These Guys

Tag: equity

Complete Streets…and all that

Posted on October 18, 2021October 18, 2021 by ljleathem

Complete Streets. A movement. A philosophy. A way of looking at the state of things and creating new avenues of change.

Hmm…avenues of change. Figuratively, or literally?

Yes!

Complete Streets (figuratively)

What does it even mean? Well, to understand that, we need to go back…way back. History of transportation in 25 words or less: People walked. They started riding on animals and making carts. Bikes and roads came along. Then motor vehicles pushed everyone else off the road.

I did it, with one word to spare. The reality is that as each new mode came along, people were forced further and further off the road. Complete Streets is about changing the trajectory. We have historically looked at “throughput,” a term engineers and planners use to mean “how can we ‘improve’ the road so that we can get more cars through here faster?” In America, over time, the road became almost exclusively for motor vehicles. Pedestrians and other road users were shunted over to the edges, and only tolerated rather than acknowledged as legitimate users of the roadways.

And now, we’re taking another look. It’s far too late, but voices are beginning to be heard. There are simply too man y people dying on our roadways every year. We “accept” 30,000 to 40,000 lives lost every year as the cost of doing business. Thirty to forty THOUSAND mothers, fathers, children, sons, daughters lose their lives because we need to get to the shopping center, or across town, or to visit our relatives a few states away faster…

Complete Streets (literally)

So what are we doing? Taking another look at streets. Why are they designed the way that are? Does that street really need to have 3 17- foot lanes in each direction? Does the median need to be 100 feet wide? Using that example, we observe that the speed limit of 35mph is ignored by virtually all motorists. And why wouldn’t it be? The road is begging them to go faster! Would they go fast if the lanes were 10 feet wide, with a narrow median? Studies have shown that the answer is no. Yet, there is very little difference in throughput when lanes are narrowed down…

Hmm. So narrower roads do not really affect how many cars will pass, but slows them down in the process…Sounds like there may be an opportunity there. How about giving some of that space back to other road users, maybe? Like people on bicycles, people on foot…you know, the ones who were using roads before there were cars. It’d be greener, too. And it would take some of the motor vehicles off the road!

That’s one example of how Complete Streets can impact the trajectory. The idea is to look at all roadways, particularly when road changes/improvements are planned. In the design/redesign, think about all road users: how can we make this safe for anyone who needs to use this road, regardless of the mode of transportation? Is a separate bike lane needed? How about green space? What should the speed limit be?

Retrofitting is obviously harder than designing from scratch. But that’s the real world. We have to look at all of the existing roadways and figure out how we do a better job so that the cost of business comes down – WAY down. We CAN’T just keep killing people and saying its ok.

Riding While Black

Posted on July 29, 2020December 19, 2020 by ljleathem

“Being stopped and harassed is one of the top concerns of Black and brown cyclists.” —Charles Brown, Rutgers University

A just-published article in Bicycling Magazine discusses one of the racial issues in cycling (See the original article here). Author Dan Roe looked at data from three major cities and found that, for black people on bikes are more likely to have problematic interactions with law enforcement.

Charles Brown, a senior transportation researcher at Voorhees Transportation Center (Rutgers University), reported on the results of a 2017 survey showing that 15 percent of Black and Latinx riders said they had been unfairly stopped by law enforcement.

Bicycling found only 3 out of 100 major cities that classify stops by race/ethnicity. Oakland, CA, New Orleans, LA, and Washington, D.C. had such data. The short version of the article: black riders are stopped at a high rate, disproportionately to the population. Black riders are also more likely to get tickets, white riders are more often let off with a warning.

One important finding: stops were made more often in neighborhoods that were historically or are currently home to black residents. Why? Is it because of the people who live there? Or is it because these areas (at least in New Orleans) have typically been underserved, and safe infrastructure has not been a priority?

Questions, not answers. Have we come a long way? Yes. We still have a long way to go, though. “Riding while black” can’t be an excuse to treat people wrongly.

For more on bicycling and equity, see these posts: “Welcome, Ladies,” “Is This About Bicycling?,” “Riding and Not Seeing.”

Welcome, ladies

Posted on July 21, 2020December 19, 2020 by ljleathem

“Because, you know, I can’t work a bicycle pump” – Judi Dench

Hmm…and that highlights one of the things we need to work on. I don’t know the context in which Dame Judi Dench said that, so I can’t/won’t assume any. But I will use it to launch a thought process about bicycling and opportunity.

As you probably know, I work with the League of American Bicyclists. Part of the mission of LAB is education of the bicycling community in the quest to create a “Bicycle Friendly America.” I enjoy teaching people how to safely and confidently ride their bicycles wherever they would like to ride them.

A quick story to illustrate where I’m going with this post. My daughter and I were on a long-distance/multi-day charity ride several years ago. We were riding with the usual suspects: a bunch of folks who had ridden together for many miles…all guys. She got a flat. We pulled over to deal with it, and a few of the guys jumped in to start fixing it. She waved them off, and changed it herself.

The point: as is often the case, the guys assumed either a) she didn’t know how to change it, or b) she would take too long to do it. But then, her dad teaches people how to do this, and made sure she knew how and and was able to do so.

Unfortunately, it is often the case that we don’t do what we need to do so that people can be self-sufficient. That is too often true in cycling. Everyone who rides should at least understand the basics of how the bike works, how to do at least the very basic repairs/adjustments to keep the bike in good shape, and when it should be taken into a shop for more expert care. And we’ve too often failed in that. Unfortunately it’s especially true for women. They’ve often not been treated well in bike shops, in bike clubs, on bike rides. It’s changing, a bit at a time, but we need to do better.

Welcome, ladies! How can I help?

For more on bicycling and equity, see these posts: “Is This About Bicycling?;” “Riding and Not Seeing.”