“Building Community through Cycling”
by Jerry Fried
July 11, 2004
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Mead
" Cars and trucks have become a major cause of social, health, economic, environmental, and aesthetic problems in cities. By making life on the street unpleasant, they inhibit the informal social contacts that bind societies together. They deny younger children free mobility and, as a result, stunt their development. Cars have become one of the leading causes of death in almost every nation, and the leading cause of death among males 15-44 worldwide. Pollution from car exhausts is now known to kill even more people that vehicular crashes. Streets and car parking absorb vast amounts of scarce urban land, and their maintenance is a large burden on the economy. The automobile is the most resource-intensive means of transportation ever devised, and serious energy shortages loom within a decade. Finally, cars mar the city's beauty in many ways, some subtle, some obvious. Notice in old photographs how much more attractive our cities were a century ago."
-from:"Car-free Cities: Do We Need Them and Can They Work?" by J.H. Crawford
“We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.... The protection of Earth’s vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust.”
-from: preamble to the Earth Charter
"Once upon a time, 500 kids a day biked to Montclair High School ..."
Back when I was a kid, two thirds of all kids walked or rode their bikes to school. Very few people had more than one car and people shopped close to where they lived. The idea of driving your kids to play with a friend, or driving with a bike hitched to your car to go for a bike ride, would have been considered pretty strange.I grew up in New York City and bikes were pretty much for recreation on weekends, like for going to the park. But in the summer, in my summers, my family was based on Fire Island, and it was there that I learned the freedom, even joy, of using bikes for just about everything. We shopped by bike, went to the movies by bike, and the only place I didn't bike was to go fishing, because I'd be walking on the beach. Idyllic, and irrelevant for our lives in town, no?
I don't think so.
I started riding my bike a lot soon after moving to Montclair , to get exercise and for fun, mountain biking in the Mills Reservation, cruising around with a kid in a baby seat in back. But this stopped after rules were changed keeping bikes away from the hiking trails. And so, like most of us, the bikes usually stayed in the garage, except for when we decided to taKe our kids out for a family bike ride, maybe once every couple of weeks when the weather was nice. Soon after, I started riding to the train station with my neighbor, and now I bike just about every day.
Since 9/11 I've needed to be involved in helping change things. First I became involved in peace advocacy. And now I've become a bike advocate. About 2 years ago my neighbor and I started a group with a few other bike commuters, and Bike Montclair has been working towards a more bike-able town since then.
In the context of a Lay Service, even a Unitarian one, and from a former Jew to be sure, I'll ask the question posed by many Christian Evangelicals. WWJD. You've seen it on buttons and bumper stickers. What would Jesus drive?
Would Jesus tool around in a Hummer? A Honda Accord? Well, I don't think so. Most of us don't even need a reminder of the harm that cars do to the environment: the major source of air pollution, global warning, international conflict (although I'd allow that that's only my opinion). Death from automobile accidents is the 3rd major cause of preventable death, behind only smoking and alcohol use. Our car culture of course has impaired beauty around the world. And of course, the consequences of massive auto use falls mostly on the poor.
On the road: thou shall not kill. Thou shall not take the name of the Lord in vain, even at crowded intersections. Thou shall not covet thy neighbors BMW. And most of all, love thy neighbor as thyself. That's the main topic of my talk today. How riding a bicycle can help restore a sense of community, a sense that has been inadvertently lessened by Car Culture.
Cars damage the social fabric of communities. When you drive to the mall, you could walk right past someone on your street and not recognize them. You get in your car and people become motorists. Who makes a human connection with the car behind you? Road rage happens for a reason. Cars depersonalize transportation. They help create a sense of alienation, separateness, lack of contact. And driving, really, is a numbing waste of time. We may feel that we're saving time by driving somewhere, but adding up the hours on the road we would usually be better off staying close to home.
