When word began spreading that G105 morning DJs Bob Dumas and Madison Lane had spent two mornings last month advocating violence against cyclists, Steven Goodridge's initial reaction was to fire off an e-mail message to station management. Then it occurred to him that the station probably was getting flooded with such messages and phone calls from the Triangle cycling community and it would get lost in the crush.

So he turned his message into a formal letter and the next morning tried to hand-deliver it to station manager Ken Spitzer. Spitzer was in a meeting, the receptionist told him. Goodridge left the letter but returned that afternoon. Spitzer was still tied up. That's OK, I'll wait, Goodridge replied. Thirty minutes later he had an audience with Spitzer and his operations manager, Chris Schebel.

Bike club chat lines burned over the next few days with cyclists irate that they couldn't get WDCG-FM, G105, to respond with anything beyond a form e-mail message. Goodridge did a few things he thought would help get his foot in the door. He wrote a reasoned, but not angry, letter dispelling some of the myths he thought the DJs were spreading about cyclists and the law. The 34-year-old engineer also was careful to note that he was on the Town of Cary Planning and Zoning Board, that he had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from N.C. State and that he was vice president of the North Carolina Bicycle Club.

"He probably knew that I wasn't going to beat him up," Goodridge said, exhibiting a wry sense of humor that occasionally penetrates his thoughtful demeanor.

Effective arguments

Grass-roots crusades often fizzle, not for a lack of energy but because no one steps forward to constructively direct that energy. While Goodridge is quick to point out that several cyclists played key roles in eventually getting G105's attention, he acknowledges that he was sought for his effective communications skills.

"I tried to make the G105 event more of a sensationalist type of event," said Sig Hutchinson, a Raleigh motivational and leadership trainer and cycling advocate who said he was outraged by the DJs' encouragement of listeners to run cyclists off the road and throw bottles at them.

"Steve was more along the lines of a rational, goal-oriented approach. I took his lead on it." High praise coming from Hutchinson, who has led successful efforts to build mountain bike trails at Falls Lake State Recreation Area and get bonds passed for open space in Wake County in 2000 and, earlier this month, for $45 million in improvements to Raleigh's parks and greenways.

Goodridge's measured approach helped result in a two-day suspension for the DJs, the airing of public service announcements about bicycle safety on G105 and other local Clear Channel Communications stations and prompted two advertisers -- Capital Ford and Great Outdoor Provision Co. -- to at least temporarily pull their advertising.

Rehearsed approach

Although that problem-solving focus comes in handy in Goodridge's ongoing effort to make this a multimodal society -- one equally accessible to pedestrians, cyclists and motorists -- his overall approach is more multidisciplined, tapping sociological, geographical and philosophical veins.

It's an approach he has been cultivating since he first learned to ride a bike as an 7-year-old in Connecticut and New Hampshire in the late 1970s and early '80s. Two years later, he was already using his bike -- a red, white and blue Huffy Star Spangler with banana seat -- for utilitarian purposes, going to school, visiting friends and his grandparents.

It wasn't until 1991, though, that he became aware of the friction between cyclists and motorists. That was when he moved to Raleigh.

"When I first got here, I was told to ride on the sidewalks, that it was much safer," said Goodridge, who enrolled at N.C. State University to work on a master's degree in electrical engineering. He eventually earned his Ph.D. in 1997.

He acquiesced -- and for the first time encountered trouble on two wheels. "I experienced a high rate of near-collisions and falls," he recalled.

That began something of a journey for Goodridge, a passage from the "pedestrian on wheels" approach, which essentially relegates cyclists to sidewalks and separate paths, to "vehicular cycling." The latter claims bicycles are vehicles with the same rights and responsibilities as motorists. It is also in accordance with state law.

Improvements in Cary

Part of the problem, Goodridge realized, was engineering. Most roads simply aren't designed for both a one-ton car and a 25-pound bike. So he earned an appointment to the Cary Planning and Zoning Board in 2000 to try to remedy that. He also got involved in the cycling element of Cary's comprehensive transportation plan, a plan that this summer earned Cary the distinction of being designated a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists.

"He spent a lot of time scrutinizing our efforts," said Cary planner Don Belk, who oversaw the transportation plan's $400,000 cycling component.

"We were getting free advice from an expert," said Belk, himself an avid cyclist who rides about 3,000 miles a year. "We'd be paying $150 an hour if we hired a firm to do this same type of thing."

Goodridge, who commutes the seven miles between his Cary home and job at Signalscape about twice a week, also had an impact on the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization's Bicycle Pedestrian Task Force's recently passed bike plan.

"When we started looking at a bike plan, we were looking at specific bicycle corridors," said Hutchinson, who was chairman of the task force. "But Steve came in and said every road should be allowed for cyclists, period. His whole concept of universal access is right on."

Fixing the roads is one thing. Changing what Goodridge refers to as the "social taboo" about cycling is another.

"The taboo for cycling is that cyclists don't belong in travel lanes," he said. "It's a taboo in American society, especially in the Southeast."

It's a taboo, he said, reinforced both by motorists, who fail to recognize cyclists' right to the road, and by cyclists, who often ride in fear and don't take that right seriously.

He turns engineer again when asked whether Triangle motorists and cyclists can ever truly share the road. "You have to look at the empirical evidence," he said.

"Bicycles," he noted, "are used more around the world than any other form of transportation."