Paper, Plastic, Glass, Aluminum--And Pedals

When I first became a dedicated cyclist, as a teenager in the mid-1970s, we were still seen as latter-day hippies:  Whether we rode to work or school, for fitness, to race or tour, or just because, we tended to be more environmentally-conscious than other people.  In fact, the environment was the very reason some people rode. It was, and is, one of my reasons.

The funny thing is that, nearly half a century later, cycling is still associated, correctly, with environmental consciousness.  These days, though, those associations have more overtly political overtones:  If you pedal, drive a hybrid or electric vehicle, look for ethically-sourced products and recycle, even when it isn't mandated, that makes you a"lib" and an enemy to the MAGA crowd.

There is, I must say, at least some truth to the stereotype.  We live up to it every day:

 

Commuting: A Detour Into A Season

 

Interesting, what detours on a morning bicycle commute (yes, I'm doing that again: more about that later) will bring into view.

First, in an industrial area of Long Island City just south of Silvercup Studios, I had to detour for this:

 

OK, I'd seen it before.  But if you're pedaling down 22nd Street and pass under the overpasses for the Queensborough (59th Street) Bridge and the #7 train of the MTA, turn right and then left,  you'll run into something that disrupted the street grid: 

Some time in the past, I started a search I just may resume.  Specifically, I was (and am) curious as to whether that rock outcropping was left in place because it was too hard to break or blast  (there are a few similar outcroppings in Upper Manhattan for that reason)--or, perhaps too expensive.  Or, for all I know, someone or some group of people didn't want it destroyed.  Could it have been sacred to people who no longer live in the neighborhood?

The other morning brought a crisp, cool breeze and a blaze of color some living beings--I include myself, sometimes--hold as a store, a memory, against the season that inevitably follows.

Whenever I see a leaf or a flower, I see a hand.  Sometimes it is trying to capture water, light--or to hold whatever time it may have left.  I couldn't help but to wonder whether those leaves I saw not far from the rock were trying to hold onto their beauty in that moment--or whether they were bleeding away, however slowly, those last flickerings of the light they still hold.

I know that since I've returned to the classroom, my experiences, and those of my students, are different--whether in obvious or not-so-obvious ways--from what they, and I, experienced before the pandemic.  I wonder whether it has anything to do with bicycle commutes like the one I did the other morning. 

No Gas=Less Greenhouse Gas: The Bicycle Equation

There is the Paris Climate Accord.  And there are other agreements between nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Among them is the European Green Deal, adopted by the European Union member states.

A common criticism of such plans is that they're "too little, too late."  Or, more precisely, the goals are ambitious but there are few or no details about what will be done to meet them, or how.  Also, many scientists and others who study pollution and climate change say that the target dates are too far into the future:  The crisis is, and therefore the work needs to be done, now.

In an article she wrote for Parliament, Jill Warren points out another deficiency of the EGD which, I suspect could also be a fault of other plans to "go green" or make cities--and the planet--"sustainable."  I mentioned it last month in writing about Nicolas Collignon's excellent Next City article.  

Essentially, both Warren and Collignon say that any plan to make a city or this planet more livable or "sustainable" should include bicycling--or, more exactly, ways to get more people to ride bicycles.  But planners, whether at the municipal or continental level, seem to have a blind spot where there are vehicles with two wheels, two pedals and no motor (unless you count the humans pedaling them).  Neither says, but I believe both agree with, what I am about to say next: While not everyone will, or want to, be a racer or long-distance tourer, most people can cycle for short trips.

And, I think that each one makes a proposal that, while seemingly very different, are very closely related.  Collignon says that one problem with much planning is that the planners think we can "technology" our way out of our problems. (Some of that mentality is, of course, a result of the sway technology companies have over policy-makers.)  Thus, planners are oblivious, not only to bicycles, but other low-tech solutions.