As UUs, bicycling fits our principles. By not polluting we help the interconnected web. By not using fossil fuels we do a favor to the world community and the cause of peace. Politically we help the cause of justice and are better citizens of the world. And with a smile we can help build stronger communities.
Cycling around cars can be a dangerous activity these days. The fewer people there are on bikes, the less we are used to sharing the road. The more roads become places exclusively for cars. Not pedestrians or cyclists. Drivers often treat cyclists the way an abusive spouse treats his partner. There seems almost a passion in the abuse, an exercise of power and dominance. Road rage is a common expression of the isolated mentality that cars encourage. But in the right context, cycling can help humanize drivers. The goal of Bike Montclair is to help make Montclair bike and pedestrian friendly by changing the context for interactions between us.
Seeing cyclists can cause Reflection on the part of drivers. Who is that person on a bike? With a suitcase. Or groceries. And families with kids are a no-brainer. Biking can educate drivers and turn them into more considerate citizens. And it has been long proven that bikes, bike lanes, and the conspicuous presence of pedestrians slow traffic, reduce speeding, and reduce accident rates. In fact, most of what is known as "traffic calming" measures are aimed at the psychology and perceptions of drivers. Ridgewood Avenue in Glen Ridge is a perfect example of conventional traffic calming. By narrowing the perceived driving area, Ridgewood Avenue was turned from a mini-highway into the major pedestrian and biking street in the town.
Cycling can also help communities by encouraging support for local businesses (you don't really want to bike to the mall, do you?) and creating a sense of a peaceful social community. We all know about the alienation created in gated communities where everyone has to hop in a car to go to a huge store just to get the proverbial quart of milk. When you're on the street, meaningful daily interactions are almost unavoidable. Biking and walking are great antidotes to a sedentary lifestyle, especially for kids.
Places where biking is safe also help in a small way with a social justice issue. The poor, especially the working poor, often must rely on biking as their major form of transportation. By not providing safe places for these people we are denying them equal benefits in our transportation systems. About two years ago two economic immigrants from South America were struck by a van on Orange Road just a few blocks from here. One was killed and the other seriously injured. The driver said he had chest pains, but there isn't anything to suggest that it was anything but common negligence. CYCLISTS PAY FAR MORE for there share of the road in taxes. The sides of the road are very poorly maintained. And this in spite of the fact that cyclists don't cause damage either to the road or the air.
Places where bikes are the PRIMARY means of getting around are among the most attractive and popular places to go. My own favorite is Fire Island , but Venice (probably the densest urban area) is another. Local transportation in Holland is mostly about bikes. I was in Minneapolis last summer and had the pleasure of riding on a bike highway from uptown to downtown with great landscaping, exit signs, separate lanes for bikes and joggers and many houses right off the path - amazingly appealing places to live.
Which brings me to the issue of bike lanes and bike paths. Separating bikes from cars can create safe havens, but in many cases creates the opposite effect. All of the traffic calming effects I mentioned before can be eliminated if cyclists and drivers are not in close contact. And the accident rate can be 2 to 3 times higher where bike paths are installed without an extensive plan for what happens when the path ends or when the biker has to make a left turn. Bike paths can create a false sense of security by decreasing the "education" of drivers.
Here's where something called Second Generation traffic calming comes in. Second Generation traffic calming is a new movement in Europe that's a blend of traffic engineering, urban design, behavioral psychology and, believe it or not, evolutionary biology. It is, I would have to say, the most faith-based, utopian, Democratic and WORKABLE means of making cities and towns more humane. It's about letting The People control their lives on the streets and not the State. It is about "returning the streets to their historic function as civic gathering places".
Here's how it works.
No traffic lights.
No stop signs.
No white and yellow lines.
There are no rules, so motorists have to think for themselves, slow down, and make contact with pedestrians, bikers and other drivers.
