A quick comment on Waxman-Markey and logic

Something that visitors here might be interested in reading: Over at good old Blog Meridian, I have a post up on illogical--but sound--reasons for supporting Waxman-Markey (the huge cap-and-trade/renewable energy bill that just passed the House of Representatives. Here's an excerpt:

If you've read this blog for a while, you've probably figured out without my telling you that I'm in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the complex cap-and-trade, reduction-in-carbon-based energy, investment-in-alternate-energy legislation that just passed the House of Representatives and faces an admittedly uncertain future in the Senate. My reasons for supporting it, though, include one that may surprise many of you, given that a) it's not usually one that comes up in the debates about the bill and b) that its source is John McCain.

I'll talk about (b) first because it will lead inexorably to (a). At some point during last year's campaign (the primaries, I believe), during a debate when the question was about climate change legislation, McCain said something to the effect that even if reducing carbon emissions does little or no good in affecting what may after all be a naturally-occurring phenomenon, there are still-indisputable goods to be obtained by passing such legislation: a cleaner, healthier environment and greater self-sufficiency (political as well as economic) due to reduced dependency on foreign oil. I agreed with very little McCain offered up as reasons to vote for him, but on these points, at least, he was absolutely right (and would be now, if he still felt it expedient to make them). However, it's equally indisputable that one reason these points don't get raised is that, as desirable as these things are, you can't quantify them so as to include them in any of the various cost-benefit analyses being offered up in support of or against Waxman-Markey. Thus, they become inadmissible as evidence.

Just once, I wish someone would come along and say, When clean-water and clean-air legislation were enacted in the '70s, businesses pitched fits about their increased costs and having to pass those costs on to consumers. Well, sure: and as a result we pay more because businesses were forced to change behavior they were very likely not to have changed out of the goodness of their hearts (because there was a time when it cost literally nothing to dump waste as people saw fit, air and soil and water quality be damned--and it showed, I well remember those days). But is anyone opposed to Waxman-Markey, or anyone opposed to "excessive government regulation," seriously going to argue that that our quality of life would be better if not for the creation of the EPA, given the clear road we'd been heading down? The resounding No we'd hear, true, doesn't fit into a strict cost-benefit analysis, but the fact that it shows people prefer--and benefit from--cleaner air and water surely needs to figure into this debate. Or have our cleaner air and water become such givens (the '60s and '70s becoming ever more distant memories for many of us) that they strangely seem negligible as a consideration?

Front Porch Cycle Chic: A bicycle on every autarchist's front porch

[Welcome, visitors from Streetsblog(!), which was kind enough to honor this post with a plug on its current front page [update: and welcome to visitors from Carbon Trace, too]. I hope you enjoy your visit.]

The Roberts and Gregory families, Kentucky, early 20th century. Click on image to enlarge. Image found here.

What follows isn't exactly a continuation of yesterday's post. It's more like a picking up of another thread and unraveling a perfectly good idea from Front Porch Republic so as to hastily (and, no doubt, clumsily) re-weave it here in combination with other recent concerns of mine as a garment to hang in cycling's metaphysical closet. I'm not sure, incidentally, whether the following, famous injunction from Thoreau's Walden--"I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes"--implicitly condones or condemns that re-weaving. But if the latter, I take some presumptuous hope from George Bernard Shaw's statement, "All great truths begin as blasphemies."

Enough preambling. On with the ambling.

