on the highway,

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they probably ride in front of you,
making you pretty angry sometimes.

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And then of course
you have the professionals,

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they do it for fitness,
they do it for triathlons,

73
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they do it for their living,
as bike messengers and pros,

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Lance Armstrong, Tour de France,
all that stuff.

75
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But then you also have
people who just do for recreation.

76
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Here we see somebody who's retired.

77
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They may decide suddenly
to pull their bike out of the garage.

78
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But it doesn't have to be
any of these particular cases.

79
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It seems that if we talk to the audience
of people who put their bikes away,

80
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mainly those who graduate college
and start to start their families,

81
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grow their lives
and start their first job.

82
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They do, they put their bike
in that garage,

83
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and they don't pull it back out again
until retirement.

84
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So we started taking these groups:

85
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retirees, people who use it
just for recreation,

86
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people who just do it
on weekends for fun,

87
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and as well as the regular people 
who just travel.

88
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They got to work.

89
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They are starting their lives off.

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And those people need to ride.

91
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When we start to do that, start to choose

92
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and think of our
complete transportation system

93
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as a series of viable options, 


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depending on what you are doing,

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where you are going, why you are doing

96
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how far is it,
how fast you need to get there.

97
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Then you can start to figure out


98
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how you're going to actually get from
one place to another with just your bike

99
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and how you might choose your bike
to get to those places

100
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instead of the normal car
or other forms of transportation.

101
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And by doing that,

102
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we will start to actually see an increase
in ridership in our communities.

103
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And thus we will get better
infrastructures. So it's not so dangerous.

104
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I'd like to challenge
everyone in this room

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to think before you get in your cars
or even on a bus

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and try to consider
how you might choose a bike instead

107
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so that you'll improve the lives
of all cyclists in your community.

108
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Thank you.

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(Applause)