Twenty-somethings doing something: Colin Quinn-Hurst

Colin Quinn-Hurst outside of Salt Lake City's
City County Building after Mayors' Bike to Work Day.
(Photo: Tom Millar / SaltCycle.org)

I first met Colin Quinn-Hurst, 28, when we began as interns in Salt Lake City's Transportation Division in January 2011. Having interviewed for the same position in December, Colin beat me out. A week after the interview, I was offered another internship alongside Colin, working with Becka Roolf, SLC Bike/Ped Coordinator and Dan Bergenthal, Sustainable Transportation Program Manager at the Transportation Division. He has been a great friend and an excellent and humble public servant ever since. We sat down for a few minutes at the City County Building following the Mayors' Bike to Work Day.

Colin currently coordinates most public outreach efforts, safety campaigns, and this year's commuter pit stops along 300 East as well as a bicycle light program that will be launched this summer. He was one of the lead designers on the 300 East Cycle Track pilot project, assisted in the design and content for the SLC Transportation Division bike program website, and countless other projects that you are sure to have used or heard of around the city.

Below, get to know Colin, why he loves bicycling, how happy Germany makes him, and the influence his parents had on his life as a bicyclist, advocate, environmental planner, and transportation expert.

"The everyday utilitarian function of bicycling is what I find fascinating..."

Colin worked with Bike Utah to man SLC's booth
of free bagels and coffee on Bike to Work Day, May 18th.
(Photo: Annette Bowman)

Colin: Biking has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. My Dad would pick me up from Kindergarten on a bike, so I feel like it's part of what I do, how I was raised, and definitely how I got into doing what I do now.

I went to college at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage has a great greenway system and I used it all the time for running or biking or whatever. Even cross country skiing. So when I was looking for a major, I saw one that said "environmental planning" so I thought, "Well maybe I can plan greenways to make sure there are more of them." Now, in the end, it wasn't quite like that. It was more about wilderness and environmental protection, but it was still pretty interesting. So through that, for my final project, I did a campus sustainable transportation master plan and that lead me in the direction that I have followed since then.

I watched my parent bike to work, watched them put on panniers, and I thought that was really cool. And when they had a weekend to themselves, they would go on a bike tour. So when I was little, I didn't really pay attention to what they were doing because it was just "old people stuff" to me, but then I started riding my bike to school by myself and realized that bikes are really great. 

After college, I wanted to live in Europe for a while and see what that was like. So living in Germany, I realized how much the built environment affects how we get around. I didn't own a car there, I used a bike just to get around town, and then trains for everything else. The cities were constrained and total built up vertically - livable and walkable. Riding the train around, you see the distinct end of one town and the start of the next one. We rode our bikes all the time, it was really fun, and it was just a great way to get around.

I worked for an Armed Forces Recreation Center at a military hotel with a lot of other young people about my age. I was just interested in traveling, exploring, riding bikes, and being outside because it was such a beautiful place.

Once I got back here to the US I thought, "Well maybe in my spare time I can contribute to that in some way." So I volunteered for about a year for a non-profit in Bend, Oregon called Commute Options for Central Oregon. And I pretty much did whatever they wanted. So for two months I was clipping out newspaper articles, which was "thrilling" to say the least. Luckily, that eventually turned into a job during a time when Bend was having an annual event, sort of like Bike Month. I was doing mostly promotional stuff and bike education. We went to schools to do a lot of bike safety education and promotion, but reflecting on my experience in Europe, I soon remembered that it is the built environment that has such a big impact on it [safety], and I think that is the biggest piece missing here. So I decided to get more involved in infrastructure and went back to school at the University of Utah for a masters degree in City and Metropolitan Planning, graduating in 2011.

Now, here are some nerdy bike things, I guess depending on how you look at it. I love steel bikes. What interests me most about bicycling is just people getting around town, doing normal things and taking normal trips, but by bike. Getting to work, getting to school - the daily aspect of bicycle travel. I love the other bicycling like mountain biking and being outside for sport and recreation, but the everyday utilitarian function of bicycling is what I find fascinating. 

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