Denver’s popular mayor on bike policy, cruisers and putting 100,000 miles on his Frejus

By Jacob Harkins/photos by Jessica Grenier

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is lauded as one of the most popular public officials in the country. He knows the people he represents and isn’t afraid to pull some nifty public relations tricks to promote causes that they care about.

Like jumping out of a plane for a commercial supporting a ballot initiative to fund schools with a tax increase-it passed of course.

Since getting elected in 2003, this local beer baron (he operated many popular Denver restaurants and craft breweries, including the Wynkoop Brewing Co.) transformed into a popular man of the people who is on several short lists of future candidates for offices from the Governor’s Mansion to the U.S. Senate.

Frankly, we’re fond of him because he likes to ride bicycles. Hick, as he’s affectionately known, commutes to work on his 1971 Frejus racing bicycle-one that he claims to have put more than 100,000 miles on over the last 38 years.

“The thing just goes; it runs like a top,” he says. He also has a Tour de France-ridden Felt hanging in his office.

Uncommon for a politician, but not surprising for someone who works so hard to turn Denver into the most bicycle-friendly cities on the planet. Yet, when we had him draped over a custom cruiser for a recent photo shoot, you could tell he wasn’t the cruiser type. “It’s the missing part of my repertoire,” Hickenlooper says.

We won’t hold it against him, considering he’s pushing an agenda we love. Part of the reason he took time from his busy schedule to drag his entourage to this interview was to promote his biggest bicycle initiative—the B-cycle program.
Denver is the pilot city for this public/private partnership that places townie bicycles in kiosks throughout the city, giving tourists and commuters alike an easy (and free or very affordable) means to get around town. Pick up a bicycle at one station, return it to another with the first 30 minutes free. It’s a pretty simple concept.

Currently there’s just one B-cycle station in Denver reserved for city employees. But by Earth Day 2010, the plan is to have 600 bikes and 50 B-cycle stations online with an additional 400 bicycles in the mix by 2011. It’s all part of Denver’s effort to get people out of their cars and turn 10 percent of its commuter trips into bicycle trips. It’s not an easy task.

The city has to change mindsets, not just offer easy access to bikes.

“It’s a matter of integrating bicycles every time I talk publicly,” Hickenlooper says. And perhaps getting said mayor out to one of the massive weekly rides in Denver, a chaotic gathering of hundreds of cruiser bicyclists that stampedes through downtown every Wednesday evening.

“I’d love to go on a cruiser ride,” Hickenlooper says. “What makes a cruiser ride so much fun for most people is you do it every week, you get to know different people; there’s a whole sense of community that grows out of that. I’ll never have the schedule, at least not while I am mayor, that allows me to do that on a weekly basis.”

Whenever you get that many people on the road at one time, it can turn into a logistical nightmare for city officials. But Hickenlooper sees the Denver Cruisers, and other community rides, as a big positive, even if the near parade causes a collective moan from the police and motorists.

“The first instinct of the police department was just say no, just say no,” Hickenlooper says. “Wait a second, we don’t have to just say no. How can we figure out how to do this? We have people wanting to do things in a group; that’s civic identity. It gets people to change habits. Having people wanting to ride bikes in groups is special.”

Basically, the mayor is all for anything that promotes bicycles, an attitude we can all get behind. His aggressive stewardship of bicycle culture is paying off, too, by showcasing the massive community rides, making it easier for folks to safely pedal to work each day and just seeing the mayor flying around town on his nearly four-decade-old road bike. Denver is most certainly a cruiser and bicycle-friendly city.

“Certainly we’ve spent a lot of time the last five years really focusing on how we make the city more useful and more accessible to bicycle enthusiasts,” he says. “I am not a competitive mayor in that sense, but we have 850 miles of bike paths in the metro area. There are not many cities that have that. I don’t know of another city that has the same level of bike potential because of climate and infrastructure—we have all the miles of bike paths and 300-plus days of sunshine.”

Meet Denver

• The Ride
• The food and drinks
• The other cruisers