One of the central causes of what the writers of Front Porch Republic contend is our current cultural and political predicament is a perversion of our understanding of property and the resulting policies and politics arising from that perversion. This matter gets addressed directly in James Matthew Wilson's "The Need for Autarchy": Following Hannah Arendt, Wilson argues that that perversion is the result of "the specious conflation of the idea of private property (which Aquinas was right in defending as necessary to a good society) with that nefarious invention of modern usury, unlimited wealth accumulation." Here's Arendt, as quoted by Wilson:

Private property is not a euphemism for anything I happen to acquire, but a reference to the place in the world that is necessarily mine if I am not to be reduced to dependence on another. The way to secure such property is not usually to expand it and widen its frontiers (though that may sometimes be the case), but to fortify it, to fill it with the productive means necessary to maintain it and for it to maintain me. That kind of security and self-sufficiency-in a word, autonomy and autarchy-requires stewardship and conservation rather than expansion and avarice. Such virtues serve the purpose of having the property remain my property with a permanence approximating to the solidity of its literal foundations. [. . . ] [W]e reply to the capitalist that he does not defend private property but, instead, rationalizes endless wealth accumulation, and in so doing he does not defend the one, best hope for the wide distribution of private property. He advocates, rather, the source of its usurpation and dissolution.

Wilson then sums up Arendt's argument: Private property, once freed of market capitalism's co-opting of it, "is a public good but also provides for the individual household the basis for what is itself a great good, the foundation of a family’s liberty: autarchy [which literally translates from the Greek as "self-sufficiency" and thus is not to be confused with "autocracy"]. And the autarchy of the family household, I contend, is the analogous foundation, the microcosmic model, for still another public good: the sorely needed autarchic independence of our country." (Wilson's italics)

So: what does all this have to do with cycling in particular and, more broadly, issues of livability?

In the first "Front Porch Cycle Chic" post, I noted toward the end that "bicycles' practicality and portability create that version of independence that arises not from mere mobility but from self-reliance in all its senses." Surely one of those senses--or, perhaps, better put, that which is essential to self-reliance--is self-sufficiency. The automobile, while it evokes in the American psyche images of freedom and independence, in fact requires a massive, state- and corporate-maintained infrastructure in order to sustain those images on a mass scale; paradoxically, then, car culture has made us more dependent on both government and business, and less self-sufficient. Moreover--just to revisit the picture you see here within this slightly different context--car culture is both symptom and cause of our consumerist mindset: the automobile consumes and occupies those resources known as raw materials and not just the physical space it happens to occupy but, by extension, the physical space the automobile's infrastructure occupies as well: not just roads and parking lots, but car dealerships and repair shops, gas stations (and, for that matter, a goodly proportion of the petrochemical industry) and, in a more virtual way, the state bureaucracy devoted to the regulation of automobiles--even, indirectly, the space and resources occupied and consumed by the fast-food industry. Yet, as the events of the past year have made abundantly and painfully clear, if no one is interested in buying cars anymore--at least, not this country's current version of cars--suddenly they don't seem nearly as essential as they once did . . . even as their revenue-generating centrality to both commerce and the state has likewise become painfully clear via the loss of much of that revenue. The centrality of car culture to American life thus encroaches on the individual's access to private property as defined by Arendt; moreover, the direct and indirect expense of participating in that culture puts at risk our independence (both individual and national) from others--if not actively excluding many from autnomous participation in it by forcing them into dependence upon others.

As I have mentioned before, it was last summer, when I really paid attention to the fact that many of Wichita's street people and working-class folks use bicycles, that cycling revealed its practicality as transportation to me. Without at all meaning to suggest that we should not be concerned for the welfare of these people, clearly bicycles make their lives a little easier than they would be otherwise: they can cover more ground in search of work and shelter; and, as cheap as bus fare is, owning bicycles allows them to save that money for food and other expenses. A reorientation in our collective thinking in the direction of cycling as practical personal transportation and, at the governmental level, a rethinking of infrastructure (in the form of retrofitting existing streets, planning future streets, encouraging high-density, mixed-use development and discouraging suburban sprawl via zoning and mass transit) would, first of all, have the effect of freeing up some of the space and resources car culture demands. That freed-up space thus becomes more truly public in that greater numbers of people can utilize it. Granted, public space, very broadly defined, is not private property, but in its status as commonly-held property it enriches us, at its best, in a way best described as "aesthetic": culturally, intellectually, emotionally.

