WEBVTT - Making A Safer City 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:07.680 Hi, everyone, Welcome to it could happen here, a podcast 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:11.239 which bipopular demand today is about livestock, as we will 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:14.960 be going forward. It's me, It's Garrison, and we're talking 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:17.280 about species of sheep. Don't not really, we're not talking 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.880 about species of sheep, much to my disappointment, not yet, 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:21.520 but that will be coming. We're going to be getting 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:25.439 into clined texuls, mules that kind of think big sheep stuff. 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.639 But now today we're actually joined by John and John 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.600 has been subjected to my weight introduction, but we're not 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.440 We're not talking about sheep today. We're talking about active 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:40.560 transport infrastructure and we're talking about how cities tend to 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:42.879 build that in certain communities and not in others. So 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.720 welcome to the show. John, Yeah, thanks for having me. 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.800 I'll say that my partner would have been overjoyed if 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:53.600 the podcast was actually about species of sheep, So she's 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:55.680 tired of hearing me talk about bikes, I'm sure, So, 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:59.080 but here we are. Um, Yeah, thanks for having me, 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:03.040 John Alan. I'm an assistant professor at University of North 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:08.000 Carolina at Greensboro. Great. Yeah, So I think to start 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:12.399 off with if if you could kind of outline what 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.759 sort of like I guess, I guess people might not 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.400 be familiar at all with bike infrastructure, certainly if they 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:21.200 live in some parts of the US or like more 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:23.640 rural areas, and sort of what it looks like, and 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.160 what cities have been doing in the last few years 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:28.840 building bike infrastructure, and then how that relates to the 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.160 I guess, the income disparities within cities. Yeah, I mean, 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.560 that's a that's a big question, something that I tackled 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:40.880 in my book, which came out in twenty nineteen. But 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:45.480 then I haven't haven't kept up with it quite as much. 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:48.280 I've been trying to start work working on other projects, 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:50.600 but you know, I keep I keep tabs on things 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.360 a little bit. Um. I mean, basically, if we're talking 0:01:53.400 --> 0:02:00.760 about the the standard rundown of infrastructure, the the I 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.920 would say, the most common thing that people think about 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.240 and probably the most common thing that's built in part 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:10.679 because it's quite cheap, especially over they say the last 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:14.000 twenty years, is the bike lane. You know, a bike 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:19.280 lane is usually about three to five feet wide, and 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:24.080 it's in to the far right of the roadway. If 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:26.280 you're in the United States or you know, if you're 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:30.079 driving on the right, tends to be where glass collects, 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:35.839 tends to be where car doors are it. And so 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:40.640 that nevertheless was you know, very common in places that 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:45.400 we're building bicycle infrastructure. That's what was being built in 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:50.840 I would say the last ten to fifteen years, there's 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.720 been a push to do more what people might call 0:02:53.919 --> 0:03:00.440 Dutch style protected bike lanes. Either they're protected by buffer 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:07.320 of kind of plastic posts that don't prevent an emergency 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.000 vehicle from kind of getting where it needs to go, 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.440 but also don't prevent drivers from just driving into the 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:19.840 bike lane. Really, so you'll see those and then you 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.519 know parking protected bike lanes. So the protected bike lanes 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:31.120 started became the big demand from bicycle infrastructure planning practitioners, 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:36.080 especially in cities like Portland's, you know, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:38.680 New York City, et cetera, et cetera. Something that was 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:46.200 actually protected by a curb usually really usually it's still 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.119 like some kind of a plastic curb right or cars right, 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:54.800 and you're not seeing a lot of you know, concrete 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.680 or brick curb work like you'll see in the Netherlands 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.640 or something like that. And then interestingly enough another piece 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:04.480 of infrastructure that there was a funny kind of Mayaculpa, 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:11.320 or not Mayaculpa, but a reevaluation of it was the sharrow, 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:14.920 which is just a sort of a chevron symbol in 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:18.440 the middle of a car lane, intended to remind drivers 