“I have managed to do everything with the aid of a good bike rack and the bus+bike transport. This has included things like a bale of hay…,” states Alicia McIntire on January 3rd in response to a post on BikeWalk Provo Chat. We’re in the middle of winter, and yet reading further I learn that this same Adjunct Professor at BYU Marriott School of Business is 100% committed to active transportation. I caught up with Alicia on campus at Harold B. Lee Library to learn more about how she has managed traveling without an auto for over two years now; and what about that bale of hay!
In the summer of 2019 Alicia’s car wasn’t working, and since she already had some experience with biking, she decided to just let the car sit for a while. By autumn the car’s battery was dead and it was also time for her to go back to school, so she continued biking and found it took the same amount of time to bike to campus as it did to drive… and no walk to and from the parking lot. “As I got to know the city more I decided to get rid of it [the car], sold it to a friend” in February of 2020 and then bought a second bike, a new Specialized Vado eBike.
Alicia’s primary and what continues to be her favorite cycling machine is a Salsa Marrakesh, a bike she has put some touring miles on and will often use for local errands and commuting to several locations where she’s teaching or volunteering on a regular basis. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic in March of 2020, when the university was shutting down some of its on campus access, Alicia used the time to do some longer rides and biked over a hundred miles to Brigham City along the Porter Rockwell and Jordan Trails, to mark just one such excursion. And the Murdock Canal Trail is one of her favorite recreational rides that she enjoys with her “dark blue,” rack fitted Marrakesh.
Still, the electric Vado has its own special appeal, “it can truly be a car replacement,” Alicia tells me, “because it can make the hills easily;” and for getting up North Temple Drive to her ward on a hot summer day, the Vado makes the trip much more pleasurable. Alicia also uses it more in the winter months, the bike has wider tires making it more stable when rolling over snow and ice (two conditions not ignored in Provo).
There’s even more to Alicia’s commitment to active transport, she has no qualms about using our local UVX (bus rapid transit) or Frontrunner train services. Taking one of the bikes with her she boards the bus to extend her reach to stores and help with cargo carrying; once she “bought pots and pans from Bed Bath & Beyond,” bringing home the “big, wobbly box tied on the rack.” When she travels to Salt Lake Center for Science Education, where she also teaches in the fall and winter, Alicia pedals her bike to the Provo Station and then rides Frontrunner to the North Temple Station, a distance of fifty miles.
For grocery shopping, Alicia likes to walk to a Smith’s near her home, as we both agree during our chat that walking sometimes reveals nice things along the way that aren’t encountered even on a Salsa Marrakesh.
And what about that bale of hay? Well, it was actually straw that Alicia needed for some home gardening, so she rode down to the IFA Country Store on South University Ave and, securing the bulky bundle to her bike rack with bungee cords, riding back up bike friendly 300 West, she really did manage to transport that “heavy bale” 1.6 miles home, and with little difficulty.
