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14
Bicycling and the Politics of Recognition
Yogi Hale Hendlin
As more people move to cities, and cars become viewed by many—especially younger generations—less as status symbols and more as unnecessary expenses leading to time spent in traffic, bicycling is experiencing a “renais- sance” in North America (Pucher, Buehler, and Seinen 2011). Yet, we can ask, how much of a cycling renaissance is there, really, since North American urban cycling remains dwarfed by European numbers? Furthermore, is this renaissance the result of urban planners reducing the barriers to urban cycling? Or, is this renaissance occurring despite the associated disadvantages and physical risks cycling poses? While cycling enables riders to engage in envir- onmentally friendly activities on a daily basis while also providing exercise and social connection and is viewed by citizens and social planners as
low-hanging fruit to reduce CO2 emissions (similar in positive environmental effects to minimizing air travel or adopting a vegetarian diet), it is uncertain that the costs and benefits of different modes of transportation (and the same mode of transportation for different users) are equitably apportioned. In this chapter, I examine contemporary trends in bicycling via a Los Angeles case study to assess how environmental this trend is, on the one hand, and how everyday it is, on the other. Cycling, it may turn out, isn’t always green in the sense of being good for the environment (e.g., chauffeuring one’s bicycle by car to a scenic cycling destination), and at other times, it may be good for the environment (in terms of not adding greenhouse gas emissions) but not so good for the cyclist (in terms of safety, inhaling polluted city air, encountering stigma, etc.). Systematic physical obstacles such as unsafe thoroughfares and a lack of cycling infrastructure also may impact who is riding a bike, and which citizens are inhibited from this mode of mobility freedom. Analyzing these axes through concrete examples deflates the notion of embracing cycling as a panacea for environmental and mobility issues without accompanied institu- tional shifts equitably lowering the hurdles to cycling. Parsing the various ways Comp. by: Jayapathirajan Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0002702591 Date:14/3/16 Time:20:33:12 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0002702591.3D Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 231 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 14/3/2016, SPi
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cycling is performed by different user groups, and how it is framed by policy and society for the positive public recognition of cyclists, admits a more exact assessment of its relationship to environmentalism.
14.1 Trendy or Travail?
Without underestimating the salutary environmental and social effects of the current good press and social bandwagoning for cycling, it should be recognized that there are both advantages and pitfalls to the current hype surrounding bicycling. Cycling is becoming cool: a “cultural icon,” used in commercials to sell other products, and flaunted as a wink to others signaling desired status as a member of one identity group or another (Friss 2015, 127). Cycling’s wide net accommodates identities ranging from environmental do- gooder or in-shape athlete to counterculture rebel, hipster, conscientious parent, and beyond. The same act of riding a bicycle, either for transport, recreation, sport, or status, carries divergent meanings depending on how it is performed and imagined by the user and recognized by the target peer group. Our modes of transportation propel distinct and diverse performances of identity, with each identity group creating and responding to attempts by other subgroups and society at large to congeal a particularized framing of the activity (Aldred 2012). For instance, commuters cycle as everyday transportation to get from point A to B, whereas hipsters may invest additional layers of political and social meaning with regard to their cycle use. While rich cyclists may spend as much money on their state-of-the-art bike as on a new car, driving to beautiful places to tour, and regarding the activity as a luxury and sport, many poor people bike out of absolute necessity as their only viable mode of transportation, while wishing to substitute their bike for a car. While all groups may enjoy the benefits of getting exercise from cycling, where they cycle, and the impact this has on their health varies widely. Some types of cycling may be good for the planet but not one’s health, and vice versa. While certain generalized public perceptions of cycling may be formed through political and social activity, these remain fragile. Attempting to cast cycling in a particular light, say, as a good recreational activity to maintain fitness, may disempower or ignore other groups of users, who might feel shame cycling because they do so only because they cannot afford a car. Stigma and coolness, or in more traditional terms, praise and blame, often govern the self-perceptions of transit users, and hence, the desirability of certain modes of transport. Especially since “slippage between group and self” identities occur, where one feels situated in a given cultural niche has important ramifications for engaging in actions such as cycling (Skinner and Rosen 2007, 84).