[Just a quick aside here: My misgivings about Critical Mass as a concept are connected to this idea. If it's an assumption of Critical Mass that motorists monopolize public roads at the expense (and to the endangerment) of cyclists and pedestrians and thus, in political terms, constitute a tyranny--one I don't necessarily disagree with--it's counterproductive to what should be cyclists' larger cause, gaining and earning the respect of motorists as equal users of those roads, when Critical Mass events in other areas (I cannot speak of Wichita's Critical Mass), at their worst, supplant the tyranny of motorists with a tyranny of cyclists. The fact that it occurs for a few hours on one Friday night a month doesn't make it any less tyrannical. Public space by definition should--and must--always be safely open and accessible to all who seek to use it.]

So, then, due to their lower costs and vastly-reduced demands for resources and infrastructure, the increased and encouraged ownership and use of bicycles presents itself as a means by which many, many more of us can enhance our holdings of private property as Arendt defines that term: that which frees us of dependency on others. At the same time, I'd like to suggest, larger numbers of folks going about their daily business by bicycle also fosters a stronger sense of and appreciation for place and, ideally, can lead to an enhancement of that place's self-sufficiency, its autarchy. In "Cycling in the rain" I try to make the case that cycling by its very nature shapes the cyclist's thinking according to a localist bent. By way of winding up that post's recognition of the Delano District's need of one/a few small full-service grocery store(s), I wrote:

No: cycling can't make corner markets appear in a neighborhood. But I think that cyclists, by being alert to and patronizing their neighborhoods' products and services, can play a role in affirming the community as a place unto itself, with a measure of (economic) sovereignty relative to the city that surrounds it. To tar with a broad brush: cars encourage us to leave the immediate area, to perhaps even see that space as in some way lacking, and don't encourage us to get to know the neighbors--they insulate us from a community's "weather," from its nature. Bicycles encourage their riders to take stock of that same area's resources and, at least in my own brief experience as a cyclist, to see it as richer than they once thought it to be. Far from being "flat" economically, the business topography of healthy communities is varied and often surprising.

Car culture, and all that car culture hath wrought, will not disappear any time soon. But it seems clear that in the decades to come it will not be as pervasive a presence as it currently is; it will no longer be the designated driver, as it were, of the thinking behind infrastructure decisions. Given the enormous individual and collective costs of car culture, I am far from mourning this. So, while I share much of the collective dismay of those over at Front Porch Republic regarding the enormous economic, political and cultural mess in which we find ourselves, I also see signs--and, via the seat of my bicycle, some of the means by which--we can begin to work our way out of those messes . . . and reinvigorate our understanding of and appreciation for community and, in the bargain, become more individually and collectively self-sufficient.

UPDATE: Here is Andy's Springfield-centric version of what I'm after and will pursue in a future post. Thanks again, Andy, for the plug and kind words.

Front Porch Cycle Chic: The revolt against lifestyle

[Welcome, visitors from Carbon Trace(!) and Copenhagen Cycle Chic(!)--and thanks to Mikael for his kind mention of this post. I hope you enjoy your visit.]

Two people converse next to a high-wheel bicycle at the fence of the first home of Alfred W. Bitting, 259 North Emporia Avenue, Wichita, c. 1882. Unknown photographer. Click image to enlarge. Repository: Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum. Image found here.

I don't know whether the bicycle in the picture belonged to the Bitting family or to their visitor. But it doesn't matter. What matters for purposes of this (very long) piece is what that bicycle suggests to me and, indeed, what cycling has come to embody for me: an easy, practical means for its owner to maintain a connection with others who don't live within its owner's immediate vicinity.

Something I'd never before imagined myself seeing was a philosophical kinship of any sort between Copenhagen Cycle Chic and Front Porch Republic. But that was before this morning. As strange a confluence as this is, though, it matters to you--or should--if you share my interest in trying to shift the conceptual frame cycling gets placed in by Wichitans--even by most cyclists--known by the insidious term "lifestyle." Until that shift occurs, we'll continue to see really, really nice bike paths built that don't really go to places where people live, work and shop and, at the same time, a continued lack of on-street infrastructure for cyclists that would facilitate their getting to places where they do live, work and shop.

