Off The Railroad And Onto Bikes: Reading, Pennsylvania

Whenever a city builds bike lanes or starts a bike share program, there is resentment.  As often as not, it's voiced as a class argument:  Cyclists are seen as young, rich and "privileged", and that poor working blokes are subsidizing their fads and fetishes.

One reason for this, I believe, is that most urban bike lanes have been built, and most bike share ports installed, in central downtown areas or in nearby areas where the young and affluent (who, as often as not, come from someplace else) congregate.  As an example, here in New York, the first Citibike ports installed outside of Manhattan were placed in the Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods closest to Manhattan:  the "Hipster Hook" communities situated directly across the East River and at the ends of bridges.  You won't find many marked paths or  Citibikes in East New York or South Jamaica, or even in relatively affluent (but further from Manhattan and less hip) areas like Mill Basin and Fresh Meadows.

What is often forgotten, however, is that in neighborhoods like the South Bronx and East New York--and in cities like Newark--there are people who ride to work, or wherever else they need to be, not because it's fashionable, but because they can't afford any other way besides walking.

They don't have the funds or a credit card to buy a new Linus "Dutch" bike or a Trek Chelsea.  The bikes they ride, in fact, may have come from tag sales or dumpsters, or been given to them.  Those machines may have parts that were not intended for them:  For example, a wheel may have been replaced by one of a different size.  And those riders aren't stopping in the trendy bike cafes for Marin Macchiatos or Linus Lattes.  If anything, they might be holed up in the local Dunkin' Donuts, if they can afford even that.

The communities in which they live have low percentages of people who ride to work.  Part of the reason for that is, well, a lot of them don't work:  They lost jobs and weren't able to find others, or they didn't have jobs in the first place.  

Many of them live in areas where there is little or no mass transit--and, even if it was available, it would be a strain on their budgets, if not financially out of reach altogether.  Or the nearest bus stop or train station is, say, a 45-minute walk away (as is the case for some residents of Red Hook, Brooklyn).  That makes it difficult, to say the least, to keep appointments with doctors, government agencies and the like, let alone get to work on time and have any time left for anything besides commuting and working.

Reading resident Harrison Walker doesn't own a car and bikes everywhere.

Almost everything I have said in the previous four paragraphs can be said about the city of Reading, Pennsylvania and its people.  Once a thriving railroad hub (If you've played the classic version of Monopoly, you've bought and/or sold the Reading Railroad!) situated halfway between the anthracite coal mines of central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, this city was beset by many of the problems older industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland experienced when their industries died or moved away.   

Five years ago, the New York Times published an article declaring Reading the poorest city (of 60,000 or more people) in the United States.  More than 40 percent of its residents were living below the Federal poverty line.  Things seem not to have changed much:  While the official unemployment rate has dropped, at 8.3 percent it still is three percentage points higher than the national average.  And, of course, that number doesn't include the people who gave up on trying to find a job or whose unemployment benefits ran out--or those who returned to school or entered some sort of retraining program after they could not find jobs in the industries in which they had been working.

Those un-, under- and never-employed Reading residents make up most of the city's cyclists. "Reading's poor, and a lot of people who live here are poor," explains Dani Motze of ReDesign Reading, a nonprofit group that's trying to revitalize the city.  "[S]o bike riding is how they get from place to place."  

The demography of Reading's cyclists may be a reason why the city hasn't attracted the attention of urban planners involved with cycling infrastructure--until now.  Craig Peiffer became the city's zoning administrator a few years ago.  He was shocked at what he found.  "As a planner here in Pennsylvania," he relates, "I've seen smaller towns--significantly smaller towns--where they were already putting in designated bike lanes."

He and a colleague decided they were going to make Reading a more hospitable place for cyclists. However, their aim in doing so would be different from what has motivated officials in other cities to make them more "bike friendly."  In those communities, bike amenities are often used to attract outsiders--especially affluent millennials and sustainability advocates.  "Other cities have used biking because biking is cool and hip," declares Brian Kelly, executive director of ReDesign Reading.  He has no problem with that, he explains, but that is not the point of what he, Peiffer and others are trying to do in Reading.  

Jason Orth, manager of the Reading Bike Hub, fixes a bike for a customer.

Instead, they are--in addition to working on acquiring the money for bike lanes--making cycling more affordable and convenient for the city's residents.  Bike racks have been installed on all of the city's buses.  The city has also launched a bike-share program.  But, perhaps most important of all, it opened Reading's first bike shop. Unlike the bike boutiques of trendy neighborhoods, the Reading Bike Hub, in addition to conducting safety workshops, sells used bikes and affordable parts--and loans tools.  "If I were to go buy this tool, I'd have to go to Sears,"  says Harrison Walker, who rides his bike "everywhere".  The tool he had just borrowed from the Hub would "probably cost upwards of $20 just for this one wrench," he observes.

