How a local non-profit is breaking down biking’s color barrier

Well, to some extent that’s true. Most folks in Portland who ride totally by choice are able to live close enough to where they work that they don’t HAVE to rely on a car. However, lots of low-paying service jobs are very far away from, for example, New Columbia and Hacienda.

These predominantly low-income housing establishments have been placed in older, close-in areas to help promote mixed-income neighborhoods and density; but the majority of the lowest-paying retail and cleaning jobs remain at mid-county shopping malls and westside office parks, too far away to pedal a bike to safely and easily.

Ha! Great article, but I clicked the link only to find out what CCC was supposed to stand for. My initial reaction was “Civilian Conservation Corps?” followed by “Clackamas Community College?”

Must be late in the day.

I don’t remember seeing teens skateboarding other than white. Maybe I have been living in white area too long even tho I am a minority.

I would agree that there is a lot of work that needs to be done. It is a culture issue.

There is a lady that work with my wife. She was born and raised in Portland. This coworker lives across the street from work, not even a full block away. She always drives even though it probably takes longer than to just walk to work. When my wife asked why she drives she said she doesn’t want anyone seeing her walk and that everyone will talk. She even drives home for lunch.

This is a BIG issue. This has to be discussed well before biking can even begin to be an option.

One that same note, my cousin in town bikes everywhere, but he grew up out of state.

This is extremely fascinating to me. It’s interesting that in some places of the country, bicycling is only something you do if you’re a kid or you’ve had your license revoked because of a DUI.

However, here in Portland biking is perceived as something of privilege and class.

It just goes to show the wildly different life experiences different groups of people can have within one city.

Lance P. (#8):

It sounds like your wife’s co-worker has some serious self-image issues, yeesh! I would consider that example a very sad statistical outlier, and hopefully not within the normal spectrum of people who resist biking (or walking) for all the usual reasons. Most people, even those resistant to cycling, will be fine walking a single block.

I’ve lived in the Irvington/Eliot area for the past five years, and I see more cyclists out then ever before, even in the winter. And the Springwater Trail and Eastbank Esplanade seem more crowded than ever. However, white people still make up a majority of those cycling and using the river-front facilities.

i’m glad someone is thinking about this, working on it, and publicizing their findings.

i think the most important part of the answer was cited in the post:

That analysis…shows a striking correlation: areas with the most ethnic diversity have the most gaps in the bike network.

the problem, though, is that this answer is so darn simple as to be boring — it’s just not interesting to talk about. yeah yeah yeah — more bike lanes, better bike lanes, more bike parking, etc. etc. — who cares?

who cares when we can talk about identity politics, and race relations, and gentrification, and all sorts of fun stuff?

my argument is this — if those ‘ethnic areas’ get the coverage and quality of bike infrastructure that others areas have, and the cycling mode share still does not start to catch up with the ‘non-ethnic areas’, then we can talk about the myriad vastly less influential reasons that people choose not bike in those ethnic areas. until then, we’re just spinning our wheels — prioritizing vanity projects like starting a bicycle-sharing program ahead and instead of building real bicycle infrastructure.

we have the anecdotal evidence, we have the documentary evidence, we have the theories and research showing the effectiveness of bicycle infrastructure — let’s get to it.

let’s talk about allowing people to ride bikes before we talk about convincing people to ride bikes.

Mr. Smith,

I think you miss the point: By building access into these areas, minorities see this as the gentrifying arm reaching further and further into their neighborhoods. If you build it, it won’t be long before more “trendy white folks” want to move in, forcing more minorities out.

Yeah we don’t want those pushy white folks trying to actually make a dumpy neighborhood better now do we?

