Why Are Bike Lanes Seen As Conduits Of Gentrification?

When the bike lane came to Crescent Street, people didn't wonder whether they'd be priced out of the neighborhood.  It didn't price me out:  My rent was the same on the day I moved as it was three and a half years earlier, when the bike lane opened.  I moved mainly because a senior apartment (don't tell anybody!) became available.

But others see those green strips of asphalt with white borders (or, in some cases, bollards or other separators) as conduits of class warfare.  While they might own their homes, they worry about the face and faces of their communities changing.  

Such anxieties are felt and expressed (sometimes overtly) mainly in older white working-class enclaves and communities of color.  From Hasidic Jews and other religious conservatives who don't want "scantily clad" cyclists (and "sexy-ass hipster girls") rolling past their abodes to working parents who ferry themselves to work and their kids to school in cars and minivans and complain they "can't park" and they're "always stuck in traffic" to poor Blacks and Hispanics who feel abandoned by their cities and country, people in communities where few adults ride bikes for recreation (and certainly aren't riding the latest carbon-fiber technowonder) see cyclists--especially cycling activists and advocates--as younger, whiter, richer or more libertine than themselves.  Oh, and many of us are childless or have only one child, in contrast to the large families many poor, religious and other people support.

So in a way, I can understand why some people sigh "There goes my neighborhood!" when a bike lane comes to their doorstep. To put it in pedantic, schoolmarmish terms, they are equating correlation with causation.  That is also understandable:  When people don't know the underlying reasons for a phenomenon, they tend to link any two events they see simultaneously.  And it's true that in my hometown of New York, you are more likely to ride in a bike lane if you're on the Upper East Side of Manhattan than if you're living and riding in the decidedly non-gentrified, non-hipster Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York.  

In my observation, if there is any cause-and-effect relationship between bike lanes and gentrification, it's actually the reverse of what many people believe:  If anything, gentrification leads to the building of bike lanes in one neighborhood.  Those paths are usually constructed along long corridors that lead from one neighborhood into another. So a lane like the one along Kent Avenue in Brooklyn began in the gentrified/hipster areas of Greenpoint and North Williamsburg and was extended down to the ungentrified areas of South Williamsburg, where most residents are members of large Hasidic families.  And another Brooklyn bike lane, along Fourth Avenue, extends from the mostly White and Middle Eastern enclaves of Bay Ridge through the mainly immigrant Chinese and Mexican communities in Sunset Park and, from there, into working-class neighborhoods near Greenwood Cemetery and on to uber-gentrified Park Slope.

If anything, such lanes should be equalizers:  People from poor as well as affluent communities can use them to bike (or ride their scooters) to work, school, shop or just for fun. I think, perhaps, more people would see them that way if more bike activists and advocates looked and talked (ahem) less like me!

What Does Bike Parking Have To Do With LGBTQ, Gender and Racial Equality?

I, personally and cyclists, collectively have been accused of "taking too much space" on the road--by drivers of SUVs and gaudily painted pickup trucks that have never been besmudged by a tool box in the cargo area or a dirty hand on its steering wheel.

So I wouldn't have been surprised, though I would have been no less upset than Scottish cyclist Alan Gordon was to find this:

Lovely evening in Colinton at the volunteer start up session for the new SW tool library and a wee blether in the Spylaw afterwards. pic.twitter.com/ZxMhtLeP6T

— Alan Gordon (@agordonsalive) May 22, 2023

He locked his bike to a curbside railing in Colinton, an Edinburgh suburb, to attend a volunteer start-up session for the area's new free tool library.  I would assume that the library would benefit residents of the complex as well as people in the surrounding community.

Anyway, in the Twitter thread that followed, someone showed a motorcycle and a two garbage bin in another parking spot, taking up more space than two bikes like Alan's would have.  No one left a "polite notice" about them.

(As someone else noted, starting the note with "Polite Notice" was a tip-off that what followed would be the exact opposite, just as people who say "I'm not a racist" usually follow it with some stereotype or another.  Or the person who, a couple of days ago said, "I'm not a transphobe, but..."  to me.)

Oh, and someone made a comment about paying road tax.  I don't know about the laws over there, but I've gotten into that exact argument with drivers here. And I have very politely pointed out that I do, in fact, pay road tax.  The only tax I don't pay that motorists have to pay is for gasoline.

