You Can't Always Get What You Want
Everyone, it seems, is clamoring for a better bike culture in our cities. The problem is that I’m not sure everyone is asking for the same thing. One group, which includes myself as a member, has a major case of Europe envy and wants the Amsterdam/Copenhagen utopia, where bikes rule the world and cars are treated as second class citizens. Another is plodding along with the practical approach of slapping down bike lanes anywhere the road is wide enough for a few extra strips of paint. This is obviously an overgeneralization of the different approaches but it does highlight a small, but meaningful schism in the bike advocacy community. At the heart of the debate is the question of how much efforts to promote bike use should attack the prevailing car culture. The mainstream bike advocacy groups like the BTA in Portland and the Cascade Bicycle Club in Seattle, have spent years lobbying the city and state to get the hundreds of incremental changes that benefit the bike community, from updated laws to accommodate the presence of bikes on the road, to the appropriation of funds for bike lanes and bikeways to the public education necessary to encourage biking and improve safety. Anyone who rides in a city with an active advocacy group understands how much better the biking experience is because of the efforts of these groups. The only objection, if you can call it that, to this strategy is that any gains feel like improved rations or a shorter work day for prisoners in a POW camp. It’s still the car’s world and we just live in it.
LA writer and cyclist Will Campbell writes in last week’s L.A. Times what many avid cyclists believe: the obsession with bike lanes creates the illusion of safety and progress for cyclists and does little to create a biking culture in Los Angeles or any other city:
Whether one sees that glass as half full or half empty, I personally wish the city would just stop filling it. Quit while it's behind and not stripe another inch of bike lane. And yes, this is coming from an avid recreational and commuter cyclist who has pedaled thousands of miles over 20 years.
Here's why: By law, my bicycle is considered a vehicle with the same right to the road as your car or truck. Bike lanes provide an arguable buffer zone of safety (as well as a great place for people to put their garbage containers on trash day), but they marginalize cyclists and reinforce their status as second-class commuters who shouldn't be on the road.
Alan Durning of Sightline, after spending a year examining life without a car, has set his sights on the question of what constitutes an adequate bike culture. Durning’s treatment of the topic intentionally leaps past the common prescriptions for encouraging bicycling in the U.S., including bike lanes, and highlights the most fundamental way in which bike friendly cities show their support for bikes: by placing infrastructure improvements for cycling ahead of those for the car. As a result, in cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, bikes get new bridges and dedicated lanes and car drivers are harassed through taxes, congestion and driving restrictions to limit their access to many areas of the city. Durning believes that until the U.S. cures its chronic case of “car-head,” a malady that causes planners to think primarily of the needs of car drivers, we’ll never create a true bike culture in this country.
To my knowledge, only one U.S. city, Davis, California, has a culture where bikes consistently receive preferential treatment over cars. The success of Davis is the result of bike advocates assuming political power in the city in the late 1960s, and sustaining a commitment to biking for the next 40 years. Whether this formula can be repeated elsewhere remains to be seen. Davis is small and benefits from the dominating presence of a university. I suspect this culture is more difficult to replicate in larger, more diverse cities. Our highest-profile bike-friendly cities, including Boulder, Portland and Berkeley, have been successful in creating a groundswell of public interest in biking, but have still fallen short of creating a true bike culture. Despite miles of bike lanes and an active biking community, the car maintains its hold on these cities. The rest of the country is even farther behind. In New York City, the city was thwarted for months by the activism of the anti-bike crowd from putting bike lanes on the busiest thoroughfare in the most active biking community in the city. I don’t think that city is ready just yet for bike boulevards and sharrows.
Which is why, despite my own personal fantasies, we need to continue to support the efforts of bike advocacy groups in our cities. The path to revolution, if you will, starts with small victories. Bike lanes are the early infiltrators, spreading like tentacles throughout the city to remind all about the presence of cyclists on our roads. They also establish a place in city and state budgets for biking, serving as precedents for future, and hopefully more substantial, requests. I still hold out hope, though, that a true, European bike culture is attainable. A few cities, including my own, are poised to take the next step and, in my opinion, have an obligation to do so. The frontunning cities need to lead the way by moving past metrics like miles of bike lanes and start taking aim at the car. We need to engage in the zero sum battles that we have scrupulously avoided in the past, and force local governments to choose between the "carful" and the carfree. These are the achievements that will inspire cities currently consumed with bike lanes to dream big, knowing that their work is about more than just painting the streets.
Photo Credit: walkablestreets.com