From A City That Almost Became A Cycling Utopia To One That Claims To Be One

 Before Portland became, well, Portland, there was a moment—say, about 30 years ago—when it seemed that Seattle would become what the “Rose City” has become in America’s —and the world’s—consciousness. (Sorry to sound like a grad student trying to imitate their favorite professor!) 

San Francisco’s countercultural spirit and much of its sheer charm was being ground down (some would say it had already been ground down) by tech- and finance-industry wealth; other cities’ creative communities and bohemian enclaves—if they ever had them in the first place—were similarly destroyed or co-opted by corporatization and gentrification. While “indie” culture, which was largely defined by its music (think Kurt Cobain, Pearl Jam et al.) was Seattle’s trademark and gave  “The Emerald City” a reputation as a haven for people who did things their way, it is very different from what “keeps Portland weird.”

But, because I am writing about cycling and not a cultural history of the United States, I am thinking of a particular way in which Seattle almost became, in essence, Portland before there was Portland—or the notion of Portland, anyway.  That is to say, Seattle seemed destined to become America’s “Bicycle City.”

I tried to find, in vain, reports I read during that time saying that Seattle had more bicycle shops, per capita, than any other US city and that it was building what we now call “bicycle infrastructure” decades before most other cities’ and other jurisdictions’—including Portland’s—planners had even thought of it. If indeed my memory of such things is correct, I could attribute that interest in cycling and cycling infrastructure to traits shared by many who moved to Seattle during the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and who moved to Portland a decade later: They loved outdoor activities, including cycling. Perhaps more important, at least a few fled car-centric cities and suburbs and wanted their newly-adopted hometowns to be more bike- and pedestrian-friendly.

Given this history, it’s understandable that Seattle Bike Blog author Tom Fucoloro would expect to find a cycling utopia during his recent visit to Portland—and surprising that he didn’t. Lest you think that his judgment was a matter of envy or civic pride, he offers some very specific criticisms of cycling in the city which, he says, he enjoyed. 

Tom Fucoloro and his son cycling in Portland.

His most trenchant observations are of downtown bike lanes. One is the lanes’ lack of connectedness: Some begin out of nowhere and take you nowhere, much less to another lane. (That is also one of my pet peeves about New York’s bike lanes.) Another is that there aren’t protected lanes in high-traffic downtown areas.

I share his consternation that a city that touts itself as a cyclists’ haven, and claims to encourage transportation as well as recreational cycling, doesn’t do something that might entice more people to abandon their cars, at least for short trips. Then again, I’m not surprised, as I live in New York, where the situation isn’t much better—but at least we have more extensive, if overburdened, mass transit systems .

Don't Try This At Home--Or On The Interstate

Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann has been as revered as Nehemiah and reviled as Robert Moses.  However you see him, you can't deny that he is as responsible as anyone for the kind of city Paris is, and has been for the past century-plus.

One of the things he did was to introduce a street grid. Previously, much of Paris--especially the old districts like Le Marais--were laced with streets narrow streets that zigged, zagged and curved.  If you've been in the medieval sections of some European cities--or a few small districts of New York and Boston--you have an idea of what the City of Light was like before Baron Haussmann came along.

In re-doing Paris' streets, he also made them wider.  While they still seem charmingly or claustrophobically narrow, depending on your point of view, compared to American thoroughfares, the newly-made streets were still a good bit wider.  They allowed for Paris' new infrastructure, including sewers and the very thing that gave the city its nicknames:  gas-powered streetlights. 

While most people agree that widening and straightening the streets modernized the city and made it more habitable for many people, others accused Haussmann of being a tool of the powers-that-be.  Up to that time, Parisians were noted for insurrecting on the drop of a chapeau, and instigators who knew the streets could evade soldiers and guardsmen, who often came from other parts of the country and therefore weren't familiar with the twists and turns of those byways.  But the new, arrow-straight streets made pursuits easier because, well, they made it easier to keep perpetrators in their pursuers' sights.

I mention all of this because, while I hope (and assume, dear reader) that you will never steal a bike, I can offer this bit of advice:  If you try to make your escape on wheels you wrested from their rightful owners, don't try to make your escape on a road that stretches straight ahead of you for miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers).

And, especially, don't try to make your getaway on an Interstate highway.  It will almost certainly result in your getting caught and hurt, or worse.

A 31-year-old man in Seattle learned that lesson the hard way.  At around 7pm on Wednesday, a bicycle was reported stolen on NE 45th Street near Interstate 5. Police were alerted and Washington State Troopers stopped him on the highway.  When he fought, they tasered him.  He ended up in a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

It will be interesting, to say the least, to find out more about this alleged thief--and what prompted him to try to get away on the main north-south highway of the US West Coast.

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.