Representation and Equity Outcomes of Cycling Advocacy a Research

Representation and Equity Outcomes of Cycling Advocacy

A Research Paper submitted to the Department of Engineering and Society

Presented to the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Virginia • Charlottesville, Virginia

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Science, School of Engineering

Chloe Chang Spring, 2020

On my honor as a University Student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment as defined by the Honor Guidelines for Thesis-Related Assignments

Approved ______Date ______Travis Elliott, Department of Engineering and Society

Introduction Background As city populations continue to rise, cycling infrastructure in dense urban areas has become a valuable alternative transportation to reduce traffic congestion, environmental concerns, and safety concerns (Federal Highway Administration, 2012). Cycling advocates have traditionally lobbied government officials to push for cycling amenities such as bike lanes, public bike racks and parking, and bike trails in natural areas (Hoffman, 2016). From 1991 to 2009, federal spending on cycling infrastructure has increased from $5 million annually to $1 billion annually

(Pucher et al., 2011). There is high demand for city officials to build cycling infrastructure that can meet immediate physical needs for cyclist space on busy urban roads.

For cycling to be a safe, flexible, and efficient mode of transportation in urban areas for people of all socioeconomic levels, current cycling infrastructure should support physical use, resident needs, and effective evaluations of the implemented infrastructure. In the US, the

Highway Safety Manual is the well-established tool used to predict the safety of infrastructure changes or improvements. Tools such as these use a simple formula that quantifies factors like risk, crash safety, and exposure time for projected infrastructure improvements (DiGioia et al.,

2017). Crash safety calculations are ingrained into city planning, and for good reason. Vehicle- bike collisions are the cause of hundreds of deaths every year (National Highway Transportation

Safety Administration, 2014). Outside of crash safety, cycling is mostly seen as a green, healthy alternative to driving a car among city residents. However, injustices among those impacted by bicycle advocates have arose after these bicycle activists focused on the environmental and health benefits while shrouding true effects on economic growth, especially in poor redlined areas of cities. Redlining is a post-WW2 US housing policy of denying home loans and suppressing home property values to residents in poorer, mixed-race neighborhoods (Lugo,

2014). Due to this focus on safety and the environment, cycling infrastructure has now become a profit generator in large cities like LA and Chicago, where bicycle advocates are privileged, white, upwardly mobile, and have influences over a larger sphere of urban planning than before this shift (Hoffman, 2016). As a result, some bicycle infrastructure has become a piece of larger infrastructure projects that cater to the white, upwardly mobile class. As newly gentrified neighborhood residents clash with residents that have resided there for years, some low-income residents argue that only their new white neighbors would use bike lanes and that these changes would further squash their voice of influence in city planning, especially those that have been redlined. I propose that cycling infrastructure implementation in US cities has failed to consider technical and social implications of funding cycling infrastructure where residents have been historically redlined or struggle to be heard among city planners, and lack of qualitative evaluation techniques of infrastructure changes further amplify and shroud these effects. I will use the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework to analyze the outcomes and prioritization in cycling advocacy.

2017). Crash safety calculations are ingrained into city planning, and for good reason. Vehicle- bike collisions are the cause of hundreds of deaths every year (National Highway Transportation

Safety Administration, 2014). Outside of crash safety, cycling is mostly seen as a green, healthy

alternative to driving a car among city residents. However, injustices among those impacted by bicycle advocates have arose after these bicycle activists focused on the environmental and health benefits while shrouding true effects on economic growth, especially in poor redlined areas of cities. Due to this focus on safety and the environment, cycling infrastructure has now become a profit generator in large cities like LA and Chicago, where bicycle advocates are privileged, white, upwardly mobile, and have influences over a larger sphere of urban planning than before this shift (Hoffman, 2016). As a result, bicycle infrastructure has become a piece of larger infrastructure projects that cater to the white, upwardly mobile class. As residents of newly gentrified neighborhoods clash with residents that have resided there for years, some low- income, minority residents argue that only their new wealthier, white neighbors would use bike lanes and that these changes would further squash their voice of influence in city planning, especially those that have been redlined. Redlining is a post-WW2 US housing policy of denying home loans and suppressing home property values for residents in poorer, mixed-race neighborhoods (Lugo, 2014). People of all income levels ride bikes, but the way that the infrastructure is funded, developed, and the location it is built often stirs friction that originates from neighborhood racialized histories. Redlining has become an unfortunate backdrop for cycling infrastructure development in these cities. I propose that cycling infrastructure implementation in US cities has failed to consider technical and social implications of funding cycling infrastructure where residents have been historically redlined or struggle to be heard among city planners, and lack of qualitative evaluation techniques of infrastructure changes further amplify and shroud these effects. I will use the Social Construction of Technology

