Separated Bike Track in Vancouver - Image Credit: Paul Kreuger
Common sense. In Taiwan I learned a Chinese expression that often comes to mind now: ”Fei whah.” It means “wasted breath.” Being forced to defend separated bicycle infrastructure (such as cycle tracks) as a critical part of basic urban transportation systems should come under the category of Fei Whah squared. It should be common sense.
I am a raging utopiholic, but I do try to sober up (on working days at least) and fake the temperance reality demands of those not fortunate enough to live in Portland (in Stumptown, God love it – temperance and reality remain irreconcilable). I realize that in any cause worth fighting for, dogged determination and well-organized action is required to make what should be obvious a reality. In fact, sadly, this always seems to be the case with even the most basic human rights and needs. [...]
It should have been self-evident that it was wrong for people of color to have been disenfranchised, segregated, and subjected to the myriad abuses they suffered in pre-seventies America. But it took the titanic struggle and pain of the Civil Rights Movement, and years of pertinacious labor, to affect even that most elemental of changes. And though that struggle has won major improvements, brought progressive core-level values changes, and a more enlightened way of thinking to our nation, it still finds itself guarding against regression and assaults from talking bags of assholes like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. So it is with almost all fundamental improvement for humanity here on this planet. It must be fought for, won, and then guarded.
Am I trying to equate separated bicycle infrastructure with the importance of the Civil Rights Movement? No. But the ability to move safely under your own power is a pretty basic right isn’t it? I am also saying it will require hard work and struggle to get it and keep it. I am saying that although safe bikeways are an obvious need, they will have to be won from a sometimes oppositional, mostly ignorant power structure.
I have blogged before about riding with my kids to one of Salem’s main parks. To get there we have to ride part of the way down Commercial Street NE, which has very heavy traffic that moves at a fairly high speed. Commercial Street, in fact, acts as a highway link-up from Interstate Five through to Highway Twenty Two and points east. To protect my family from the rushing cars and trucks moving over this stretch of road, the powers that be have given us a magic white line. It is about six inches wide. To the right of this white line we have been granted a few feet in which to bicycle (when a parked car, delivery truck, or trash can doesn’t occupy it).
I must (and do) trust that six-inch white line (and God) to keep my wife, kids, and self safe from car and truck drivers herding their metal boxes along, while some of them update their Facebook status, no doubt. That thin six inches of paint and the driver’s attention is all that keeps the hurtling metal and my family apart from each other. And some people say I am not a religious man!
Now I ask you, in the name of common sense and the mastery of the obvious, shouldn’t we really have a physical barrier there between some two to twenty tons of rolling metal and our so very breakable selves?
Elly Blue has written a great post for grist also demanding separated bicycle infrastructure and covering a recent study in Canada that shows people are much safer in them. There are also some other good studies that show that cycle tracks are effective and well received and that people are safer while riding in separated bicycle lanes. I think that’s great. I feel it’s unfortunate that we actually need them though. I must be on another utopi-bender. It should be palpably clear without the studies that people would be safer out of physical reach of vehicles while bicycling. Let’s promote the radical common sense of getting that done.
