Bike Infrastructure: A Path Out Of Poverty And Pollution

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.) 

Take A Bike Ride And Call Me In The Morning

Lately, there's been a burst of interest in "social prescribing", particularly in the UK.  In fact, the UK plans to implement it nationwide, as part of a strategy to combat loneliness, by 2023.

"Social prescibing" is a loose term of practices that draw upon therapeutic art-, hobby- or exercise-based programs to help patients with a range of issues ranging from dementia to lung conditions.  The idea behind it is that for many patients, particularly the elderly, their physical ailments are exacerbated (if not initiated) by their isolation.  Not surprisingly, depression and anxiety plague many who have outlived friends, family members, colleagues and neighbors and create a vicious cycle in which emotional conditions worsen physical ones--which, of course, make the people who suffer those conditions even more unhappy, and sicker.

As part of "social prescribing", general practitioners and, in some cases, other health care providers can prescribe any number of activities, including museum visits, cooking classes or walking tours for patients. These activities are not meant to replace medical or surgical treatments, though they may well reduce, or even eliminate, the need for medications to treat emotional and other conditions.

Those activities could include bike rides.

The Welsh National Health Service has just announced that doctors at two Cardiff medical centers can now prescribe free six-month prescriptions to a bicycle-rental service.  The intent of the pilot program is to not only improve cardiovascular health, but also to support overall mental well-being.  If successful, the program could be expanded to include other health care professionals in the city, and perhaps even the country.

Under the plan, patients will be given a code that will provide them access to an unlimited number of free 30-minute riding sessions.  These sessions, which will be made available by European bike-share company Nextbike, can cost 10 pounds sterling (about $13 at current exchange rates) per day.  

The announcement of this plan, the first of its kind in the UK, closely follows an NHS report detailing a 15 percent increase in obesity-related hospital admissions in the UK.  That is not surprising when you consider that five years ago, the city of Boston started a "Prescribe-a-Bike" program for low-income patients, in part to combat the obesity that disproportionately affects the poor.  It has since morphed into a discounted BLUEbikes membership program for people who receive government benefits.

Lime In The Queen City Of The Southern Tier

If you have ever wondered what La Belle Siffleuse did, take a listen:




I mention Alice Shaw, not because she might be one of the world's few whistling virtuosas or for making one of the earliest known sound recordings, but because she hails from the same town where a fellow named Samuel Langhorne Clemens is buried.

How did Mark Twain end up in the ground in Elmira, New York?  The short explanation is that his wife's family had a plot (which couldn't have made him too happy) in the city's Woodlawn Cemetery.

Other justly and unjustly famous people have come from self-proclaimed Queen City of the Southern Tier. In more recent years, this city hard by the Pennsylvania border has fallen on hard times:  It now has less than half of the population it had in 1950, when it was a center for both manufacturing--which declined in the region--and railroads, which declined and nearly died everywhere in the US.  As if those losses weren't bad enough, it's been said that the city never recovered from the flood of 1972, which decimated residential as well as industrial areas.

I mention the city's hardships, not to denigrate it, but to highlight something it has in common with other areas that have a service that's about to come to Elmira.

I'm talking about Lime Bikes, the dockless sharing service with green bikes you just can't miss.  This summer, I saw them along the Rockaway Peninsula--both in the popular beach areas and in Far Rockaway, a long-depressed area where high-rise public housing looms over rather forlorn (but still, in their own way, charming) bungalows.  I also saw Lime Bikes in Yonkers, which has its share of affluent neighborhoods that fit the stereotype of Westchester County but also areas like Getty Square, which locals have dubbed "Ghetto Square" because of crime and general seediness.

I know that Lime can be found in thriving upscale (or, at least, young and hip) communities in other parts of the US.  But it's interesting to see them in poorer areas more established share services like Citibike seem to shun.  Lime also is making inroads into college campuses which, like the neighborhoods I've mentioned, are full of people who don't have a lot of disposable income. 