(SCOT) framework to analyze the outcomes and prioritization in cycling advocacy.

STS Framework The sociotechnical analysis will be conducted using the SCOT framework. SCOT tenets of relevant social groups, principle of symmetry, interpretive flexibility, and stabilization will be used to investigate the topic. The success of new cycling infrastructure technology depends upon its implementation is largely influenced by social context. Socioeconomic representation in cycling advocacy is one of the factors that determines the implementation cycling infrastructure technology (interpretive flexibility). Evaluations of cycling infrastructure should consider the whether the implemented infrastructure serves marginalized groups (stabilization).

STS Analysis Stakeholders Cycling advocacy affects local residents, business owners, city planning officials, infrastructure planning companies, future residents, and current surrounding residents using the proposed infrastructure. Cycling itself is not an activity that is inherently race or class-based

(Hoffman, 2016). People of all income levels ride bikes, but the way that the infrastructure is funded, developed, and the location it is built often stirs friction that originates from neighborhood racialized histories. The power and voice of each of these stakeholders changes the way the infrastructure serves the people it was designed (or not designed) for.

Cycling advocacy affects local residents, business owners, city planning officials, infrastructure planning companies, future residents, and current surrounding residents using the proposed infrastructure. Cycling itself is not an activity that is inherently race or class-based

(Hoffman, 2016). The power and voice of each of these stakeholders changes the way the infrastructure serves the people it was designed (or not designed) for.

Case Studies – San Francisco Bay Area and Minneapolis A cycling “revolution” has hit large US metropolitan areas, changing the way that residents get around in the past twenty years. Transportation is being reimagined to be sustainable and pedestrian or bike oriented. In the San Francisco (SF) Bay Area, cycling has been touted as a positive factor for economic growth (Stehlin, 2013). I propose that this tune of cycling advocacy has reduced some of cities’ racially charged, complex histories to binary platforms for economic gain. In SF, bike lanes have failed to achieve the original purpose of increasing access to cycling for everyone in the population. Bike commute trips increased by 6 percent from 2005 to 2017, one of the highest rates of bike transit in the US (SFMTA, 2018).

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) director has stated that the “most cost- effective investment we can make in moving people is in bicycle infrastructure” (Stehlin, 2013).

Investments in bicycling infrastructure are a cost-effective way to “enhance shopping districts and communities, generate tourism, and support business” (League of American Bicyclists,

2012). The SFMTA has allocated $90 million in cycling infrastructure across the city for the next three years (SFMTA, 2019). I argue that the SFMTA has well-intentioned priorities of investing in cycling infrastructure, but has unfairly prioritized development in wealthy gentrified neighborhoods over outer neighborhoods lacking sufficient matching infrastructure to encourage the same rates of cycling.

As a direct result of redlining in the 20th century, urban spaces in the SF Bay area had become both centrally located and disinvested. While wealthier white families tended to move to sprawling suburbs, poorer families struggled to get loans and resided in urban centers. This practice has allowed for gentrification to take root in revitalizing these urban centers. Young, upwardly mobile new residents who are critical of suburban sprawl and car-centric transportation support key visible transformations to public spaces such as bicycle infrastructure and park

upgrades (Jackson, 1987). Bike lanes add value to their new residences and criticize suburban, car-centric living. This suggests bicycle advocates have been complicit in their desires to improve the livability of their new communities, but ignore the tension underscoring the gentrification process. In SF, gentrification and rent inflation has attracted new residents that are proponents for sustainable and inclusive transportation, but have only increased the divide between urban centers and outer city areas because few options for non-car commuting exist in outer city areas (Bardhan & Kroll, 2003). In order to reach SF urban centers, residents in outer counties must rely on less frequent bus systems or biking on unsafe roads (Stehlin, 2013). The number of bicycle commuters per day is on the order of thousands in the SF city center, but has seen an increase in number of bicycle commuters only in the hundreds in outer neighborhoods in the past ten years (SFMTA, 2019). The dense bicycle infrastructure development in San

