Okay, I must confess, I was about to write a blog post about this very thing.  I was going to state how given the right building, someone like Alterra could pull this off (because biking with coffee would be fun!).  Then I came back to reality and realized that the idea was fundamentally flawed.

Drive-thrus are about as anti-community as can be.  Sure eventually the teller hands you your food and you smile back at them, but that’s about as social as the process gets.  A line of bikes would be marginally better than Toyotas, but still far from perfect.

Going inside a store fosters communication.   It encourages randomly talking to people.  You’re probably not going to become friends with the other people in the store, but you’ll recognize them elsewhere.  The faceless city you live in becomes just a little less anonymous by avoiding drive-thrus.  And in a world that is increasingly detached from the random people around us, every random connection helps.

Powells
Originally uploaded by compujeramey

Portland, Oregon is getting on-board with a program I would love to see Milwaukee jump on in the near future.

Slated to happen on June 22 (in conjunction with the International Carfree Conference), Sunday Parkways will offer Portlanders a chance to stroll, pedal, and play on a six-mile loop of streets that will be closed to motor vehicle traffic from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm…. reports BikePortland.org

They’re linking the route up with parks and live entertainers, to offer a little more than a unique place to ride your bike.

As far as Milwaukee goes, it would be amazing to have a loop available on a Saturday or Sunday during the summer for people to just play in the absence of dangerous cars everywhere.

Linking up with parks for entertainment value I think is huge, along with having a view of the lake.

A potential route starting at Cathedral Square might include heading north on Van Buren Street, east on Brady Street, south on Prospect Ave, and west on Wells or Kilbourn to come back to the starting point.

This is really a tool the Third Ward, East Town and West Association’s could use to market their neighborhoods as safe places for both fun and work by drawing people in from other areas who are otherwise intimidated by the speed and noise of the cars on city streets.

I would imagine businesses would be behind this and traffic on Saturday or Sunday mornings is next to nonexistent anyway, so it would bring business in, not chase it away.

The only thing that I can think of that compares on a scale basis is the Bastille Days Run through downtown with Jazz in the Park going on afterward.

Milwaukee needs to convert that to an open day-time event for everyone to enjoy in a non-competitive environment.

Any thoughts? Support? Yays or nays?

Special thanks to the Streetsblog for pointping the Portland event out to me. I can’t find anything, but I think they have something like this in Manhattan too.