As recent visitors to this blog know, I've written approvingly in a couple of posts over the past few days about the Cycle Chic movement. The idea, despite the name, is really very simple: You don't need a fancy bike or clothes; ideally, you don't even need a helmet. Just put on the clothes and shoes you'd usually wear for work or shopping, dust off your one-speed cruiser, and go. The coolness of Cycle Chic is precisely that the rider wears what s/he usually wears, goes where s/he usually goes and does what s/he usually does--just on a bicycle. There's absolutely no affectation involved with Cycle Chic, no "in" crowd, no special gear; the entire point is not muss and fuss, but the absence of it. Or, as Henry David Thoreau memorably put the matter regarding the general affairs of one's life, "Simplify, simplify!"

But as many of you know, in-town cycling is now, well, chic. Those of us who want to cycle as a practical and inexpensive means of getting around town to do what needs to be done are now a Market: a group of people who need Stuff, whether or not they in fact need that Stuff. And yesterday Mikael of Copenhagen Cycle Chic put up a lengthy post identifying a couple of the more disturbing manifestations of this fact that have recently appeared: Shimano (the company that almost certainly manufactured your 21-speed bike's shifters and derailleurs) is now apparently marketing "'Cycling shoes' that were completely normal shoes, just with a Shimano logo." Or this passage from a recent Reuters story:

In keeping with the city's efforts to promote cycling, luxury apparel maker LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton asked students at the Fashion Institute of Technology to create chic yet affordable cycling gear.

"We want to do everything we can to raise the profile of biking in New York," Janette Sadik-Khan, commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, said at the news conference to announce the winning design.

"Having functioning, attractive gear so you can arrive at work looking stylish should be very encouraging," she said. "No one wants to show up at work looking like bike messengers."

To which Mikael replies, "Unbelievable. '...functioning, attractive gear'? Open your closets. Buy a chainguard. Fenders. Off you go."

In the face of market capitalism, Mikael concludes, "Let's sell bicycles and bicycle culture. Let's make our cities nicer places to live": activities not usually thought of as being among the contributive causes of the wealth of nations. In other words: the buying and selling of bicycles aside, Cycle Chic is very much about its participants' extricating themselves, if only a little, from the consumerist dynamic.

This idea has been one of this blog's central assumptions almost from its very beginnings:

Because Nature matters to cyclists, they become different sorts of consumers of their world. Topography and weather and their bodies' and bicycles' needs, not fantasy, shape their choices--indeed, those factors reacquire an immediacy that, [Fredric] Jameson argues, postmodern culture had assumed for them. The local and immediate are what catch and hold their attention. Theirs are pragmatic sorts of choices, and being compelled to make such choices has a way of revealing just how superfluous and self-indulgent most people's choices are. This, of course, is something the vast majority of manufacturers, marketers and merchants would prefer we not dwell on too thoughtfully or for too long.

I'm not arguing that serious cycling is at its heart anti-capitalist but, rather, that it goes against the grain of how consumerism has come to shape our thinking about wants and needs and how to meet them. It thus opens up a space for the individual to see him- or herself relative to those dynamics and respond with a bit more autonomy than s/he might otherwise have.

It's here that we perhaps can begin to see why the term "lifestyle" is so unhelpful as a frame for contextualizing cycling. Within the context of economics, that term has the effect of re-inserting cyclists back into the very dynamic that we're trying to remove ourselves from; within the context of debates about city infrastructure, that term makes it all the easier for the skeptical to respond, "No one's making you ride your bikes" or "Get on the sidewalks, then, if the streets are too unsafe."