Francisco has been a positive influence for attracting young professionals to serve the Silicon

Valley economic boom, but has produced an unfair side effect by further increasing class divides. Some bicycle advocates in other West Coast cities such as Portland argue that cities

“must start planning to serve the existing population,” and that “remaining communities are holding traffic justice hostage” (Hoffman, 2016). However, this mindset is allowing for housing injustices set post-WW2 to carry on into the present. Serving the new, wealthier population moving into cities does not mean that city planning officials should use cycling infrastructure technology as a tool to justify displacement of old residents. By the SCOT principle of symmetry, cycling infrastructure technology has failed to serve the populations it was designed for because the technology has been touted as environmentally friendly and economically valuable to young professionals, but physically uncompromising and not useful for displaced or marginalized residents. The SFMTA must consider both the physical and social implications of

implementing new bike lanes and racks, especially in dense city centers where some of the allocated funds might be better spent on establishing infrastructure on the fringes of SF city bounds.

In Minneapolis, evaluation techniques have rated it as a Platinum Level Bicycle-Friendly city, something only four other cities in the US (Madison, Boulder, Davis, and Portland) have achieved (League of American Bicyclists, 2015). A Bicycle-Friendly city uses qualitative principles of Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, Evaluation, and

Diversity/Inclusion to evaluate cities’ cycling infrastructure. Minneapolis government plans detail that bicyclists of different backgrounds and experiences should feel safe and comfortable biking throughout the city, and that neighborhood groups are sent letters by the city to ask if they would like to see bicycle infrastructure in their communities (Minneapolis City Council, 2011).

Other cities such as SF, NYC and LA have focused on a “Vision Zero” goal of eliminating the number of traffic deaths by increasing policing of traffic law (SFMTA, 2019). Vision Zero is a policy inspired by Scandinavian policies of redesigning roads to decrease vehicle-bicycle accidents and fatalities. It uses traffic statistics to drive bicycle infrastructure improvement

(Johansson, 2009). I argue that the decision to make bicycle infrastructure a quantitative choice of decreasing traffic deaths has masked the shortcoming of infrastructure in some cities to make cycling accessible and useful for everyone. Although these Vision Zero cities have succeeded in reducing traffic accidents through increased policing of traffic law, increased racial profiling reported by community members has not been reported in city evaluations (Bliss, 2016). It’s also worthy to note that Vision Zero cities consider only Engineering, Education, and Enforcement as pillars to follow. I propose that cycling infrastructure technology in all US cities needs to include widespread community surveys similar to those deployed in Minneapolis instead of relying on

policing and engineering to make cycling accessible to everyone. Vision Zero is a straightforward approach to building cycling infrastructure, but approaches utilized in

Minneapolis include all stakeholders affected by infrastructure changes.

Bike lanes are part of a larger issue of historical gentrification. They are a highly visible change to a community that has already undergone change to its buildings, storefronts, or apartment dwellings. Now that the buildings have changed, developing the roads is the next frontier. Bike lanes happen to be the component of improvement that city planners settle on, like a logical next step. Frustrated residents then voice their opinions after seeing unfavorable changes to their communities, and planning for bike lanes bear the weight of their discontent. I argue that bike lanes in cities such as SF did not cause historical redlining or gentrification, but they perpetuate suppression of the voices of marginalized people because they fail to serve them effectively. It is both a social and technological failure of bike lanes in gentrified areas to serve the whole population because these lanes do not physically or economically support all people who are interested in cycling and instead are used to promote economic growth potential, are advertised as sustainable and healthy, and use incomplete quantitative evaluation measures that mask historical class divides.

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