Stephen Regenold is a Minneapolis writer whose Ultrafit column in the StarTribune is one of our most important regional bully pulpits for cycling and a physically active lifestyle. I commend him for his attention to cycling not only as a sport but also as a means of transportation – even in Minnesota in the winter. His column a few months ago on winter cycling is very informative, as is an accompanying video.

I also appreciated his March 19 column, “A large fella on a bike,” which concerned Scott Cutshall, who has lost nearly three hundred pounds after taking up cycling – his only real option for exercise when he weighed over 500 pounds, he and Regenold say. Cutshall eventually moved from New Jersey to Minneapolis so that he and his family could “embrace the cycling lifestyle,” he said. He was drawn to Minneapolis at first because it is home to the man who built his custom-made bike: Bob Brown, of Bob Brown Cycles. See Scott Cutshall’s impressive blog, Large Fella on a Bike, and hear him speak eloquently of his journey in an audio slideshow.

Regenold’s column is just one example of the StarTribune’s praiseworthy coverage of cycling and transportation in general. Regenold also writes on outdoor gear for a wide variety of publications; see his web site, thegearjunkie.com.

The Northfield Public Schools, the City of Northfield, the City of Dundas, and Bridgewater Township have received a $30,000 Safe Routes to Schools grant. The grant is one of 27 that were awarded throughout the state of Minnesota. During this round of funding, 105 grant proposals were submitted to the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

The Safe Routes to Schools program seeks to make conditions safer for children who walk or bike to school and also expand the number of students who do so. The title of the Northfield Safe Routes project is PaTHS: Pathways to Healthier Students: Planning Enhanced Access to Northfield Schools.

The Northfield area grant is a non-infrastructure grant, which means that it won’t be used to make infrastructure improvements. Instead it will focus on planning for possible future improvements, as well as the creation of education, law enforcement, encouragement, and evaluation programs that will foster physically active modes of travel to and from school.

The Northfield Area Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, on which I serve as chair, presented the idea for the grant proposal to the Northfield Public Schools and local governments. All parties worked together to complete the proposal, with the task force managing the effort. Our thanks go out to all who helped, especially to Tom Stringer and Superintendent Chris Richardson of the school district, Joel Walinski of the City of Northfield, and Christopher Tassava of Carleton College. Carleton allowed Christopher, a professional grant writer, to donate work time to the project.

For more information on the Safe Routes grant, see a March 22 Northfield News article (which I found online but not in print), the school district press release, and MnDOT’s Safe Routes to Schools web site. See also an earlier post I did following the submission of the grant proposal.

We recently made our annual trip to visit my wife’s grandparents in Sun City West, Arizona, about an hour or so northwest of Phoenix. Sun City West is one of those Del Webb retirement communities, like the original Sun City (which is near Sun City West).

It’s a bit strange that Sun City West calls itself a “city,” since it really isn’t a city in the strict sense, as its web site explains:

Sun City West is a “city” in name only as it is an unincorporated community. As such, it does not have the usual city government structure. Maricopa County provides street maintenance, building and zoning codes, law enforcement and public health services.

You won’t find any schools in this community of 26,000 people, nor will you find many playgrounds, because, according to a representative at their visitors center, to live here one person in the household must be 55 years of age or older, and no one younger than 19 can visit for more than two weeks at a time.

One benefit of these rules, at least for those who live here, is that property taxes are low. “Many of our homes do not even have a school tax,” their web site boasts. Their page on fees and taxes states this:

Local school taxes can often be a major part of property taxes but most of Sun City West was removed years ago from the surrounding school district. As a result, a typical property tax on a $395,000 home are less than $1500. annually.

An age-segregated community such as Sun City West raises some questions. What is lost and gained when we separate the generations? How ethical is it for people to avoid paying school taxes, particularly people who have benefited from public education themselves?

There is an element of racial segregation to the city as well, given its special character and history. According to the 2000 census, 98.71% of the residents are white. Of course a large percentage of the workers are not white.

Finally, I should say something about the picture above. Sun City West bills itself as “Arizona’s finest golf retirement community,” and as the picture attests, golf carts are a common vehicle for transportation. Many streets have a narrow outside lane that they can use. This, at least, is something that I’d like to see other cities – oops, communities – embrace as well.

My March 10 post has been edited since the original publication to correct inaccuracies. The declaration it concerned was not a document approved by the Southern Baptist Convention, as I originally wrote. The inaccuracy was a result of my misreading of the New York Times article listed below. I apologize for this error.