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This entails distinguishing the practice of cycling from its image. Whatever rising image cycling carries in certain subcultures—from elite sport cyclists to downtown hipsters, and increasingly in the media—the everyday lived experi- ence of cyclists is by no means one-dimensional. On roads built for cars, not for bicycles, cyclists exist still as de facto second-class citizens. Caught between the Scylla of the slow pedestrian-filled sidewalks, and the Charybdis of aggres- sively car-centric roads, actual experiences of cycling are often far from roman- tic. Instead, they are fueled by adrenaline and existential risk. This can even be compounded by what Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) director Jennifer Klausner (2014) calls “bikelash” (bike-directed backlash from car drivers): when:
[C]yclists suffer from a renegade image associated with disobedience of traffic laws, and a pervasive sense of cyclists as an alien presence on roads intended for cars. (Pucher, Komanoff, and Schimek 1999, 46)
Discrimination against cyclists on account of their perceived lower moral or economic standing is:
[H]eavily determined in relation to automobiles [such that even] utilitarian cyc- lists [or commuters] are variously seen as too poor to own a car, ‘anti-auto,’ eccentric, or deviant. (Pucher, Komanoff, and Schimek 1999, 46)
It is the thesis here that part of civic recognition means acknowledging the hardships cyclists suffer in a car-centric world, and part of (environmental) justice means taking deliberate and swift steps to rectify this discriminatory treatment.
14.2 Moving beyond Car Culture
Cycling, like driving, is enmeshed in a cultural web of signification that far exceeds the actual object or its function. Learning to ride a bicycle, for example, constitutes one of the few milestones in a secular Western upbring- ing. Unlike the roads cyclists encountered upon the first wave of riding when the modern bicycle was invented, today it is impossible to speak about bikes without reference to cars. Over the last hundred years cars have ruled the roads, granting cycling little latitude to freely compete as a viable form of mobility.1 Car-centrism pervades our present culture to such a degree that we often are unaware how deeply it affects our daily life and decisions.
1 The movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? tells in comic fashion the dark history of what is known as the Great American Streetcar Scandal, when General Motors and oil barons bought up the light rail and viable public transport systems in Los Angeles and other US cities, only to dismantle them (Snell 1974).
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Coming to terms with the immense penetration of the car as the mobility- orienting principle for thought and action is a first step in being able to overcome its hegemonic effects. Bohm and colleagues write:
Automobility is one of the principal socio-technical institutions through which modernity is organized. It is a set of political institutions and practices that seek to organize, accelerate and shape the spatial movements and impacts of automobiles, whilst simultaneously regulating their many consequences. It is also an ideological or discursive formation, embodying ideals of freedom, privacy, movement, pro- gress and autonomy ...through which its principal technical artifacts—roads, cars, etc.—are legitimized. Finally, it entails a phenomenology, a set of ways of experiencing the world which serve [ ] to legitimize its dominance ...Together these apparently diverse strands comprise an understanding of automobility that is irreducible to the automobile. (2006, 3)
It is in such a car-centric context that the possibilities and obstacles to a cycling renaissance must be appraised. It is important to remember that:
[C]ycling has been made difficult and unlikely through a series of structural decisions that place cars at the center, thereby pushing most people toward automobiles. (Williams 2010, 247)
That is, preferences to drive rather than ride aren’t simply sui generis decisions, but instead are manufactured, at least in part, by the various social “nudges” promoting or impeding what are considered valid mobility possibilities.2 A civic-phenomenological account of what it is like to be in a car in a city versus on a bike or using public transport can illuminate the political conse- quences of different modes of travel. In a car, a hermetically sealed box with the windows up, the external world can be safely ignored (with the exception of not getting in an accident). One is not required to engage in interactions with the outside world if these are not wished. Serendipity and chance cease to play a role in the car-oriented world, at least in positive terms. Interaction with one’s fellow citizens becomes optional rather than a given necessity for get- ting along in shared public space. One can go from apartment to car park to car to car park at work and back again without smelling the quality of the air, catching the eye of a fellow traveler, or hearing whether the birds are singing in the trees. Automobiles, as a mode of personal transportation that seals one off from the outside world, do not foster trust-building dialogue and political or social interactions with strangers—the predicates of a healthy, functioning democracy (Allen 2004).
