Joshua Poe, a student at the University of Louisville, recently posted his observations on living in New Albany and biking to Louisville for school and work at the New Albany Bicycle Coalition blog. He says he was apprehensive about living so far away, but eventually made the jump to a bike commute.
Finally, when the weather warmed, I surrendered and devised a route to commute to work at Dutchmans and Cannons Lane and school at U of L. I started out using TARC and the #22 bus to get across the Sherman Minton Bridge, but the 3 bus routes in New Albany are so scattered and infrequent and that I have since forsaken the bus altogether. Here are some observations about biking from New Albany to Louisville.
- New Albany has the potential to be an excellent city for cycling. Right now, it is not.
- Two bike racks on TARC buses are not sufficient. Often they are already in use and some bus drivers will not let you take your bike on the bus, in which case you have to wait for the next bus, which can take up to an hour and a half.
- It takes approx. 45 minutes to get from downtown New Albany to U of L across the Clark Memorial Bridge on a bicycle (the completed Greenway will easily cut this in half).
- On an average day, I see blue herons, hawks, eagles, turtles, and a variety of songbirds on the Beargrass Creek bike trail, at the Falls, and in Cherokee Park (this week I saw a hooded warbler).
Joshua has many more great observations you should check out at the NA Bicycle Coalition site.  He says he rides at a leisurely pace, so a commute through various parks around town must be really refreshing, not to mention all the wildlife he is able to enjoy (without creating roadkill).
