Here in South Mississippi, it is inconvenient and less safe than it should be for our people to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Evidence lies in the fact that there are less than a handful of community pools within our six coastal counties, a shortage of sidewalks, including around schools, and roadside drainage ditches that our cities are already having to pay to maintain. We see these as areas of opportunity to improve our community in a way that will not only impact our lives today but also the generations to come.

Our club is passionate about seeing through actions that support the creation of green bike lanes, most especially around Woolmarket Community Center, Success Civic Center, and Latimer Community Center, where most traditional club rides start from, and the regular cleaning of those bike lanes to remove safety hazards. We believe this will encourage our community to have the access and infrastructure needed so they can adopt a healthier lifestyle! Right now, the choice is not possible for most.

These efforts line up nicely with more “share the road signage” and an ongoing public & safety awareness campaign that promotes cyclist safety.

It’s fantastic to point out that we do have some green bike lanes in the downtown Ocean Springs area. However, those bike lanes have become incredibly debris-heavy due to a lack of having a regular schedule to clean those bike lanes, making them dangerous in a different way. We also have to dodge a great deal of debris on other roads we ride and train a great deal on: Cowan Lorraine/605 and 67. Therefore, we not only need the implementation of more green bike lanes along the roads we ride and train the most on, but we also need the purchase of a bike lane cleaning machine and maintenance agreement in place with that company, so we are protecting that work better and helping it to last and be effective for its purpose! Something like this machine would be what we are looking for: https://www.elginsweeper.com/

An additional strategy regarding improving our infrastructure to support this movement could involve the roadside ditches our tax dollars are already being used to maintain. Those could be paved over with green bike lanes, leaving ample room for drainage still underneath, that are then regularly cleaned.

We are going to save someone’s life by seeing these changes through. We all deserve having a choice to adopt a healthier lifestyle via improving our access/infrastructure. If you have ideas and suggestions, please send them our way!