2 A “nudge,” according to Thaler and Sunstein (2008), is a set of policies, beliefs, and social constraints that systematically favor certain options over others. Rather than the bald claim of market liberalism that people do whatever their preferences are, the authors highlight the fact that how a society and its regulations are designed has strong and lasting effects, funneling decisions into certain “default” choices rather than others.
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That car drivers can retreat from environmental harms though the private “personal commodity bubbles” of their vehicle (Szasz 2007, 97), but cyclists have no choice but to breathe the public externality of exhaust, also extends the question of civic sacrifice to urban mobility practices. The privilege over and against cyclists some drivers may feel and exhibit has significant and direct impacts on cyclists’ real and perceived safety. Beliefs that roads are made for cars and that cyclists ride as interlopers at their own peril, the road realpolitik of biggest-vehicle-wins forcing cyclists to accommodate for passing automobiles rather than vice versa, drivers’ indignation at being delayed to wait until it is safe to pass a cyclist, and even feelings of superiority due to projecting negative identity traits on someone who would be forced to or choose to cycle rather than drive a car—all provoke divisive effects. Automobility portrays a textbook example of what Andrew Szasz (2007) calls an “inverted quarantine.” Rather than attempting to contain environ- mental harms and preventing their spread as a quarantine does, the inverted quarantine abandons the political possibility of collectively rectifying envir- onmental or social wrongs to instead take private measures insulating oneself from the negative impacts of a degrading “default” world.3 Inverted quaran- tine consumption elides the public dimension of problems and instead places the burden for coping with public threats on the purse strings and conscience of private individuals. Critical theory’s attention to the topic of alienation suggests that the less mediation and armoring insulation, the more that agent must confront and deal with her or his surroundings—for better or worse. If ambient conditions are pleasant and vivifying, then cyclists enjoy the fruits of the outdoors, the fresh air, and the elements, even if they may enliven one’s senses in bitter- sweet ways, like cycling through the first rain of a season, or making one’s way through softly falling snow. However, if one’s environment is abrasive or even toxic—filled with smog and air pollution as in big cities like LA or Beijing, or lacking bicycle paths free from precariously close auto traffic—then a traveler without the mediation of the enclosed vehicle suffers inordinately for the choice or necessity to move through life without an insulated personal com- modity bubble. Car use can be understood as part of a larger civic enclosure movement (Norton 2011), shutting public interaction outside one’s social circle and further contributing to pollution, reinforcing the desire to enjoy the muffled and recycled air of a (social-)climate-controlled environment. Conversely, cycling opens the physical and social encasements to sense the pulse of the polity on a more immediate and bodily level. Cycling and public
3 By “default” here I mean the standard option with which those unable or unwilling to buy into the premium option are left (e.g., “conventional” fruit versus organic).
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transportation can break us out of denialism and isolation, working against the “political anesthesia” that occurs when, through inverse quarantining, we become less and less connected with the actual lived experiences of the majority of our fellow denizens (Szasz 2007, 194). Freeing ourselves from isolated spaces and having direct experiences with the kaleidoscope of our social and environmental surroundings can stimulate political animation for collective action.