All this comes out of this thing called "woonerf". Started in Holland in the 70's, it basically blurs the line between places for cars and places for people. What people found is that the busier and more chaotic the streets became, the safer they were. This has become so popular that it's now part of the UK 's national transportation policy. There's an intersection in a town in Denmark called Christiansfeld where they've gone from 3 traffic fatalities a year to zero. By removing the signs and making it look like a plaza for people. Why do kids not bike to Montclair High any more? Because we've been trained that cars have free reign on the road.
How does "woonerf" look? There are lots of paving stones, few curbs to separate cars and pedestrians, and a fair amount of craning necks and people making eye contact. There is deliberate ambiguity and uncertainty.
How does it work? By acknowledging and working with the contradictions in our different roles as "residents" and as "motorists". The motorist in us wants to get from point A to point B, as quickly as possibly, restrained mostly by a general fear of stretching the rules too much and perhaps a deeper fear that some day we may be part of an avoidable accident. The resident in us wants the motorist zipping past their house to SLOW DOWN and DRIVE SAFELY. We need to see that we are sometimes a "motorist" and sometimes a "resident".
Woonerf helps keep us on our toes, in our value systems and dynamically connected with the interconnected web of life of which we are all a part. The main guiding design features are, believe it or not, Intrigue and Uncertainty. Instead of the predictability of a striped road with the driver's attention focused on some distant "vanishing point", we have community bulletin boards close to the road. If possible, stone chess sets and kids play equipment. There are actually places where trees have been planted IN THE ROAD. This seems surreal and wildly experimental, but it works because it engages people's humanity.
Part of woonerf is lowering the driving speed to around 20 miles per hour, which, it just so happens, is the maximum speed at which humans can maintain eye contact with each other. Here's where the Evolutionary Biology comes in. 20-mph is also the "maximum theoretical running speed". WE CANNOT REALLY BE CONNECTED WITH EACH OTHER TRAVELING ANY FASTER THAN THIS. And so, in many places, traffic speeds are being reduced to about 20-mph. And, believe it or not, traffic moves more smoothly, reducing congestion. Although this seems counterintuitive, faster driving speeds require more controlled intersections. How fast can you travel on Upper Mountain Avenue ? At 35-mph, 10-mph faster than most other roads in town. But what happens when you hit Claremont Ave. ? You're at the longest light in Montclair .
Where these principles have been enacted, many intersections work like this: You're driving 20. You come to an intersection. If you can see left and right, you keep going. If you can't you slow down until it's safe to go. You can SEE the eyes of other drivers who may be in the intersection.
And there's another side benefit here. A person struck by a car at 40-mph has only a 15% chance of survival. At 20-mph, the rate goes up to 85%.
Of course we'll need our highways and byways. And our cars. But by not being PUNITIVE with cars, change is far easier to accomplish. We need speed laws, but laws alone create lawlessness by creating the sense that the laws really control everything. When the state seems to control the road, we don't rely on ourselves to do so. Nor do we engage with others around us or our logic and perceptions to help. A great quote in one article I read on traffic calming is "If I walk into your house, I don't need a sign that says 'Don't Spit on the Floor".
What can we do on our way to a more enlightened community? One thing that you can do is create your own Intrigue and Uncertainty. Some residents in town have put "Drive 25/Keep Kids Alive" signs by the side of the road, and move them around often. Waving at random drivers actually helps. Playing in the streets (where you know drivers will have enough time to see you and stop, no matter how far over the limit they may be going). Walking in the streets. Being a "pace car" on the road by driving at the posted limits (it helps to have a "Drive 25/Keep Kids Alive" bumper sticker to help convey that you're not some lunatic.
In conclusion, I'd like you to consider Biking and Walking as redemptive, slightly subversive acts. We can create our own "Intrigue and Uncertainty" on the streets of our towns while promoting a healthier, more humane lifestyle.
Closing words:
Going down Hill on a Bicycle, A Boy's Song
By Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919)
WITH lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.
Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:--
'O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.
'Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!'
Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?
'Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.
Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.
Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er,
Shall find wings waiting there.
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