This may seem strange (of course it won't when I explain it), but recounting Alan's tale reminded me of another part of the conversation I had with the "I'm not a transphobe" dude and other people with similar mindsets. Any time a law is passed to give Blacks, immigrants, women, LBGBTQ+ people or anyone else who is in a "minority" the same rights as white, cisgender, heterosexual Christian men, such people whine that things have "gone too far" or that we're getting "special privileges." Complaints like the one Alan received in the "Polite Notice" have the same feel to them.  

As I have pointed out to such folks--including a few relatives of mine--if you have always enjoyed a right or a privilege, you don't notice it until someone else gets it--or you lose it.  The latter has happened to me in my affirmation of my female self:  I lost some of the assumption of competence, innocence and other things I once could take for granted.  Likewise, most drivers, especially if they're not regular cyclists, would never know how much of the landscape and economy are shaped by their driving--which, I grant, is a need for some.  Contrary to what some think, though, I am not trying to take anything away from them--or cisgender people.  I only want the same rights and protections they take for granted.

 

Bicycle Licensing: An Instrument of Racial And Economic (In)Justice

Last week, I wrote about the arguments over a planned bike lane in Berkeley, California. One resident referred to it as a "culture war."

If it is, I am surprised that controversy about another bit of bicycle-related policy or planning hasn't been seen in the same way.  I am referring bicycle-licensing regulations.

While bike lane battles have garnered a lot of attention during the past decade or so, bike licensing has been mostly an under-the-radar issue for nearly as long as bicycles have existed.  

The battle-lines in bike-lane conflicts are drawn largely along generational lines and between business owners who fear losing parking spaces and people who want more walkable and cycle-able downtowns. On the other hand, the quieter battles over licensing laws divide people, ironically, pit people against each other in a very visible way--one that has defined some loud and violent protests in recent years. 

While there was little or no bike lane construction, at least in the US, between the end of World War I and the beginning of this century, many jurisdictions, from small seaside villages to major metropoli, have had bicycle licensing regulations on their books for decades whether or not most citizens are or were aware of them. As an example, in 1957 Toronto repealed such a law that had been on the books since 1935.  Several times since, the idea of resurrecting the law, or some version of it has been re-visited and, ultimately, rejected, albeit for different reasons.

When the Canadian city got rid of the requirement that stood for more than two decades, few adults rode bicycle.  Thus, according to city fathers (yes, they were all men) "licensing of bicycles be discontinued because it often results in an unconscious contravention of the law at a very tender age; they also emphasize the resulting poor public relations between police officers and children."  Translation: Kids break a law they don't realize exists until they're busted for it, so no wonder they grow up hating cops.

The cost-ineffectiveness of the scheme was also cited in scrapping it and against reviving it.  Also mentioned in the discussions of bringing it back to life is that licensing does little, if anything, to promote bicycle safety or return stolen bikes to their owners--two rationales that have been given for mandating bike registration in what one of the city's most famous natives, Drake, calls "The Six." The cost of administering the program has also been invoked as a reason to end, or not to begin, bicycle licensing and registration programs in other locales.

During the last few years, however, an objection to bike licensing has echoed something that has motivated so many protests of the past few years:  racial injustice.  As an incident in Perth Amboy, New Jersey showed all too clearly, in those few instances when the police stop or even arrest cyclists for riding without a license--or not wearing a helmet, or for violating some other rarely-if-ever-enforced law--the ones penalized are not White and/or do not conform to gender "norms."

David Martinez

That is one reason David Martinez worked to abolish a bicycle registration mandate in his hometown and state of Costa Mesa and California, respectively. Three years ago, he went to the police to register his bike.  When he asked about the program and who gets ticketed, "they said, 'we might ticket the homeless."  That motivated him to make a public records request.  He found that, according to the department's own data, most of the citations were issued on the city's west side, an old industrial area where, not surprisingly, much of the city's nonwhite and homeless populations are concentrated.  He presented his findings to safe streets advocates who, in turn, contacted politicians.

Now Costa Mesa is about to comply with an omnibus bill California Governor Gavin Newsom signed in October.  It calls for, among other things, the abolition of bicycle-licensing and -registration laws and regulations, which have been locally administered, throughout the state. Costa Mesa is the latest municipality to align itself with the new law.

I don't know whether Martinez or anyone else in the Golden State has framed the effort to end bicycle registration as a "culture war."  However, whether or not he has used such terminology, he (like, I imagine, Newsom) no doubt understands bicycle licensing--or, more precisely, how it's enforced--as a racial and economic justice issue precisely because it has never served the purposes (safety, recovery of stolen bikes) given as its rationale.

Riding Thunder To Reach The Un-Housed

Years ago, I rode the front of a tandem bike, with a blind woman in the rear, on a ride co-sponsored by Lighthouse.

