This is one of the bicycle parking areas at the institution of higher learning that is located in our downtown. Driving around this rainy morning on the way home from the farmers’ market, I was floored by how many bikes I saw on campus. I count fifty bikes in this parking area alone (using this and the other photos I took), and there are probably seven or ten similar lots within a several-block radius. There’s a movement here that I’m not sure we’ve noticed yet as a city.
These photographs aside, I should note thatmy own alma mater is still, of course, a vastly superior institution. 🙂
We’ve received two “car line” notices from my daughter’s school in the last few weeks, both of which seem to be discouraging either walking to school or parking and walking to avoid the car line. Here is an excerpt of what came home on Friday:
Please do not park in Baker’s Loft parking lot in the morning or afternoon… It is not safe to have your child cross the driveway where cars are exiting the morning car line.
Due to closure of Lincoln, there is increased traffic coming down Columbia which makes it difficult for cars to pull out. When foot traffic is added, it only slows the process down and brings the car line to a halt. With this in mind, please do not park in undesignated areas on Columbia or 22nd and walk your child over.
If you are able, we encourage you to use the car line, despite the few extra minutes it takes, for the safety of our students. Thank you.
Emphases are mine. When I unpack this memo a little bit, I notice that there are appeals to safety the first and third bullet points. It’s hard to argue with safety, especially when we’re talking about our children. The logic is problematic here, though: Cars are dangerous to our kids, and we’d like to address this danger by introducing still more cars into the system. The second bullet point clarifies what this may really be all about – keep the car line moving!
There are many, many places where this wouldn’t be surprising, but this is a city school in a traditional neighborhood. It was built in the era of sidewalks and city blocks. There are no cul-de-sacs to make walking impractical, no arterial roads to make walking dangerous, no deep set-backs to require kids to cross a treacherous parking lot. What we do seem to have is a modern suburban mind which prioritizes people in cars over people on foot.
Whew. This afternoon I both talked to my daughter’s teacher and stopped in the office for clarification. Both sources told me rather emphatically that NO, this school does NOT discourage walking, at all! I found the emphatic denial of any bias against walking reassuring – these memos had me dismayed beyond words – but as a new parent I’m still struggling to parse the mixed messages I hear coming from the school.
In our few weeks at this school, however, this is what I see: The car line is a well-oiled machine. Truly, it is impressive. Pick-up for walkers, however, does not seem to be, consisting of what appears to be a smooshed group of parents reduced to milling around on the sidewalk in no particular order.
I think that the time is ripe for a Safe Routes to School program here. I learned who my initial contact needs to be in my visit to the office this afternoon, and will follow up on this in coming weeks. Without question, we want to keep our kids safe. The real question is how.
(I apologize for the wacky formatting of this post, by the way. The code that’s visible to me looks fine; no idea why it looks like a mess.)
I live on what ought to be a quiet residential street in suburban Zeeland. It’s a neighborhood of families; in a quick mental tally of neighbors in the sixteen houses closest to mine, fourteen of these have children. The youngest is my own nine-month-old daughter, the oldest are seniors in high school.
Looking toward the subdivision entrance
Standing in the middle of the road, however, it’s not difficult to see what the problem could be on this street. Another view here…
Facing the neighborhood center
My handy measuring tape indicates that our street is 30′ wide, and clearly designed according to forgiving design principles (a slightly more technical article here, another about safety and attentiveness here). In short, this means designing roads to be as safe as possible for the people in the car by straightening roads and removing barriers. On an expressway, this is an excellent – lifesaving, in fact – idea. This is the origin of the divided highway and crash barriers, and the reason why there are no trees right next to the highway.
Unfortunately, these principles have been built into neighborhood streets as well with much more undesirable results. Although the default speed limit for a residential area is 25 mph, few cars travel at this speed in our neighborhood. My guess is that 30-35 mph is the average, but I certainly see 50 mph or greater on a daily basis. Why does this matter?
The effect of vehicle speed on pedestrian death
To put it simply: when some people drive fast, other people die.
My children are not allowed to play in this street. They may not ride their bikes without ridiculously close supervision. If I let them play in the front yard, I do so with a sense of impending doom. My kindergartener is capable enough that she ought to be able to walk down to a friend’s house, but I won’t allow it when I know that a neighbor in a car could pass within five feet of her little self at 45 mph – while texting.
There are solutions for this, which I hope to address in future posts. All of them, however, require a sea-change in the way we live our communities. It requires us to change how we use our streets as drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists, as well as changing local, state, and federal regulations concerning how streets are built. That last bit I find overwhelming – who am I to influence the federal government in any meaningful way? – but changing how I use our street this afternoon? That I think I can manage. We all can.
Laundry time is radio time for me. I try to choose a good hour (or three) and click on NPR, hoping for an uplifting tale to distract me from the interminable folding, folding, folding.
Friday morning was no disappointment. Morning Edition had a story on the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, with interviews of people who had been there, people who had been among the first to cross the bridge that first day. Great stories.
Courtesy Archive Americana. Click photo for link to original interview.
