Great read here!

In reference to Brian O’Neill’s Sept. 14 column on biking (“Motorists, Bicyclists Creep Toward Truce on City’s Busy Streets”), I think that the biggest factor that is never discussed in the promotion of biking is locker rooms at places of employment. It’s relatively easy for a politician to get lane closures to create bike lanes, but much, much harder to get employers to invest dollars to create locker rooms where bikers can shower and dress for the workday.

At previous jobs, I’ve seen people bike to work and then go off to the restroom to pseudo-shower with baby wipes to be reasonably nonoffensive to colleagues. That’s just not going to work (pun intended) for the vast majority of people even considering biking to their jobs.

The locker rooms would serve the double purpose of allowing people who want to run at lunchtime a way to get their exercise, so it’s not as if these would be used by only one small group of employees.

So I believe that we’re not really getting serious about biking as a daily alternative to driving until we make it possible to shower and dress afterward — unless we want to make sweaty Spandex equivalent to business casual.

More at http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2014/09/22/Biking-as-transit-won-t-take-off-until-employers-are-invested-too/stories/201409200136