The Great Bicycle Path Experiment
While freezing weather destroyed the city's old cinder paths, the new asphalt tracks remained pristine, sparking a push for further infrastructure investment.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
If I ever had any doubts as to the durability of asphalt in building bicycle paths, they have been dispelled thoroughly within the past month. Alternate freezing and thawing the past month has not affected the paths in the slightest degree as far as I am able to discover, after a trip over the city, while the old cinder and dirt paths are in a frightful condition and in most instances in such shape that wheelmen cannot use them. It was feared that freezing weather would cause the asphalt covering to crack and bulge, but such has not been the case, and every block is apparently in just as good condition as when first laid. Although there is only a few hundred dollars remaining in the bicycle path fund, it is quite likely that the work of recovering the remainder of the paths in the city will be taken up immediately with the opening of spring.
“Alternate freezing and thawing the past month has not affected the paths in the slightest degree.”
Early 20th-century bicycle advocacy laid the groundwork for the modern multi-modal transportation debate in Walla Walla. While the materials have shifted from asphalt to modern bike lanes, the tension between municipal budget constraints and the necessity of durable active-transportation infrastructure remains a recurring local civic argument.
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