http://www.grist.org/biking/2011-07-05-bicycling-our-way-into-work-and-out-of-the-great-recession
Bicycling our way into work and out of the Great Recession
by Elly Blue
5 Jul 2011 10:29 AM
Bikenomics. This is the tenth and last column in the Bikenomics
series. A new ten-part series will begin in two weeks, exploring some
of the different reasons people don't bike for transportation and ways
these obstacles to bicycling can be overcome.
Conversations about transportation bicycling tend to revolve around
work, particularly commuting.
This is a good thing. We need to get to work; more of us need to get
to work by bike; and more bicycling means a healthier economy, a
better workplace, and even more jobs.
But the commutes in these conversations are an endangered species,
part of a type of work and lifestyle that's fading fast: the 9-to-5
lifetime career with health benefits and pension, a commute from
suburbs to central city, and a hot meal waiting for you when you get
home.
The way we work has been changing for a long time, and our
transportation needs and options along with it. With the recent
recession, fewer people are working as much or for as much money, or
as regularly -- or at all. More of us are, in a word, poor.
We're the ones who need bicycling the most. Yet the broke and the
tenuously employed aren't always reached by bicycle transportation
advocacy, education, and services. When they are, the messages being
promoted are not always relevant or welcome.
The mainstays of bike advocacy organizations are the three E's:
engineering, enforcement, and education -- with a fourth E,
encouragement, becoming increasingly popular.
Encouragement is a kind of marketing. It's about selling the benefits
of transportation bicycling as though it were a product. It's
appealing because, to a large extent, it works, imbuing everyday
transportation bicycling with a certain cool cachet. Marketing, being
what it is it, tends to be best executed by businesses and blogs
selling everything from imported, upright city bikes to the concept of
cycling fashion to the aesthetic and lifestyle associated with both of
these.
But lately, advocacy organizations and even government agencies are
investing in encouragement initiatives and seeing a lot of success. A
recent example is the charming animated video made by the Cascade
Bicycle Club called "Will you ride with Sophie?" that extols
the environmental, social, and personal virtues of choosing to bike
instead of drive, even for just a few trips a week.
And that's the crux of it, what makes encouragement so appealing to
some and so frustratingly divisive to others: When you're broke, you
simply don't have the same choices. The risks you are willing to take
are informed by different factors. What one person might feel as a
stirring call to action, another might just as easily see as unwelcome
and out-of-touch moralizing.
It's understandable, of course, that the pursuit of encouragement, as
well as the other E's, is informed by the concerns of the advocates
themselves. Part of the heritage of bicycle advocacy in the U.S. is
recreational riding -- an activity that suggests a decent enough
income to have a nice bike in the garage and the leisure, skills, and
confidence to go out and ride it whenever one chooses. U.S. bike
advocacy is also imbued with a heavy focus on individual
responsibility as more important -- or perhaps more readily achievable
-- than social and infrastructure change, as exemplified by the
until-recently prominent vehicular cycling movement.
Such initiatives tend to reach out to the people who ride -- or don't
-- out of choice rather than economic necessity, whose only barrier to
getting on a bike is motivation.
When you're already broke, you don't need to be encouraged to adopt
someone else's lifestyle. You need solutions that arise from your own
circumstances and community.
That means that simply choosing to hop on a bike isn't actually that
straightforward. Even as your car is sucking your savings dry and
pummeling your credit, at least it's the devil you know.
People living in low-income households are less likely to have access
to a working bicycle (only 29 percent of households making less than
$15,000 do, according to the NHTSA's most recent survey). Aside from
the cost and learning curve of acquiring, outfitting, and maintaining
a reliable everyday bicycle, if you're broke your neighborhood is also
less likely to be graced by bike lanes, calmed traffic, and other
facilities that are lauded for their ability to raise property values.
You're also less likely to have easy, central access to grocery stores
and other amenities.
Bicycling has a reputation as being dangerous, making it even less
appealing to those who lack health insurance. There's also a social
stigma attached -- car ownership is a widely acknowledged symbol of
success and adulthood.
Moreover, the pursuit of the three original Es -- education,
engineering, and enforcement -- demands some further sensitivity if
undertaken in the context of economic inequality.
When you're low-income, you may simply not have access to the
amenities of bicycle advocacy that others of us take for granted. Your
concerns are less likely to be solicited or lobbied for. Education
initiatives and materials about cycling laws and safety, what to do if
you crash, and even how to ride at all are less likely to reach you
and may not even exist in a language you read fluently. And
engineering and enforcement are as likely to work against you as they
are to protect and serve your interests.
Runs on fatPhoto: Carlton ReidThese concerns are hardly universal, but
they're a sampling of what advocates need to ask and engage about if
they are serious about making bicycling more widely accessible and
attractive.
Of course, relatively elite bike advocacy organizations didn't invent
bicycling, and have much to learn from others who have already been
doing it a long time. Among people in the U.S. who already ride,
residents of socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods are already
riding for transportation rather than recreation. Bicycling is
particularly embraced by recent immigrants from countries where
bicycle transportation has long been the norm.
There are a lot of bike organizations out there that are already
driven by the needs of low-income people and communities. Earn-a-bike
programs around the country empower participants with a free bicycle
and the skills and knowledge to maintain and ride it well. Tamales y
Bicicletas is a Minneapolis group run by and for Latino youth to build
job skills and work for environmental justice. Ciudad de Luces/City of
Lights is a Los Angeles program that provides free bike lights and
bike safety and maintenance education to working-class Latino
immigrants. In Madison, Wisc., police work with bike advocates and
businesses to install free bike lights instead of writing costly
tickets to those caught riding unlit at night.
As our economy shifts and bicycling becomes a more urgent economic
imperative both individually and socially, advocates need to start
seriously rethinking how their work can better serve the people who
need it most. Initiatives that presuppose motivation as a primary to
barrier for bicycling, or climate and public health concerns as a
primary driver of transportation choices, will necessarily be limited
in their reach, and run the risk of alienating people who, if listened
to and engaged with, could be powerful allies.
I propose a fifth E for the bicycle advocacy toolkit: Economics. Not
marketing, not the creation of wealth or the promotion of wealthy
lifestyles, but rather the awareness of economic inequality and its
impact on people's choices and lack thereof. When we wander down the
path of assigning moral value to lifestyle choices and take our
policies cues from gender and identity politics, we lose a lot of
people -- and make enemies -- along the way. When we focus on
communities' economic realities and the hard numbers behind them, then
we can provide concrete, material tools for addressing the
inequalities that are holding us all back.
The bicycle economy, after all, isn't going to make most of us rich,
and that's OK. We could use fewer people getting rich in this country
and more people getting by, feeling good, and having fun. Bicycling
creates a little wealth. But more importantly, it creates a lot of
well-being. That's what the bicycle economy is all about.
Elly Blue is a writer and bicycle activist living in Portland, Oregon.
You can also find her on Twitter.
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