In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
I am Justine Valinotti.
Showing posts with label bicycle infrastructure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycle infrastructure. Show all posts
My first time in Paris, so many things impressed me. Among them were, of course, the food and the architecture—and that an entire street—l’Avenue de la Grande Armeé —was lined with boutiques of every major French bike maker and a couple of étrangers like Raleigh.
And the city’s Métro system seemed like a fleet of high-tech yachts compared to the only such system—New York’s—I knew at the time. The feature that seemed most other-worldly, though, was the interactive route maps in the major stations like Châtelet-Les Halles. Three decades before GPS, it was about as high-tech as urban subterranean navigation got: You pointed your finger to the name of a street or landmark and a string of lights marked the route and transfer (correspondance) points.
Now the city of Austin, Texas has something that reminds me of that old Paris map. The city’s Public Works and Transportation Departments have collaborated to create the ATX Walk Bike Roll to solicit ideas for improvements to the Lone Star capital’s bike and pedestrian infrastructure. To that end, they’ve designed an interactive map where residents can drop a “pin” wherever they find, say, “hilariously narrow “ or non-existent sidewalks or bike lanes that are more like “obstacle courses.”
If we had such a map here in New York, I—or any regular cyclist—alone could fill it. And to think this city is better than others in the US—including, possibly, Austin—for pedestrians and cyclists!
This post will be a tale of two cities--without the capital letters.
They have roughly the same population. One is the capital of its nation; the other is, at least in some senses, in its country. They could be said to be rivals because they are renowned for many of the same things: food, fashion, finance, the arts, education and technology.
Now one of those cities is not only wants to emulate something the other has been doing; it plans to do even more of it.
I am talking about urban bike lane networks. While Copenhagen and Amsterdam are seen, perhaps rightly, as the most bike-friendly capitals in Europe, Paris is leading the way in creating new bike infrastructure. It plans to have 680 kilometers (423 miles) of bike lanes in the City of Light and its surrounding areas.
Well, in the city's chief rival for food and fashion--Milan--the City Council has approved a plan that will include 750 kilometers (466 miles) of lanes that will connect not only major areas of the immediate city, but also its suburbs and some rural areas. The goal of the Cambio Biciplan is to make bicycling the "first and easiest" way of getting around Metropolitan Milan.
One of the motivations for this plan is a problem the city is trying to tackle. Among Italian cities, only Turin has worse air pollution; both have some of the worst air quality in Europe. The factors contributing to that toxicity are similar in both cities: population density, industrial activity and automobile density. That pollution intensifies in winter, when temperature inversions trap pollutants in the lower atmosphere, leaving a toxic blanket of smog. Also, I suspect that each of those cities shares a problem with Denver: the mountains that surround (Turin) or abut (Milan) those cities also trap some of the pollutants. (Denver consistently has some of the worst air quality in the US.)
So, in the near future, bike advocacy groups may well emulate fashion and culinary institutions in seeing their "capitals" as New York, Paris and Milan!
Yesterday I decried, as I often do, the sorry state of bike lanes here in New York City and much of the US. It seems that bike and pedestrian lanes are, too often, conceived and designed by people who never have actually set foot, let alone walked or ridden a bike, where the lanes are built. The result is lanes that actually put bicyclists and pedestrians in more danger than they'd experience without it and that don't offer safe and practical routes to and from wherever people live, work, go to school or shop.
Well, it seems that some folks in Tulsa, Oklahoma are reading this blog--or they have great minds that think like mine. ;=) They are doing at least part of what I think anyone planning a bike or pedestrian lane should do. What's more, they plan to continue the practice for at least a year.
The other day, some of the city's business owners, neighborhood association members, city councilors and other citizens took the first "walk audit" of an area with crash areas. More such "walk audits" will be conducted through the coming year. The purpose is to determine what needs to be changed in order to make those areas safer for walking, cycling and using public transportation.
Photo by Josh New, for Oklahoma Magazine
It sounds like a good idea, although I'd also like to see "bike audits": Much, but not all, of what will make walking safer will also help cyclists. As an example, the audit identified a lack of sidewalks in one area which, of course, forces pedestrians to walk in the street. While I certainly favor installing a sidewalk, it generates this question: Will cyclists and other wheeled (but non-motorized) vehicles be permitted on it? In some places, like some areas of Florida I've ridden, bike lanes double as sidewalks (or vice versa, depending on your point of view). That works out as long as there isn't a high volume of pedestrian or bicycle traffic, which seems to go against the purpose of having safe bike and pedestrian routes.
So, I think the good folks of Tulsa have begun to move in the right direction. Now I'd like to see whether they expand their efforts, and whether they can export them--or whether they will be imported by--cities like the one in which I live.
