Bike commuting article from Washington Star, 1972

I am always on the lookout for old newspapers, mostly because of the advertisements, which back then tended to be a much better representation of local commerce than the ads typically presented in newspapers today, which if not car ads, are mostly for national firms.

That is more interesting to me than the big story headlines which were the reason for saving the newspaper in the first place.

The first edition of the Washington Star after they acquired the Washington Daily News was saved by someone because the day before George McGovern won a big campaign victory in the 1972 presidential primaries, but I picked up the paper because on the front page of the local news section, they featured an article about a female flight attendant who bicycled to Washington National Airport, back when there was no Mount Vernon Trail.

It gives another perspective to the recent piece by John Kelly in the Washington Post about circa early 1970s bicycle planning in DC ("A look back at the early days of DC's bicycling laws").

And about the long process of social change required to reinstitute bicycling as a serious mode of urban transportation.