14.3 Cyclists as Second-Class Citizens
Since its inception as a popular mode of transport, cycling has been socially disruptive by virtue of its equalizing effects. Susan B. Anthony’s opinion of the bicycle in relation to the suffrage movement of the 1890s was that “it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world” (Bly 1896, 10). This link between freedom of mobility and freedom simpliciter, the equal freedom of travel for those previously restricted in movement is a reoccurring cycling theme. But while many gladly ride a bicycle, the structure of our cities and neighborhoods built up around the car stand as a formidable barrier to safe and easy pedal-powered navigation. In most places, urban planners have stacked the cards against cyclists, and as a result, have failed to recognize their equal purchase to the public service of thoroughfares. The sacrifices cyclists shoulder in exposing themselves to the perils of riding tacked-on infrastructure, pressed within inches against cars more than a hun- dred times their weight and going many times their velocity, matter; however overlooked they may be. Under most circumstances, cyclists are treated even by the nicest of automobile users as second-class citizens whose safety takes a backseat to the expediencies of automobility. Such a status is concretized in insufficient infrastructure, presenting cyclists few options to safely and unob- trusively ride. Sacrifice in politics, and especially environmental politics, is always already happening. But personal sacrifices are rarely equally distributed, and often, not even acknowledged; mainly, because many long-standing sacrifices are so routinized as to become illegible to those unencumbered by structural injust- ices. Recognizing these injustices and the unequal sacrifices particular groups of citizens make in the prevailing social order is a first step in “[O]pen[ing] a discussion about social and political change that might lessen or redistribute its burden, thereby enabling more effective environmental action” (Meyer 2010, 21). Politically, acknowledging cyclists’ sacrifice of engaging in marginalized mobility entails instituting redistribution of lopsided burdens through recip- rocal sacrifice in terms of lower speed limits, more safe bike infrastructure
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even if it reduces the breadth of car infrastructure, and so on. Remedying a history of one-way deference, reciprocal deference is the very stuff of civil life, and is premised on the idea that no arbitrary attribute or possession should warrant establishing relationships of de facto or de jure superiority and inferiority; especially when those discriminated against are engaged in actions like cycling that ostensibly have positive rather than negative externalities. Cycling through the streets of contemporary North America, one has the “opportunity” to experience what it is like to be a second-class citizen, espe- cially for those normally accustomed to unearned social privilege. While for many cyclists who already feel judged on a daily basis because of their appear- ance or status this additional layer with the role of cycling only compounds insult to injury, others (especially say, white, middle-class, heterosexual males) who rarely have felt marginalized or worth less on the basis of their social station or body have the profound chance to experience a taste of role- reversal: what it is like to walk around (or bike around, as the case may be) life without the insulating cover of privilege. One might even venture that, more than any other activity engaged in, and on a daily basis, cycling disrupts people—often comfortable, well-heeled people—from their personal commodity bubble of organic food (in a global- izing two-tiered food system), filtered (or worse, bottled) water, gentrified neighborhoods, and well-rutted political, social, and psychological comfort zones. Many commuters who normally enjoy status and privilege in their society may be shocked to repeatedly experience the stigma of being threat- ened and scorned while riding a bicycle in a major car-centric city (Aldred 2012). Conversely, riders of all backgrounds in well-groomed and respectful cycle-centric cities (like Portland or San Francisco) may experience a feeling of freedom and respect seldom encountered in other life roles. Thus, depending on the ambient circumstances, cycling can at times expose the privileged to a similar firsthand perspective to those marginalized in society, and allow the marginalized to feel the privilege of freedom and recognition by participating in a normal activity that happens to have gained social merit and visibility as an act of social-environmental civic virtue. It is precisely this perspective swapping that is crucial for a vital democracy, allowing citizens to begin to see from the other’s perspective, building empathy and solidarity through shared experience (Allen 2004).4
4 Of course, one cannot compare the discrimination a cyclist faces on the streets with that of someone who, at the end of the day, remains with their class, gender, sex, or skin color, as the privileged cyclist can hop in a car or get off and walk and reassume whatever advantages society confers. But, insofar as cyclists’ lives are in continual danger on many streets, there is a silver lining for civic solidarity in the action of cycling.