A few days ago, Mark Wagenbuur re-posted an early post on his excellent blog, Bicycle Dutch. In it, he outlines the developments that led to the Netherlands' much-lauded bicycle infrastructure and culture.
Utrecht city center in 1929...
Perhaps most important, he shows that his country wasn't always the cyclists' paradise one encounters today. Before World War II, bicycles were the main mode of transportation for many Dutch people. Photos show streets relatively free of cars and cyclists riding among, but not competing with, trams. After World War II, however, increasing affluence led people to foresake two wheels for four. Another photo from 1968 shows a street as clogged with motor traffic as any in an American city (though, it's hard not to notice, the vehicles are smaller). It was during the 1970s, he says, that the movements that led to today's system of bike lanes and other facilities began.
..
...and in 1968
Activists and planners of that time also advocated for changes in city planning to encourage motor-free transportation and recreation. He shows motor vehicle-free central business districts, some in centuries-old areas of cities. As he points out--in contrast to the arguments of their American counterparts--business owners report increased business because a cyclist or pedestrian is more likely to stop by whereas a driver might pass by if they can't find a parking space.
But his post also points to another parallel with the US that might help to explain why such developments are slower in coming to America. For one, he mentions that in recent years, the amount of cycling in the Netherlands has stabilized--which isn't surprising when you realize that bicycles have outnumbered people for some time. (They do in my apartment, too!) Those statistics, though, have layers, and if you peel off one of them, you find that cycling has increased in urban areas but decreased in the countryside has decreased. I don't know what the numbers are for the US, but I suspect that there is a similar situation at work--or that, at any rate, most of the increase in American cycling has come in or near urban areas.
For another, he talks about the resistance to making city centers more auto-friendly. (One of the images is a rendition of a proposed highway that looks alarmingly like the ones in areas like Southern California and other auto-centric areas. Thankfully, it was never built.) While cycling declined for a couple of decades after World War II, remaining cyclists fought to make their country safer for riding. Also, making some city centers more auto-friendly meant, not only removing bike lanes or streets that were safe for cycling, but also some beloved buildings, some of them centuries old. When some of those structures were lost, people thought that perhaps the price of "progress" wasn't worth it.
While there is some interest in preserving historic structures in some American cities, on the whole the environment in the US is more amenable to large-scale development. Some of that has to do with citizens who still see building bigger buildings as "progress," but I suspect that it has at least as much to do with the fact that mega-developers have more influence on politics and the media, at the local as well as the national level, in the US.
Also, business and commercial districts in some American cities, especially the newer ones in the South and West, are auto-centric by design. In contrast, the older Dutch (and other European) city centers, with their narrower streets and smaller plazas, were created long before automobiles came along. So, I would suspect, making them more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly would mean, at least to some degree, returning them to their original state. Or, at least, making them bicycle- and pedestrian- friendly doesn't require as much of a radical redesign as would be required in most American cities.
Finally, there is the matter of geography. The Netherlands is a much smaller country, and places are closer together. So people need less convincing to see that bicycling is a practical way to get to where they need to go--and that riding is simply fun. If someone lives 100 kilometers away from work, as many Americans do, no bike lane is going to convince them not to drive. At best, such a commuter might be enticed to ride his or her bike to a train or bus station--if indeed there are safe and secure parking facilities at the station. Or if there is a train or bus line at all. That is another area in which Dutch and other European people are better-served than Americans.
So, Mark Wagenbuur has done a service by showing that his country wasn't always the cycling Nirvana we see today. More important, he shows that it was once before a country of cyclists, but planners and ordinary citizens learned from their mistakes in emulating American transportation and city planning. Perhaps we can learn from our own mistakes and, although we can't go about it in the same way as the Dutch (or Danes or other Europeans), we can make this country more amenable for cyclists and pedestrians. It's one of the steps we need to take in order to keep from cooking ourselves (and most other life) on this planet!
As I said on Saturday, and in earlier posts, if any municipality is serious about getting people to ride bikes rather than drive to work or school, or for fun, building bike lanes is just one step.
And it’s a legitimate step if and only if (See what I learned in my formal logic class?) those lanes are well-designed, -constructed and -maintained—and practical.
On that last condition: Building bike lanes that begin and end in seemingly-arbitrary locations, without any markers or any other indicators, serves no one. People will give up four wheels for two if, among other things, bike lanes actually connect places people ride to and from, safely. Of course, I don’t mean that people should have lanes directly from their front doors to their desks or work stations. But bike and pedestrian paths should make it possible to go from, say, a central point in a residential neighborhood to a business or cultural district in the way of good mass transit systems—like, say, the one in Paris.