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.039 that cyclists are allowed to be there, but sort of 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.720 put cyclists in the location where they would sort of 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:29.360 garner the most hatred. And there was a recent recent 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:33.400 editorial from Dave Snyder, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. It was 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.800 a big, big pioneer just in general bicycle infrastructure. I 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:41.719 interviewed him for my dissertation and he talked about how 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:44.960 they don't work. That was a mistake. It was mistake 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:49.080 kind of splitting the difference, making it seem like you 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.440 didn't have to take any space away from cars in 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:54.360 order to fit bikes into the roadway. So I don't 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.000 know if that's kind of more than you wanted from that. No, No, 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:58.720 that's great because I think a lot of folks might 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:01.799 not have seen all these different things. Certainly, like if 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:03.479 you're like me and you wrote your bike every day, 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:05.760 you know to teach of these different things, and some 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:07.400 of them make you feel safer, some of them don't, 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:10.440 and some of them are just kind of tokenistic. I 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:12.919 think a lot of this kind of gets to a 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.520 bigger discussion, which which is one waybe we can touch on, 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.120 which is like who the city is for? When we're 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.080 building cities in this country, certainly it seems like we've 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.279 built them around cars, with a few exceptions like older 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.240 cities and stuff, and increasingly like if you ask for 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:32.400 space that and you are not a car, then you 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:34.760 know to include people wanting to live on the streets, 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:36.600 right that cars have free places to go at night, 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:41.200 but people don't. And so like this reallocation of space 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:45.360 I think gets to a bigger question, which is, yeah, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.160 maybe something you can speak to. Yeah, so I mean 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.039 the question of I think you can think of who 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.880 both In terms of the mode of transport, it's very 0:05:56.000 --> 0:06:03.320 car dominant society, right, and car car driving is even 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.560 on the rise in places like Copenhagen. Right, there's kind 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:08.600 of a lot of fretting among my supply advocates in 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:15.360 Copenhagen about the rise of car usage. So there's the 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.080 quite the sort of the mode of transport. But you know, 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.440 cars aren't people, right, as you sort of pointed out 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:22.960 just then and then so there's another layer to it 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.480 that intersects with it, which is cities being increasingly sort 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:33.520 of oriented towards attracting higher income residents, right, kind of 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:38.960 creating an attractive urban environment. There's a there's a kind 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:44.000 of an intersection with the interest in attracting kind of 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:48.440 high tech or creative or knowledge intensive types of jobs, 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.760 right your software programmers, you know. I think it was 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.080 Chicago mayor Roman Manuel. I use this in lectures all 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:59.479 the time. He said something like, um, you can't be 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.400 for a high tech, creative city economy and not be 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:08.000 pro bike. Right. So there's this there's this idea that 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:15.480 you know, may be a little bit spurious, or it 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.640 might be kind of loose causality, but there's this idea 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.320 that the kinds of workers that you want in your 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:27.600 city that are either going to take high paying jobs 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:34.120 and increase the property tax base or themselves create new startups, 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:39.680 entrepreneurial energy, arts, culture and and things like that, right 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.000 that they are they are attracted by bicycle infrastructure or 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:48.840 bicycling or bicycle culture in some respects. So there's that 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:53.320 that kind of the The irony, of course, is that 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:58.760 those workers, you know, guilty, I have a car, right, 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:03.760 typically bring cars with that, right, And so yes, maybe 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:06.320 they don't want to use them on a daily basis, 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:08.440 like I don't use my car on a daily basis. 