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14.4 Bicycling and the Natural Environment
Bicycling is one of the most immediate experiences many people have with their environment on an everyday basis. It enables an interface with the non- built environment in an immediate yet casual way. Nature or wilderness need not be the destination to enjoy or react to the scenery in a much more embodied and sensorial way (smelling, hearing, sometimes tasting or touch- ing plants or trees, in addition to the visual). From a bicycle, nature enjoyment can be passive, without losing its intensity or meaning. Cycling also entails positive environmental and social side effects, and its popularity appears correlated with healthy environmental and social condi- tions. But how to increase this hale activity? City planners refer to this phenomenon as “the chicken or the egg problem” (e.g., Register 2006): greener cities with better air quality, public safety, and cycling infrastructure are conducive for a more egalitarian distribution of cyclists; that is, cyclist demographics surpassing only young male risk-takers. Likewise, cities with higher and more diverse ridership provoke more human-scaled planning, integrate work/home/shopping opportunities in closer proximity, and put infrastructural muscle into promoting modes of transport other than just cars. In the words of a well-known activist (bike) bumper sticker, “One Less Car” has far-reaching positive externalities, benefiting the acting individual (e.g., exercise, low-cost mobility), and one’s fellow denizens (e.g., less pollution).5 And these positive externalities persist even if one does not intentionally cycle for these salutary or altruistic reasons. Conversely, the reversal—going from a bicycle-centered culture to a car-centered one—trending currently in China and many other developing countries—has far-reaching negative environ- mental (and social) externalities, as China’s smog-suffocated and class- stratified megacities attest. An indicator of environmental health and awareness, cycling also appears to be an agent for propagating environmental and social goods. A recent US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) report found a decrease of driving and an increase of cycling in ninety-nine out of a hundred of the US’s most populous cities (Davis and Baxandall 2013). Furthermore, the study found that the decrease in car use—often dismissed as a by-product of higher gas prices and a recession—varied inversely to how hard the cities were hit by the 2008 recession. Those cities with the largest reductions in automobile use, and the greatest growth in cycling and public transport use, showed the most resiliency to the economic downturn, proving that reduced consumption
5 For instance, the city of Copenhagen calculated that residents choosing cycling over driving saves the city 43 million dollars a year in reducing wear, congestion, and pollution on its streets (Wiking 2011).
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alone is not the only driver of these phenomena. Increased cycling itself may both be a sign of and contribute to economic resiliency, as well as adding greater environmental sustainability. Many cyclists in high-income big cities with poor public transportation like Los Angeles own a car in addition to their bicycle(s). In cities with better public transportation, like New York and the Bay Area, one can get by quite well without a car, and many individuals, even those earning six-figures, simply do without for social and environmental reasons, or simply because they wish to avoid the hassle of parking, insurance, traffic, and so on. As part of the collaborative consumption movement, most major cities currently streamline brief-use car rental for formalized car sharing, simplifying trips to the coun- tryside or moving one’s apartment. This permits opting-out of car ownership as the norm and encourages the habituation of denizens to cycling for every- day transportation.6 In such cases, cycling as a primary form of transportation does not translate into being locked into certain constricted possibilities or economic class profiles. With a portfolio of mobility options, the three- dimensionality of cycling makes it a viable mode of transport. Returning to this chapter’s opening question examining the relationship between city planning and bicycle use in conjunction with the equitable distribution of the manifold costs of transport, Rietveld and Daniel (2004) point to six major factors (or costs) determining cycle use: travel time, physical needs (comfort), traffic safety, risk of bike theft, monetary costs of bike use, and feeling safe from violence at all hours of riding. Different users evaluate these costs differently, and it is important for city planners to recognize that some populations are more impacted (have higher costs) by certain factors than others. Conversely, Moudon and colleagues’ (2005) qualitative research claims that cycling in cities without extraordinary infrastructure (representa- tive of most cities in the US including Los Angeles) is not a function of urban planning factors such as safe paths and dedicated bike lanes or the presence of parks, but rather individual choice and determination. It is likely that what is included in the category “personal choice” is affected, consciously or not, by many of the factors Rietveld and Daniel point out; but both studies overlook environmental effects or citizen recognition and interactivity, two factors I take to be crucial. Examining the following case of cycling in Los Angeles
6 An article on the app-driven citizen-taxi service Uber recently described a San Francisco start- up company CEO who traded in his BMW to instead use Uber as an ersatz default transport mode. While not mentioning bicycles, the article did discuss the rising popularity in cities for alternative models to car ownership, eschewing associated economic, time, and worry—not to mention environmental—costs (Voytek 2013). For a broader look on the evolving sharing economy of “collaborative consumption” that allows people to use (rent, share, trade, etc.) without the depreciation and waste of ownership, see Botsman and Rogers (2010).
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in section 14.5 can aid in discerning the relevance of genuine recognition going hand in hand with realistic cycling policy.