I think you miss the point: By building access into these areas…[gentrification happens]…forcing more minorities out.

i don’t think i missed the point — i’ll briefly reiterate my argument [bold mine]:

my argument is this — if ‘ethnic areas’ get good bike infrastructure like the ‘white areas’, and nothing changes, then we can talk about the myriad vastly less influential reasons that people choose not to bike in those ethnic areas.

one of those ‘vastly less influential reasons’ is ‘fear of gentrification’.

so, in my opinion, based on anecdotal evidence and research, ‘fear of gentrification’ is not as important as ‘lack of infrastructure’ in trying to promote cycling. people and neighborhoods and cities make all sorts of decisions based on competing, often contradictory, interests all the time — the ‘cycling infrastructure’ vs. ‘gentrification’ debate is not new in that regard.

said another way, the number one most important factor in getting people to bike — green black grey white orange male female gay straight young old 1st-gen 2nd-gen atheist humanist catholic muslim whatever — is providing appropriate bicycle infrastructure. if we want people to bike, we know how to do it – we already know the answer – we don’t have to go looking for a new answer – we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

and i’ll add a brief note to say that, while i have no specific knowledge of the CCC’s surveys/questions/interviews/etc., i think many ‘bike surveys’ are flawed in that they don’t get to the heart of what is actually important to would-be bikers — the questions are not specific enough, those being surveyed are not asked the right questions, people respond differently than they actually behave, etc.

This would not be at all surprising for anyone who has read any behavioral economics-type stuff, and from the bike surveys I’ve seen, most recently one commissioned in San Francisco, totally failed to ‘suss out’ meaningful answers in one of those “why don’t people bike?” surveys.

and, while i don’t claim to have any answers about gentrification — whether it’s right, wrong, or somewhere in between — i’m inclined to say to people who worry a lot about all sorts of things: “too bad. the adult worriers have failed, so now the adult doers are going to succeed. the children of this neighborhood will be able to walk and bike to school, and if they can’t do it here, they’ll be able to do it in their new neighborhoods. this is a fairness/human rights issue, first and foremost, and it may also be a civil rights and women’s rights issue, but it’s going to happen, because it has to happen, because it’s right, so consider it inevitable.”

the argument that we should build bike infrastructure because of its ‘gentrification-inducing’ characteristics seems a bit twisted to me, too. what’s next — keep the good schools out in the suburbs?

i want to respond to this later argument:

Before we start allowing people to ride bikes, let’s engage in dialog with the neighborhood and find out what *they* want. …

life is full of decisions — they’re not all clean and easy. some decisions may, in fact, be almost perfectly horrible, yet still be just a bit more perfectly awesome — and that’s why we should probably do them — Prime Example #1: Health Care Reform.

i would argue that the benefits of bike lanes and all manner of bike infrastructure are so devastatingly effective and awesome that we should not waver or hesitate in bringing our bike infrastructure to full implementation (whatever that might look like in the end) as quickly as possible.

of course every community / neighborhood / town / etc. gets a say in how their areas develop, but they only get _a_ say, not _the_ say. communities have to abide by all sorts of laws, whether they like it or not, and that’s often a good thing. when Complete Streets legislation hits cities and towns and states across America, I expect people to comply with the law — regardless of their ‘fear of gentrification’, ‘fear of not being able to terrorize people in their cars’, etc.

as for maps, Google Maps now includes bike directions (as many of us know) — and you can get them in Spanish if you know how:

a (possibly not working/your mileage may vary) link for bike directions from Hacienda CDC to downtown Portland is here.

also, to view bike lanes and routes, you can just turn on the ‘Bicycle’ layer in the ‘More’ menu.

for the nerds: one way of getting bike directions in Spanish is to add an ‘hl=es’ parameter to the query string.

for the non-nerds: you can also get Spanish-language directions by starting your google maps bike directions search at maps.google.es (defaults to Spain for the location) — just put in your start location like you normally would, then select ‘Como llevar’, then add your destination location, then switch the start/end locations, then select ‘En bicicleta’ (by bicycle) option (sounds more confusing than it actually is).

the current Hacienda CDC to downtown bike directions have about 21 turns, while the car directions have about 7 turns. in an ideal world, those figures would be reversed — which means we need to push for the most direct bike routes from Pt A to Pt B, which means taking over at least a slice of every major route in the city, including the highways. and if we can’t have the highways, then they have to come down, or we need our own highways.

Peter, you don’t seem to want to hear what Black Dude on Bicycle is saying, maybe you should practice your listening skills a bit more.

