If You Live In Chicago And Need A Bike...

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I like to give "shout-outs" to individuals and organizations who provide bikes, helmets and related items to people in need.

Now a city--Chicago--is undertaking such an initiative.

A new program called Bike Chicago will distribute 500 new bikes and provide "maintainece and safety equipment" this summer.  The program, under the auspices of the Chicago Department of Transportation, plans to provide 5000 bicycles, along with maintainence and safety equipment, by 2026.

The program is part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot's "Chicago Recovery Program" which aims "to increase affordable and climate-friendly mobility options."  In a statement, Mayor Lightfoot said, "Every resident of our city deserves equitable access to safe, reliable and affordable clean transportation options."

To apply for a bicycle and related accessories and service, a peron must:

• be a Chicago resident and at least 14 years old
• have a household income 100% or less of the Median Area Income for Chicago (e.g., $104,000 for a family of four)
• not already own a bicycle, and
• live in an area that faces high mobility hardship.

Those under 18 must have a parent or guardian present when picking up a bike and equipment.

In The Saddle, Through The Eyes Of A Bee

About a decade ago, New York City, my hometown, legalized beekeeping.  Other cities have done likewise, and in some other cities, the practice has always been legal.  A result is that the number of urban beekeepers has grown exponentially.  

In the Big Apple (Now there's something a bee would like!), the first apiarians were amateur hobbyists.  These days, however, there are beekeeping businesses in formerly-abandoned industrial buildings as well as other "recycled" spaces.  As you might expect, beekeepers in New York and other cities are selling honey--some with interesting and unique flavors--in farmers' markets and even to stores.  They also, ironically, sell bees and hives to farmers and fruit growers.

Another trend in large and mid-sized cities coincided with the re-discovery of beekeeping.  Since you're reading this blog (Aren't you smart!), you have probably guessed what it is:  bicycling, for transportation as well as recreation.  Just as hives were being built in old warehouses, bike lanes and other infrastructure were blazing their way through urban neighborhoods.

It makes sense, then, that these two trends would meet at some point.

More precisely, they have met in someone:  Jana Kinsman, founder of Bike a Bee in Chicago.

Jana Kinsman. Photo by Adam Alexander.

Seven years ago, she was working in graphic design but wanted a change.  To help satisfy a lifelong curiosity about bees, and insects in general, she took a winter beekeeping class with the Chicago Honey Co-op.  After that finishing that class, she went to Eugene, Oregon to apprentice with a beekeeper.  She brought the skills she learned there back to the Windy City, and began a Kickstarer campaign that raised $8000.  With that, and her 1974 Peugeot PX-10 (You can do damn near anything with that bike!), she "started Bike a Bee out of my apartment," she says.

Jana with bike and bees.  Photo by Brent Knepper.

In the beginning, her operation was in her apartment.  "All of the equipment was stored in my bedroom and we extracted honey in my living room," she recalls. (I must say that I've lived with housemates who did less to contribute their fair share of the rent, and who were far more dangerous!)  Today, Bike a Bee maintains more than 50 hives in community gardens, schools and urban farms on the city's South Side.  She pedals between those sites to conduct inspections and collect honey.  From those places, she transports honey all over the city, where it is sold in farmers' markets and stores.

She says she has yet to find the need for a motor vehicle.  What's more, working by bicycle has other benefits.  Not only does it keep her physically active, it helps her to be more mindful and enjoy the community around her.  "When you're on your bike, you're slower," she explains. You're able to take things in more.  Stop whenever you want, wherever you want.  You can see nature more, the blooms in the trees.  You connect much more with the world around you by bike."

Could it be that from the saddle of her Peugeot PX-10, Jana Kinsman is seeing her city through the eyes of a bee?

Jana with bees. Photo by Adam Alexander.

Keep Moving--On A Divvy, Manta-Ray or Featherstone

Some motorists see us as invaders, or as over-indulged, when we "take" "their" roadway and parking spaces simply by exercising the rights we have--let alone when bike lanes are built. 

Others, though, simply are baffled by us.  They are unaccustomed to seeing us, mainly because few, if any, Americans living today can recall a time when bicycles and cyclists were major presences in their cities or towns.  They certainly can't recall a time when bicycles were important parts of their community's culture and economy.

In some places, such a time really wasn't so long ago.  Detroit, Boston, New York and a few other cities had vibrant, if small, cycling communities during the "Dark Ages" of US bicycling:  roughly the two decades or so following World War II.  Also, a few colleges and universities, including Princeton and the US Military Academy (West Point) had very competitive cycling teams.