I am glad that the folks at National Public Radio, where I learned of Reading's programs, were able to see and communicate some of the challenges faced by people who are forced to rely on their bicycles for transportation.  It is only with such knowledge that American cities can make bicycles a viable transportation option for all of their citizens.

Bike Shares-- And Social Class?

Yesterday, I wrote about the bike-share program that begins today in Los Angeles.  I was happy to learn that such a program is commencing in one of the first cities people associate with the automobile.  And I found it interesting, to say the least, that city officials hope that the bike-share program will help to bolster ridership in the city's Metro system, which has been on the decline.

If that goal is realized, it will buck trends seen in other cities that have bike-share programs.  In some places, like Washington DC, those who commute on share bikes are using them in lieu of subways and buses, not automobiles.  

Although I have not seen such data for my hometown, New York, I would suspect something similar is happening.  After all, the commuter who is most likely to ride a Citibike--or to be a bike commuter--lives somewhere in Manhattan below 125th Street, or in Astoria (where I live), Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg or other Brooklyn or Queens neighborhoods just across the East River from the United Nations.

Before they started riding bikes to work, those commuters were probably taking the subways, which bisect their neighborhoods. If they work in downtown or Midtown Manhattan, they would have been riding the subway for only a few stops:  fifteen or twenty minutes, no more than half an hour.

In contrast, someone who drives to work--or takes one of the express buses or trains--probably lives further away, in southern and eastern Queens neighborhoods like Bayside or Cambria Heights or southern Brooklyn areas such as Mill Basin or Dyker Heights.  Or they live outside city limits altogether.  Typically, those who drive to work or are taking the Long Island Rail Road (Yes, it's spelled as two words!) or Metro North have commutes of an hour or more each way.  Needless to say, few of them are going to start riding bicycles to work, even if Citibike installs ports in front of their houses!

Now, some of those commuters--particularly those who live on the North Shore of Nassau County or in certain parts of Westchester and Bergen counties--are rich. But most are middle- or working- class people who live in those areas because they simply could never afford a house, or even an apartment, big enough for their families in Manhattan or the nearby Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods.   More than a few of them are contractors or have other kinds of businesses that requir them to haul a lot of equipment into, and out of, Manhattan or the areas near it.   I am not a sociologist, but I feel confident in concluding, from my own observations, that most such commuters are not cyclists.

I mention all of these things because reading about the launch of the LA bike share program got me to thinking about things I've noticed during the three decades I've been cycling in New York.  As I've mentioned in other posts, back in the mid-'80s, the neighborhoods that now comprise what I call Hipster Hook were mostly blue-collar, white-ethnic enclaves (Greeks and Italians in Astoria, Poles and Irish in Greenpoint, for example).  In those neighborhoods, people simply didn't ride bikes once they were old enough to drive. (Many never rode bikes, period.)  Very often, I would ride along the East River and New York Bay from Astoria Park all the way to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge--or even to Coney Island--without encountering another cyclist.

People who rode for fun, or even to commute, lived mainly in places like Greenwich Village, the Upper East and West Sides and Park Slope.  Those were home mainly to single people or young couples with varying amounts of disposable income--and without children.  Most didn't live far from where they worked, or they were artists or independent business people of one kind or another.  

In those days, the blue-collar and middle-class people I've described rarely, if ever, encountered cyclists--or anyone--from the milieu I described in the previous paragraph. But, as places like Williamsburg started to fill up with trust-fund kids on fixed-gear bikes, older and poorer residents looked at them as "privileged children" who were "taking over" their streets and sidewalks--and other public spaces.

Thus, older residents started to equate bicycles with privilege.  I guess it's easy to resent someone who looks like he or she is having fun--and is younger and fitter than you--when you're fighting traffic (or the crowds on the buses and trains)  to get to and from a job you hate so that you can pay for things your kids don't appreciate.  

I can't help but to notice that any time people express their displeasure over new bike lanes that take away one of the lanes on which they were accustomed to driving, or when a Citibike port appears on their block, they say that the city is catering to "privileged children".  Yes, they--as often as not--use that phrase.

I guess that, even at my age, I am one of the "privileged children"!