14.5 The Los Angeles Case Study
When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa returned from the December 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Fifteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP15) summit in Copen- hagen, he brought back with him surging excitement for cycling, having visited a European city where more than 40 percent of all local trips are made by bicycle. His excitement for cycling as an elegantly integrated part of city planning led him to bicycle in his own city, where he subsequently fell and fractured his elbow, further radicalizing his conviction for the need to develop extensive and safe cycling infrastructure in America’s most car-centric city. Mayor Villaraigosa promised the development of 40 miles of new bike lanes per year, and between 2005 and 2012, cycling in LA increased by 67 percent (League of American Bicyclists 2014). But many barriers to cycling persist, bearing ramifying social consequences. The LACBC, along with the City of Los Angeles, cobbled together the 2010 Bicycle Master Plan, and undertook the first Los Angeles Bicycle and Pedes- trian Count (LABPC) in 2009, according to National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project standards.7 While in Europe and elsewhere urban planning involves extensive research on bicycle transportation, many US Departments of Transportation at all levels of government have neglected to suitably and systematically study non-automobile transportation. For this reason, the LACBC as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) undertook the LABPC study in cooperation with local governmental agencies, but with- out their coordination or financial support. Since 2009’s baseline study, every two years, so far in 2011, 2013, and 2015, the LABPC has been conducted with increased institutional and community support, public–private partnerships, and specificity.8
7
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The results are telling: While hundreds of miles of new lanes have been implemented since the first count in 2009:
[M]ost of these miles have consisted of bike lanes “where they fit” and sharrows where bike lanes don’t. The result has been a somewhat fragmented bicycle network primarily designed to avoid impacts to motor vehicle delay rather than designed to meet the needs of people who want to ride a bike. (LACBC 2014, 3)
Ridership is up, but recognition is down. Cluing in on the disaggregated data reveals telling inequalities. Dispro- portionate increases in ridership occur on improved streets, doubling rider- ship on streets with bike paths between 2013 and 2011, whereas during the same period streets without cyclinginfrastructurewitnessedamere 7.5 percent increase (LACBC 2014). Additionally, while only 8 percent of counted locations were dedicated bike paths removed from automobile traffic, 25 percent of the total number of cyclists were counted on bike paths—considerably more than less cycling-sanctioning street improve- ments. Safe, Netherlands-styled physically separated paths are, for a variety of reasons, greatly preferred by cyclists to sharing unmarked roads with cars, sharrows (street markings of arrows designating that cars must “share the road” with cyclists), or even marked but not physically divided bike lanes between car and bike traffic. This points to the factor of physical safety for all, not just the risk-resistant, as playing a major role in encouraging cycling. In a major step in this direction, the US Federal Highway Commission’s 2015 Separated Bike Lane Planning and Design Guide has finally signed US planners up for implementing separated bike lanes (paths), recognizing this essential component to increasing cycling amongst non-risk-taking popula- tions (FHWA 2015). While, according to the US Census’s American Community Survey, only 1 percent of all trips made in LA during 2012 were on a bicycle (League of American Bicyclists 2014), such unreliable statistics based on a random sample of self-reporting must be taken with a grain of salt. (LA city-run statistics, for example, show cycling and public transportation use comprising 19 percent of all trips (LACBC 2014).) Rather than set up advanced technological infrastruc- ture to measure cyclist density along with cars, as most European countries do (Ryus et al. 2014), the US government and most states and cities have been slow to adopt the proper procedures to assess actual cycling and pedestrian trends. But a problem with reporting is that even when public agencies do fulfill their due diligence in surveying cyclists and pedestrian trips, what counts as a trip on bike or foot might be discounted for short distances (Clifton and Muhs 2012). Walking or biking a few blocks to the supermarket may not seem noteworthy for many citizens, and hence not reportable. But if they had instead taken a car for such a short trip as some people do, and
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clogged up the streets, adding to the air pollution, then ironically, such an action would be more likely counted as a “trip.” Funding is also a major problem. Like many motorist-centered cities, Los Angeles spends only 1 percent of transportation funding on cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, despite the fact that 19 percent of all trips are made either by bicycle or on foot (LACBC 2014, 15). In contrast, the cities of Portland, Oregon, and New York have aggressively retooled to accomplish human-scaled cyclist and pedestrian-centric urban planning as part of a com- mitment to learn and respect the myriad needs of diverse bicycle users (Klausner 2014).
