Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

This little rig pictured to the left was my pride and joy as a 5th grader and some of my best memories growing up were of taking family bike rides after dinner.  That, and when I crashed this “orange krate stingray” coming home from baseball practice one afternoon…not necessarily a good memory.  Pain doesn’t let you forget. Riding home from baseball practice isn’t something you’ll see any young boys doing in these parts.  Not that they don’t play baseball.  Baseball is incredibly popular here, but that is another post.  They don’t ride because there is no where to ride.  Of every opinion that I’ve ever written on this blog, this next one is going to absolutely be the least controversial:  Alpharetta, North Fulton, Atlanta in general is a horrible place to be a cyclist, whether you are an eleven year old trying to go to practice or a forty-one year old trying to get a little exercise on the weekend. I don’t care about Bicycling Magazine giving Roswell honorable mention as a “best bicycling city."  The editors should be ashamed.  I don’t care about the Tour de Georgia, which starts April 16 and, by the way, is not finishing in Alpharetta this year ;-<. Bicycling in North Fulton is an afterthought ... right after doing your will or planning your funeral.  The cultural ambivalence to cycling in Atlanta and the South in general is one of our area's least flattering characteristics. I grew up in Denver, which has a large number of city parks, and because of the arid environment an old irrigation canal, the Highline Canal, that runs through a large section of the city.  After dinner during the summer, my family would all hop on their bikes and ride down to the neighborhood park that was encircled by the canal and the path that ran alongside.  There was a great old wooden bridge stuck between two houses that you’d cross over to get to the path and you had to know exactly which houses - that was local knowledge. Since my childhood, Denver has expanded its bike path system immensely showing us what can be done when you value cycling and alternative modes of transportation.  In North Fulton, we prefer to drive.  Or maybe it is that we have to drive because there are practically no sidewalks, let alone bike paths, to ride on.  I would never let my children ride their bikes out of our subdivision and when I very rarely venture out on my own bike, I think my wife fears I may return in an ambulance. However, there is a new bright spot on the cycling horizon.  The City of Milton has recently created a new committee to develop plans along with assistance from Georgia Tech staff for pedestrian and bicycling paths and possibly even equestrian trails, which would benefit all the horse owners in the City.  No routes have been put forth yet, but this single project could be instrumental in connecting the various enclaves in the City which today are segregated behind subdivision entrances. Today, Alpharetta boasts the Big Creek Greenway, which when we want to go biking as a family is where we go, but we have to pack all the bikes on the car and drive there first.  Roswell does have the River Walk trail along the Chattahoochee, which we use sometimes too, but again, we have to drive there first.  Additionally, Roswell has defined in the 2006 Master Transportation Plan the Roswell Loop, a multi-modal route that would connect all Roswell’s parks, schools, historic districts and natural resources.  Right now, though, the Roswell Loop is just a line on a planner’s map.  Roswell has a lot of plans… I’m optimistic though.  I see a future perhaps like Denver’s, where the cities develop trail systems and eventually they are linked together into a North Fulton network.  Maybe one day people will actually bike to work.  If the traffic gets much worse in some areas, they may have to.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll see the day when my son can ride (and crash) his bike to baseball practice. Š

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