Joking aside, I got to thinking about the experiences and observations I've described when I learned that LA city officials hope that the new bike share program will bring riders back to the Metro system.  What I found especially revealing is the finding that one cause of the decline in Metro ridership is gentrification:  working- and middle-class families are being priced out of the areas that offer mass transportation.  So, while I hope the new bike share program is successful, I can't help but to wonder how it will entice people who've had to move further away from their jobs--and, possibly, had to take second jobs--to ride bicycles to a Metro system--or jobs--that are further away from wherever they were living before they were dispalced.

In brief, I couldn't help but to wonder whether the LA Bike Share program--or, more important, the hope that it will bring people back to the Metro--might reveal, or magnify, social and economic class differences in the way people commute.  

A Summer Afternoon After The Storm, Fire And Crash

People fantasize about the sort of summer afternoon we had today.  There was lots of sunshine, very little humidity and practically no clouds as the temperature rose to 30C (86F).

So, of course, I went for a ride.  After crossing the bridge into Rockaway Beach, I turned right and rode along rows of serene-looking homes that masked the tragedies the Queens coastal communities of Rockaway Park and  Belle Harbor have experienced.  Of course, they bore the brunt of Superstorm Sandy, but perhaps survived it a bit better than some other areas.  

Eleven years earlier, Flight 587--which had taken off from JFK Airport only two and a half minutes earlier, bound for the Dominican Republic--crashed into the ocean and sent its debris flying into those homes.  Although it is the second-deadliest air crash in US history, it has been forgotten, probably because it happened only a few weeks after 11 September.

To see the neighborhood today, one would hardly know--save for a monument on 116th Street--that it had experienced something so horrific. I could say the same for Breezy Point, about four miles to the west on the Rockaway Peninsula.  Few areas were more devastated by the storm:  In addition to the destruction wrought by the wind, rain and tides, 100 houses burned to the ground in a fire sparked when a storm surge inundated power lines.

Homes, stores and other buildings have been restored and rebuilt.  Still , it all looked rather forlorn. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that  almost nobody was out and about in spite of the weather.

 
At least it was all there and I could ride it.  And I did--over the bridge to Brooklyn, to Floyd Bennett and Brighton Beach and Coney Island.  At least it looked like a summer day at Coney Island, with people swimming and fishing the water, walking, riding and lounging on the boardwalk and eating all of those unhealthy foods sold in boardwalk stands. 

Then I rode home, along the promenade that passes along the Verrazano Bridge and up Hipster Hook to my place.  I was grateful for another good ride, even if it wasn't long or challenging. 

Do You Ride To Fish Or Fish For Riders?

In the space of a week, the calendar has changed from late May to early June.  On the other hand, the weather seems to have changed from mid-August to early April.  Last week it was hot and humid.  This week,  it’s been chilly, windy and wet:  In fact, we had the sort of flooding rains one normally associates with the beginning of Spring in many parts of this country.

Today, though, was sunny and dry—and windy and cool.  It was all fine with me as I took an afternoon ride down to the Canarsie Pier and along the coast to Coney Island, under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and up “Hipster Hook” back to my place.

I saw a pretty fair number of cyclists, especially for a weekday.  I guess they all felt as I did about the weather.  Even more interestingly, I saw a lot of fishermen.  It seemed that everywhere along the shore—in Canarsie and Marine Park, on the Coney Island Pier and the Verrazano Narrows promenade—poles were propped against railings and lines cast into the water. 

I have seen similar days on which no one was fishing, and other more inclement days when, it seemed, every male over the age of ten who didn’t have to be somewhere else (and a few who did, I’m sure) was casting, trolling or reeling. 

Now, I’ve fished only a few times in my life.  Every time, I’ve gone with others—relatives, usually—who were far more dedicated to it than I have ever been.  They decided when and where we fished.  I’m guessing it had to do with their work schedules and other things in their lives.  But now I also wonder whether they knew about some condition or another that made for good fishing.  Were they watching the weather or current patterns?  Or did they know, somehow, that bluefish or whatever kind of fish were out and about?

You may have noticed that I used male pronouns to talk about those who fish.  Fact is, nearly everyone I’ve seen with a rod and reel—and every one of the relatives I mentioned-- has been a man or boy.  I think I’ve seen two or three women fishing during my entire life, and no girl who wasn’t old enough to vote.

And all of my (admittedly limited) angling experience came when I was still living as male.  Now, I don’t think it had anything to do with my maleness or femaleness.  Rather, I think it was a matter of circumstance:  When I was younger, my uncles used to fish—sometimes on-shore, other times on party boats.  They invited me and my brothers, and I went along.

None of my uncles were cyclists.  Two of my brothers ride occasionally—and they fish, usually with male friends and in-laws.