Photo by Ludivic Marin, for Agence France Presse
Apparently, the City of Light’s Mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has such a vision. She won a second term last June on a platform that included making Paris a city “tout á velo”—totally cycleable—by 2026. To that end, the French capital is investing 250 million Euros to improve its cycling infrastructure.
Among other things, 52 km (about 32 miles) of “coronapistes”—temporary lanes created during the pandemic—will be upgraded and made permanent. To that, another 130 km will be added to the existing 100 km. These additions and upgrades will make it possible to cycle from one end to another, and to and from key locations, within the city as well as in the adjacent suburbs.Even more important, those lanes will be planned to make it safer for cyclists to cross intersections, thus addressing another concern of people who say they’d consider cycle commuting but worry about safety.
Hidalgo’s plan will also address another concern—bike theft—by adding 100,000 new secure parking spaces, including 1000 for cargo bikes.
Earlier this week, New York City Mayoral candidates Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa debated. The latter, best known as the founder of the Guardian Angels, expressed one position I wholeheartedly agree with: his stance on animal welfare. He said that, if elected, all of the city's animal shelters would become "no kill" shelters. He deemed it "barbaric" that there are still horse-drawn carriages on city streets.
The only purpose those animals and carts serve is the amusement of tourists around Central Park. Thus, his wish to ban them is, I believe, well-founded. The same cannot be said for his stance on bike lanes and traffic. He believes there's a "war on cars" on this city, and has vowed to remove bike lanes in neighborhoods where they're less-used.
I think, like any good politician--which is what Sliwa has always been--Sliwa is echoing his supporters, many of whom believe that "their" streets and parking spaces are being stolen, "invasion of the body snatchers-style" by terrible, evil cyclists.
Apparently, that sentiment echoes in other cities:
You can't even go to South Water Street in Providence anymore, at least not without wearing a bulletproof vest and duct taping AirPods to your ears. Nothing screams "thug" like a skinny person in bicycle shorts.
Dan McGowan obviously doesn't think that way. He followed that paragraph in his Boston Globe editorial with this: Said absolutely no one ever. He used his platform to praise outgoing Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza for building bike lanes and in general planning with the recognition that the future of his city, and others, cannot be car-centric. Those efforts, and similar work by other officials, led McGowan to this conclusion: Real Cities Have Bike Lanes.
Bike lane on South Water Street in Providence. Photo by Barry Chin, for the Boston Globe.
He is partially right. Bike lanes can be an integral part of a city's infrastructure and thus encourage cycling if those lanes are well-conceived, -designed and -constructed. They need to make cycling safer by taking into account the actual experience of cycling on urban streets or county roads. (As an example, the lane has to be built and traffic signals coordinated so that cyclists can proceed through an intersection, or make a left turn, ahead of right-turning motorists.) And those lanes should be practical: They should enable cyclists to pedal from their homes to schools, workplaces, shopping areas and other common destinations. I've seen too many bike lanes that begin in seemingly arbitrarily locations and end abruptly.
So, I would amend Dan McGowan's conclusion with one word: Real cities have practical bike lanes.
In one of my early posts, I recounted a distracted driver who made a dangerous turn in front of me. She rolled down her window and castigated me for not riding in a bike lane.
I explained, as politely as I could, that the lane followed another street and wouldn't take me to where I was going. She insisted that I should ride that lane anyway, not "her" street, where I was riding. I then asked her whether, if she had to be someplace, she'd drive down a street that didn't take her there.
The memory of that incident has stuck with me because that woman echoed what seems to be a notion that (mis)guides planners, designers and builders of bicycle infrastructure. They seem to think that cycling is only a recreational activity, not to be taken seriously. So bike lanes are designed for, at best, aimless meandering (which I sometimes do) rather than as conduits of transportation. The lane that woman believed I "should" have taken is fine for riding from the neighborhood near LaGuardia Airport to Astoria Park, and useful for commuting if you work at the power generating plant or one of the metal fabrication shops (or the Halal slaughterhouse!) along the way.
That driver didn't "get it;" perhaps she still doesn't. But Alex Kent of Amherst, Massachusetts does. In a letter to the Daily Hampshire Gazzette, Kent makes the point that "bicycles are essential."
The letter is a response to another letter writer who "claims not to understand why bike lanes are needed in Northampton when there is a rail trail nearby." That person, Kent shows, does not understand that a bicycle is not simply a piece of exercise or recreational equipment; it is "an essential form of transportation." The bicycle is "a way of getting from one place to another" and, as Kent points out, that place "may well be a business on Main Street and not on the rail trail." Moreover, Kent explains, many cyclists--especially in places like Northampton and Amherst as well as cities like Boston and New York--don't even own cars: The bicycle is their main form of transportation.
