Jennifer Lacker: In virtual reality on a bike-and-pedestrian friendly Newport Bridge

In the virtual reality of a reimagined Pell/Newport Bridge.

At the Colony House.

The brilliance of Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s junior U.S. senator, in asking the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design to help envision possible scenarios of how the Pell/Newport Bridge, which connects Jamestown and Newport, could be made good for pedestrians and cyclists was on display recently at the Colony House, in Newport, presented by Bike Newport.

The event was groundbreaking, or to me mind-blowing, because it presented the possible infrastructure changes through virtual reality. I and other visitors were fitted with VR headsets and, either sitting on stationary bikes or standing on a small pad, they (including me) experienced travel through the four scenarios presented with astonishing detail.

To an older non-gamer like myself, it was an unnerving to virtually cycle around other cyclists as well as pedestrians, often feeling as if I were headed over the edge and into the water. level. The options displayed were all stunning, with corridors and public spaces connecting Newport to Jamestown within the bridge’s infrastructure.

This is a ray of hope for bike/pedestrian advocates who spend countless hours banging their head against the walls of state departments of transportation as we beg for the sort of basic safe spaces for people and their transportation that’s a given in many European countries.

While U.S. Transportation Secretary Commissioner Pete Buttigieg is doing all he can to promote changes, our plus-100-year car-centric culture is a stubborn foe, and there’s a chorus of naysayers. In Anand Giridharadas’s new book, The Persuaders, he gives a catalog of pointers from the front lines of change makers. “Sell the brownie, not recipe” is my favorite. The best persuaders, he claims, paint a picture of the future. With the tool of virtual reality that was demonstrated at the Colony House that picture can be more effectively shown and felt on a cellular level.

Jennifer Lacker is president of Bike Stonington (Conn.)