Will They Still Be Riding When They're 64?

We all get older. Some of us get old.  Of course, when we're young, most of us don't think about that:  We simply cannot imagine ourselves not going on as we are.

I got to thinking about that again, ironically, while riding along the waterfront from my neighborhood into Long Island City, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, a.k.a. Hipster Hook. Hipsters are, of course, young by definition.  At least, that's how I understand them to be.  That begs the question of whether one can "age out" of hipsterdom.  (I recall how the hippies used to say young people shouldn't trust anyone over 30.)  What do hipsters become when they're, say, old enough to be President?  Or do they move to other hipster enclaves and lie about their age?

More important (at least in relation to this blog!), will they continue riding their fixed-gear bicycles?  And, if they do (or if they ride any bikes at all), will they still want "deep V" aerodynamic rims in rainbow colors?

I can just picture some hipster retirement community in 40 years. Maybe residents will be riding machines like this:

From Trikes and (odd) Bikes

To tell you the truth, I like it, though I don't feel ready to ride a trike just yet. (Knock on my Phil Woods!)

Why Do The Editors Of "Bicycling" Think New York Is The Best City For Cycling In The USA?

If you read Bicycling, you already know the magazine has just rated my hometown, New York City, as the best city for cycling in the USA.

I am always suspicious of "best of" ratings in any subject. Even when using the most objective criteria, people come to different conclusions about what is "best".

Now, I grant you that more people are riding bikes now than at any other time I can recall.  Best of all, the riders aren't all lycra-clad racer wannabes or twenty-year-olds on tires wider than those on a Hummer.  People are actually riding to work, shop, visit galleries and museums and attend concerts, ballgames and school. Some are riding, well, to ride.

We also have bike lanes, some of which are completely segregated from the streets.  And, of course, we have a bike-share program that has proved immensely popular.  These would have been all but unimaginable only a few years ago.  Moreover, the number of bike shops has grown exponentially a decade after it seemed that online retailers would wipe out all but a few brick-and-mortar establishments. 

But--not to dump Gatorade on anybody's Gran Fondo--I have to wonder whether all of the things I've mentioned actually make New York the "best" cycling city.

Now, it's hard to argue that a bike-share program isn't good for a city's cycling infrastructure and culture.  On the other hand, as I've mentioned in other posts, bike lanes don't necessarily make cycling safer or entice more people to ride.   For one thing, some are so poorly-designed that they actually put cyclists in more peril than they would have found themselves while cycling on the street.  This is particularly true in intersections or spots where lanes begin or end.  For another, some motorists become resentful--and, as a result more agressive and confrontational-- because they feel the lanes have taken parking spaces and roadway against them.  

Even more to the point, when bicycles are segregated from traffic, motorists don't learn how to interact with bicycles, and cyclists don't learn the safest ways to ride.  As I've mentioned in at least one other post, such awareness is what makes many European cities safer (or, at least, to seem so) than their counterparts in the US.

Finally, I have noticed that the Big Apple Bike Boom, if you will, is not spread across the city.  I see many other cyclists on the streets of my neighborhood, Astoria, which is the northern end of what I like to call "Hipster Hook".  The communities of Long Island City, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, as well as the area around the Navy Yard, are part of it, and are full of young, well-educated, sometimes creative and often ambitious people, most of whom are white.  Those characteristics are shared by the cycling-rich neighborhoods of (mostly downtown) Manhattan.  

On the other hand, one still finds relatively few cyclists in the poorer and darker (in residents' skin hues) neighborhoods of central and eastern Brooklyn, upper Manhattan, southeast Queens, the north shore of Staten Island or almost anywhere in the Bronx.  The same holds true for the older white blue-collar neighborhoods of central Queens, southwestern Brooklyn and much of Staten Island.  Moreover, one almost never sees a female cyclist in any of those areas.   

So, while I am happy to see that there are more cyclists--and, most important of all, more consciousness about cycling--here in the Big Apple, I am not sure that those things make it the "best" cycling city in the US.  And we are certainly nowhere near as bike-centric as any number of European cities are.

We Can Bridge These Generations. But Can We Bring Along The Next?

In earlier posts, I’ve described riding along Hipster Hook and other areas where parked bikes now frame cafes, bars, restaurant and shops of one kind and another but where, thirty or twenty or even fifteen years ago, I would encounter no other cyclists.  Back then, those neighborhoods—including Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Long Island City and Astoria (where I now live) in Queens—were mainly low-to-middle income blue-collar enclaves populated mainly by first- and second-generation immigrants with smatterings of families that had been in this city—and sometimes in the very same houses or apartments—for three or more generations.