A quick perusal of the OED is very instructive here: "Lifestyle" first appeared in the 1920s as a term from psychotherapy "to denote a person's basic character as established early in childhood which governs his reactions and behaviour." It was only in the 1970s, though, that the word acquired its current, more familiar meaning, "A way or style of living." Though it's true that, strictly speaking, there's nary a whiff of consumerism in that latter definition, the mere existence of "Christian Lifestyle" stores--I mean, really: ponder the implications of such a concept--is all you need to know about the extent to which consumerism pervades our thinking about how we live: we live as we do because we choose that manner of living; it is our "style." An entire economy has thus emerged whose purpose is to produce and market items that will outwardly mark for others the style we've chosen.

How we live is sold to us rather than constructed by us; "lifestyle" is designed more to say something to impress others than to say something essential about us as individuals.

Front Porch Republic's "About" statement in effect makes these same arguments about consumerism and/but also identifies Big Government as complicit with corporations: an aiding, abetting co-conspirator eating away at the vitality of what, in this blog, I've been calling communities:

The economic crisis that emerged in late 2008 and the predictable responses it elicited from those in power has served to highlight the extent to which concepts such as human scale, the distribution of power, and our responsibility to the future have been eliminated from the public conversation. It also threatens to worsen the political and economic centralization and atomization that have accompanied the century-long unholy marriage between consumer capitalism and the modern bureaucratic state. We live in a world characterized by a flattened culture and increasingly meaningless freedoms. Little regard is paid to the necessity for those overlapping local and regional groups, communities, and associations that provide a matrix for human flourishing. We’re in a bad way, and the spokesmen and spokeswomen of both our Left and our Right are, for the most part, seriously misguided in their attempts to provide diagnoses, let alone solutions.

Yes indeed. To link these sentiments more directly to the concerns of this blog: It is a sad irony that our cities, entities deliberately planned by and for human beings, in fact more often than not feel denuded of their humanity--assuming they had any humanity to be denuded of in the first place. This has happened because, too often for the past 100 years, city planning plans not with human beings but with automobiles in mind.

Another essay at Front Porch Republic, Patrick Deneen's "A Republic of Front Porches," examines what it takes to be the signs and symptoms of the dissolution of community (broadly defined) in the U.S. via Richard Thomas's 1975 essay, "From Porch to Patio." In the italicized passage below, Deneen quotes Thomas directly, then comments afterward:

When a family member was on the porch it was possible to invite the passerby to stop and come onto the porch for extended conversation. The person on the porch was very much in control of this interaction, as the porch was seen as an extension of the living quarters of the family. Often, a hedge or fence separated the porch from the street or board sidewalk, providing a physical barrier for privacy, yet low enough to permit conversation. The porch served many important social functions in addition to advertising the availability of its inhabitants. A well-shaded porch provided a cool place in the heat of the day for the women to enjoy a rest from household chores. They could exchange gossip or share problems without having to arrange a “neighborhood coffee” or a “bridge party.” The porch also provided a courting space within earshot of protective parents. A boy and a girl could be close on a porch swing, yet still observed, and many a proposal of marriage was made on a porch swing. Older persons derived great pleasure from sitting on the porch, watching the world go by, or seeing the neighborhood children at play.

By contrast, the patio reflected both new settlement patterns and the increasing desire for privacy and withdrawal from interaction with one’s neighbors. “In communities with high rates of mobility, one did not often want to know his neighbor. The constant turn-over of neighbors worked against the long-term relationships which are essential to a sense of belonging.” The patio, it was believed, was a symbol and practical expression of our independence, our liberation from the niggling demands of neighbor and community. Yet, Thomas insightfully notes that it was just as much a symbol and reality of a new kind of bondage, the bondage especially to the automobile and to the grim necessities of mobility, including long commutes and increasing isolation from a wide variety of bonds.

