My name is Marc Merlin and I bicycle pretty much every day of the year, unless it happens to be raining or snowing. Bicycling is my primary form of transportation. It’s how I get to meetings around town relating to my work – I run a nonprofit group dedicated to public science outreach – or to visit with friends or to enjoy Atlanta’s wonderful parks and other attractions.
I bike for a number of reasons. It helps to keep me fit. Also, when I’m on my bike it often means there is one less car on Atlanta’s already congested streets. And that means one less car spewing climate-change-causing carbon emissions and other pollutants into the air that we all breathe.
In addition, I love to bike because it gives me a chance to get to know Atlanta, its people, and its neighborhoods in a way that I could never do driving around in a car. Although I was born and raised here, I never really began to appreciate the texture of this city until I became a committed cyclist around fifteen years ago.
To put it simply, clean air is the fuel that I need to make my bicycling possible.
So far I’ve been fortunate. At age 60 I’m in good enough shape to handle whatever air quality alerts Atlanta has thrown my way. But, as I grow older, if the air quality here declines, I’m concerned that I’ll have to cut back significantly on or even abandon this activity that I enjoy so much.
For example, when I’m cycling on a busy street on a hot summer day, I realize that ground-level ozone is doing a number on my lungs. Even if it’s not causing me an acute problem now, I know that I will be paying a price in the years to come for the exposure I am receiving today.
So one important step I’d like to see taken right away is approval of EPA regulations that lower the amount of ozone that’s permitted in the air that I breath. The current standard (75 parts per billion) fails to protect public health, so I know it can’t be adequate for someone like me who’s out in traffic on a bike all the time.
More generally, I’d like to see us move to toward expanding and improving Atlanta’s public transportation options like MARTA rail and bus services as well as transportation alternatives like walking and, of course, biking. Getting people around without cars is a not only critical to improving our air quality, it is also key to improving our quality of life as a community.
Written by Marc Merlin.
