For Friday's Bike to Work Day, Louisville cyclists met up in area parks and rode downtown for free coffee and bananas before heading to their jobs.Less than 2 percent of Louisville residents commute by bicycle, according to data compiled by the American College of Sports Medicine. Some peoplecite safety concerns;others say the infrastructure just doesn’t suit cyclists. But the city is working to change that. In his budget proposal for next year, Mayor Greg Fischer put nearly $300,000 to improving the city’s cycling infrastructure, which includes painting, striping and creating new bike lanes.But Louisvillians who choose to ride their bikes to work do it for a number of reasons. Some say it is liberating. Some say it is a great way to boost their health. Others say the amount of money they save on gase makes it an obvious choice. Here is what they had to say:“I rode my bike once and I realized it took less time to ride my bike than it did to drive.”—Lisa Huber“To get that exercise in on your commute saves you about an hour-and-a-half to two hours—time I would be spending in a gym.”—Andrea Pompei Lacy“Most everybody loves to ride a bike. When you ride a bike, you feel free, you’re out there, you got the wind blowing through your hair. People are smiling, you're waving and saying, ‘I’m having a good day.’”—Mayor Greg Fischer“It was a great ride, it was fun to be with a group of people. I felt like we were a biker gang rolling in to downtown Louisville this morning.”—Troy Harvey“I do follow all the rules of the road. I usually have maybe one or two people that get aggravated, but I just fluff it off.”—Laura Trachtenberg“It’s refreshing, it’s powerful, it’s a sense of independence and a sense of freedom, for me.”—Shubha Ghosh"Instead of filling my truck up once a week, I fill it up once a month, maybe. If people don’t want to ride for the health of it, ride for money of it. You can save a ton of money.”—Andy Murphy“I’ve been riding since I was a kid. I got back into it in order to gain some fitness, lose some weight.”—Doug Brent“I like it but we still have some problems with roads, but they are getting much better.”—Marina Malovichko