At the end of his essay, Deneen challenges us "to revive our tradition of building and owning homes with front porches, and to be upon them where we can both see our neighbors and be seen by them, speak and listen to one another, and, above all, be in a place between, but firmly in place." I would like to suggest, in keeping with my sense of the picture that begins this post, that bicycles can play a significant role in that revival by in effect serving as a kind of virtual extension of our individual front porches: as we cycle through our communities, we have an intimacy with them simply not possible when in our cars--and those neighborhoods through which we commute become, if not our own, then certainly something more than some streets with houses on them that automobile travel converts them into. Indeed, I have come to feel an emotional tie to that part of south Wichita I regularly ride through that, I feel certain, simply would not have occurred had I driven that same route. Yet, bicycles' practicality and portability create that version of independence that arises not from mere mobility but from self-reliance in all its senses.

Bicycle-riding thus, to my mind, has a significant role to play in the reviving of the importance of place as envisioned by the writers of Front Porch Republic--and the Cycle Chic movement is, to my mind a version of that role--assuming, that is, that it not be co-opted by consumer capitalism. Far from being merely a "lifestyle," cycling is, in the deepest senses of the phrases, life-enhancing and life-affirming in ways no lifestyle ever could be.

If you've read this far, you probably wouldn't mind reading some more about the self-sufficiency of Cycle Chic. Here you go. Andrew's own gloss on these ideas is not only also worth your time, it's a whole lot shorter than what you just read.

Changing "default assumptions" about cycling: The case for the need to do so

Two recent news stories, one from Oregon and one from yesterday's Eagle, are worth addressing, especially as, to my mind, they serve as a fairly accessible entrance into something more existential I've been giving some thought to of late regarding my sense of the status of cycling culture in Kansas--or, at least, in Wichita.

The Oregon story comes by way of U.S. News and World Report and is rather provocatively titled, "Do Bicyclists Deserve to be Taxed?" It concerns a proposal before the Oregon state legislature to require cyclists "to pay $54 every two years for a bike registration - the same price as a car's registration." The argument in favor of the proposal is pretty straightforward: cyclists use the roads, just like motorists; therefore, they should contribute monies toward their upkeep. The arguments in opposition are varied but equally straightforward: a bike's wear and tear on the roads is minuscule in comparison to that of a car; many cyclists own cars as well and so would be asked to in effect pay double into the system; would cyclists be assessed this same fee per bike?; etc. As you might imagine, in bike-friendly Oregon this proposal is getting a fair amount of discussion. As you'll see in the article, some make an argument that I find a bit surprising: that cycling contributes so positively to the welfare of both cyclists and those who choose to drive--and therefore should be encouraged--that they fear the tax could persuade some to stop commuting via bike and discourage others from taking it up. Others, though, counter that the tax will go toward the maintaining of cycling infrastructure (in Oregon, that's not a small investment, either) which, it stands to reason, cyclists should be willing to fund.

I'd just push that last statement a little harder: while one can quibble with proposed amount for the tax (it strikes me as a bit high, especially if it's the same amount at which a car is taxed) or method of assessment (maybe there could be small surcharges for bike purchases and on certain ordinary but necessary maintenance-related items, such as tires, tools, etc.), the state should feel no reluctance to ask cyclists to be asked to help maintain the infrastructure which makes their cycling safer. Though bike infrastructure is relatively cheap, it's not free; having it is a privilege and not a right. Speaking for myself, this blog's implicit assumption is not to presume that the city and other governments owe cyclists anything in the way of infrastructure. Sure: I keep harping on wanting to see one or two genuine, right-through-the-middle-of Wichita, east-to-west bike paths or dedicated bike-lanes, that request isn't exactly on the Founding Fathers' list of self-evident truths. Or, at least it's not on the Kansas version of that list.

That brings me to the Eagle article, "Bob Aldrich says Janet Miller's mailer could mislead voters." The chief issue in the piece is whether Aldrich, in not permitting public comment at a meeting of a planning commission subcommittee, was in violation of citizens' right to petition if not in violation of committee rules. However, the commenter forwarded me the link because in the piece Aldrich addresses Miller's mailer's noting of Aldrich's not approving a proposal to link the northern terminus of the K-96 Bike Path with the north end of the I-135 Canal Path. Aldrich "opposed the bike paths because he felt the money would be better spent on the city's crumbling roads." The commenter also speculates that because of that oppostion, Aldrich hadn't responded to the e-mail I sent him and Miller, in which I asked them to state their thinking on cycling's place in Wichita's transportation scheme.

