Click here to read the recently-released International Scan Summary Report on Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety and Mobility.
A team of transportation professionals visited five European countries to check out the 5-Es of successful bicycling and walking systems: engineering, education, enforcement, encouragement, and evaluation. At first I found it a little discouraging they chose to exclude the Netherlands. But early in the report it says the team wanted to see programs and facilities with “potential transferability.” You know, we dumb Americans can put a man on the moon and pay for the Iraq war, but we can’t build superior bicycle highways. The report does say, however, and quite correctly, that the barrier is cultural (and, therefore, also political).
One of the interesting moments for me occurs in the “General Findings and Conclusions” section: The scan team found that in the host countries the “street user hierarchy has been developed to support a range of public policy goals, such as livability, sustainability, public health, climate change, and congestion management. The hierarchy guides decisions about transportation policy, planning, design, operations, and maintenance. For example, typical street design begins by first considering the space needs of pedestrians and bicyclists, rather than designating the motor vehicle space and then giving pedestrians and bicyclists the leftover space (if there is any).”
In other words, the team found cultures in which the slowest are given consideration — sometimes primary consideration — in street design. That is an element of the huge cultural barrier we face. It is an aspect of the barrier that was mentioned in this comment on Commute Orlando: “Why are the interests of a faster traveler deemed more important than the interests of a slower traveler in our culture?”
I think there are many interesting ways to answer that question. I want to approach it from the nexus of culture and technology.
If you’re looking ahead and not seeing much writing left to this blog post, well, that’s because I intend to take my time thinking and writing about this. In a way, I’ve been writing about it for nearly a year now on Carbon Trace, i.e. everytime I mention car culture and sport cycling culture.
A couple of things are clear to me:
1. Creating a new hierarchy means changing how we think and feel about a machine that is central to American culture and the mythology that supports it. Big news: This will not be easy.
2. American culture will be unsustainable if we continue on our unsustainable path.
Comments 11
I am afraid that ‘Sustainability’ implies ‘drill-baby-drill’ in this culture. Till water levels rise enough to flood a few Florida homes and weather changes enough to make the government ration food, the concept of sustainability will always be alien to the masses.
Another aspect of the culture is not accepting a bicycle as a mode of regular transportation. Is it mostly due to lack of utility bicyclists?
Posted 14 Jul 2009 at 3:04 pm ¶Shek… Yep. Drill baby! Should we laugh or cry?
Posted 15 Jul 2009 at 10:37 am ¶I suppose it’s human nature to seek the path of most convenience. We’ve made private auto driving the most convenient conveyance in all but a few very dense American cities. In some of out cities, we’ve made it nearly mandatory. While it is possible to be car free in car-centric cities, it involves a level of inconvenience most Americans won’t choose… and many would consider an intolerable hardship. And that’s not even factoring in the abuse prevalent in some areas… just to make your way in the world.
Posted 15 Jul 2009 at 6:28 pm ¶Keri… I like to spin that inconvenience into “better way to live”
Posted 15 Jul 2009 at 7:00 pm ¶Agreed. It is a better way to live. Today I passed a little girl riding on training wheels and her mom walking beside her. It was a quiet, residential street that I’d never take in a car. That kind of human encounter enhances my life, brings me joy.
Posted 15 Jul 2009 at 8:44 pm ¶Andy,
How can a method be a ‘Better way to live’ if it involves an inconvineance. At some level of repeated inconvenience, the static quality of the ‘better way to live’ migrates into a lower dynamic quality.
Keri,
Posted 16 Jul 2009 at 10:28 am ¶I bet you wont see the little girl in training wheels riding with her mom to the grocery store through busier roads. You will see her strapped in the back seat of an SUV. That sight is depressing.
Shek, don’t you think that “quality” implies much more than just simple convenience? If convenience is the pinnacle of the human lifestyle, why do people turn up their noses at McDonald’s and go eat at some fancy restaurant where they have to dress up and god forbid, get out of their cars to eat?
Okay, it’s a silly exaggeration, but it makes the point… quality lifestyle isn’t about convenience, or only convenience, and those who think so are doomed to eat McDonald’s forever. “A better way to live” is determined by each individual, of course, but to me biking is a huge part of that and really makes me glad we moved here. We used to live in Kansas City and had to load our bikes up onto the car rack to go places to ride them. Silly. Here I can hop on and ride to the farmer’s market, the store, the library. For me, it is better. The amount of inconvenience is minor and more than offset by the benefits: fresh air, exercise, seeing my neighborhood and neighbors up close.
I don’t know why my comments on this blog always turn out to be novel-length, so I’m shutting up now… lol.
Posted 16 Jul 2009 at 11:55 am ¶Kelly,
I agree that convenience is not the only sign of quality but inconvenience during a part of the activity is a sign of bad quality. For example, back pains, low quality bike, frequent flats, honking and yelling motorists, debris on the path, opening car doors, portholes, etc. Some of these can be avoided, some improved, some neither.
Presence of inconvenience sometimes outweighs other aspects of the bicycle-rich-life. This is the point I am making.
Posted 16 Jul 2009 at 1:01 pm ¶Shek… Well, I did call it “spin”
But I think Kelly is onto what I meant. And, also yes, the problems you name do challenge that “better way” by making it less better. I think it comes down to personal attitude (which can also be mightily challenged by circumstances).
Posted 16 Jul 2009 at 1:26 pm ¶Shek, thx for clarifying… the things you list certainly are inconvenient. However, we could also list the inconveniences of the car lifestyle… finding/paying for parking, traffic jams, flat tires (also), expensive repairs, sedentary lifestyle, gas prices, auto insurance…the list is long.
I guess it’s just what you’re used to/willing to accept.
Posted 16 Jul 2009 at 3:54 pm ¶Kelly,
Car-centric life is of a lower quality than the worst day in a bike-centric life. I was not lowering the status of bicycles in front of cars. As a little bit of history about myself, I lived car-light from June 2008 to October 2008, then sold my car and have been living car free.
My journey living solely on bicycles has not been friction free, as is evident in some of my recent blog entries ( http://www.sheksfootprint.com ). Jacksonville FL isn’t the ideal city for such living. Even on the worst day of my bike commute, I come home to several hundred dollars worth of car related savings, a few inches off my waist and a over 20 Lbs off the weighing scale.
It was fairly easy for me to ‘spin’ the inconvineances into a ‘better way to live’ for the first 10 months or so. Then, the gumption was no longer sufficient to blanket the inconvineances. I probably shouldn’t get into detailed conversations on Carbon Trace as Andy’s readers do not live where I do and the culture here is more abrasive. My point is that after some time in a particular place, both cars and bicycles hold low quality, each for different reasons.
Lately, my bike-centric life holds low quality and I am more and more inclined to move to the urban core and buy a motor-vehicle to commute to work. I am at the break even point of financial and health gains versus mental agony, abysmal subjective safety and anxiety. This break even point exists. It is very real and continues to discourage millions of people from adopting a bicycle. and now we have come a full circle to comment #3
Posted 16 Jul 2009 at 9:45 pm ¶