So improving infrastructure is seen as gentrification? I’m reading what Peter is saying and what Black Dude is saying (and to an extent Matt mentioned) and I see the disconnect on both ends. As a middle class white who’s ridden nice bikes through nice neighborhoods most of my life, it’s interesting to hear the perspective that adding a bike lane to a road in an ‘ethnic’ neighborhood is seen as a negative thing. I’m usually pretty jazzed when my tax dollars actually go back to benefiting me, probably because it’s such a rare treat.

I think these studies are interesting but two points are fundamental here: #1 Portland is not a very diverse city culturally, plain and simple, and #2 an assumption seems to be made that once the barriers are removed (social or otherwise) people will actually get off their butts and ride bikes. I personally believe the most effective way to get the average Joe (or Jane) to consider riding a bike is to jack gas prices up through the roof. I guarantee if gas were to hit $8+/gallon you’d see a whole rainbow of riders hit the streets again!

(I’ll never forget a quote on a CNN report about the surge in biking popularity from a few summers ago – remember gas prices then? – when a black man riding in Chicago said “the times are surely changing when the Chinese can afford automobiles and the Americans are going back to riding bicycles.”)

I see lots of folks up on the sidewalks choosing to not use the bike lane on Fessenden. They’re all minorities!
…
So, I wonder if it really is an issue of access… or even education….

i think education plays a big part in getting cyclists off the sidewalks, but that said, i don’t ride in bike lanes instead of on sidewalks because bike lanes make me feel safer or more comfortable — i ride in bikes lanes because:
* it’s faster to do so
* it requires much less effort than riding on sidewalks
* i don’t run the risk of running over and injuring pedestrians, and
* it’s legal – unlike riding on (most) sidewalks.

and being a white US citizen without real disincentives to getting involved in all sorts of conflicts with motorists, i choose to ride in the road as opposed to on sidewalks, but that would be different if I was, say, on a work visa in Canada and was expected to generally be on my best behavior (i.e. no chasing down terrorist drivers, etc.). In other words, if i had to be well-behaved/obedient/complacent, i’d want to be on the sidewalks, too.

i think many folks, immigrants (legal and illegal) and others, don’t want to be ‘high profile’ in any way, and don’t want to get hassled by drivers or the cops, so they stay on the sidewalks — this was documented in the post (‘43% of Hispanics’). not feeling like a police target is one of the main reasons i bike instead of drive — such an awesome feeling — and i’m white and a citizen and know many of my rights. if you stay on the road, or even in a bike lane, you run the risk of looking like you’re asserting your rights to the road or worse, you risk actually getting involved in a conflict with a car – both bad. if it’s a bad cop in a car, even worse. the stories of police intimidation and harassment of undocumented workers are scary — i don’t blame folks for wanting to stay out of the road, even if it means riding illegally on the sidewalk — the main point of which, i suspect, is to fully convey the message that you are not attempting to challenge authority in any way whatsoever — you’re obeying and just want to continue to work and live in peace and do not want to make any white people or authority figures angry. i don’t have research to back up my feelings, but the anecdotes are pretty powerful — every time a Latino day laborer makes room for me on the sidewalk as i walk by, like i’m royalty, and says ‘Good Morning, Sir’ to me, i’m reminded of the power dynamics at play.

Far and away the most powerful driver of human behavior is culture. Plenty of reasons beyond cultural attributions contribute to the explanation of why non-whites have not embraced bicycling in Portland. However, unless and until cultural norms are really addressed, forget it.

For instance, cars are status symbols for the Latinos.

i’m confused as to what this comment means, but the last sentence does seem remarkably racist to me. really. but, i’m all for having a little honesty when talking race, finally, so it can’t hurt to talk about it.

i’m white as rice, and i think cars serve as excellent status symbols, and it’s one of the main reasons i’ve been considering becoming a driver again. Am i an exception to the rule? i doubt it — i suspect most Americans/San Franciscans/Portlanders see cars as status symbols (whether we’re willing to admit it or not might be something else). if Latinos do, in fact, view cars as status symbols, how would they be different from non-Latinos?

i just don’t buy the ‘culture’ argument to explain cycling rates – at least not in this broad sense. i’ve never seen what i would consider to be good evidence to support it, so it remains, as far as i’m concerned, a lazy generalization. i could see it playing a role, but probably not a main/leading role.

i think it’s easy to look at some non-white/racially diverse neighborhood, see that nobody there cycles, and say, “Culture! The [insert culture here] people don’t know how awesome biking is! They need to be educated!”