There are, however, a few more communities in which bicycles as well as bicycling were an important part of the history and culture, and even the economy.  One such place was Shelby, Ohio.  So was a much larger city about 500 kilometers west:  Chicago.

Mention the "Windy City" and, in regards to cycling, a certain name enters people's minds.  Hint: It starts with an "S".  If you grew up in the US, there's a good chance you rode--or had--one of their bikes. And, if you became an active rider or simply an enthusiast, you might have bought one of their top-of-the line bikes.

I'm talking, of course, about Schwinn, which manufactured bikes on the city's West Side for nearly a century.  But in 1900, it was just one of 30 bicycle manufacturers making its wares along Lake Street!  Perhaps not surprisingly, the "Second City" was also home to one of the most intense racing scenes, and vibrant cycle cultures, to be found anywhere in the US, or even the world.

While much of the current bicycle culture in American cities began with young, educated and affluent people--and is frankly consumeristic--Chicago's cycling culture thrived, then survived to the degree that it did, largely because of its industrial, working-class roots and immigrant (particularly German) communities.  This story is  one that the Chicago Design Museum tells with "Keep Moving:  Designing Chicago's Bicycle Culture," an exhibit it recently opened.

The Museum places a Divvy (from the city's bike-share program) alongside a Schwinn Manta-Ray and an 1891 Featherstone-- believed to be the first US bike offered with pneumatic tires--and other bikes that were made, or had some other significant connection to, Chicago.  There is also memorabilia related to the bikes, including material from Carter Harrison's successful campaign to become the city's mayor.

So why is Carter Harrison's important in the story of cycling in Chicago?  Well, to demonstrate his athletic bona fides, he wore his Century pin--signifying that he'd done a 100-mile bike ride--on his chest while riding his single-speed bike.  

And to think that a certain presidential candidate ridiculed a Secretary of State for falling off his bicycle! Hmm...Would El Cheeto Grande have won Harrison's election?

No Escape In The Windy City

One of the great things about cycling, at least for me, is that it offers a way of escaping, if only temporarily, the stresses of daily life and the ills that afflict this world.

Perhaps I can say such a thing because I am white.  Nothing, it seems, can free Blacks and Hispanics--especially those who are young and male--from the yoke of lasso of racism, especially its noose of racial profiling.

No, not even cycling can free young people of color from those things.  If anything, riding a bike  might make them targets for cops on the hunt for tickets to meet their quotas.

At least, that's how things seem to work in Chicago.  Recently, the Tribune reported that 56 percent of all 2017  bike citations were issued in Black-majority neighborhoods, 24 percent in Latino/a-majority communities and only 18 percent in areas populated mainly by Whites.  That, in a city where the proportion of non-Hispanic Black and White people is almost exactly the same, at just over 32 percent for each race.  Hispanics make up 28 percent of the Windy City's population, but they are more dispersed than Blacks throughout the city, so it's fair to say that those who live in Latino/a-majority neighborhoods are bearing disproportionately ticketed.

This caricature of Major Taylor appeared in the 26 April 1894 issue of Cycling Life.

North Lawndale, where 89 percent of the residents are Black and relatively few cycle, got more bike tickets than any other Chicago neighborhood.  Lincoln Park--a neighborhood that is either "bike friendly" or the home of "Trixies" and "Chads", depending on your persepctive--got only five.  Yes, you read that right:  5, as many fingers as you have on your hand!  Oh, and Lincoln Park is  81 percent white.

The Idaho Stop: A Women's Issue (Or: Does Obeying The Law Kill Us?)

I learn some interesting things from my students.

From one of them--a criminal justice major--I learned that the vast majority of crime is committed by males between the ages of 15 and 25.  After that age, the crime rate plummets, and there is an even more significant difference between the lawlessness of males and that of females.

Or, to put it another way, females are more law-abiding than males.  Of course, that usually works to our advantage, but there are instances in which it doesn't.

One of those areas in which it doesn't is in traffic law, as applied to cyclists.  In most municipalities, the law requires cyclists to stop for red lights, just as motorists do.  Of course, such laws are not evenly enforced:  A state highway cop in a rural or suburban area is more likely to give a summons for running a red light than an urban police officer, and in cities, Black or Hispanic cyclists are more likely to get tickets (or worse) than a White or Asian person on two wheels.

But, according to studies, women are, proportionally, far more likely than men to be run down by heavy transport vehicles while cycling in urban areas.  As an example, in 2009, ten of the thirteen people killed in cycling accidents in London were female.  Of those ten, eight were killed by "heavy goods vehicles", i.e., lorries or trucks.  That year, about three times as many men as women cycled in the British capital.