Sometimes I envision a fleet of tandems in a local Lighthouse chapter or some regional office or warehouse.  I also think about the ways different social-service organizations could use bicycles.

Such organizations might include ones that provide services and outreach to un-housed people.  A fellow named Mark Sniff in Little Rock, Arkansas is living proof that the great minds think alike. (LOL)

He is a case manager with the Ouachita Youth Center, a division of Little Rock nonprofit Ouachita Children, Youth and Family Services.  Once or twice a week, he delivers items like socks, blankets, first-aid kits and backpacks to people in the city's homeless encampments.  He often makes his deliveries on his Breezer Thunder mountain bike, "especially when the weather is nice."

One advantage to his bike of choice, he says, is that it can "handle everything from road to gravel to single track."  That is important, he says, because sometimes those camps are "difficult to get to," especially in a van or other motor vehicle.  He uses bags attached to a rear rack (which I suspect are panniers) and, when he needs more capacity, carries a backpack.

He says he's a "middleman" that connects un-housed people, especially the young, to services and facilities.  Being on a bike facilitates face-to-face connections, which builds trust.  Those facilities include the Drop-In, a space for people under 24 years old who are un-housed or in unstable housing. "People can come in, take a shower, and do laundry and take care of some of those basic needs," Sniff explains.

Many police departments maintain a fleet of bicycles for patrols that go into places that are difficult to reach by car.  Perhaps more social service agencies, especially those who serve the un-housed, could do the same, with folks like Mark Sniff leading the way. He is living proof of something I've said in earlier posts:  the bicycle can be one of the most effective tools for social mobility--and justice.

Deliver Your Vote!

Today is Election Day here in the US.

I have already voted and I exhort you to do the likewise.

If you've been reading this blog--or simply know anything at all about who I am, in addition to being an avid cyclist--you probably can guess how I voted.

There was a time when I didn't vote because I "didn't think it mattered."  I can understand why people--including you, perhaps--might feel that way.  After all, your ballot is one of millions.  And you might live in a jurisdiction where one candidate or party or another is "safe."

Well, let me tell you, no district is as "safe" as it seems.  The past few elections should have taught us that.  I can recall hearing, in early 2015, that Hilary Clinton was a "shoo-in" for the Presidency and Donald Trump's candidacy seemed like a joke. Right now, here in New York State, the gubernatorial race is much closer than anyone had anticipated--and I have seen many more signs for Zeldin than for the incumbent Hochul.

Even if you don't think reproductive rights or even bodily autonomy, let alone equality for women, LGBTQ people, immigrants or any other marginalized people are relevant to you, I assume that, since you are reading this, you are a cyclist or have some sort of interest in bicycles.  While most candidates don't mention cycling or bicycle infrastructure specifically, there are a host of other issues that relate directly to what we love.  They include, of course, the environment and transportation.  But cycling also intersects--to borrow Kimberle Crenshaw's postulation--with economic and social justice in all sorts of ways. We need not only to encourage people to trade four wheels and one pedal for two and two whenever possible, we must also make communities--and jobs--safe and affordable so that people who aren't athletes can ride bikes to work or school.

Anyway...these Boy Scouts (confession:  I was one in my dim, dark past!) are delivering the message in more ways than one:

Riding Without Running Away

 The other day, I enjoyed a nearly perfect ride to Connecticut and back.  An overnight rain broke the weekend’s heat wave and I pedaled, with a brisk wind against my face on my way up and at my back on the ride back, under a clear sky accented by light cirrus brushstrokes.

When I’m enjoying such a trip, such a day, I never realize how lucky I am and, however ephemeral that privilege may be, it’s still more than so many other people have —and how much more orderly yet joyful my world can be—even if only for a few hours—than what lies not far beyond.

Yesterday I learned, from my friend Lillian—who is recovering from a back injury and wants to ride with me again—that a mutual friend, Glenda, had passed away around four in the morning.  That wasn’t much of a surprise, as her lung cancer was overtaking her doctors ‘ ability to treat it and her body’s ability to resist.  

She also told me that Edwin, for whom we sometimes ran errands, did other things beyond his computer skills and simply provided company, passed on Thursday.  That, of course, solved the mystery of why we hadn’t heard from him though, of course, that was neither a relief nor a consolation.

