The new bike lanes in Hartford are an improvement, but VTrans did not go far enough. They should be part of a network of safe streets for bicyclists and pedestrians. We’ve been building our streets to serve cars for so long that cars are often our only option, but for the future of our communities we must fix this.

It’s interesting that your editorial (“Additional bike lanes miss mark”; Dec. 21) quoted the Washington Post, which is published in an area that has had a decades-long conflict between the elites who want an interstate to their office door versus the people who actually live there and want walkable, bikeable streets. Perhaps a better example would be the popular Prospect Park West bike lane in New York City, which former NYC DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall opposed for years, but which her husband, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, now uses.

Even better is Nashville, which sees 600,000 people (nearly the population of Vermont) enter the city every day. The cars are hurting their downtown and the city is removing car facilities while installing better biking, walking and busing for an expected 1 million people each day, according to a study from the federal Department of Transportation. One of the proposed bridge changes looks like our Route 5 bridge, with six lanes changed to one car lane, a bike lane, a bus lane, and a wide sidewalk protected by plant boxes.

Amsterdam is a leading example, but not an excuse to deny safe biking and walking here. Hartford has a creative culture that works well with a walkable city. From the train station to the top of either hill is within walking distance for many people, a short bike ride and insignificant on an ebike.

If you want lower taxes there should be businesses between the ones downtown and the ones at the top of both hills. In city after city it’s been shown that pedestrians and bicyclists spend more than people who are just driving by. Hartford also has two beautiful rivers that no one else has that flow through downtown. There are several nature organizations at both state and federal levels that want better access to the river. A Route 5 Bike Greenway would be a significant tourism boost. Hartford is growing and Route 5 is a backbone that needs to be fair, comfortable and safe for all users.

The previous two-lane configuration had no reason to be in the center of Hartford, besides wishful 1960s thinking. All roads leading to them are single lane, and not far away Seminary Hill actually handles 1,100 more vehicles each day. The two lanes were a race track that cued drivers to try to pass each other, and this showed up as 27 major crashes over 10 years at the intersection of Routes 4 and 5, according to a VTrans study.

I ride into town for errands and can’t believe some of the stupid driving I’ve seen, including one incompetent truck driver who came within a couple inches of me at 35 mph. VTrans deserves kudos for working to improve this, and to slow traffic so that Hartford is a destination and not someplace to speed through.

I’ve given over 2,500 test rides on e-bikes I’ve built during the last dozen years, and can say that people would love to ride more, but there is a huge group of average riders that will not ride on our roads. Studies have found this is about 56% of people, and the Lycra-clad racers that you do see are only 4% of riders.

We kill over 40,000 people and maim hundreds of thousands of others with our cars in the U.S. each year, and there is no other industry that would find this acceptable, not even the military. Perhaps Valley News could publish helpful information about using the lanes? The Daily Hampshire Gazette did when MassDOT added bike facilities to Route 5. I encourage the Valley News editors to get out of their cars and see what it’s like before another editorial about the bike lanes. I will help you and provide e-bikes.

Karl Kemnitzer started using electric cargo bikes for everyday transportation in 2010. He lives in Hartland.