But the answer is probably more like “They’re busy trying to make ends meet, aren’t as connected to the ‘green movement’ for various reasons, so therefore aren’t as connected to the bike advocacy movement, which means their neighborhoods are neglected in terms of bike infrastructure, which means not many people bike there.”

In other words, cycling rates have a lot less to do with ‘culture’ than they do with cycling infrastructure, land use, and socioeconomic status. The ‘gaps in cycling infrastructure’ argument was brought up in this post. On land use, we know many poor areas don’t have good walk/bike access to all sorts of facilities — grocery stores, schools, etc. On socioeconomic status, there have been articles that talk about the stigma that poorer people associate with riding bikes — a stigma that not-so-poor people do _not_ suffer from, and so rode bikes more often.

Guess who gets stuck riding the stinky bus, the least favored mode of transportation of all? Minorities. We non-Caucasians are too busy trying to scratch out a living. We don’t have time to sit around and pontificate with the do-gooders on the virtues of pedaling. We’ve got to get to work, where ever there is work to be had.

Also, I’d like to know what kind of racial diversity the CCC administration has in it’s own internal organization.

maybe i am just another white guy on a bike, but i think maybe some people here are framing the conversation in a way that is not helpful. the question is not how can we get those blacks and latinos onto bikes, but instead: in delivering more broadly (i.e., to everyone) the message that the bicycle is not only a legitimate form of transportation but also may in many cases be more appropriate than the private automobile, how might that message need to be shaped to address particular cultural concerns. anyone who believes she must have a car or must own a house or must get the new angus burger in order to live sarah palin’s american dream has been sold a bill of goods. not just racial and ethnic minorities, but the sell here might be harder to overcome because they have been excluded. near as i can tell, alison graves is on the right track, asking the right questions.

in some utopia it will not matter if some neighborhood has been “gentrified,” because we will no longer be engaged in consumption as an end in itself, and we will have forgotten whether our neighbor is some color or another. but that is not the world we are sentenced to live in. it is glib to suggest that dislocating people is okay, but it is naive to suggest it will not happen. all any of us can do is to try to live free and to enable others to live free as well.

I wonder how much of this is not so much an ethnic issue, but a matter of the economics and geography you grew up in.

For instance, if you’re from an urban environment of high density and available public transit, a bicycle is unnecessary. You probably live in an apartment or condo with (bike) storage at a premium. Therefore no cycling culture develops. If you’re poor as well, then your apartment is smaller and the cost of a bicycle is more extravagant.

Growing up in a suburb with its low density and generally poor public transit increases the desirability of bicycles with the kids. With a bike, they can ride to their friend’s house, to school or the store. The bicycle is an early sign of independence. With more bikes in the suburbs, cheap used ones and hand-me-downs are easy to find. For middle or upper class families, the cost of a new bike is not out of reach. With all the kids on bikes a cycling culture develops. Even if adults put the bike away for a few years, it’s still something that’s taught to the kids. The idea of cycling as transportation remains.

Peter S. – the only place sidewalk riding is illegal in Portland is in the downtown core.

You don’t need a bike lane to ride a bike.

yes, you do — if by ‘bike lane’ you mean ‘bike lane and all related bicycle infrastructure that makes it possible for people to ride their bikes, including traffic-calmed streets (woonerfs/bicycle boulevards/neighborhood greenways), etc.’

that’s the entire basis of the gentrification, in fact. people don’t find bike lanes desirable because they’re particularly pretty, or because they require maintenance, or any other reason like that — they like bike lanes because bike lanes make it possible for a some (brave) people to ride bikes — that’s it.