As planners think in terms of high-tech, they also tend, especially if they are in large governing bodies like the EU, to see the world in macroeconomic terms.  That is why, I believe, that the drafters of the EGD don't mention something that, when I read about it, seems glaringly obvious:  re-shoring Europe's bicycle industry.

Road transport accounts for 26 percent of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions.  I suspect the proportion in similar in Japan and other developed economies.  Some of those emissions come from vehicles transporting manufactured goods, and still more from planes and other forms of transportation.  Re-shoring bicycle (and other) industries would mean that bikes, parts and accessories now made in China would be manufactured once again in France, Italy and other EU countries, as they were until around the beginning of this century.

Cyclists waiting at a red light in Munich, Germany.

Warren's idea ties into Collignon's because as raw materials and manufactured goods have to travel shorter distances to their customers, the means of accounting for, as well as transporting, them don't have to be as technologically sophisticated.  

So, yet another voice is saying that planners and policy-makers need to take a longer and closer look at the bicycle.  Let's hope that Jill Warren and Nicolas Collignon are seen as oracles or prophets rather than as Cassandras.

Not To Die--Or Kill--For

Some of us have seen bikes "to die for."  When I was a teenager, almost anything with a frame made from Reynolds 531 tubing and Campagnolo components would have been, if not Nirvana, then a ticket to it.

Speaking of which: A year before he offed himself, Kurt Cobain expressed shock at ticket prices for his band's concerts:  $17-18.  In today's dollars, those prices would be double that amount. At the time, other acts charged anywhere from 50 to 75 dollars for the privilege of attending one of their shows.

Anyway, what I said in the first paragraph might, for some of you, beg the question of whether any bike is worth dying for.  Or, to follow this line of thinking, worth killing for.

That is what Bobby Peters asked Tellious Savalas Brown.  Peters, however, was not merely posing a rhetorical question during a casual conversation.  Rather, he was determining the course of 19-year-old Brown's life.

Three years ago, at a Columbus, Georgia bus stop, Brown fatally shot 60-year-old Roy Wilborn to steal his bicycle. Turns out, he'd committed an armed robbery of a restaurant and shot at said restaurant's employees.  Oh, and the car he used to get to the crime scene, and wrecked in fleeing from it, was stolen--hijacked at gunpoint, to be exact.

The hijacking charge and more than a dozen others were dropped in a plea deal.  But, as a penalty for killing a man for his bike, robbing the restaurant and shooting at employees, Judge Peters sentenced Brown to life with the possibility of parole--after 30 years.

"Why do all this?," the judge asked. "All over a bicycle?  This just doesn't make sense."

Bikes Without Brews?

Around 2010, a new kind of business emerged:  the bike cafe.  Some were established bike shops that added counters, stools and even tables and served coffees, teas, snacks, sandwiches and even light meals and craft beers.  Others, though, like Red Lantern in Brooklyn, offered bikes, accessories and repairs along with fuel for the ride (or re-fueling for after it) from the day they opened. 

About five years ago, Red Lantern closed.  According to its owners, Brian and Lena Gluck, the final nail in the shop's coffin was a large rent increase, although they noted that they started to lose business a couple of years earlier when a Starbucks opened two blocks away and the Citibike program rode into full gear. The bikeshare program wasn't the "gateway drug" to a bike purchase, Brian noted. Although Citibikes, like most other share programs' bikes, are heavy and clunky, people weren't interested in getting a nicer bike.  Rather, they liked "compromising between not getting stolen, not having to maintain it, and not having to lug it up four flights of stairs," he explained.  Also, many Citibike users are tourists who aren't going to buy a bicycle during their trip unless it's very different from, or much less expensive than, whatever they can buy at home.

He's not the only one who misses Red Lantern.

The factors Gluck cited upon closing the shop may well have led to other bike shop/cafe establishments ending their runs.  After Red Lantern, I noticed a few other such closures. At the time I thought it had to do with the things that led the Glucks to close their shop and, possibly, that Millenials--who were those establishments' chief patrons and sometimes the proprietors--were simply moving on to other things.