I encourage you to listen to the podcast; I enjoyed hearing the story and the voices telling it far more than just reading the article.
The line that jumped out at me was this quote from George Klein, who was 20 when the Golden Gate Bridge opened and is now 95. He was a former high school track star who ran across the bridge and back on opening day. His words:
“I could take a train, then a ferry, and then take another ferry and then a train and make it to downtown Oakland in an hour and five minutes. And I defy you to do that today with the bridges — that’s how things have changed.” (His story begins at 3:10 in the recording.)
There’s the rub when we consider the transportation revolution we’ve seen in the past seventy-five years in our country with our wholesale conversion to the automobile. On the surface, it’s a quintessential reflection of American individualism, traveling entirely on our own terms. Digging a little deeper uncovers a multitude of issues, not the least of which is that owning and being able to operate a vehicle is the entry fee to get around. That leaves out young people, many disabled people, elderly people, low-income people… a substantial chunk of our communities are left out of this equation. Some of those interviewed may well have been unable to walk across the bridge without the transit infrastructure to get them there first – infrastructure we’ve now largely lost.
Lucky for us, the story isn’t over. Have a great Memorial Day, everyone.
Friday! And I’m beat. A glass of cabernet on the deck is calling my name this fine evening, but first, a brief round-up of today’s two commutes.
My “morning job” doesn’t allow for much of a bike commute. (With three kids, I had to rule out the mamachari, though I’m still sorely tempted to acquire a Bakfiets cargo bike.) So we went green by riding the local city bus…
…which works out, because they LOVE to ride the bus. We got some coffee, walked to the playground…
… and then headed home, so I could get going on my afternoon commute.
As I ride to work more, I’ve noticed myself increasingly gravitating toward riding on the road. I’ve never understood why cyclists would ride on a busy street when there is a bike path right next to them, but it becomes more sensible to me with each bump or obstacle I encounter. There are a couple spots in my commute where the bike paths are smooth and uninterrupted by driveways, but the path closest to my house, in particular, offers a really uncomfortable ride. Driveways seem to have taken priority in the construction of the path so there are two seams to ride over at each one, and each seam is accompanied by a gap or grade change. I can hear my panniers clanging behind me and fear for the integrity of my rear wheel with every jangle. The curb cut going into one of the subdivisions is even worse; anyone attempting to traverse that in a wheelchair would likely end up on the road (I wonder if that’s enforceable under ADA). So I’ve been taking my chances on the much smoother road, feeling increasingly envious of cycling infrastructure that exists elsewhere.
As I’ve been reading about cycling infrastructure around the world, I’m finding it interesting how many different models of cycle infrastructure are out there. The Dutch are moving in the direction of segregation – no bike lane adjoining a road, but rather a path that is separated from motor traffic by some kind of physical barrier.
And then there’s Japan, which I’ve seen maligned for not even having a cycle infrastructure – but it seems to be working out for them. First, a mamachari – this is what I aspired to when we returned to the States (now I’m leaning more in the cargo bike direction):
Puffing away would describe me on the way in to work… and what I saw on the way home. What a ride today! It looked windy when I left the house and I doubt I would have ridden had it not been Green Commute Week, but I’ve committed to try to ride every day this week and a little wind didn’t seem like a very persuasive excuse for wimping out. (“Try”, by the way, meaning that I’m not going to ride in a storm unless the laws of nature are changed such that I could single-handedly stop global climate change by so doing. So. )
The ride in, facing a 33 mph headwind on a path that trends vaguely uphill, was brutal. I was also trying to go a little faster than my normal meander, thinking that I may be settling for an excessively poky pace. In spite of the wind, my sweaty self pulled into work thirty minutes after I left home. It was great and all, but I’m happy to resume my former pace tomorrow. Style over speed. 🙂
If I had chosen to drive today, though, I would have missed the highlight of today’s ride! On the way home, I passed a woman out power-walking with her friend, all dressed in Spandex and ready to take on the world.. but for the cigarette swinging in her left hand that she was puffing on mid-stride. Totally worth it.
In honor of Green Commute Week here in the Macatawa Bay area, I’ve decided to start blogging again.
On the ride today
I’ve been bike commuting to work on occasion since early this spring, choosing to ride when weather and schedule allow. My route is four miles from my home in suburban Zeeland to work in downtown Holland, and usually takes me about thirty-five to forty minutes to complete – just enough time to decompress and transition from home to work or vice-versa. Since I work part-time, my mornings are filled with laundry, storybooks, and trying to prevent a three-year-old from licking the handrail in the coffee shop bathroom (preferably without dropping her baby sister). When I head out the door in early afternoon and hop on my bike, I feel like I’m getting away with murder as I cruise off in my low-tech zero-emissions vehicle. I’m alone with my thoughts, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air and subversive satisfaction of getting some exercise without going to the gym. Beautiful.
It’s not always sunshine and roses. There are scary roads and potholes and a cycling infrastructure that isn’t all we might dream. But I’m sure we’ll get to that another day. For today, I’m choosing to think on the scent of the wetlands and sound of the spring peepers I heard singing just a couple weeks ago.
Traversing Tulip Lane 