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:10.240 I don't use my car to get to work, right, 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:16.520 But they, you know, are often kind of having it 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:19.440 both ways, right, in a lot of ways in terms of, 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:21.920 you know, buildings will be built with garages, right, and 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:26.240 that's only recently starting to be eroded, right as just 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:29.239 a you know, a one to one parking ratio and 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:34.320 a transit connected building. Yeah. And so when we're talking 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:36.520 about it, the combination of these two things, right, like 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.080 affluent areas or cities trying to attract affluent people and 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:44.120 cities trying to build bike infrastructure. And something I've observed 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.680 where I live, which is San Diego, is that we've 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.520 built a lot of bike lanes, but only connecting privileged 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.600 communities to places where people do high income work. And 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.800 it seems like increasingly like riding your bike safely is 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.480 a privilege, there's only a forty to a certain group 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.679 of people. Is that something that's broader than justested in 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:08.880 my town? I'd say so, I mean, I think you 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.160 see this in in where I did a lot of 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:14.719 my research in the San Francisco Bay area, also did 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:19.040 research in Philadelphia and Detroit and Austin as well. That's 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.960 not in the book, but yeah, that's it's common, and 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:25.640 there's a few different There's kind of a there's a 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:32.240 degree of cumulative causality, as we would say in economic geography. Right, 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:37.360 you have, going back to say the nineteen nineties, you 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:45.400 had bicycle advocates primarily recreational, primarily middle class, largely white, 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:51.360 recreational cyclists, or and you start to seem participants in 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:55.880 by squad vocacy organizations also being kind of bicycle commuters. 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:03.040 The kinds of jobs that were growing in urban centers 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.880 in the nineteen nineties and two thousands or you know, 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.920 the first decade of this millennium, right, are the kinds 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:17.080 of you know, if not high tech, sort of professional 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:23.200 technical type of employment, right, growing in urban centers. And 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:33.200 there's relatively affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods that makes it 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:40.040 feasible and desirable actually that you could you could, you know, 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.120 find a fairly affordable house and be able to bike 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.160 to work right two to three miles, right, rather than 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.560 the commute in from the suburbs or the commute out 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:55.839 from the urban center to jobs at the suburbs. Right. So, 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.640 I think that you get a lot of the initial 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:04.079 energy around the bicycle movement if you look at critical Mass, 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.640 if you look at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:09.400 its early days. Again, these are things I'm familiar with. 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.080 A lot of this sort of the political mobilization is 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:19.240 around making those types of journeys easier, more doable. Right. 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:22.319 You also have the phenomenon where the neighborhoods that are 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:27.439 getting gentrified in this time are your sort of classic 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:34.080 innermost streetcar suburbs developed around a hundred years ago, fairly 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:37.760 walkable themselves. They have a mix of commercial and residential. 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:41.959 They aren't buying large industrial neighborhoods, right, The industrial neighborhoods 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:44.360 where you still have a lot of truck traffic, where 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:49.920 industry be got more industry or de industrialization really hollowed 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:56.200 out the economic base where you have you know, large roadways, 0:11:56.600 --> 0:12:01.800 you have you know disinvestment and kind of a mix 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:08.079 of small retail, etc. Etc. Um. Lower income population. Uh, 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:14.080 those were not um. Those were not areas where were 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.800 that were attracting the kinds of people who would be 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:22.440 listened to when they're demanding bicycle infrastructure. Right, there's still 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:26.120 lots of cyclists in those neighborhoods UM in a place 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:32.840 like East Oakland or um uh North Philadelphia or something 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:34.840 like that, right where there are a lot of people 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:39.240 who ride bicycles, but they don't they're not organized politically 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:43.240 uh under the sort of the block of of of 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:49.320 cyclists UM. And so there's this sort of paradox or 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:53.040 in the way that I came around to this project 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.200 was I was working in a bike shop in Philadelphia, 0:12:56.280 --> 0:13:03.600 and I was one of those white hipsters on fixies. 