The Overly Informal First Blog Post

Excellent to see Cedar Falls getting on board with the Patch community. Hello, one and all. I'm Nick Maddix and I'm an undergraduate student at the , but originally am from the biking mecca of Iowa City which has had a great impact on my life. I’m the president of the UNI Cycling Club, am a student assistant in the UNI Special Collections & University Archives department and am also on the Cedar Falls Bicycle Advisory Committee.

I have a burning passion for alternative transportation. When I rediscovered the joys of bicycling in my early twenties, I began to see transportation in a different light, and with my background in history, learned of a great deal of things that made our automobile-dependent society what it is today. From an abundance of cheap oil to the influx of cheap cars; to the introduction of the first McDonalds to the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, which has changed the way we have developed land and our transportation network from a easy-to-follow grid system to a multitude of cul de sacs and "fat" high speed thoroughfares that whisk people to and from the suburbs and the urban metropolis. 

My blog will focus on many things in the Cedar Falls community from a non-traditional student's point of view. Cedar Falls, like many Iowa communities, is sprawling outwards at an astonishing rate. Yet, there is a growing movement in the community, just as there is with communities around the world, that seeks to shift us away from the auto-dependent transportation system and policies and to begin investing in alternative transportations. Cedar Falls's establishment as a Bronze bike friendly community by the League of American Bicyclists has been rapidly due to its extensive trails system. Yet in order to become more bike friendly, the city must devise a means to accommodate bikes on roadways, too. This is proving to be an extraordinary challenge with a divided city council and a divided community. 

What can the council do to make bicycle commuting a more feasible option in Cedar Falls? How can we make streets safer, not just for bicyclists, but for motorists as well? What has been the history of transportation in the community? I hope to shed light on a few of these things and many more while providing interesting content that I have found on the web and through my various sources, from a youth’s point of view. I encourage everyone to send me transportation ideas that they would like for me to potentially explore, such as parking policies, bike rack standards, the history of Highways 58, 20, 218, 63 and how they have shaped our community. Last but not least, I will provide some encouragement for those who may be trying cycling or taking the bus to work for the first time. This blog is mine, but the community is yours so we should have an intelligent discussion of the pros and cons of everything involved.

Thank you curious reader for being with me during the Opening Act and I look forward to posting in the near future. You can find me on Facebook at “Nick Maddix”. My e-mail address is maddixn@uni.edu. I thoroughly welcome ideas, comments and criticism from every one of you!