But now I am hearing of, and reading about the end even more such businesses, here in New York and elsewhere.  Still others--like Mello Velo in Syracuse, New York--are getting out of the brew 'n' bagel business.  I have to wonder whether the cafes of  Mello Velo and other such establishments simply never recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.  While bike shops remained open, I can't help but to think that when masking was mandatory early in the pandemic, people didn't stay for coffee when they bought their bikes or had them fixed.  

If that is the case, it's ironic:  While the pandemic was a boon for many shops (though others closed because they couldn't get any more inventory), it was a disaster for almost anything having to do with hospitality--except, of course, for takeout.  

How Many "Drips" Will It Take To Wash Away A Stroad?

Charles Marohn's book is called The Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.  In it, the former road designer and transportation planner describes how conventional American traffic engineering makes people and communities less safe, destroys the fabric of communities, bankrupts towns and cities and exacerbates the very problems--like congestion--engineers like himself were trying to solve.

His greatest disdain is for what he calls "stroads."  I mentioned them in an August post. Think of them as Franken-lanes:  They are supposed to be streets in cities and towns but in reality are highways with multiple lanes of high-speed traffic.  (Even if the speed limit is more like that of an urban or residential street--say, 30 mph (50 kph), drivers are often sprinting at twice that between lights.) They are usually lined with big-box stores and other businesses that provide a steady stream of cars and trucks pulling in and out of the lanes.

Examples of "stroads" in my area are the Hempstead Turnpike, which I wrote about in an earlier post, West Street (a.k.a. Route 9A) in Manhattan and, even closer to home, Northern and Queens Boulevards.  A particularly egregious example of a "stroad" is US 19 on Florida's Gulf Coast.  

In some places, particularly in the southern and western US states, cyclists use "stroads" because there are few or no alternative routes.  Even if a cyclist is not riding along the route itself, he or she probably will need to cross it because, as Mahron points out, they often divide downtown areas, leaving, say, a store somebody frequents on one side and a doctor or other service provider on the other.  Or said cyclist might live on one side of the stroad and want to go to a park or movie theatre--or need to get to school or work--on the other side.

Michael Weilert discovered this danger the hard way.  He was crossing, with his bicycle, one such stroad--Pacific Avenue (a.k.a. State Route 7) in Tacoma, Washington--when he was struck and killed in a crosswalk.  Last week, a hundred people gathered for a silent ride at the site where Michael's life ended after only 13 years.

Photo by Carla Gramlich for Strong Towns

While such tragedies motivate the families, friends and immediate communities of victims, they don't lead to fundamental change because of what Marohn calls the "drip, drip, drip" effect.  When hundreds of people are killed, say, in a plane crash or building collapse, it gets the attention of planners, policy-makers and, sometimes, politicians.  On the other hand, incidents like the one that claimed young Michael Weilert usually claim one, or a few victims, so they receive less notice.

How many more "drips" will it take before those in authority see a tidal wave?

 

I Couldn't Bring Her Florida. I Brought The Next-Best Thing.

During the past week, my bikes were envious.  They knew about my long weekend with near-perfect weather in Florida.  I couldn't replicate those conditions here in New York, at this time of year.  But the past weekend was quite lovely, with sunlight turning the falling and fallen red, yellow and orange leaves into jewels in necklaces that rimmed streets and curbs.

They wanted that, and a seascape like the ones I saw while riding along Route A1A.  A view  just like that one isn't available along the South Shores of Queens or Long Island because the water is more of a steely blue-gray and the light more diffuse, but the vistas are there. 

La-Vande, my Mercian King of Mercia, was ready for one of those views of the ocean.  But when we arrived at Point Lookout, after pushing against the wind most of the way, we were greeted with this:

I could sense her disappointment, though she didn't show it on the ride back.  Of course, we had the wind with us but, more important, she was the nimble, stable ride she's been since she entered my fleet last year.