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.800 Right at the same time, I spent a lot of 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:11.680 my day speaking Spanish, talking with and helping people fix 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:16.000 their bikes, mostly Latin American immigrants who were working as 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:20.319 dishwashers or delivering food, buying bikes at Walmart because it's 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:22.360 what they could afford, even though they knew that they 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.560 were crapped, they just couldn't afford anything better trying to 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:30.360 get the most out of those bikes. And so there's 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.720 this funny dichotomy. On the one hand, it's like you 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:39.200 have the cool bike already, creative scene that is sort 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.200 of trying to be encouraged maybe, And on the other hand, 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:46.280 a lot of the people were actually making do on 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.320 bicycles are not sort of part of that vision, I 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:56.040 guess for the city, right when I think about things 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.640 in spatial terms as well, right, if you imagine going 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:03.240 back to the journeys to work from a sort of 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:08.200 close in residential neighborhood that is experiencing a lot of turnover, 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.960 a lot of middle class you know, mostly white but 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:16.640 not necessarily exclusively white, in migrants, the types of journeys 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:21.520 that a lot of you know, I'll take Durham for example, 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:25.880 where I live now, which is not there's not a 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.600 lot of good bicycle infrastructure. There's a little there's not 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.480 a lot of good bicycle infrastructure, but there's some job 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:33.800 growth in the downtown area. There's certainly a lot of 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:40.080 job growth in the sort of the suburbs. But in 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.880 terms of the kinds of jobs that, um, you know, 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:48.520 working class jobs that are being created at Amazon fulfillment centers, 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.720 those are at the urban periphery, right, They're not places 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:56.320 that even in a kind of a gentrifying neighborhood. Even 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.920 if bicycle infrastructure were created. This sort of the direct 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:06.520 tionality of the feasible commute kind of runs against the 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.640 feasible bicycle commute sort of runs against the very kind 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:21.200 of spread out and scattered commutes in the sort of retail, wholesale, warehousing, manufacturing, 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:25.080 et cetera, et cetera, the sectors that are experiencing job 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:30.480 sprawl rather than a sort of a concentrated, concentrated job 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.200 growth in in the sort of the urban center. Right. 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:45.840 So that's another aspect to it as well. Bike advocacy 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:48.400 is very interesting to me. Like I was a bike messenger, 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:51.560 I was a bike racer like these, I've made my 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:53.880 living riding a bike. I've also just ridding my bike 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:58.000 to get to work. And bike advocacy really hasn't reflected 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.840 a broadsworth of psychists for a very long time. Do 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:06.640 you think that's why we don't see like better infrastructure 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:10.000 in some of these like d industrializing areas for instance, 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.320 And does that lead directly to it being more dangerous? 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:16.240 Like you would be the best to ask of their 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:18.920 statistics to show that, like it's more dangerous to ride 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:25.880 your bike. So I'll say a couple of things. The 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:31.240 the the directionality or the causality is a little bit complicated. 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:33.640 I would say certainly there was some evidence that bicycle 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:37.160 advocates weren't in the early days, and there was a 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:40.000 big sort of cultural shift in by advocacy in the 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:43.480 nineteen nineties part of the nineteen nineties. You have a 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:47.280 lot of cyclists who are actually opposed to bicycle infrastructure. 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:52.800 We still have. They are still a loud, being rish 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:57.400 voice in San Diego. Yeah, exactly, the vehicular cyclists, right, yeah, yeah, 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:02.840 can you explain that, sure? Vehicular cyclists. Um. It was 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:09.720 a philosophy expounded by John Forrester. I have his book 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:13.919 right here in the book and it's not here in 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.359 the book Effective Cycling. Um. Where it was the idea 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:22.840 was that cyclists should be riding like cars, right, which 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:28.239 means riding fast, center of the lane, behaving exactly like 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:33.480 a car. And they were very opposed to any infrastructure 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:38.040 that would sort of create be created especially for bicyclists, 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:43.840 on the basis which there was maybe some slight truth 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:47.440 to this, that that cyclists would be banned from roads 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:52.600 that didn't have dedicated bicycle infrastructure. There was a little 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:58.480 bit of concern that was there was I think I 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.879 remember reading about a little bit of actual talk among 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:05.919 legislators and planners that bicyclists would be kept off of 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.840 main roads. And I think their to their credit, they 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:16.240 saw the creation of bicycle infrastructure at that time as 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:21.800 basically designed to get cyclists out of the way of motorists, right, 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:26.040 And so it was mainly to advance the interests of motorists, right. 