Justice: It's Bigger Than Bikes

In previous posts, you might say that I've touched upon the sociology and demographics of cycling.  What I wrote in those posts was not confirmed by empirical data; rather, it was based on my observations.

I realize now that, in one way or another, all of those posts relate to this question:  Who cycles out of necessity, and who cycles by choice?

In one sense, you might say that I'm a cyclist of necessity:  I can't imagine my life without riding.  There is also another way in which I'm that sort of rider:  I not only don't own a car; I also don't have a driver's license.

Those circumstances, however, are a result of choices I've made:  Through most of my adult life, I have lived in large cities.  When I haven't, I still managed--whether through choice or chance--to be in situations where I could get to work, school or wherever else I needed or wanted to be without having to drive. 

Now, I must admit that I had the opportunity to make such choices.  While I have never been rich (at least not by the standards of any developed country), I have education and skills--and, at times, have had the connections--that have allowed me some leeway in my choice of jobs and living arrangements. I have been able to turn down jobs, or leave one job for another, in order to have manageable (i.e., an hour or so on my bike or mass transit) commute--and to have time to ride my bike for fun.

It's also not hard to believe that my race and my former gender had something to do with my ability to base much in my life around cycling.  After all, as I've recounted in some of my earlier posts, nearly all of the "serious" and recreational cyclists I used to see while riding during my youth were male.  Even though I see increasing numbers of female cyclists (including sometime riding partners of mine), the vast majority are still male. 

While there isn't a law prohibiting women from cycling, I think there are (yes, still are) some cultural deterrents, especially for women of certain backgrounds.  Let's face it:  Unless you have exceptionally thick skin, or are just extraordinary in some way, you aren't likely to do something unless you see someone who's like you, in whatever way, doing it.  And unless you have an unusually independent sort of spirit, you probably won't do something if people around you give subtle (or not-so-subtle) cues not to do it.  Just ask any woman who wanted to be an engineer but got steered into nursing or elementary school teaching--or being a stay-at-home mother.

(Mind you:  I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with a woman working as a nurse or teacher, or staying at home with her children.  If a woman is going to choose such a career, I want her to do exactly that:  choose.)

Would I be a dedicated cyclist--one who takes day trips to neighboring states and tours in other parts of this country and the world-- today if I had grown up as a girl named Justine instead of a boy named Nicholas? Of course, I have no way of knowing the answer to that.  I can't help but to think, though, given the milieu in which I, and other women my age were reared, that it would be less likely.

Likewise, I have to wonder whether I'd be riding because I can and because I want to had I grown up in a lower socio-economic class (You might say that I was blue collar-near the-threshold-of-middle class.) and not had the opportunities to expand my horizons (if not my bank account) that came my way.  And, of course, I have to wonder whether those opportunities would have come to someone of my background had I been living in the gender I am now.  Or if my skin had been darker.  Or I spoke another language as my first, or had a different cultural or religious background from mine.

Jenna Burton

I found myself thinking about those questions a few days ago, when I wrote about the folks who are trying to make Reading, Pennsylvania more hospitable for those who ride because they have no other means of transportation:  the very sorts of riders of whom most urban planners and cycling advocates are unaware.  I am thinking about them, again, after coming across this article describing the work of Jenna Burton, one of the co-founders of Red, Bike and Green (RBG), as well as other community activists and groups who are working to not only get more people of color and women on bikes, but also to bring more cycling infrastructure to neighborhoods that are poorer and darker than the ones that usually get the bike lanes and bike-share ports.

An RBG ride in Atlanta

RBG has expanded from Ms. Burton's adopted hometown of Oakland, California into other cities.  With a slogan of "It's bigger than bikes!", the group aims to use bikes as tools to improve the health of Black people, support Black-owned businesses and to work on reducing pollution and other environmental problems that disproportionately affect Black and other "minority" communities. 

