The weather here finally cleared up and it’s actually been quite nice the last few days. I bike-commuted yesterday and today and remembered that a) riding a real bike is a hell of a lot different than a stationary one, and b) I’ve got a passing interest in bike activism.
Portland, OR, is an incredibly bike-friendly town. There’s still a long way to go, but the bike activism community has done amazing work make the streets safe and open to bicycles. The difference just across the Columbia River, in Vancouver WA, is enormous. Although I’ve worked up here for two years now, it’s living here, and trying to ride the roads instead of just the bike trails, that showed how incredibly different it is here.
Vancouver’s an odd little burg. Right next to Portland, it’s not in OR–so any laws, changes, progress that affect PDX can only be watched from afar. Similarly, we’re three hours south of Seattle, and a bit of an afterthought as far as Washington state goes. This limbo makes Vancouver a really interesting place — separation from the two urban centers has made it self-reliant and somewhat provincial, taking great pride in its mom-and-pop shops — but proximity to the cities has also made it a semi-urban escape for city slickers like me, and there are just enough yuppie comforts to keep us in the fancy coffee and magazines that allow us to enjoy the small-townness of it all.
Vancouver is historically a working-class town, home of shipyards and manufacturing centers — and a conservative town with a libertarian edge — where you hang on to what you’ve earned and damn anyone who tries to take it away from you. It’s a de-centralized city, with a small-town downtown and a suburban sprawl extending out from it. Vancouver after 1920 was built for people with cars, and the infrastructure has only developed to support that. Cars here are old and lovingly patched together, or new and large and loud.
Bike activism hasn’t really made it to the ‘Couv yet. Bikes on the road are seen as an intrusion, and riders are often menaced, pushed off the road, and otherwise harassed. Bike lanes, when you can find them, are littered with debris, some of it actually tossed out in front of riders. Casual conversations I’ve started about road etiquette generally devolve into what bikers do wrong, not what drivers can do better.
Of course, the situation isn’t helped by the riders who *do* act like asses, cutting in and out of traffic and riding without lights or helmets.
But change takes time and advocacy, and riding in Vancouver has mostly been the province of upper-class recreational riders in expensive spandex, and people for whom riding isn’t so much a choice as it is the only option. It appears as though it’s going to take more folks like me — solidly middle class, who might have a car but want to be healthier, and for whom saving $30 on a tank of gas might not make or break me, but will definitely make a visible difference in my budget.
It’s horrifying to saddle up and feel like a target … but at the same time it’s a little energizing … it doesn’t have to be like this, and there are things we can do to change it. I’m not sure what they all are, but I’m going to find out. And I do know that one of the best things we can do is to get out on the road and to ride safely and consistently — we have the right to be on the road, and we have the responsibility to set a good example.
