Your entire family of six enjoys riding bikes and scooters, your family often bikes and scoots down the Provo River Trail and you would also like your children to bike to school. “The kids want to do that too,” but there’s a problem… In order to reach Jordan Avenue and then W 1460 N on the way to Westridge Elementary you must carry your children’s bikes up “Grandview hill” at the S/W corner of Lions Park, because “the kids aren’t old enough” to make that long climb themselves. It’s either that or having to access W Columbia Lane, a well traveled thoroughfare, especially in the morning, and pedaling up Grandview Lane. Or, you could take the much longer W 820 N route to the south, which makes biking to school even more difficult.
Meet Devin Young, Assistant Coach for BYU Men’s Volleyball, an athlete, and a dedicated bike commuter for the last four and a half years. I met up with Devin at his office in the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse to learn more about him and this family of bike and scooter riders, and why they wish they could, but don’t, use more of Provo’s popular streets and many bike lanes.
Devin’s family, his wife and four young children (the youngest age three), “quite often ride the river trail to Utah Lake” or, at least, to Lakeshore Drive for recreation. Whenever there’s a BYU Football Home Game, Devin and his son, sometimes with Devin’s dad, “always bike to the game;” and Devin takes “a few of the kids to soccer games at Fort Utah,” usually towing the youngest in a bike trailer. During the weekdays Devin bikes to work on Cougar Boulevard, parking his commuter bike at the racks nicely located just outside his office on the 2nd floor above the main entrance to the Fieldhouse.
Devin would like for his family to be 100% active transportation, but he tells me that he “gets a little nervous taking my family anywhere other than the river trail and neighborhood. Lions Park has a nice paved path around the border.” It’s things like “distracted drivers” that make Devin nervous and “feel unsafe” about biking more with his family on Provo’s streets. Otherwise, he would like for the family to bike and scoot to the grocery store and to some of the events about town. I ask Devin if he is aware of the 300 W bike friendly corridor, as a way to access Center Street and venues such as the Covey Theater. He muses a bit, and then thinks out loud that he might consider trying that route sometime.
Now, getting back to Devin’s problem concerning him having to carry his children’s bikes up “Grandview hill,” I decided to pedal over myself and visit Lions Park. It was even more than what Devin had described to me, and what I had expected. Two, steep flights of concrete stairs separated by a long, horizontal landing… 92 steps in all! I couldn’t imagine carrying the three bikes of his school age children up those stairs five days a week, so they could ride their bikes to school safely.