Fortunately, I followed up on the post by going to the Southern Baptist Convention web site today. Please see the revised post for a more accurate story.

Note: The post below and headline above have been edited since the original publication to correct inaccuracies. The Declaration listed below was not a document approved by the Southern Baptist Convention, as I originally wrote. The inaccuracy was a result of my misreading of the New York Times article listed below. I apologize for this error.

A group of Southern Baptist leaders has issued a document entitled “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” Signers of the new declaration include the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as two former presidents. The declaration was organized by the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative, which is distinct from the Southern Baptist Convention.

The group’s declaration differs strongly from a June 2007 Southern Baptist Convention resolution on global warming that is skeptical about whether global warming is caused by humans and whether significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are warranted. The smaller group’s declaration, in contrast, states, “current denominational engagement with these issues [has] often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice. Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. We can do better.”

See a New York Times article on the new declaration and the Southern Baptist Convention press release written in response to it.

From time to time Neal Peirce, a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, writes on the topic of bicycles and public policy. On March 3, he published an excellent column, “Year of the Bicycle?,” that summarizes some of the developments in cycling policy worldwide over the last year. These include the Velib bike rental program in Paris, rental programs elsewhere, bicycle boulevards in Portland, and developments in the U.S. Congress.

Peirce’s column coincided with the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC, March 4-6, about which I hope to hear more.

Here’s an excerpt from Peirce’s column:

First the trends: Oil costs are surpassing $100 a barrel, global warming alarm calls are mounting, polluting autos and trucks increasingly clog city streets, and health concerns about a sedentary and fattening society are mounting.

And now the developments: Handy bike-for-hire stations are proving instant hits in Paris and other European cities, and seem poised to invade urban America. Moves to add painted bike lanes along city roadways are being eclipsed by proposals for entire networks of “bike boulevards” — roadways altered radically to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians. And a companion “Complete Streets” movement — making roadway space for cyclists and pedestrians, not just cars and trucks — is gaining traction nationwide.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus (now 160 bipartisan members strong), claims a new pro-bike politics is forming, that it can mobilize a 1-million-plus national constituency and force clear recognition of the role of bicycles in the next (2009) federal transportation bill. He and the Bike Summit will be pushing for a sense of Congress resolution recognizing the potential of bikes to undergird a greener, healthier and more efficient national future.

Cycling, nationwide, still counts for tiny portions of commuting and shopping trips. But Portland’s experience shows the potential, Blumenauer insists: Since that city’s bike program began in the 1990s, the “modal split” for bikes has quadrupled and a $100 million bike industry has emerged, accounting for 1,000 jobs.

Paris’ Velib bike rental program — the name combines velo (bicycle) and liberte (freedom) — opened last July and registered an astounding 2 million trips in its first 40 days. Twenty-thousand bikes are available at 1,450 cycling stations across the city. Insert a credit card to sign up ($1.50 a day to $43 a year) and you can drop your bike off at any other station, the first 30 minutes free.

So Hillary Clinton has survived to fight another day. After winning yesterday’s primaries and caucuses in Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas, she will stay in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. And now fans of Obama such as myself are less confident of their candidate’s eventual victory.

For those choosing between Clinton and Obama, it seems there are two criteria at issue: electability and future benefit. By the latter, I mean, which candidate will bring the most benefit or improvement to the country? Obama seems more electable, while I’m uncertain about which would be most beneficial in office.

We make compromises between these criteria every time we vote. We want the best policies for our society, but we also want to be in the position to make policy in the first place. For some people I respect very much, too much compromise is required to vote for any of the remaining candidates of the major parties. They either vote for a candidate of a small party who cannot win or opt out of the system entirely.

Each of us needs to decide when and how much we will compromise. Given my estimation of the current system, I choose to stick with one of the big parties, the Democratic Party. Too much is at stake to leave the existing system entirely. The political spoils are too great, the necessary actions too important. At the same time, we can still keep an eye on the larger questions concerning the shortcomings of the existing system and how it might be improved.

This blog got noticed in the February 27 Blog House, Tim O’Brien’s StarTribune column on political blogs. Mr. O’Brien quoted some of my February 26 post on the recent transportation bill.

Northern Letter is now aggregated on the BlogNetNews.com/Minnesota page. I’ll have to see if I can get aggregated on MNspeak.com again.