Alex Kent could have been me on that day when a driver cut me off and tried to tell me it was my fault because I wasn't riding in a bike lane that, at that moment, was of no use to me. Unfortunately, I think there will be many more encounters like the one I had with that woman, letters like Kent's and "bike lanes to nowhere" before we have bike lanes or other infrastructure conceived as though the bicycle is a viable form of transportation.
Yes, you read that right. Oh, but it gets better: that city is in what is often seen as one of the world's most bike-friendly nations.
That country is the Netherlands. The city in question in Utrecht; the bike lane, alongside Vredenburg, is said to be the busiest in the nation. It was widened a few years ago; even so, it's not enough to meet the demand.
So many cyclists ride it because Vredenberg path is the main east-west corridor the city center. As in many older cities, there simply aren't many options available: Other streets dead-end at rivers, canals, railroad tracks or other natural or artificial barriers. (This is also true in some older areas of cities like New York and Boston.) In some places, it isn't possible to build bridges or other ways to navigate those obstacles--and, in some of the more historic and scenic areas of a city like Utrecht, it's too expensive or people understandably don't want to do such a thing.
Also, as the author of the Bicycle Dutch post points out, just as "we all know that more asphalt isn't the answer to too many cars," it's "probably also not the answer to too much cycling." In other words, old European cities like Utrecht have very limited amounts of space on which to build anything, so adding more pavement would defeat one of the purposes of encouraging people to ride: reducing congestion. The city is thus looking at other possible solutions, which including the closure of some streets to motor traffic and turning them into bike routes. Another suggestion includes using a former railway bridge as a crossing for cyclists.
At least it seems that the city is trying to create a comprehensive plan to make movement from place to another safe, convenient and sustainable. Too often, American cities build bike lanes or other transit facilities without a coherent scheme. That, I think, is why too many bike lanes are poorly constructed and maintained and don't offer useful routes, or even connections to other forms of transportation.
In earlier posts, I’ve lamented the poor conception, design and construction of too many bike lanes in New York, my hometown, and elsewhere.
Sometimes I feel that a bike lane that doesn’t provide a safe, useful route to schools, workplaces or other forms of transportation (like trains or ferries)—or a truly interesting or physically invigorating ride between parks, museums, shopping areas or anything else people might want to visit—is worse than no bike lane.
Such shoddy bicycle infrastructure, I believe, does nothing to encourage people to even consider the bicycle as a healthy, economical, environmentally conscious—-and safe—alternative to driving or other forms of transportation or recreation.
If urban planners and other policy-makers can’t or won’t come up with bike lanes that make sense or other useful infrastructure, I would rather that they provided good bicycle parking, whether curbside or in protected areas. That might do more than anything else to entice people into the saddle.
At least, more and better bike parking would augment other initiatives, such as bike share programs. That is the premise of a report issued by Transportation Alternatives, an organization of which I am a member.
I've held off on saying anything about the election results because, you know, I didn't want to be accused of "stealing" it by calling it "prematurely." Or someone might think I stuffed my panniers with ballots from dead people and brought them to the Queens County election office.
Seriously, though: I think you know the way I feel. Just about anybody has to be better than El Cheeto Grande for, well, almost anything you can think of--including bicycling.
Speaking of which: According to People for Bikes (an organization I heartily endorse), this year Americans voted more than $1 billion for projects, including lanes and trails, that support cycling.
From People for Bikes
Although I have complained about the faulty conception, design and construction of many bike lanes (including some I ride regularly), I am glad when a lane or other piece of bike infrastructure is created, or an education program is launched. Even when these things are done poorly, I try to keep hope that they're steps to "getting it right." Too many planners don't yet understand cycling; I figure it will take time for them to learn--or to be replaced by people who have experienced our realities.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed about that--and the Senate: If it's split evenly between the Democrats and Republicans, Kamala Harris will be the tie-breaker.
