Boston Globe
May 12, 2002

By Clare Kittredge
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

DURHAM, N.H. - Although bikers and walkers are a growing force in the Granite State, there are few bike routes on the seacoast.

And many roads are dangerous because they have very narrow shoulders, according to Cameron Wake, president of Seacoast Area Bicycle Routes, a group that promotes bike routes in the area. "We need a viable, safe transportation network for the entire Great Bay seacoast region," said Wake, an avid biker and a glaciologist at the University of New Hampshire’s Climate Change Research Center.

Bicycle tourism and economic development is the focus of Wednesday’s Bike and Walk Conference at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Louis Barker, chairman of the conference committee, says that in addition to reducing transportation costs, biking and walking improve health and clear up traffic congestion.

Barker, who also serves as New Hampshire’s assistant bicycle and pedestrian transportation coordinator, says that making places "more friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians is better for communities because it’s part of the tourism draw."

But Wake says seacoast bikers need help.

"We need four-foot shoulders on many roads so people feel safer and want to ride their bicycles," said Wake. "Having transportation choices is a quality of life issue that goes centrally to the fact that we have bad air quality on the seacoast in the summer. We need to support alternative forms of non-polluting transportation. In a perfect world, it’s an integrated multi-modal system so bicycles connect with buses, trains, and planes."

Wake has been working for a decade to develop a transportation network for bikes in the seacoast and Great Bay region.

According to Wake, the seacoast’s few bike routes include the Odiorne Point Route along Route 1A, the shared roadway at the Pease International Tradeport, a connection north to Newington, and a connection east toward Greenland, Stratham and Exeter.

Then there’s the bridge connecting Portsmouth to Pease, where there isn’t much traffic and the roads are wide.

A trail connecting Durham with Dover Point - which would widen the shoulders on both Route 108 from Dover to Newmarket as well as a section of Route 1A from Foye’s Corner to the Witch Creek bridge - is in the works.

"We’re sort of beginning to see this framework emerging," said Wake. "We need connections from Route 33 to Stratham and Exeter . . . And we need a general filling in and widening of shoulders on a whole series of roads so they’re safer for cyclists."

This week’s conference, organized by the state Department of Transportation and its Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Advisory Board, will look at the future of biking and walking amenities in the state.

There will be sessions on transportation planning, safety, travel and tourism, design issues, and the economic impact of biking and walking routes.