NE Alberta.
(Photo © J. Maus)
The northeast Portland-based Community Cycling Center has won a grant for a project to help them “understand cultural and economic barriers to bicycling.”
According to a statement from the CCC, the project will help them perform a needs assessment to better understand the “unique cultural and economic barriers to bicycling encountered by minority and low-income community members.”
The nearly $80,000 grant from Metro also comes with the expertise of Kristin Lensen, a consultant with Alta Planning + Design and Portland State University’s Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation.
Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder lauded the goals of the project. “In my work here, it’s the first grant project that I can recall that has specifically been aimed at addressing social justice issues related to transportation.”
Susan Remmers, executive director of the CCC, says this type of effort is needed now more than ever. “The need for the bicycle as an affordable, reliable, clean, and healthy transportation option,” she said, “will continue to grow as the economy sputters, the obesity epidemic grows, the global climate changes, and traffic gets more congested.”
The project is slated to begin this spring and continue through 2011.
Whoo hoo. Maybe by this time next year I’ll need TWO hands to count the number of non-white folk I see on bikes while I’m out and about. /sarcasm
On a less bitter note, this is very good news and I’ll be interested to see how this project goes.
Kronda-
Would I be correct to guess that this is based on experience denser city neighborhoods where transit service is frequent and goes most places?
B/c if you come out to the burbs, say, up & down TV Hwy, 1/2-2/3rds of bike traffic is low-income folks trying to navigate a streetscape that is outright hostile to getting around w/o a car.
There was an excellent and thoughtful editorial on this phenomenon in the NY Times back in January…
Washington County BTC is trying to serve this population (& everyone else) with their version of the CCC, haven’t yet been down there to see how it’s going, but I have an old clunker I’ll get around to donating sooner or later.
Let’s hear it for Burkholder, David Bragdon and the other Metro leaders – nice to politicians really putting the $$ where their mouths are on biking.
Intriguing idea, but I’d love more detail — like what a “needs assessment” consists of, and what some of the potential outcomes of the project might be.
dpmF94 –
I do believe Kronda said “non-white” folks, not “low-income” folks. Interesting how you jumped from one to the other.
dpmF94: What anon said.
There are a couple of exceptions to this rule: John Benenate has been doing amazing work with the B.I.K.E program for years.
Deborah Leopold Hutchins also works to get more black women riding. She had regular weekend rides last summer that I heard went quite well.
As for everyday (or even once/week) commuters, that well is still pretty dry. My goal is to convert at least one person each summer. Last summer I offered bike-buddy services to a friend who said she wanted to start riding, met her at her house and escorted her to work. She was amazed at how pleasant and peaceful it was. Hopefully, she’ll be inspired to ride a few more times when (if) the weather gets warmer.
Baby steps, but progress.
Congratulations CCC! Wonderful news – keep up the great work.
Hmm…
Yes, I did make that jump. Probably because I had in mind a specific situation out here in the boonies that affects a specific set of cyclists who are overwhelmingly both low-income and minority.
But of course there’s nothing like the interrelatedness of race & class to trouble any analysis. My statement did seem to imply that “non-white” and “low-income” inherently go together, which is silly at best.
So lets hear it for minority professionals on two wheels! Lets hear it for low-income white folks taking to human-powered transportation as the means to mobility!
And for these $ to get folks rolling, & help ’em stay safe…
dpmF94
Nice save. 🙂