Last week, I wrote about the current bicycle shortage and compared it to a similar scarcity during the 1970s Bike Boom. Then, I waited three months for my Schwinn Continental, not a custom-built frame. Today I want to talk about another parallel between then and now. There probably was never a time, save for the 1890s (or now), when everyday people were more aware of cycling and cyclists as they were from about 1969 to 1974. Back then, governments at every level from counties to the nation were floating plans to build "bikeways" (as bike lanes were called then) to, perhaps, an even greater degree than we see today. Back then, regular cyclists included Dr. Paul Dudley White, President Eisenhower's personal physician and a founder of the American Heart Association; Stewart Udall, the Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and one of the founders of modern environmental movements; and John Volpe, Secretary of Transportation. Also among their number was Carl Bernstein, who helped to expose the Watergate scandal and, much to his chagrin, one of the Watergate "burglars" he exposed! As transportation writer Carlton Reid notes, the 1970s Bike Boom offers hope, as well as cautionary tales, for today's "Boom". One hopeful sign is that while, in some areas, cyclists are stereotyped as overprivileged milennials or hipsters--the bohoisie or bourgemians, if you will: the very antithesis of a rebellion against consumer capitalism--back in the day, adult riders were labelled as "bike freaks" who were hippies, commies or worse.
More to the point, though, too many decisions about bicycle policy were being made by people who weren't cyclists and, worse, didn't have the collective memory, if you will, of cycling that Europeans and people in other parts of the world could draw upon. So there was an emphasis on "bikeways" that separated cyclists completely, not only from motorized traffic, but the community in general: They were good for leisurely weekend rides, but not for transportation. That is one reason why the massive bike sales of the early 1970s (which dwarfed mountain bike sales during their late 1980s-eary 1990s boom) did not translate into a culture in which bicycles were an integral part. Once the "boom" ended, many people hung up their bikes for good. That ignorance of cycling extended to law enforcement officials, as it too often does now. I have been stopped by cops who insisted I broke the law when I didn't and that I should engage in practices that actually endanger cyclists, such as riding all the way to the right and following traffic signals when crossing busy intersections. Also, as Reid points out, while bikes from that era are called "vintage" and sell for high prices on eBay, the fact is that most bikes sold during that time were of low quality. In other words, when most people bought Schwinns or Raleighs (if they didn't buy department-store bikes), they weren't buying Internationals or Paramounts, they were shelling out their money for Records or Varsities--or for any number of low-end models from makers like Atala or any number of smaller companies that haven't been heard from since. Most people never learned to even fix a flat, let alone take care of more complex problems, so when things went wrong, they never got fixed. Moreover, most of the bikes sold really weren't designed for the way people were riding them. That is why, for example, lower-end ten-speeds came with brake extension (a.k.a. "suicide") levers: Most casual cyclists are better off with upright or flat handlebars than on drop bars. So, Reid cautions that we must learn that--as Richard Ballantine argued in his 1972 book--"bikeways" alone are not alone the answer. For one thing, it's much better to take lanes and streets from vehicular traffic and to raise awareness of cyclists, pedestrians and motorists alike of cyclists' right to ride. So are bikes that are suited to the riders' needs and inclinations. Otherwise, alot of the bikes purchased today will be hanging in rafters--or buried in landfills--by 2030.
Today I am going to take you to a city with an international airport named after a Beatle. To my knowledge, it's the only such city.
You may have guessed that city is Liverpool, England. Now I'll give you a clue as to which Beatle has the honor: Its mayor has said the time has come to be "as radical as possible." Which member of the Fabulous Four are you most likely to associate with the word "radical?" John Lennon, of course. All right, I admit that I took his quote just a little out of context. And, of course, I can't take you to Liverpool: Not even the airlines can do that right now. For that matter, there aren't many places the airlines can take you now. But, as I used to tell kids for whom I did creative writing workshops, your imagination can take you anywhere. If you can imagine (There's another John Lennon word!), you can. And, it seems that Mayor Joe Anderson is doing just that. He is pleased with the improvement of his city's air quality since the lockdowns began. More important, he imagines maintaining it. More important still, he understands what needs to be done in order to keep its skies the clearest they've been since the Industrial Revolution began. Mayor Anderson has just green-lit 2 million GBP to improve cycling in the city by introducing up to 100 km of pop-up lanes. He gave his approval as the city has already begun a 45 million GBP redesign of the center city that includes 11 km of permanent bike lanes. While that will make the city's center more bikeable and walkable in the long-term, the "pop up" lanes are intended, in part, to help in the city's recovery from the pandemic. It comes at a time when the UK Government is encouraging local councils to improve cycling and walking structure as public transport will be operating on very limited schedules due to social distancing guidelines. All of this, it seems, comes from a recognition of a question I've raised about in a couple of recent posts: Of those who have taken up cycling during the pandemic, how many will continue once things return to "normal?" As I have mentioned, during the 1966 and 1980 New York City transit strikes, some people cycled to work. But once subway and bus service returned to normal, they hung up, sold, gave away or discarded their bikes. I maintain that in 1966, few adults cycled in the US and there was no cycling infrastructure; by 1980, more adults pedaled but there was little infrastructure. On the other hand, after the 2005 transit strike, many new cycle commuters continued to ride to work and school, in part because there was more of a cycling culture--and more infrastructure--than existed during the earlier labor stoppages. Mayor Anderson seems to recognize that some Liverpudlians who took up cycling or walking are enjoying favorable conditions, with far fewer motorized vehicles on the city's streets than one normally encounters. Once shops, offices and other workplaces, and schools, re-open, traffic volumes could creep back up to pre-pandemic levels. And once public transport returns to a full schedule, people will return to commuting on buses and trains. Some of the newly-minted cyclists and pedestrians could be enticed to continue walking and riding if there are spaces in which they feel safe while riding, and other infrastructure (bike repair stations?) to support them. "The COVID pandemic has impacted our way of life beyond imagination but the challenges it has presented has also provided us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-imagine how we use and travel within our cities," Mayor Anderson says. "Imagine." "Reimagine." How appropriate for a city that named its airport after John Lennon. (Thanks to regular commenter "Voyage of the Eye" for alerting me to this story.)