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:32.680 But they were very hostile to um. They're very hostile 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:36.280 to a sort of a Dutch style model, which, like 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:39.560 you know, these were guys who like to ride fast 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:44.480 and like you don't. You can't ride fast in the Netherlands, yea, 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.119 not everyone's physically able nor really wants to go forty 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:52.160 miles an hour on a road next to cars exactly right. 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:57.280 So it was very much around a strong, fit, confident 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.560 cyclist who who knew all the laws of the road, 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:08.400 road really fast, was very assertive. It obviously lent itself 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:16.040 towards a sort of a boomer type, right, a sort 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:21.920 of adventurous type, and it was very much that we 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:26.040 that bicycle advocates should advance the interests of cyclists, not 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.040 try to grow the number of people cycling, right, And 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.679 so the shift towards that maybe the critical mass moment 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:36.800 is not the only thing, but this is that's sort 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.800 of a good moment to kind of tag it to 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:44.439 the nineteen ninety two first critical mass era, but you 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:47.600 know Earth Day vehicle for a small planet, all of 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:53.200 this sort of growing interest in bicycling. Yeah, the shift 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.520 towards more people should be doing. Yeah, can you explain 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:59.280 critical mass to people who haven't like participated, because I 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:03.159 think it's quite meek an interesting phenomena. Sure, yeah, absolutely so. 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:10.080 I'm critical mass began in San Francisco in I think 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:17.080 the first critical mass was nineteen ninety two, and it 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:22.240 was began sort of as like a group of people working, 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.280 you know, broadly working office jobs who were sort of 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:30.880 kind of culturally anarchistic or you know, had these sort 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:35.359 of anarchist or situation as kind of ideas and who 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:39.880 were kind of organizing months of selves to ride home 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:43.040 as a group. Right, And they started getting this idea 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:51.000 of sort of having these monthly ride together um happenings. Right. 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:53.719 They called it. They didn't call them protests, and they 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:59.760 weren't organized rides. They were um sort of rolling festival 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:04.080 was the idea. I think the first The first name 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.040 that they came up with, which mercifully didn't stick, was 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:11.080 like the commute clot right, So it was also about 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:17.560 kind of jamming up the regularity of the Friday evening commute, 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:19.680 so it would be like the first Friday of every 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:23.560 month at commute time. Right. Um. Some of these I 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.480 think still happened in Portland. Oh yeah, yeah, it's it's 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.240 the critical mass still happens. Um. There's a you know, 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:32.919 one of the chapters in my book, I sort of 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:37.280 trace this arc of critical mass through to the more 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:43.520 kind of bike party oriented exactly exactly the slow roll 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:48.280 type of model, which I think is interesting because it's 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:52.560 a little bit it's consciously less confrontational. It's not held 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:57.480 at a time that would clog up um, sure, clog 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:02.919 up evening traffic. Uh. It's designed to attract kind of families, 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:06.640 people who aren't trying to have confrontations with drivers or police. Right. 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:10.680 One of the things that sort of really put put 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.360 bicycle infrastructure on the agenda and San Francisco was this 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:21.920 mass arrest of critical Mass in nineteen ninety seven, supposedly 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:25.160 because the mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown at the time, 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.360 got stuck in one in his limo and was like 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.120 furious and so asked the police to crack down next time. 