Perhaps the commenter is right that Aldrich is reluctant to state such views here, but I would be disappointed if that were the case. It's obvious that this blog favors more and improved cycling infrastructure for the city, but neither cyclists nor motorists would argue with Aldrich's position that the city's streets are in a bad way and urgently need attention. His argument is not only perfectly legitimate, it's also pretty compelling--especially during a time when revenue for infrastructure will be reduced for some time to come. If by any chance you or someone on your campaign committee is reading this, Mr. Aldrich, I sincerely ask that you consider speaking to this issue via this forum. I promise that the full and unedited text of your response will appear on this page. I'm not at all hostile to reasoned, reasonable discourse and debate--the John Brown picture notwithstanding.

And here's the crux of the matter for cyclists in Wichita: if the right to free-to-cyclists bike infrastructure isn't a self-evident one in Oregon, of all places, it's considerably less self-evident here. This seems borne out by, if nothing else, the fact that, of the 6 people running for city council in next Tuesday's election, I have received responses from two of them. I hasten to add that I don't resent their not having responded--they have campaigns to run, after all; it's not as though I'm a potential donor or someone who commands a great deal of political clout (the Underserved Cyclist demographic is still pretty small in this town, you've got to admit). It does seem to suggest, though, that when candidates speak of their vision for the city, bicycle infrastructure is on the periphery, as it were. This means that our task here is a rather different one--and, frankly, a more a priori one--and thus a very difficult one: to begin to shift the default setting for thinking about cycling from where it presently sits in the minds of many policy-makers and politicians (not to mention many citizens--cyclists as well as motorists). Here's how I put the matter the other day in an e-mail to Randy of Kansas Cyclist:

If the default setting for assumptions about cycling in this state--or in Wichita, for that matter [. . . ]--remains "middle-class white people tooling around on Saturdays by the river" and "Spandex-wearing racers in the Flint Hills," we're not going to see much money for even something as simple as sharrows, much less true bike-lanes or "complete-streets" projects.

So: projects may get proposed but don't get funding because, well, the powers that be don't see any evident need for them--"Look at all those bike paths not getting used during the week!" (That's because many of the paths don't actually go where many people work.) In the meantime, people who'd like to bike-commute stay off the streets, and then when the issue of bike lanes gets raised again, there's still no apparent need for them because there's (still) no one cycling on the streets. In the collective mind's eye, cyclists remain recreationists first, almost to the exclusion of any other conception. It all becomes a vicious circle/self-fulfilling prophecy (take your pick).

I'm interested in exploring some ideas on how to begin breaking out of that cycle that incorporate both national trends and things I and others have observed here in Wichita. As I have said many times before here, it's difficult to imagine a city better suited to a thoughtfully-planned on-street cycling infrastructure, in terms of topography and present size, than Wichita is. (The wind is another matter entirely, of course, but . . . oh, well.) The problem is that the right people (and the right number of people) aren't seeing this potential, in large measure for the reasons I mentioned above. This is something I'll be returning to as my schedule permits, both here and at the KTOC Bike and Pedestrian forum (which you should also join); in the meantime, though, I encourage you to give this thought as well and post your responses at your own places--and be sure to leave links here in comments or e-mail them to me

Hither and Yon #2

UPDATE: Welcome to visitors from Austin Bike Blog! As a native Austinite myself (Beat OU!!), I'm doubly pleased y'all found y'all's way here and hope you enjoy your visit here.

A round-up of links and some recent past adventures, in no particular order:

A bit of silliness from my other blog about Elmira Gulch as Kansas cyclist archetype.