That stark reality reflected conditions described in a report leaked by The Guardian's "Transport" section.  According to that report, 86 percent of the female cyclists killed in London from 1999 through 2004 collided with a lorry.  In contrast, 47 percent of male cyclists killed on London streets met their fates with a truck.

In unusually blunt language for such a study, the researchers concluded, "Women may be over-represented (in collisions with goods vehicles) because they are less likely than men to disobey red lights." (Italics are mine.)  They, therefore, confirmed what many of us already know:  We are safer, particularly in areas of dense traffic or in the presence of heavy vehicles, if we get out in front of the traffic in our lane rather than wait for the green light--and run the risk of getting smacked by a right-turning vehicle.



A DePaul University study of Chicago cycling and traffic patterns made use of the British study and came to a similar conclusion.  More broadly, the DePaul researchers concluded that it would be more practical and safer to mandate the "Idaho stop" for cyclists.  

In essence, the "Idaho stop" means that cyclists treat red lights like "Stop" signs and "Stop" signs like "Yield" signs.  It allows cyclists to ride through a red light if there is no cross-traffic in the intersection.  

Believe it or not, Idaho enacted that law all the way back in 1982.  Since then, no other state has adopted it, although a few Colorado municipalities have enacted stop-as-yield policies since 2011.  Interestingly, a 2012 decree allows cyclists in Paris to turn right at--or, if there is no street to the right, to proceed straight through-- a red light as long as they excercise prudence extreme and watch for pedestrians. Three years later, that policy was modified to allow cyclists to treat certain stop lights (designated by signage) as "yield" signs as long as they are making right turns or going straight through "T" junctions.

The funny thing is that you don't hear or read the kinds of flat-earth rants about cyclists in the City of Light that we regularly find in American discourse.  And, it has seemed to me, cycling is generally safer than it is in New York or just about anyplace else in the US I've ridden.

Now, back to my original point:  Allowing the "Idaho Stop", or even the policies of Paris or those Colorado municipalities, is not only a cycling or transportation issue.  It's a women's issue!

Bicycling While Black In The Windy City

Two decades ago, I was living on Bergen Street, on the northern side of Park Slope, Brooklyn.  I was midway between Fifth Avenue, then one of the area's main shopping strips, and Flatbush Avenue, one of Brooklyn's main throughfares. 

The latter street was often called, in a grim joke,  "The Mason-Dixon Line."  The difference between the two sides of the Aveune was literally black and white.  I ended up on the white side.  Some time after I moved there, I realized that all of the apartments the agent with whom I'd dealt showed me were on the side of Flatbush where I lived.  

The local precinct house was just on the other side.  I often heard stories about how differently each side was policed.   It was during that time I heard an expression that may be familiar to you: Driving While Black, or DWB for short.

Of course, the phenomenon was not limited to that neighoborhood--or, for that matter, to any particular American city, or to the US.  It's also not surprising to realize that there's a two-wheeled equivalent:  BWB, or Biking While Black.

From phmelody.com

Yesterday, an article by Chicago Tribune reporter Mary Wisniewski revealed that of the ten community areas with the most bike tickets from 2008 to September 2016, not a single one has a white majority of residents.  Seven of those neighborhoods have an African-American majority, while Latinos are the majority in the other three.

What must be most galling, particularly to Black and Hispanic cyclists in the Windy City, is that the neighborhoods with the greatest numbers of cyclists are mainly-white enclaves such as West Town and Lincoln Park, whose cyclists didn't come anywhere to getting as many summonses as those in such communities as Austin and North Lawndale.


But African-American cyclists are bearing the greatest burden of constabular harassment, according to Wisniewski.
"As Chicago police ramp up their ticketing of cyclists," she writes,  "more than twice as many citations are being written in African-American communities than in white or Latino areas."

Some law enforcement officers and commanders repeat an argument I have heard before and is condescending or simply insulting, depending on your point of view.  In essence, they say people in low income (which usually means African or Hispanic) communities are less educated and therefore more ignorant of the rules of the road.  But others, including cycling advocates, point out there are simply more cops on the streets because of their higher crime rates, so there are more opportunities to stop cyclists in such neighborhoods.

Whatever the explanation, such tactics can only worsen relations between the police and non-white residents in a city where, by many accounts, such relations are worse than in most other cities.

And don't get me started on relations between cops and cyclists--or trans women!