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.919 It was a huge it was. It backfired massively politically, 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:40.280 but it also created this opening for the San Francisco 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:45.679 Bicycle Coalition, which actually was an organization. Critical Mass was 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:49.840 not an organization, right. It gave them this opportunity to say, well, 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:53.560 what cyclists want is, you know, to actually build out 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:56.920 the bike plan that supposedly exists, but nobody's been doing 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:01.960 anything about it, right, So, I mean that's probably maybe 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:03.920 more than you wanted to know. But sort of that 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:07.360 that arc of Critical Mass as this sort of countercultural 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:11.520 moment that created this opening for a more formal bicycle 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:18.320 planning uh, an advocacy organization or a set of organizations 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:22.600 to emerge, right, Um, And maybe it's unfair I think 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:24.000 I'd probably do it in the book. It's a little 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:26.560 bit unfair probably to call it a kind of depoliticization, 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:30.679 But there was certainly a degree of kind of like 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:35.080 explicit politics of sort of reclaiming the city more broadly 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:40.639 from a kind of left perspective that does disappear somewhat 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:43.080 in the sort of the rhetoric of the bike movement. Yeah, 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:45.199 it's definitely it's definitely lost some of that like radical 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:47.800 edge where these types of these types of you know 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:50.920 when when when like a hundred or two hundred people 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:53.480 on bikes takeover streets in Portland every once in a while, 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:55.960 it is way more in the form of like a 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.879 big party. It's like it's it's it's like it's like 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:01.119 a it's like a rolling block party. It does not 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:04.800 have that same level of like, yeah, almost like situationist 0:24:05.320 --> 0:24:08.240 creating a happening or creating a situation that that affects 0:24:08.240 --> 0:24:10.359 the regular politics and affects the regular way that the 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:14.159 city functions. Yeah, I mean, yeah. That being said, the 0:24:14.720 --> 0:24:18.560 sort of the successors, like bike Party in San Jose 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:21.399 was a huge one, and this that bike party model 0:24:21.480 --> 0:24:24.719 kind of spread throughout California were often much bigger than 0:24:24.760 --> 0:24:28.560 critical maps, right, um, a lot of times more diverse 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:32.360 as well. Right, So there's there's a really interesting kind 0:24:32.400 --> 0:24:36.560 of politics around Is the is the politics in the 0:24:36.640 --> 0:24:40.200 sort of explicit slogans, or is the politics and sort 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:44.879 of like showing people that there is a kind of 0:24:44.920 --> 0:24:49.720 collectivity that they might be part of simply by virtue 0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:52.639 of like moving through urban space in a different way. 0:24:53.080 --> 0:24:54.919 And for a lot of people it was their first 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:58.560 time riding a bike in the city because they were 0:24:58.600 --> 0:25:01.280 so afraid of cars other wise. Right, yeah, it's safety 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:05.240 and numbers. Yeah yeah, yeah, it definitely, Um, I know 0:25:05.320 --> 0:25:06.679 for a lot of people that was the case. Like 0:25:06.680 --> 0:25:08.840 I've done some critical masses, I mean the UK, we 0:25:08.880 --> 0:25:12.359 had reclaimed the streets as well, like a similar vibe. 0:25:12.400 --> 0:25:15.119 I remember in the early I guess the first decade 0:25:15.119 --> 0:25:18.440 of this century, like there would be critical mass rides 0:25:18.520 --> 0:25:22.440 before anti G eight protests, like I remember in Octor 0:25:22.520 --> 0:25:25.600 rider in Scotland and things or not in Octorada before that, 0:25:25.640 --> 0:25:28.240 and like before other G eight protests would be mass 0:25:28.320 --> 0:25:31.560 rights and it's a very different scene to like bike 0:25:31.600 --> 0:25:34.760 advocacy now, right yeah, yeah, And you saw this a 0:25:34.800 --> 0:25:40.280 little bit with like the Occupy movement, the at least 0:25:40.320 --> 0:25:45.399 my experience of them, the sort of early wave of 0:25:45.400 --> 0:25:47.879 the Black Lives Matter movement in twenty fourteen with the 0:25:47.960 --> 0:25:52.680 killing of Trayvon Martin Um, there were a lot the 0:25:55.119 --> 0:26:01.280 bicycles seemed like an intuitive protest for many people, and 0:26:01.320 --> 0:26:05.000 that's probably sort of some of the cultural political tools 0:26:05.000 --> 0:26:07.760 of critical mass that sort of surface here and there. 0:26:09.800 --> 0:26:14.800 But I think for the twentieth anniversary, Chris Carlson, who 0:26:14.840 --> 0:26:19.120 was one of the early organizers, called it talks about 0:26:19.160 --> 0:26:21.600 critical mass all over the world, and that San Francisco 0:26:21.680 --> 0:26:23.480 felt kind of like the hole in the middle of 0:26:23.520 --> 0:26:26.320 the donut, right, Like it sort of created this reverberation, 0:26:27.040 --> 0:26:32.199 but then it actually withered to a degree in the center. 0:26:32.280 --> 0:26:36.959 And often the narrative is, well, you're you're getting like 0:26:37.000 --> 0:26:40.080 you're winning, right, so critical mass is no longer necessary 0:26:40.119 --> 0:26:44.360 because you're getting bike lanes, you're getting you know, you're 0:26:44.400 --> 0:26:50.960 getting investment, you're getting attention from planners, etc. Etc. Right. Obviously, yeah, 0:26:51.040 --> 0:26:55.959 the gains, whatever they are, are pretty kind of geographically circumscribed. 0:26:56.560 --> 0:26:58.120 And that kind of relates back to how we kind 0:26:58.119 --> 0:27:01.200 of started by talking about how, you know, some cities 0:27:01.240 --> 0:27:04.600 are putting more development into bike infrastructure, but how it's 0:27:04.600 --> 0:27:08.240 being developed is not actually serving people who like like 0:27:08.400 --> 0:27:10.440 have to use a bike to commute because they don't 0:27:10.440 --> 0:27:12.119 own a car and they can't afford a car, Like 0:27:12.160 --> 0:27:14.760 it's it's it's getting used to people who actually already 0:27:14.760 --> 0:27:17.000 have a lot of resources. And like an interesting case 0:27:17.000 --> 0:27:20.040 in point in this is the belt line in Atlanta, 0:27:20.200 --> 0:27:22.760