Oh, and there was another mass shooting in a school. The cynic in me is not surprised:  In a country whose mantra is, “Children are the future,” we haven’t made it more difficult to get assault weapons or easier to get mental health care, educational services or stable housing and employment since, in an eerily similar incident almost a decade ago, 28 kids and two teachers were murdered in a Connecticut school. Or since, more than a decade before that, a dozen students and two teachers were slaughtered in a Colorado high school.  Or after any number of attacks during those years.

That I can say “any number” of such incidents is a sad commentary on the situation in this country.  So is the supermarket shooting in Buffalo a week and a half ago. Again, my cynicism kicks in:  That horror doesn’t surprise me because if nothing changed after white kids were gunned down, I’m anticipating even less after a tragedy in which the victims were Black and, mostly, elderly.

So why am I invoking the Howard Cosell rule and ranting about such things on my cycling blog?  Well, it seems almost frivolous to talk about anything else.  For another, I wanted to express my understanding of my good fortune, though I am trying to avoid a lapse into guilt. Finally, though, I trust that you, dear readers, and cyclists in general, have a good sense of justice.  

Sweeping Their Bicycles

 About a month and a half ago, Mayor Eric Adams ordered “sweeps” of homeless people’s encampments in my city, New York.  He claims, rightly, that sleeping on park benches or under overpasses is “no way to live.”  His real motive, I think, is to appease moderate and conservative voters who believe that the city is descending into the “chaos” of the 1970s and 1980s.

He’s been telling homeless people that they should go to the shelters.  So far, 39 people—roughly one per day since the program started—have heeded his call. 

Frankly, I’m amazed that many have moved in.  The shelters are seen as dangerous places because mentally ill and violent people are cheek-by-jowl with people whose luck simply ran out.  Also, I can hardly imagine a better incubator for COVID or other transmissible diseases.

Probably the most wrongheaded part of the sweeps is the destruction of tents, partitions or whatever else people might be using to shield themselves—and whatever possessions they may have.  Those possessions sometimes include bicycles.

Something similar is happening in San Diego. A video circulating on Twitter shows police officers confiscating and trashing bicycles owned by homeless residents near Petco Park.

I don’t know whether San Diego’s mayor is following Adams’ lead in trying to coax people into shelters.  It might be more difficult  in the self-proclaimed “America’s Finest City,” with its year-round mild climate.  But, whatever the condition of its shelters, people won’t be enticed into them if the city takes and destroys their perfectly good bicycles.

Hello I don’t know whether San Diego is trying to move people into shelters as Eric Adams is in New York.  Even if the shelters are cleaner and safer, I imagine it might be even more difficult to convince folks in San Diego, with its year-round temperate climate. In any even, confiscating and destroying people’s possessions—especially bicycles—doesn’t seem like much of an incentive, whatever the climate or to move people into shelters as Eric Adams is in New York.  Even if the shelters are cleaner and safer, I imagine it might be even more difficult to convince folks in San Diego, with its year-round temperate climate. In any even, confiscating and destroying people’s possessions—especially bicycles—doesn’t seem like much of an incentive, whatever the climate or conditions in the shelters

The #OpeningDay Homeless Sweeps have begun again this morning. pic.twitter.com/78577GGgZu

— Michael McConnell (@HomelessnessSD) April 14, 2022

Bikes Not Going Their Way

 

For the past two years, you may have had difficulty in buying a bike—the one you want, anyway. If you managed to find your machine of choice, you probably had to pay more for it than you would have in 2019.

You may have had a similar experience in procuring parts to repair, refurbish or update your favorite ride—or even if you were looking for accessories like water bottle cages or a pair or riding glasses or gloves.

The reason for the situation I’ve described is the COVID-19 pandemic. It disrupted supply chains and even closed production facilities at the very moment when folks took up cycling as a way to avoid buses and trains or to get exercise or mental cleansing in a way that allows for social distancing.

But at least you could get something you could ride, whether or not it was your first choice, as long as you were willing to pay and could wait. 

The folks in Russia aren’t so lucky. (Ok, the Ukrainians have it worse, but bear with me!) The way things are going, they won’t be able to get bikes, parts, accessories, apparel—or much of anything—at all.

A number of bicycle and bike-related companies have suspended their operations in the country. The list includes SRAM, Trek, Specialized, Tern and Quality Bicycle Products (QBP). Also, leading bicycle tire manufacturers Continental, Michelin, Pirelli and Bridgestone have joined their ranks.  

Those companies, no doubt, were motivated by the difficulty of doing business in Russia due to banking sanctions and that some shipping companies, including Fed Ex and UPS, have stopped delivering to the country.  But one representative also says “there’s a social aspect too” in the companies’ actions.