Yesterday, I wrote about how a beloved member of his cycling community is being commemorated: The University of Texas at San Antonio opened the Tito Bradshaw Bicycle Repair Shop in a former information booth. The reason why he's being commemorated is, unfortunately, terrible: He was killed by an intoxicated driver while riding his bike. Sometimes, it seems, it takes the death of a cyclist or pedestrian to bring the issue home and spur people into action--that is, when someone isn't trying to blame the cyclist, or cyclists in general, even if the driver was drunk, high, distracted or driving with a suspended license (or no license at all). For Chesley Ann Epley Cobbs (Does that sound like a Southern name, or what?), the issue of safety came home, literally, when her brother was killed while riding his bicycle in Oklahoma City. As personal as the issue is for her, she made the point that cyclists' safety is vital to the redevelopment of her city. "Having safe and protected bike lanes connecting our downtown communities secures the safety of getting to and from those places of well-being and entertainment that you are working so hard to build and elevate our great state," she said in a hearing at City Hall. She found a receptive audience in at least two City Council members. One, Jo Beth Hamon, described rides that "should take minutes" but take much longer because "going through the neighborhoods, there was no connection" between bike lanes. As a result, she had to cross major thoroughfares, including a highway, to take what is a typical days' ride for her. Another Council Member, James Cooper, connected the safety of cyclists and pedestrians to the overall livability of the city. In addition to a lack of cycling infrastructure, he said that sidewalks are unsafe "in even our most walkable neighborhood, award-winning neighborhood." He wondered how "a child" could "get safely to school, to a park" in the conditions he described.
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The Council members and Ms. Epley Cobbs spoke at a public proposal meeting on how to spend public funding earmarked for public facilities. I hope that others in the decision-making process--in other places as well as Oklahoma City--understand what Ms. Epley Cobbs, Ms. Hamon and Mr. Cooper are trying to say: Ensuring the safety of people who get around without motor vehicles is a vital part of a modern city's development, or redevelopment.
I share at least one attitude with poor black and brown residents of New York, my hometown: a dislike of the bike lanes. Our reasons, though, are very different. My criticisms of those ribbons of asphalt and concrete are that too many of them are poorly conceived, designed or constructed. The result is that such paths start or end without warning, aren't really useful as transportation or recreational cycling conduits or put us in more danger than if we were to ride our bikes on nearby streets. On the other hand, members of so-called minority groups see bike lanes as "invasion" routes, if you will, for young, white, well-educated people who will price them out of their neighborhoods. I can understand their fears: When you live in New York, you are never truly economically secure, so you always wonder whether and when you'll have to move. (Those Russian and Chinese and Saudi billionaires with their super-luxe suites don't actually live here; when Mike Bloomberg famously called this town "the world's second home," I think he really meant the world's pied a terre.) Also, as I have pointed out in other posts, cycling is still a largely Caucasian activity, or is at least perceived as such. My experiences and observations have made, for me, a report from the United Nations Environment Programme's "Share the Road" report all the more poignant, and ironic. In one of its more pithy passages, it pronounces, "No one should die walking or cycling to work or school. The price paid for mobility is too high, especially because proven, low-cost and achievable solutions exist." Among those solutions are bike lanes and infrastructure that, in encouraging people to pedal to their workplaces and classrooms, will not only provide cheap, sustainable mobility, but also help to bring about greater social and economic opportunities as well as better health outcomes.
Tanzanian girls ride to school on bikes provided by One Girl, One Bike, a non-governmental initiative.
