Cooperstown, with its 22 miles of village sidewalks, its inspiring architecture and lovingly tended gardens, its parks and preserved business district, is a wonderful place to walk, both for recreation and transport. We're not yet a perfectly walkable village, but we're pretty close.

Among other things, a perfectly walkable village needs bike racks.

As much as I hawk walking, there are occasions when I find myself pressed for time and my knee-jerk reaction is to take the car to a nearby appointment. This is usually false economy, especially in our busy summers when parking is scarce. By the time I've driven to my destination and searched for a place to leave the vehicle, I'm late anyway. Not only that, but I've denied myself the opportunity of exercise, fresh air, running across friends and some precious mental "down time."

The obvious compromise in this situation is a bicycle. A bike provides quicker transport without the parking hassles and cycling is good exercise to boot. It's much easier to enjoy our beautiful scenery or stop and chat from a bike than a car. There are a plethora of good reasons to ride a bike. However, there are no racks in the village to park a bike.

Bike racks in the village, at schools, at our parks, at the Clark Sports center, at the trolley lots could encourage bicycle traffic over auto traffic, resulting in less congestion, less frustration and a fitter population. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, encourages cycling to the extent that twenty-five percent of that city's transport is non-motorized, with their goal of fifty per cent in sight.

Cooperstown is a small village, hardly designed for heavy traffic, and mercifully maintained that way. A town that rightly chose a flagpole in the center of a main intersection as a higher priority than vehicles (even if that meant wagons in 1918) can surely see the benefit of encouraging cycling.

Brenda Berstler is the founder of the Walking Example Group (WE-GO).

a non-profit organization encouraging walking and walkable communities. Visit their website at www.we-go.org.