Even more important, people like Ms. Burton and groups like the Ovarian PsychoCycles are trying to address some of the inequalities that accompany bicycle infrastructure inequalities. A Black or Hispanic cyclist has a 25 percent greater chance than a White cyclist of being killed while riding.  That is, at least in part, a result of another disturbing reality:  low-income areas (which are most likely to be Black or Hispanic) are where the most crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians take place.  That, in spite of the fact that those are the places where people are least likely to walk or cycle (unless they have no other choice), or to do any other kind of exercise.  Those neighborhoods are also where the most dangerous streets, with the highest rates of crashes, are found.  That, along with other factors endemic to such communities--like high levels of noise and low air quality--tend to deter people from cycling, or engaging in other kinds of exercise or outdoor activities.

Ovarian Psycho-Cycles

So, perhaps, it's not an exaggeration to say that environmental, racial and economic justice, as well as gender equality, will be furthered by making it easier, more practical and more affordable for people from every sort of background to ride bicycles, for transportation and for recreation.  In other words, it's not a stretch to say that if we want a better world, we can't leave it all up to white guys in spandex, though they can be valuable partners--and can even be a lot of fun. And I'm not saying that because I once was a white guy in Spandex!)

Why Discounting Memberships Isn't Enough To Get Public Housing Residents To Join The Bike Share Program

Sometimes I wonder what's being taught in journalism schools--or, for that matter, in a lot of other schools--these days.

This article about New York City's Bike Share program (a.k.a. Citibike) seems to have been written by the  cut-and-paste method.  In recent years, I've seen any number of student papers--and, sadly, professional documents written by people whose credentials and pedigrees are supposedly superior to mine. 

OK.  Enough of my ranting.  The article, in spite of itself, raises some interesting and important questions about, not only the Bike Share/Citibike program, but of the nature and demographics of cycling--not to mention other social phenomena-- in the Big Apple.

According to the article, the 58,000 annual memberships sold as of mid-July include only 500 discounted memberships to residents of New York City Housing Authority apartments.  

NYCHA residents can purchase a membership for $60 instead of the normal $95 fee.

Citibike and the Department of Transportation distributing free helmets in New York City Public housing project. From The New York World

Notice that I wrote "residents" in the plural and "a membership" in the singular.  That, according to the article, is what seems to be happening:  NYCHA residents are sharing membership, which the Bike Share program forbids.

If they are indeed doing so (which I don't doubt), I can understand:  After all, NYCHA residents tend to come from lower on the household income spectrum than people in private housing.  Also, families who live in public housing are more likely to have family members or friends staying with them for a few weeks or months after arriving from out of town or the country, or during a bout of unemployment or other difficulties.  I imagine such long-term temporary residents (Is that an oxymoron?) are using their hosts' passes. 

Even if, say, five or six people are using each NYCHA Bike Share membership, residents of public housing are probably using the Bike Share program less, proportionally, than other people in New York.  

One major reason is, of course, that the shared bikes are less available to residents of public housing.  For example, the Bronx, eastern Brooklyn and southeastern Queens, which have large swaths of public housing, do not yet have any Bike Share ports.

Whether those areas of the city get ports any time soon is an open question, as they include some of the highest-crime neighborhoods (and most dangerous streets, traffic-wise) in New York.  Also, in talking with residents of those areas, some express concern or outright fear of cycling in their neighborhoods,  whether because of gang activity or other crime, or traffic, so one has to wonder whether they would ride.  

I don't know exactly which parts of which public housing projects are controlled by which gangs.  But I'm sure that significant parts are controlled by Bloods.  Their arch-rivals, the Crips wear blue:  the color of Citibikes.

Perhaps even more to the point, though, is the paradoxical resistance, and even hostility, one finds to cycling and cyclists in lower-income communities.  In Portland, people of color refer to bike lanes as "the white stripes of gentrification."  Though not articulated in quite the same way, many poor and working-class people of color--who comprise the vast majority of public housing residents--hold such attitudes.  (I know:  I've heard them.)  

So, if membership is indeed low in New York City's housing projects, I think  Bike Share/Citibike administrators will need to address the cultural as well as physical barriers to renting and riding bikes in the neighborhoods in which the projects are located.  Now, if people are sharing memberships, well, I don't know what to say.