“Back in the Day”, as us oldsters (the antithesis of hipsters?) would say, the few cyclists I encountered anywhere in the city or its environs were, interestingly enough, born-and-bred New Yorkers.  Most of us did not have relatives or friends who cycled; you might say we were renegades, a cult, or just geeks of a sort.  It seemed that, in those days, transplants to this city didn’t ride.  I am not sure of whether they didn’t ride before they came here or gave up their two-wheeled vehicles once they got here.  I guess some didn’t plan on remaining for more than a couple of years—many didn’t—and were focused on starting a career or some other particular goal.  Lots of people did nothing but work during the time they lived in this city.

Such conditions prevailed as recently as the mid-to-late 1990’s, when I was a member of the New York Cycle Club.  I occasionally rode with them but, truthfully, I joined for the discounts I could get in bike shops and other establishments.  In any event, most of the cyclists I met on those rides were natives of the Big Apple.  Interestingly enough, most social classes were represented:  I saw construction workers, seamstresses and firefighters as well as teachers, professors, lawyers and bankers.  Admittedly, it wasn’t the most ethnically diverse group, though I was more likely to see faces darker than mine than I would have seen in most health clubs or on most tennis and squash courts.  The demographics I’ve described also applied to the rides and other activities of the local American Youth Hostels chapter, which employed me for a time after I moved back to New York.

Then, as now, I did most of my riding alone or with one or two friends.  They were, as often as not, people who grew up in circumstances similar to my own.  That is probably the reason why many of our conversations, over coffee or beer or whatever, centered on the city’s streets, intersections, bridges and neighborhoods:  Which ones were “best” for cycling?  Which were the most dangerous?  Was anybody or anything worse than a cab driver?  And, unfortunately, more than a few of us related stories of having our bikes stolen.  In fact, I recall several fellow cyclists who were held up or assaulted for their machines as they crossed the Williamsburg Bridge:  Twenty to thirty years ago, the neighborhoods on each side of the bridge were poor and crime-ridden.

Today the majority of cyclists I see in New York are young and have come here from some place else.  Hipster Hook is full of such riders.  Some ride only to commute or shop; others are as committed to riding and training as we were in my day.  I am glad they ride; I am glad to see anyone riding.  But their attitude about cycling, and about themselves, seems very different from ours. I don’t mean that as a criticism; no one should expect “the younger generation” to do as those who came before them.  But, from my admittedly-limited contact with hipster cyclists, I have the impression that their conversations—to the extent that they have them—have less to do with cycling, or even bikes, or the places to ride or not ride.  I guess the latter can be explained by the fact that they are not the minority we were, and they feel less need to pay attention to the “good” and “bad” bike routes because the bike lanes that line their neighborhoods give them a feeling of security.  They have bike-oriented cafes, which no one had even conceived in my youth.

From Filles + Garcons

 But I think one of the biggest differences between us and them is that we were more readily identifiable as cyclists.  Part of that has simply to do with the fact that we were more of a minority.  More to the point, we used equipment and wore garments and accessories—helmets, shorts, jerseys and half-fingered gloves, not to mention cleated shoes—that few others even tried on.  On the other hand, the young hipster riders dress and generally look like many other young people you might find here in New York.  Some—particularly young female pedalers—favor retro threads in fabrics, designs and patterns that were popular, well, in our day—or even earlier.  Or they wear facsimiles or imitations of such clothing.  Others adorn themselves with the severe sartorial straits of knife-blade black pants or tights and leather jackets:  interestingly, not unlike what I wore off-bike for a time in my youth.

It will be interesting to see what the next generation of cyclists will be like—or, indeed, how many of them there will be.  These days, I see more adult cyclists—young as well as, ahem, those of us of a certain age—but I seem to encounter fewer adolescents and children on bikes.  At one time, I’d see few kids on bikes in low-income neighborhoods, in part because of their parents’ or guardians’ fear of crime and in part because some families simply couldn’t afford bikes for their kids.  But these days, I seem to be encountering fewer child and teen riders in the middle- and upper-income neighborhoods of this city and the nearby suburbs.  

What’s disturbing—to me, anyway—about that is that a lot of those kids haven’t learned how to ride.  Nearly everyone who rides as an adult started in childhood:  Even if they abandoned their bikes when they got their drivers’ licenses, they didn’t forget how to ride a bike and could take it up again as an adult. On the other hand, those who don’t learn how to ride as kids rarely learn how to do so as adults.  So they won’t have the opportunity to become the kinds of cyclists we were and are---or hipsters—or whatever the next generation of cyclists in this city will be.