Rolling confidently and cautiously down University Avenue on a sage-green, hybrid, Novara Fiona Rachel Whipple made a left turn across the hectic rush-hour traffic to pull into the parking lot at Provo City Library at Academy Square. Days before, I had made arrangements to meet Rachel at this location for an interview. She easily shoved the bike’s front wheel over one of the heavy u-bars of the bike racks adjacent to the south entrance and secured her bike with a cable; all this without a smudge on the smartly dressed Associate Attorney who had just come from her law office two miles away to the north. Rachel often rides her bike to work, a bike she bought especially for commutes, and her husband, Associate Professor Clint Whipple, walks five to six days a week to his place of business, the main campus of BYU where he teaches. I will soon learn that this is an active transportation family—their three children included.
One of the main reasons Rachel and Clint chose to live in Provo was its “bikeability and walkability.” Rachel began biking around town thirteen years ago “because it was faster and to cover longer distances” than one could walking. On other more casual days the whole family would walk to the movie theater (at the time, “Movie 8”) located 3.4 miles away on No. University Parkway. All this activity started when they decided “to give up using the car during Lent,” and the whole family would ride bikes, and slowly worked its way into daily routines the rest of the year. When their youngest daughter, a student at BYU, accepted an after-classes job four miles from campus on South State Street there was a problem: Rachel didn’t feel that the route was safe enough for riding a bike, so the use of a car was decided. But due to BYU policy the car couldn’t be parked on campus and this didn’t allow enough time for Claire to get to work on time. They then bought Claire a scooter to solve this problem, giving her enough time to reach the car and still drive to work. The scooter began to attract more use, soon Claire was riding her scooter to other locations around town and for other reasons than to merely get to work. Rachel and Clint’s oldest daughter utilizes UVX Route 830x to arrive safely at Utah Valley University where she is attending classes, a distance of 5.4 miles from home and along some very busy traffic corridors that would make biking a bit uncomfortable (still a plausible alternative to driving). Isaac, the youngest Whipple, at one time rode to school on the back of his mom’s bike, then used his own bike (Provo Bicycle Collective), and now often takes the bus or catches a ride to Seminary, rounding out the family’s commitment to active transportation.
In 2016 the family moved to Belgium where Clint was on sabbatical for a year at “Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie.” Of course, bikes again were a major resource for grocery shopping, outings, and commuting to work. I learned that while the children were enrolled in a Belgium school a day-long, 20 kilometer, bicycle field trip was designated each year to teach bike safety and to check the riding ability of each child. When the Whipples returned to Provo in 2017 they were all even more savvy about active transportation, and even more committed. Today the family car seldom leaves the property, although some occasions of long distance and/or work related travel are still necessary. Otherwise, you’re more likely to see Rachel Whipple pedaling up University Avenue, to Costco or even, as she is now one of the City’s newest Councilors, to Provo City Hall.
