Living with Bikes

And Rethinking Our Streets

Spruce Street.

Bikes are here, and they're going to stay. What's it like living with them?

Depends on who you ask.

Opponents generally fall into a few overlapping groups: the car lovers, the bike haters, the anti-gentrifiers, and the people who dislike change in any form. Some people may actually belong to all these groups.

I sometimes say of these people that they all want things to get better, but they don't want anything to change. This may be unfair.

Fitler Square.

On the other side, the one arguing for change, there is an interesting coalition that has gathered around the concepts of Vision Zero (nobody should die in a traffic crash) and Complete Streets (streets should be safe, useful, and pleasant for everybody).

Not so many years ago, bike advocates were fighting a lonely battle for bike lanes. They were relatively isolated, and they were not united: Some cyclists continued to believe in vehicular cycling - the concept that bikes are vehicles (which, legally, they are) and that, rather than changing the design of existing roads, cyclists should always exercise their rights in the same space as all other vehicles. In other words, always ride in traffic with cars and trucks and buses, no matter how crowded the street, how fast the traffic, how erratic the drivers. (For more on vehicular cycling, click here and here and here.)

Logan Square, near the Franklin Institute.

Vehicular cycling, as a movement, basically stopped the development of bike lanes in this country for several decades. Vehicular cycling still seems to have a few adherents and sympathizers, but I think it's fair to say that the bicycling movement is now controlled by people who want bike lanes. They want bike lanes a lot.

But, until recently, they were an isolated group, and the opponents were extremely effective in preventing or diluting positive change. Then along came Vision Zero.

Vision Zero got its start in Sweden, where it was adopted by the parliament in 1997. It spread fairly quickly to the United States, and Philadelphia officially adopted the program in 2016 (it had already adopted Complete Streets in 2009).

18th Street, near Rittenhouse Square.

Vision Zero and Complete Streets have attracted a wide range of reformers - bicyclists, pedestrians, people who want better mass transit, people who want breathable air, people who want to stop global warming, people who want our streets to be attractively designed and even welcoming to passersby, people who don't want their child hit and killed by a speeding car. (There was a particularly gruesome crash on Roosevelt Boulevard in 2013. For stories, click here and here.)

And so the movement for bike lanes morphed into something much larger: the movement to reimagine our streets.

Many people, including important journalists, have completely missed or largely misunderstood what this new coalition, built around Vision Zero and Complete Streets, is trying to do. I think this is because they don't know the history and therefore do not have a good grasp on the context.

I have two favorite misconceptions: first, the idea that cars own the curb. Second, the stereotype that bicyclists are all skinny white guys in spandex.

Pine Street.

The idea that curbside parking is in the Ten Commandments is ahistorical. Curbside parking, as opposed to loading, was illegal until the arrival of cars in the early twentieth century, The laws changed, but the underlying reality has not. There are many better uses for the curb than the storage of automobiles. (For more, click here, here, here, here, and here.)

It can be disconcerting to open the pages of your favorite newspaper (or, more likely, scroll through on your phone) and find a respected journalist simply assuming that all street design must take place without affecting curbside parking (for one example, click here).

Grays Ferry Triangles, 23rd and South.

As for the spandex stereotype, have a look at the photographs in this story. Bicyclists are a large, very diverse group. 

I'll add one more error in the conventional wisdom surrounding bicycling. It's not just for recreation. (It never was, but that's another story.) People today commute by bike, they use a bike to take the kids to school, they go to the grocery store by bike. I could go on, but I'm going to stop before I get snarky. I do find it frustrating that people, not just the person in the street, but people who are paid to inform themselves before they write a story, are still stuck with these wrong ideas.

Pine Street.

Recently, though, I do find myself less frustrated than I was a few years ago. It's because I sense the beginning of a long-term shift in attitudes. Let me tell you a story.

When I was in my early teens, I thought it might be fun to join my school's track team. During spring vacation, it occurred to me that I should do a bit of training, to prepare for the upcoming season. We lived in Manhattan, and I decided I should go run some laps every morning around the Central Park reservoir. 

So one morning I got up early and put on some tennis shoes (this really was a long time ago, and my other option - penny loafers - struck me as a bad idea), and I walked over to Central Park. It never occurred to me to run on the sidewalk. I'd never seen anyone run on the sidewalk. Everybody always walked. When I got to the cinder track around the reservoir I did run and occasionally sprinted, and I enjoyed myself. It was a cool, overcast day. There was virtually nobody else on that cinder track, just as the sidewalks in the early morning had been very sparsely populated.

Fast forward forty years. I'm lying on a grass slope in Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, waiting for the New York City Marathon to start. I'm on my back, with my eyes closed, feeling very comfortable. There are several groups of people near me. To my left, people are speaking quietly in German. Above my head they are speaking Italian, and to my right they are speaking French. 

And then it is time to get up and head to the start. The two Frenchmen who had been to my right shake hands, looking one another in the eye. One says "Bon voyage," and the other says "Bon voyage" right back. And so it was.

For its first six years (1970-1975), the New York City Marathon was confined entirely to Central Park, for fear of disturbances to automotive traffic. Then, in 1976, it was allowed to expand to all five boroughs of the city. I ran the New York City Marathon in 2003, 2006, and 2009, and I would count my life significantly poorer if I had not had those experiences.

Things can change. Acceptance takes time. When it comes to reimagining our streets, I think we're on that path. A few years ago, we had yet to find it.

Just as bike lanes are part of the Complete Streets project, so are open streets. Here's a de facto open street a few blocks from Liberty Place. I'd like to see a lot more of these.

Smedley Street.

See also Reimagining Our Streets: Bikes Will Lead, But They Will Not Be Alone; It's the Road Design, Stupid; What We Lost; Why Did It Crash? The Bicycle Boom of the 1890s.