Easy Riders Bicycle Club

Cathy Tuttle Leads Cyclists to Safer, Low-Carbon Transportation

by Cindy Shyev Riskin

Cyclist of the Month: Cathy Tuttle

Age: 51

Bike club: Spokespeople (through Cascade)

In October 2007, Cathy Tuttle was cycling through Ravenna with her 10-year-old son, Akiva Notkin, when she realized that there was no safe route to Roosevelt High School from their Wallingford home. It was then that the 51-year-old former city planner for the City of Seattle made a mental commitment: By the time Akiva entered high school, in three years, a secure bicycle route would exist to the school from Wallingford.

To raise awareness of the lack of safe routes linking Seattle’s 38 neighborhoods, Tuttle got certified as a ride leader through Cascade Bicycle Club and created Spokespeople. More than 25 people attended Spokepeople’s first ride, March 1, 2008. The group has maintained its excellent turnout.

In addition to offering maps of safe routes on the group’s Web site, at http://spokespeople.us, Spokespeople teaches new, returning, and reluctant riders of all ages to conquer their fears of riding on streets and to become competent bicycle commuters. Experienced bicycle commuters come along to encourage and to help model good road techniques.

Tuttle learned the most about leading rides from Cascade ride leaders Terri and John Calnan, Jan Johnson, and Cindy Riskin (this author) as well as Cascade employees Sarah Bronstein, Ashley Geisendorfer, Serena Lehman, and Julie Salathé.

"Spokespeople teaches new, returning, and reluctant riders to conquer their fears of riding on streets and to become competent bicycle commuters.”

Spokespeople starts at 2 p.m. the first Saturday of every month at Wallingford Playfield (4219 Wallingford Avenue North). The group runs short (around 5-mile) rides from Wallingford to Ballard, Eastlake, Fremont, Green Lake, Greenwood, Phinney, Ravenna, Roosevelt, South Lake Union, University District, and Uptown Queen Anne. Wallingford is the hub of the wheel, and the safest to adjacent neighborhoods are the “spokes” in “Spokespeople.”

Through SPOKESPEOPLE, Tuttle hopes to help ordinary people, not just “bicycle messenger types,” to feel safe cycling to their everyday activities.

“That’s what this group is about: [the safest routes] to the grocery store, to school, to soccer practice, to our jobs,” says Tuttle. “We need to feel we can get on our bikes at our house and not worry when we go and do just our daily life activities. And right now we do worry about it.”

Spokespeople also forwards the transportation goals of Sustainable Wallingford, another group that Tuttle cofounded. Sustainable Wallingford is interested in home food production, home and business energy and insulation, and nonmotorized transportation.

The change to nonmotorized transportation is going to come through a lot of directions—from people not being able to afford to drive, from waking up to the climate impact, and from realizing the economic advantages. But mostly, people must feel comfortable traveling outside of their cars, Tuttle says.

Cycling lanes and sharrows being painted on arterials as part of the Bicycle Master Plan don’t always make Tuttle feel safer. For example, the new sharrows on the busiest part of 45^th Avenue Northeast, in the University District, aren’t a route she feels comfortable having Akiva ride.

The Spokespeople safest-route maps sometimes follow the Bicycle Master Plan but often do not, preferring lower-traffic routes with the lowest-grade hills whenever possible.

“I thought the whole point of this exercise in city planning was to provide safe, secure ways for people to get from urban core to urban core; to go between Wallingford and Ravenna; to go between Green Lake and Northgate,” says Tuttle. “I feel like what we’re doing in Seattle is just scratching the surface of linking people through neighborhoods along secure bike routes.”

Eventually, a network of maps could link the entire city. In the future, the City could use these maps to create more-secure routes if it adopts a bike-boulevard system, says Tuttle.

Remember to choose low-traffic routes with lowest-grade hills whenever possible. Like Tuttle—a self-described lazy rider who rides her daily hills slowly—spokes-maps are about safest, easiest routes for nonmotorized transportation not fitness or endurance riding.

So put your Spandex-mind aside when choosing your routes.

“I just want to get from place to place,” says Tuttle. She’s more interested in the kind of bicycle trailer for hauling groceries or kids; the safest lights and brakes; and “the stuff that commuters and just ordinary people need to know for ordinary riding.

“I don’t even own any Spandex.”

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