The Fort Collins Bicycling Specialist: A Conversation with Nick Heimann
An afternoon call with Nick Heimann, the Fort Collins Active Modes Specialist, brought light to the unique features of Fort Collins cycling. With a personal background in exercise science, he understands the psychological nature of exercise and the impact it has on people. This led him to expand his focus of how cycling makes an impact on a population scale. Heimann’s knowledge of cycling in Fort Collins revealed city efforts towards education, safety and environmental impacts about bicycling in the Platinum Rated Bike Friendly town.
Beyond The Oval: Will you explain your role within the Fort Collins Government?
Nick Heimann: I have been in Fort Collins for 10 years now and working for the city for five. I started with the city in our FC bikes program as a graduate student at CSU in the public health program. I was very interested in getting involved with local government. I think local government is an important way to achieve a behavior change, especially in a place like Fort Collins that has historically been known for its bicycling culture, among other things. I started as an intern and now I am a full-time employee and my main role is primarily focused on coordinating our large-scale community events, two open street events and Bike-to-Work-Days.
Would you consider yourself to be an active member in the Fort Collins Cycling community?
In terms of me being a cyclist, yes. My approach to that is to be as visible as I can. Showing cycling is accessible, because it is something truly anyone can do. I think it’s important to be out there, using the available bike routes on a regular basis. I also think it’s important to show people that you don’t need special equipment. So, you’ll see me in the clothes that I’m going to wear to work or what I would typically wear. My approach is to be a visible example that cycling really is an easy thing for just about anyone to do.
Do you participate in the events you plan?
Yes. My predecessor set the idea that if we were going to be spending so much time on the back end, the day of was a chance to experience the work we had just done. For Bike-to-Work-Day it is not uncommon for me to ride 15 to 20 miles to visits various breakfast stations. Really, my goal is to check in with people, see how it's going, and really tune my eye to what it's like to be a participant. The same is true for us with open streets events. A lot of it is about building relationships with community members. Being a participant at these events is certainly critical for me to do my job well, plus it’s a lot of fun.
How does the Fort Collins biking differ from other places you have been to or lived?
Fort Collins is unique in a couple of respects. One way is that in the late 1800s, was that the streets were designed intentionally wide. What we are left with now are abnormally wide residential streets, wider than many other cities would consider for their design standards. That allows us to have a blank canvas that we can look at multiple uses of to make sure the space is safe and functional for as many people as we can.
Something that we are doing, that a lot of cities learn from us, is how we redesign the street. In some cases, the most efficient way to do this is to redesign that street and then go out there and rip it up to redo it. The problem is that it’s very costly. Instead, we have leveraged the street maintenance program. This program is an annual program where our streets department has already identified areas that need work, to more easily resurface roads. When the new road is created, we end up with a blank canvas to be redesigned to add in space so as many people as we can. Including buffered bike lanes and other innovations.
In terms of accessibility and as a platinum bike city, what ways does the city uphold these standards and continue to grow?
We have worked really hard to promote our bicycling network as a system of low volume, low-stress streets, that we would consider bikeable for anyone from age 8 to age 80. There is data coming out of other institutions are showing that infrastructure is the number one reason that someone is going to get on a bike for whatever reason. Quality infrastructure, smooth asphalt, wide roads, and bike ways that you won’t run into high speed/volume cars people tend to feel more comfortable.
We are one of 5 Platinum Rated Bicycle Friendly Communities. That being said, there are plenty of things that we can do better and strive to do better. One thing we do is go to conferences throughout the country, even the region, to be able to go to a different culture to see how other cities do their bicycling. Then how can we scale this to work with a community like Fort Collins? We are consistently looking at more progressive designs for our infrastructure, and other evolving ideas.
What is the most important safety initiative Fort Collins has in place for rider safety?
One of the most important and best things we have done is to implement a program called “Bicycle Friendly Driver”. This an educational curriculum that we have introduced to high schools and bigger employers around Fort Collins. We also get requests to present to neighborhood groups and other groups who also want this education. The idea behind the program is that we recognize that a majority of people using our streets happen to be drivers. But we also know that it is a significant source of risk of injury and potential safety concerns. The program tries to teach people who primarily the same things we teach people who ride bikes. People driving thus begin to understand why people on bikes do what they do. We also highlight some of our top crashes and causes of the crashes to teach skills to avoid these types of incidents.
What other ways does the city promote bike safety?
There are adult-oriented bicycling education programs and our Safe Ride to Schools program is incredibly impressive. It educates upwards of 8,000 students on an annual basis about walking and cycling safety as it relates to transportation.
Another component of this is enforcement. On a regular basis, we are working with police officers in order to identify areas where data shows high incidents of crashes or places where there are a lot of safety concerns. Then educate people about these areas and how to avoid these risks. A lot of the work we do with police officers isn’t necessarily about enforcement, or getting in trouble, rather raising awareness among the population.
How do the bicycling initiatives help the environment?
The most recent community survey puts the Fort Collins modal transportation share between 7 and 10 percent, taking seasonal differences into account. This is relatively high, especially compared to other national standards.
Through inventory of our climate action plan, transportation in Fort Collins accounts for nearly 25 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second-largest contributor, with electricity being the first. Clearly the transportation system has a major role to play, especially if we are going to reach our goal to be carbon natural by 2050. If we are to achieve that, there is major work to be done in terms of modernizing and implementing a progressive transportation system. Bicycling will play a role in that, though as we see in other cities, implementing scooter share is making even bigger progress of moving people out of single-occupancy vehicles and into low carbon or carbon natural modes of transportation.
Do you have any additional thoughts about our conversation?
Some of the more fun things related to shifting the focus of transportation has less to do with some of the things like infrastructure or education. Its the things that can be seen as fun or be seen as promoting a sense of community and connectivity all in the same broad brush.
For more information on Fort Collins Cycling check out https://www.fcgov.com/bicycling/