14.6 Women as an “Indicator Species”
Attesting to the lower-risk tolerance of females, LACBC’s findings echo similar reports in other US cities of a 10 percent female cyclist ridership on regular city streets while, on dedicated bike paths, one in four cyclists are female. The LABPC 2011 report states:
The percentage of female cyclists counted at intersections with some form of bicycle infrastructure was 19%, more than double the percentage observed at intersections without any kind of infrastructure (9%). It would seem that the rate of female ridership is related to the presence of bicycling infrastructure, particularly Class I or II bikeways. (LACBC 2012, 21)
This question of safety appears especially important. The presence of robust bicycle infrastructure also translates into a higher rate of female ridership, increased helmet use, and decreased sidewalk riding (LACBC 2014). The most heavily utilized thoroughfares are those with either Class I (physically separ- ated bike paths) or Class II bikeways (designated bike lane). Streets that received Class II infrastructure between 2009 and 2011 saw the most substan- tial jumps in ridership. On the other hand, Class III bikeways (sharrows or signage only) show little increase in ridership over the numbers on unim- proved streets (LACBC 2012, 28). It also turns out that female ridership is tied to rider perceptions of safety. Linda Baker (2009) calls women “an ‘indicator species’” for city safety due to their higher risk-adverseness; where the male-to-female rider ratio is sharply skewed, the city most likely provides inadequately safe lanes for cyclists, bearing a car-centric rather than cycle-friendly signature (Garrard, Rose, and Lo 2008). In bike-friendly Netherlands, for example, 55 percent of riders are female, and in Germany 49 percent are (Garrard, Rose, and Lo 2008). In car-centric LA, only 15 percent of all riders are women (LACBC 2014). Clearly, safe streets for cyclists is a social justice issue for women, and for risk-adverse
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populations such as older or differently abled citizens and families with children. Bicycle-friendly city planning makes a big difference, enabling cyc- ling to be accessible for populations beyond just the young, courageous, and helmeted (Naparstek 2006). Garrard, Rose, and Lo (2008) found that female cyclists are particularly sensitive to “‘concerns about cycling in traffic’ and ‘aggression from motor- ists’,” and that dedicated separate bicycle paths (Class I infrastructure) also proved to be the routes where the female-to-male riding ratios are the most equitable (Garrard, Rose, and Lo 2008, 55). Since there is also a strong positive correlation between the overall prevalence of cycling in society and the rate of female cycling (Garrard, Rose, and Lo 2008), it would seem that perceived and real safety for cyclists must be attended to in any just urban plan. And these conclusions that freedom from harm in the form of dedicated separate bike lanes encourages ridership among the more risk-averse population of female riders also have implications for encompassing other risk-averse populations. As long as urban cycling in the US remains a high-risk sport rather than an equally protected form of mobility, the freedom of mobility that comes with cycling remains limited to risk-ready, desperate, or resource-rich individuals.