Via Bike Commute Tips Blog and BlogNetNews's Cycling page, the news-to-me announcement that part of the just-passed $700 billion-dollar bailout bill was the inclusion of a $20-per-bike-commuting-employee tax break to employers. While Paul of Bike Commute Tips rightly notes that it would have been preferable to include monies or incentives for infrastructure changes leading to bike-friendlier streets--and of course, it goes without saying that we'd all have been much better off without the need for the larger bill of which this is a part--it's also true that this sort of program should help as well in "trickle-up," grassroots movements to encourage cycling and, via growing numbers and awareness, cause municipalities and states to see the value of cycling and mass transit and plan (and invest) accordingly.

Cycling Chat #3: File this under "In case you need another reason to bike-commute." A while back, I biked over to a nearby laundromat with a small load of clothes. While there, a couple walked over to my bike and began talking about it, so I went up to them and struck up a conversation. It turned out that the man had just bought a new bike from Wal-Mart (they don't have much money) and that he has been using bicycles as his primary transportation since 1986. The chief reason for that, he shared, was that one night that year he had been driving while drunk and had an accident. He decided then that perhaps a bike might be a better option for him because, and I quote, "I like my beer."

The pragmatics of cycling manifest themselves in many ways, do they not?

From the League of American Bicyclists comes their list of bicycle-friendly businesses, recently announced at Interbike, the largest bicycle trade show in this country. A quick survey of the list reveals a depressingly-familiar East Coast and West Coast heaviness; on the other hand, though, I'm glad to see the good people of Clif Bar & Company on the list: not only do they make a superior energy bar, they are seriously committed to being good corporate citizens.

And finally: You may have heard that there's a national election next month. I happen to support Barack Obama's candidacy and hope you will consider doing the same. I respect that enormous problems face this country, problems that can appear to dwarf urban policy concerns in terms of importance. Certainly, I'm not a single-issue voter and discourage those who are from thinking like that.

But: if I were, and urban policy were my single issue, here's what I would say about that. First of all, I would make the argument that wise decisions with regard to urban policy have the clear long-term benefits of making our nation a more energy-efficient, healthier and more prosperous place for more of its citizens. And to that end, a thoughtful person who cares about urban policy should strongly consider voting for Obama. Of special interest to cyclists is the following passage from Obama's 12-page Urban Fact Sheet [pdf]:

Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Our communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to leave our cars to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. As president, Barack Obama will re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account. Obama will build upon his efforts in the Senate to ensure that more Metropolitan Planning
Organizations create policies to incentivize greater bicycle and pedestrian usage of roads and sidewalks, and he will also re-commit federal resources to public mass transportation projects across the country. Better transportation alternatives will not only reduce the amount of time individuals spent commuting, but will also have significant benefits to air quality, public health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

John McCain's website has no comparable section on urban policy. The American Energy page of his site does address developing alt-fuels and fuel efficiency in cars and improving buildings' energy efficiency; to be sure, those are important tasks to take on. However, unless he addresses them elsewhere McCain's website does not include mass/alternate transportation as being, even potentially, part of the "transportation sector" that, to my mind, should also be considered when addressing our cities' and citizens' future prosperity. Another way to put it: it is not an anti-car argument to say that the fewer cars are on the streets, the more livable--the healthier, the more prosperous--cities become. And of course, there are other ways to reduce the need for cars besides mass transit, such as programs to make it feasible for more workers to be able to afford to live closer to where they work (which Obama's fact sheet also addresses).

As long-time visitors to this blog know, I see real potential in Wichita as regards such matters. It's the biggest city in the state, but its still-short average commute times tell me that it is an excellent candidate for a well-thought-out transportation plan that makes room for pedestrians and mass/alternate transportation via Complete Streets and a re-imagining of the relationship between people's workplaces and residences. It seems to me, if the candidates' websites are any indication, that Obama has considered all this far more carefully than McCain has. If these policy matters are of concern to you, I would urge you to consider all this as you weigh your choices this coming November.

No more politics here--I promise.

But, along the lines of urban and transportation policy, Matthew Yglesias makes the case for congestion pricing.