Plea to widen roads nets a wide response

A recent column hit plenty of nerves out there, eliciting numerous emotional e-mail responses.

The subject wasn't about the Iraqi war, or gun control, or the environment, or the high price of gasoline.

It was about wider shoulders on the roads.

I have to admit, I was unprepared for the number of people who ran to their computers and dashed off notes about the need for better accommodation of bicycles, runners and pedestrians on paved roads built and paid for by taxpayers. The personal experience I wrote about — when I was bicycling recently in the farmlands of Colorado and the shoulder suddenly disappeared — was obviously not the first time that happened to anyone.

Charlotte Hansen wrote, "Amen! to your article. We live in Riverton. I am a distance runner and I also ride my bike at least once a week. My husband commutes to work three days a week on his bike, and we have on occasion taken our kids on bicycle outings as a family. There is nothing scarier than riding (or running) along a road with little to no shoulder, especially if you have kids with you. I wish there could be some kind of uniformity to roads, with wide shoulders everywhere!"

Another reader wrote, "SLC needs wider shoulders . . . this is one of our most important quality of life issues."

Yet another, triathlete Travis Jensen of Salt Lake City, wrote, "I hope you are getting far more positive comments about your article than negative ones. I'm sure that there are a few of the Hummer/F-350/CXT crowd that have e-mailed you with comments to the effect that we should just get off the roads before someone runs us over (by the way, CXT stands for Commercial Xtreme Truck)."

But no one from the Hummer/F-350/CXT crowd bothered to write. The only response that wasn't positive was more cynical than negative. It came from a person who signed himself as "ML" and blames environmentalists — who don't want to yield an inch to blacktop without a fight — for much of the problem in making roads a few feet wider.

"You talk about how the world would be better on a bike, but to get there you will have to ante up more cash to the tax man or you will have to change the environmental laws of this country," ML wrote. "Honestly, we have reached a point where the environmental impact statements and the environmental assessments cost more than the pavement."