14.7 Conclusion
The experience of cycling and its presence in our streets disrupts common categories of privilege and marginalization, visibility and invisibility, activism and complacency. The freedom of mobility and social and environmental attractiveness of cycling lubricates the gears of politics in a bottom-up way, allowing pro-cycling social movements to transform mobility from a personal issue and “redefine it as social or collective in origin” (Szasz 2007, 239). Although the first signs of a cycling renaissance in North America are evident, equitable urban mobility needs dedicated infrastructural reprioritiza- tions constitutively reflecting the claims of its cycling denizens. Currently, bicycling is “unfashionable” for aspiring Chinese, and if infrastructure is built on fashion rather than political values like justice, citizens suffer unfortunate results (Yang et al. 2012, 3):
After 1980, the bicycle, a Chinese cultural icon, came to represent Chinese back- wardness. As China looked westward for the secrets of economic success and social sophistication, China's post-1980 generation developed a subliminal shame toward things intrinsically “Chinese” as well as an appetite for consumption. When asked if she’d like to go on a romantic bike ride, dating show contestant Ma Nuo caused an uproar in the Chinese media and blogosphere in 2010 with her tart retort, “I’d rather cry in the back of a BMW than smile on a bicycle.” (Wetherhold 2012)
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How we deal with mobility reflects our values. Chinese cyclists are losing their rights and access to roads at the same time that North American cyclists are gaining them, but in both cases the common denominator in question is justice. Attention to shared and reciprocal deference, rather than entrenching inequalities and unearned privilege is as important for public goods like safe transportation opportunities as it is for other political freedoms. “[O]rdinary habits are the stuff of citizenship,” Allen affirms, suggesting an interplay between personal habits and institutional health (2004, 12; emphasis in original). As Timms, Tight, and Watling (2014) point out, most visions of the future center on “dystopic avoidance” rather than utopian realization. Rather than imagining desirable ideals of future city circulation, urban planners instead commonly engage in backcasting, predicting default future scenarios through extrapolating current trends. To innovate moral and political interactions in accordance with environmental justice requires an enlarged imagination of mobility including visions of equally attractive and tenable car-free mobility options, rather than a tacit yet fatalistic acceptance of the status quo. Urban planning commitments to accommodate bicycles on city streets col- lides with a seeming unwillingness to fundamentally alter business-as-usual car- centric-accustomed urban planning strategies. Trying to squeeze bike-friendly infrastructure into the interstices of car-centric cities misses the velocipede point. Sticking bike lanes in the emergency parking zones between parked cars (with drivers opening their doors) and 50 mph traffic is a dangerous “solution” that pretty much insures that only risk-takers will frequent such routes. Cycling is (environmentally) transformative rather than merely peripheral for city plan- ning only insofar as cities reconceive and restructure actual public land. Increased cycling brings multitudes of positive externalities including envir- onmental ones, even if early adopters of cycling in inhospitable environments suffer undue harms as they pave the way for cycling as an everyday activity for risk-averse citizens (Weichenthal et al. 2011). Early adopters are less risk-averse than second-wave cyclists who inherit the improved infrastructure and motorist education that comes with acclimatization to cyclists as a normal part of road traffic. Traffic calming techniques, such as lowering speed limits or installing physical barriers separating bicycle-dedicated paths, have positive externalities for public safety and environmental health. Furthermore, as more politically “respectable” and leverage-wielding populations begin regu- larly cycling, their demands for more safety and increased infrastructure have (unfortunately but often) proportionally larger policy outcomes that result in city planning based less on the policy fulcrum of the car—and more on bicyclists, pedestrians, and mass transit. The virtuous circle of increased cyc- ling, in the best cases, leads to better city infrastructure to support cycling and green space, removing the barriers of personal risk to allow the normalization
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of cycling as a valued activity and viable mode of transport for women, children, the elderly, and other populations. Refocusing cycling as an aspir- ational mobility mode and identity also lightens the stigma of cycling for those reliant upon it. Publicly exposing oneself to actual outside conditions, rather than remain- ing inside one’s constructed quarantine, allows for a more honest assessment of public priorities. Engagement with other citizens holding differing opin- ions, as well as with the natural world, harnesses broader perspectives for interpreting our own roles and identities. Contact with the outside world (both environmental and social), beyond our bias-confirming routine, gains us the treasure of entertaining new possibilities for our personal and social identity. Bicycling accomplishes this.
Bibliography
Aldred, Rachel. 2012. “Incompetent or too competent? Negotiating everyday cycling identities in a motor dominated society,” Mobilities 8 (2): 252–71. Allen, Danielle S. 2004. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baker, Linda. 2009. “How to get more bicyclists on the road.” Scientific American. September 21. Available at:
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LACBC (Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition). 2014. LA Bike and Ped Count, 2013: Findings and Recommendations, ed. Eric Bruins and Peter Soderberg, May 12. Avail- able at:
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Wetherhold, Sherley. 2012. “The bicycle as symbol of China’s transformation.” The Atlantic. June 30. Available at:
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