All of this is especially true for women and girls in developing countries. Far more women are the main or sole providers for their families than most people realize. I think that in the Western world, we think of such domestic arrangements as a result of marriages breaking up or the father disappearing from the scene for other reasons. Such things happen in other parts of the world, but in rural areas of Africa, Asia and South America, for example, a father might have been killed in a war or some other kind of clash. As for girls, very often they don't go to school because a family's limited resources are concentrated on the boys--or because it's not safe for girls to walk by themselves, or even in the company of other girls. Now, of course, bike lanes in Cambodia or Cameroon are not a panacea that will resolve income and gender inequality, any more than such lanes by themselves will make the air of Allahabad, India as clean as that of Halifax, Nova Scotia. But bike infrastructure, as the UN report points out, can help in narrowing some of the economic as well as environmental and health disparities between rich and poor countries, and rich and poor areas within countries. Of course, it might be difficult to convince folks of such things in non-hipsterized Brooklyn or Bronx neighborhoods. Really, I can't blame them for fearing that, along with tourists on Citibikes and young white people on Linuses, those green lanes will bring in cafes where those interlopers will refuel themselves on $25 slices of avocado toast topped with kimchi and truffle shavings glazed with coriander honey and wash them down with $8 cups of coffee made from beans fertilized by yaks and infused with grass-fed butter and coconut oil. (About the avocado toast: I can't say for sure that anyone actually makes the combination I described, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody does. On the other hand, the coffee concoction is indeed mixed in more than a few places. I tried it once. It tasted like an oil slick from the Gowanus Canal. Or maybe I just couldn't get past the oleaginous texture.)
In other posts, I've pointed out that bike lanes and other bicycle-related infrastructure are not always received warmly by low-income or working-class people, or by people of color. Bike lanes are often seen as paths to gentrification. While the income level and hue of a neighborhood may well change after one of those green ribbons winds down a street, we cannot, as at least one of your teachers has said, confuse coincidence with causation. (The same association is often made between art and the ways neighborhoods change: More than one commentator has referred to artists as the canaries in the coal mine.) Still, I can understand why someone who's just getting by would feel resentment when he or she sees a cyclist who seems to be having fun--even if said cyclist is riding to work. Also, that cyclist is, as likely as not, to be white. Or, if he or she is not, he or she is, as often as not, an educated professional, and young. That last fact is even more important than one might realize: Gentrification often pushes out people who have been living in a neighborhood for decades--in some cases, their entire lives--and really have nowhere else to go. One more thing: Nearly all planners and designers involved in building bike infrastructure are like the folks spinning down those lanes: white, with at least one university degree and from at least the middle class, if not a higher rung on the socio-economic ladder. Urban and transportation planning, it seems, are a bit like architecture: a difficult profession to enter if you're not already connected, in some way, to the people who are already in it. And, of course, it takes financial and other resources to, not only get the education required for such work, but to endure long periods at jobs that don't pay well. That is why, for example, most of the students in the college in which I teach are preparing to become nurses, dental hygenists and the like, if they're not studying business. But today, in taking a slightly different route to work, I found yet another reason why poor, working-class and nonwhite people might fear and hate the arrival of a bike lane in their neighborhood.
As you might have guessed, those tall brick buildings to the left of the bike lane are projects (or what the British call "council flats"). Guess who lives in them?
If you were one of them, how welcome would you feel on that bike lane? Oh, and that ferry: It's nice. But, even with the location of that dock, one sees hardly a dark face on board. By the way, just beyond the end of the lane, a new development is going up. If nothing else, it just might make the bike lane seem welcoming, by comparison anyway, to the folks in the projects.
I have never been to Omaha, and I have met only two people who hail from O.N.E. (Omaha, Nebraska) in my life. So I won’t make any generalizations about it. I will say, however, that the seem to have made the same mistakes in bicycle infrastructure planning and construction countless other places—including my hometown of New York. While city officials are congratulating themselves for stringing together a “network “ of bike lanes that will allow cyclists to get around in the city, local cycling advocates are making the same justified criticisms one hears all over this nation. From what I can see, local officials think that all you have to do to make a bike lane is to paint lines on the side of the road, and all you have to do to “connect” them is to install a few signs.
I’d protest by boycotting Omaha Steaks, but It wouldn’t change their thinking. Besides, I’ve never ordered Omaha Steaks before and very rarely eat steak at all. I’m not a vegetarian, but—I know that this will seem like heresy to some—I’m not so crazy about steak. Or most bicycle infrastructure I’ve seen. And I probably won’t like Omaha’s infrastructure, either.
