It one of those traits unique to humanity to be both for something and against it at the same time. The battle over bicycle transportation is a prime example. So much attention is given to reducing greenhouse gasses and to improving traffic congestion and to improving the urban economy. And somewhere in that attention is the understanding that one of the best and easiest tools to address these concerns comes on two-wheels. Yet, as even the DOT has admitted, there is something missing between the idea and the application. We know what we should do, we just don’t choose to do it. That goes for both the people who could use the bicycle for more of their transportation needs, and the people who are in charge of designing and maintaining our urban landscape to be accessible for all users. It sounds simple. That means it isn’t.
One of the dominant points of contention – and a point that has real consequences for the pro-bike community – is that there is a general disregard of road laws by bicyclists. I’ve done a bit of urban riding and a lot of urban walking and I can’t say that this point is invalid. Friday night I was enjoying an after-dinner stroll around midtown and within a matter of two blocks I encountered two separate bicyclists riding on the sidewalk in such a manner that I had to scramble out of the way – despite the fact that there were bike lanes on both sides of the street. This is not uncommon – especially in midtown and downtown where the sidewalks are often wide and the streets are often one-way. While a motorist will play ring-around-the-rosie, driving around blocks to access shops, restaurants, and parking on one way streets, it is both frustrating and wasteful for bicyclists. At the same time, riding in the bike lane against traffic on one-way streets – especially streets where the average speed is 10mph above the posted speed and where the bike lane is wedged between heavy traffic and an unending line of parked cars – takes a kind of guts that could be mistaken for attempted suicide.
So I understand the sidewalk riding. I’ve even been forced to use it myself – there is one underpass on the way to my gym where there are four lanes of one-way medium-speed traffic with no shoulder and a hill that makes it difficult to see what is immediately ahead – driving it makes me cautious, riding it straight-up gives me the willies and if there aren’t a lot of pedestrians out, I’ll take the sidewalk tunnel instead. But that doesn’t mean that I think it is right. Nor can I help but worry about the damage it does to the cause of urban bicyclists and bike enthusiasts who are constantly struggling against other critical needs for those few remaining infrastructure dollars.
Of course the real problem isn’t the bicycles on the sidewalk or the lack of enforcement of road rules on bike riders (the kind of behavior common in the U.S. would get instant and expensive tickets and reprimands in most European cities). The problem is that we have reconfigured our cities to optimize existing infrastructure for the movement of cars – to the exclusion of all other means of transportation. One-way streets are great for moving lots of cars at the same time. But they are huge obstacles for bicyclists. They also encourage speeding, are confusing and difficult for tourists and out-of-towners to navigate, and pose traffic hazards that are not addressed by the current traffic management systems. My worst car accident was on a one way street when someone ran a red light and hit me before I could see them – something that wouldn’t have happened if that particular street had been two-way.
There is a lot of obfuscation about the urban and commuting bicycle issue. A lot of drivers take bicyclists to task for not obeying the laws – and they should obey the laws. And bicyclists complain that there are insufficient bike-lanes and infrastructure support to make bicycling a safe and accessible mode of transportation for more people – justly so. But both are symptoms of a much larger problem – the misshapen retro-fits we’ve imposed on our urban fabric to facilitate what really is a ridiculous number of personal autos. In giving the car the prime position we’ve sacrificed our urban scale, our pedestrian accessibility, and our transportation choice. Seems like maybe the real challenge shouldn’t be to change opinions or laws or anything else so reactionary, but instead to change the default attitude about transportation and just how our cities should circulate people and goods.
If anything else, it would make our sidewalks safer.
urbanhistori 