And when I stopped at the Gateway reception center on Beach Channel Boulevard, a woman exulted, "I just love that color!"

So do I--and the hues of autumn, and the sea.

A Different Origin Story?

As a transgender woman, I often ask, "What if?"

What if I had been assigned, at birth, the gender and name under which I live?

What kind of cyclist might I have been?

Would I ever need to look back?

He Should Have Been Careful!

When I go for a ride, people--usually non-cyclists--implore me to "be careful."  Sometimes I think they've been inculcated, if unwittingly, with the notion that the car reigns supreme and if a driver harms a cyclist, the cyclist was careless.  

That said, there are indeed dangers in cycling, as there are in almost any other activity.  But there is one that almost no one ever thinks of.

An Italian fellow was riding his bike away from house on the Costa del Sol, the Spanish region that's become Europe's Florida:  a warm-weather magnet for vacationers and pensioners.

But he didn't retire from the Carbineri. In fact, the Carbineri and their counterparts in a few other countries were looking for him.

Turns out, he was part of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafia gang and had been on the run from his country's authorities for seven years.  In addition to committing the common grifter offenses of money laundering, forging documents and tax evasion, according to said authorities,  he was a point man for shipping cocaine from Colombia to Europe.

Someone should have told him to "be careful" when he went out for his ride.

Cyclists Killed, Victims Blamed

This blog is twelve years old.  During that time, I've argued--fairly consistently, I believe--that bike lanes and other physical forms of "bicycle infrastructure" aren't, by themselves, enough to make cycling safer or to encourage people to trade one pedal and four wheels for two pedals and two (or three) wheels, if only for short trips.

The most important form of "bicycle infrastructure" is, I believe, attitudes and policies and about cycling and cyclists.  As I've done before, I'm going to make a comparison between victims of sexual crimes and victims of motorists' aggression or carelessness against cyclists. (I've been both.)  In both cases, victims have been blamed, implicitly or explicitly, for what happened to them.

Photo by Tim Grist

Although some attitudes have changed, it's still not unusual for some people to wonder aloud what someone "was doing on the street at that time of night" or was wearing at the time she, he or they were attacked. Or, worse, to blame the victim's sexual orientation or gender presentation for the attack.  And the ways in which too many police officers treat victims re-traumatizes them and discourages others from reporting attacks against them.

Similarly, when an intoxicated or distracted driver runs down a cyclist, or when any driver uses a bike lane as a parking or passing lane, the cyclist or bicycling is, too often blamed, again, whether explicitly or implicitly.  The former happened after a woman driving an SUV in Houston struck and killed an eight-year-old boy on a bicycle.  In response, the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a statement that he "was riding his bike in an area that isn't safe for pedestrians or people riding bikes."

As it turns out, the boy was crossing an intersection where the driver had a stop sign.  So, in brief, the Texas DPS blamed the boy for riding--to school?  home?--as so many other kids, and adults, do.

The bike- and cyclist-blaming is also extended to users of any form of transportation that isn't an automobile.  Pedestrians have also been similarly held culpable for crossing a street when a driver blew through a red light.  And, in Bloomington, Indiana--home to Indiana University--a student was killed while riding a scooter in a bike lane.  How did the city respond?  It decided to limit scooter use.

The real infrastructure improvement, if you will, the city needs is for its planners and policy makers to shift their goals away from moving as many cars or trucks as possible as quickly as possible from one point to another. In other words, they need to stop thinking that the car is king--and to spread the message that motorists share space with cyclists, pedestrians, scooter-users--and folks in wheelchairs or walkers.

To be fair, just about every other US municipality, even if it's deemed "bike friendly," needs to make such a shift. Otherwise, kids riding their bikes to school or adults riding to work or for exercise will be blamed when they're run down by people who drink or text while they drive, or use bike lanes for parking or passing.