I always find it humorous in Portland how the white people always try to attribute the lack of “x” to anything other than race.

‘the white people’? no.

‘many/most white people’? yes.

As long as minority groups (especially black people) continue to see this as another attempt to further run them out of their neighborhoods, this issue won’t get a lot of support from minorities. I think this is the heart of what the CCC is trying to understand.

if this is what the CCC is trying to understand, and then, presumably, address – then that might be a worthy endeavor, but what then? what’s the answer?

hypothetical: we go with the presumption that bike lanes do, in fact, bring about gentrification and/or rapid/uncontrolled gentrification. and let’s say that the bike lane installers, whoever they may be, are operating on good faith — that is, they really believe that installing bike lanes will be good for the city as a whole, for all of the city’s residents, and in particular for the residents who live nearby or along the route where the bike lanes are to be installed — in this case, we’re talking about black and/or diverse neighborhoods. and let’s say that the CCC has figured out there is distrust in the black/diverse community, has reached out and convinced the black/diverse community the new bike lanes are not an attempt to gentrify, but an attempt to make their lives better, and it will, most community member believe, make their lives better. to reiterate the first stated fact in this hypothetical, most people, community members included, also agree that new bike lanes will bring about a ‘medium’ level of gentrification — whatever, exactly, that is or may look like ‘on the ground’.

now what?

do we build the bike lanes or not?

this question is for everyone, but especially for you, Black Dude on a Bicycle, because you seem to be generally critical of new bike lanes, or at least critical of ‘the white people’.

i gave my answer — “build ’em.” what’s yours?

I am a brown guy on a bike. Not sure how BDOB will respond, but I can generally say that I’m ALL FOR bike lanes in areas of Portland with high minority populations.

Moreover, I’m ALL FOR white people discussing, grappling with, and promoting this idea with this qualification: do so with respect (not a we-know-better-than-you attitude), ask when you need some input (we’re out here), and show how bike lanes matter to the things Communities of Color care about (this will begin to address current attitudes re: gentrification, our own racial stereotypes re: bikes, etc.).

The reality is with higher unemployment and lower income levels than Whites, Communities of Color don’t have the time to do the advocacy it takes to bring bike lanes to our communities. (We’re working on jobs and police accountability right now.) Once bike lanes are built out, there will be more opportunities for people of color to bike. Bike lanes may not get as much use as say the yellow line or bus lines, but they will be used. (And they will, in turn, lead to jobs/wealth creation for the next generation — not to mention parents who will feel less worried.)

So, all you bike allies, please keep this topic going. When resources are limited and the hard decisions need to be made, please keep the shaded areas in the equity map above in mind. By building bike lanes with Communities of Color at the center of focus (and not as an add-on), I think it will benefit everybody: the communities of color who live in these areas, poorer, white people who also live in the same areas, weekend warriors, bike culture in Portland, and ultimately a bike lobby to fund the entire 2030 plan.

Thank you, Alison, for pursuing a topic that could easily have been ignored. Thank you, Board of CCC. Thank you, Jonathan, for the coverage.

Of course, I am just one person — and certainly most people from communities of color won’t value bike lanes as much as I do. Then again, it’s hard to value something until you have ready access to it in your own neighborhood.

BTW, cyclist, I’m Pete currently living in the Bay Area and a BP reader/poster since the beginning; hope you’re not confusing me with Peter S. This has been one of the more interesting posts and follow-up comments – thanks everyone for keeping it informative and civil. As I said before I represent the majority, so it’s enlightening to hear what minorities have to say.

The point about cars being a status symbol – exceptionally true here in Silicon Valley. They’re placed on a pedestal and it’s not a race thing (though you can often guess the demographic by the car).

And yes I’ve ridden in Portland. Way more diverse ridership here (gender, age, and race). Mostly recreational though (weather and high income probably the factors). Most commuters I see here (I ride daily) are white or Asian males.

Yeah, I’m sure economic class has NOTHING to do with this…*rolls eyes*. I bet when you draw a map of all the bike improvements, you find them in wealthy neighborhoods. Weird. Probably just a coincidence.