Is This A Victory For Social Justice—Or A Defeat For Public Safety?

 Last year, I wrote about the debate over the helmet law in King County, which includes Seattle.   The arguments, as I recounted, have been presented as either public-safety or social-justice issues.

On one side, those who wanted to keep the regulation posited the same reasons proponents of similar mandates in other jurisdictions assert: Helmets prevent, or greatly reduce the chances of life-altering or -ending head injuries. This argument is made even more forcefully to require helmets for children, as many locales do. King County has been one of the few jurisdictions to require them for cyclists of all ages.

While opponents don’t deny the value in promoting safety for all, they point to the uneven enforcement of the law. While proponents—who include medical experts as well as some policy-makers and cyclists—cite statistics indicating that “helmets save lives, full stop,” in the words of one researcher, opponents point to equally-persuasive statistics showing that Native Americans (of whom the Seattle area has one of the largest communities in the U.S.), African-Americans and immigrants are disproportionately stopped, ticketed and even arrested because they weren’t wearing helmets.

Notice how I worded the last part of the previous sentence. Too often, critics charge, the helmet law is used as a pretext for stopping non-white, poor, homeless and visibly non-gender-conforming cyclists. Such cyclists are, as often as not, using their bikes as their primary or sole means of transportation.  Or they may be using them to make deliveries or to, in other ways, work. Such riders often ride bikes that were given to them, salvaged or acquired through barter or for little money. This, they may simply not have the funds to purchase a helmet.

Well, opponents seem to have taken the day.  Yesterday, the King County Board of Health voted to repeal the law, which had been on the books since 1993.  This repeal will take effect 30 days after the vote.

While I wear a helmet and encourage others to do the same, I am ambivalent about mandates. One reason is unequal enforcement I’ve described.  Also, as some have noted, attitudes and social norms about helmet-wearing have changed during the past three decades. Thus, some say, all-age helmet requirements probably don’t encourage helmet use: The cycling haven of Portland, Oregon, which has never had an all-ages requirement, has a level of helmet-wearing similar to that of King County.

The repeal, however, does not mean that all cyclists in King County can ride bareheaded:  Seventeen municipalities (which do not include Seattle) have their own helmet codes, which won’t be affected by the repeal.  So, I suspect, the fight is not over.

What Would Dr. King Think Of Cheap Bikes Or Rich Riders?

Last week, I wrote two posts that might indicate a future direction for this blog.  (Don't worry, I'll still write about my rides, bikes and all things related to them!) One post, about a German study, discussed who is becoming a new cyclist, and why.  The other discussed a mechanics' petition calling for repairable bicycles:  Turns out, most of the new cheap bikes, which are usually the ones bought by people with limited funds, have faultily-designed frames made from shoddy materials and are equipped with proprietary parts that break easily or wear out quickly.  

In brief, those new cyclists on nice new bikes bought in Cannondale, Giant, Specialized or Trek showrooms are mainly people with advanced educations who live in fashionable or gentrifying urban areas.  They might be riding to work or school, or simply for exercise and, as often as not, they are signaling that they care about their health and/or the environment. In other words, they are cycling by choice.

On the other hand, folks buying the cheap bikes, if they're not cycling for the first time in decades and therefore don't want to spend a lot of money,  are buying that big-box special in a big box because they can't afford anything else, including a bus or train pass--if indeed there is a bus or train that will get them from wherever they sleep to wherever they work.

One of the sad ironies--following the logic of the German study--is that we see a kind of social, economic, racial and gender segregation that would have astounded or appalled the man who is being commemorated today in the US:  Martin Luther King Jr.

Now, I don't think King would have denounced cycling or cyclists per se:  He was often seen riding, which he probably saw as a way of bringing him closer to some of the people he was trying to help.  And, because he was turning more of his attention to economic justice issues in his last days, I can somehow see him advising bike share organizations on ways to bridge the cultural divides and media representations that cause some people to believe they can't ride because they're not white and don't look good in lycra--or those who harass cyclists because they see us as entitled jerks (the educated riders of the German study) or the scum of the earth (cf. police who are trained to automatically assume that any cyclist in a low-income neighborhood is a criminal).

So...while I wasn't thinking specifically of King, or any activist in particular, when I was writing the posts I've linked in this post, thinking about King today is causing me to realize that my almost half a century of cycling--and nearly two decades of living as a woman--makes it all but impossible not to connect my experiences and even the things I most love (bicycling, reading, writing, food, travel, animals) to questions of justice.   In other words, the work of Martin Luther King Jr is one of the major byways, if you will, of my journey.