Aliyya Swaby Photos
Hausladen, Willis prepare to speed-lobby.
Septuagenarians Maryann Thomas and Bobbie Rategan showed up late to a city-organized bike ride to Hartford to lobby for bike-friendly legislation. But they soon blazed their way to the front of the pack, ultimately guiding city transit officials through the last five miles of the journey.
“It keeps us out of the nursing home,” Thomas said with a grin.
Thomas and Rategan joined — and arguably bested – a delegation of city transit officials and several other local bike fanatics Tuesday morning in biking 45 miles from the New Haven Green to the Hartford Capitol to lobby state representatives to vote for SB 502 or “the bike bill.”
City parking enforcement supervisor Ray Willis (pictured) pitched the idea for the ride to his boss, transit chief Doug Hausladen, who was immediately gung-ho. Willis represents the city on the board of Bike Walk CT.
Click here to see the route the cyclists traveled Tuesday..
The bikers planned to ride to Hartford in time to participate in New Haven Day, in which local officials and community members lobby state legislators to push for specific bills or budget items.
Their target bill, SB 502, would give local and state engineers more “flexibility” in making roads safer and more convenient for bikers, Hausladen said. If passed, state and city officials could legally move forward with projects like the plan for a two-way cycle track over the Tomlinson Bridge. Right now, part of section 14 – 286b on the state statue says bikers must ride “as near to the right side of the roadway as practicable,” meaning cyclists can’t ride against traffic unless lanes are “separated” or “protected.”
The State Senate approved the bill earlier this month; the House is expected to vote in the next few days. If it passes, “things that are illegal right now that we’re going to take care of are left-handed bike lanes, contraflow bike lanes, two-way cycle tracks,” Hausladen said. “Also it’s [now] unclear how to physically protect bike lanes if they’re going to be in the roadway.”
Organizers Tuesday also expected to advocate for legislators to leave money in the budget for the state Department of Transportation to “upgrade its maintenance facilities” and to complete the roll-out of a new “urban mobility” program that will bring money to New Haven.
Fairfield State Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, a co-sponsor of the bike bill, started off with the others from the New Haven Green in a persistent drizzle just after 8 a.m.
By the time the group passed Sleeping Giant State Park on the Farmington Canal Trail, she realized she would be late for the noon legislative session unless she stepped on it.
She, her husband Brian, and a man on a surprisingly speedy recumbent bicycle (pictured) took off and soon disappeared down the trail, leaving seven other members of the contingent behind.
Willis had hung back in New Haven to wait for Thomas, who is 75, and Rategan, who is 74. The two friends had driven with their bicycles to New Haven from Waterbury after hearing about the ride from a friend.
Forty-five miles was twice the distance this reporter had ever before pedaled. It was small change for Thomas, who six years ago biked 100 miles down a portion of the eastern shoreline. Both were familiar with most of the trails, having met several years ago at a bike group.
Rategan regularly long-distance bikes with a group Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thomas takes tap dancing lessons for an hour each week. Both kayak during the summers and cross-country ski during the winters.
Despite arriving late, the two easily caught up to the group in Cheshire and finished in Hartford with energy to spare. Rategan doled out advice to this inexperienced reporter on how to move closer to the front of the pack. (Hint: Use the left-hand shifter to change the front gears.)
A “sag wagon” carrying extra bikes, food and water headed bikers off at two stops in Cheshire and Southington. But no one got hurt or needed a bike change.
During a particularly vigorous gear change on a calm New Britain road, Hausladen’s bike chain fell and hung below the gears. East Rock bike mechanic Joel LaChance and Willis swiftly replaced it, and Hausladen was back in action.
The bikers had trouble figuring out how to stay on the newly built CTFastTrak multi-use trail, adjacent to the busway between New Britain and Hartford.
Their first critique of the trail: No bathroom inside the downtown New Britain station. Second: A speed limit sign blocked part of the bike trail, Hausladen noted. And third: Signs were hard to read or non-existent.
“It’s not particularly scenic or anything. But it’s good. It’s progress,” Willis described it to someone later.
The group lost the trail — and Thomas — somewhere around Central Connecticut State University, and found both several blocks later. Thomas led the then-struggling team of pedalers through West Hartford and finally onto Capitol Avenue.
They made it to the Capitol at around 1:30 p.m. — as the official New Haven Day event was wrapping up.
After loading the bikes onto a city truck, Hausladen and Willis rushed into the building anyway. There was no time to change out of dirty road clothes and into the suits they had packed.
“Where are you going?” one city official called out as they hurried past.
“New Haven Day,” Hausladen called back, without turning.
“It’s over,” she said.
“I still got 14 minutes left,” he said.
Inside the House chambers, Hausladen made those 14 minutes count, speed-lobbying several legislators, including State Reps. Juan Candelaria and Bob Megna.
Then, after five hours of biking, less than an hour of lobbying and a quick cafeteria lunch, Hausladen and Willis drove back to work in New Haven.