One of my graduate school classmates described Cambridge, Massachusetts--his hometown--as "Paradise." That was some years ago, but from what I hear, it's still a nice, albeit expensive place to live. It's been a while since I've been there, but I do recall some nice bike riding--and lots of cyclists-- in the town. The number of riders, I suppose, shouldn't have surprised me, given the number of college campuses in and around the city. One thing that my former classmate probably liked about his native burg is this: It's a nice place that tries to improve itself. At least, that seems to be true when it comes to cyclability.
Photo by David L.Ryan of the Boston Globe staff
The 2015 Cambridge Bicycle Plan is more extensive and better thought-out than most other municipal bicycle plans. It calls for, among other things, a 20-mile network of protected bike lanes. That, in itself, is impressive for a city that's about a quarter of the size of Manhattan, and a population of 113,630. What makes this plan all the more impressive is that it identifies particular streets and roads that need such lanes, and calls for them to be physically separated by more than lines painted on the street. Now the plan is getting "teeth," according to Sam Feigenbaum, a volunteer with Cambridge Bicycle Safety, a local advocacy group. The other day, a new Cycling Safety Ordinance was passed, mandating that the city add permanent protected bike lanes when doing reconstruction on any roads identified in the Safety Plan. "The intent of the Ordinance," according to Feigenbaum, is that if "the bike plan says a street needs a protected lane, that street will get a protected lane." Mayor Marc McGovern says that prior to passing the law, a lot of time was spent debating whether the roads under construction would have bike infrastructure. While there will be opportunities for community input, he explains, "people can expect that the city is moving in this direction." While the plan allows the City Manager--Louis dePasquale--to nix a particular lane based on a street's physical features, the use of the road or financial constraints, he would have to provide a written analysis of why the lane couldn't be built. But, he says, those instances should be "rare in a layman's sense of the word" as well as in the context of the Ordinance, meaning something that is "infrequent, irregular and exceptional." Actually, those three words can describe most bicycle-related policy in most US jurisdictions--when it exists at all. But, for its newly-passed Ordinance, Cambridge is indeed exceptional, whether or not it's the "paradise" my old classmate described.
Efforts to get people out of cars and onto bicycles are most commonly associated with European (and, to a lesser extent, North American) cities with relatively young and affluent populations. Most of them are places that have long been established as regional, national or worldwide centers of commerce, culture and technological innovation. Those cities, with a few exceptions like Portland, are relatively compact: San Francisco, Montreal and New York are hemmed in by water, while European capitals are ringed by long-established, if smaller, municipalities. In other words, they can't expand, so if people move in, their population densities increase--and housing becomes scarcer and therefore more expensive. That, as much as anything, puts a damper on the growth in such cities' populations. Most people don't immediately associate car-to-bike campaigns with rapidly-growing cities in developing, low- to middle-income countries. If anything, people want to parlay their newfound prosperity, or even flaunt it, with their new automobiles. That their shiny new machines may spend more time idling in traffic than moving to any particular destination seems not to deter them from getting behind the wheel rather than astride two wheels. So it is in Bangaluru, known in the English-speaking world as Bangalore. It's often called "The Silicon Valley of India" for its concentration of high-tech firms, which have drawn migrants from the rest of India. As a result, it's been one of the world's fastest-growing cities and metropolitan areas in the world: The 2011 Census counted 8.4 million residents (about the same number as my hometown of New York) but current estimates say that there are between 10.5 and 12.3 million people living in the city where fewer than 3 million lived in 1981 and only 400,000 took up residence in 1941. But Bangaluru, like other rapidly-growing cities in developing countries, has even more knotted and chaotic traffic than what one encounters in First World cities. As I've mentioned before, millions newly middle-class Bangalureans have taken to driving. The real problem, though, seems to be that the city's roads simply can't handle so much traffic. They are narrow, and many people won't cycle because they don't want to compete with motorized vehicles for space. Worse, they are jostling with cars and trucks on the roadway while dodging huge potholes: Before the boom, there wasn't money for maintenance, but now it's difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with needed repairs.
The possible model for Bengaluru
So, the city and its regional administration are working on a several-pronged plan that both takes its cues, and learns from the mistakes of, other schemes in the area's cities. In those places, bike lanes were built but people didn't use them because they weren't useful for getting to wherever they had to go or were simply seen as not much safer than riding on the streets. Also, Bangaluru planners have learned that city-owned bike share programs have had a number of problems and, as one report put it, while municipalities are good for providing the needed infrastructure, private companies are better at providing share bikes. A problem with those services, though, has surfaced in cities all over the world, especially in China: the bikes are left anywhere and everywhere when people are finished with them. So, a possible solution is to have a company like Yulu or Ofo provide the service, and for the city to build dedicated parking facilities--like lots for cars, only smaller--where people can leave, or pick up, bikes. Could India's Silicon Valley also become its next Amsterdam?
