[The following article was written by new executive director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, Rob Sadowsky.]
“To make a significant dent in bicycling mode share in Portland…we need to take significant steps to limiting the convenience of driving a car.”
I was excited to read the various ‘Big Ideas’ submitted to BikePortland, even my favorite — the giant slide down Mt. Hood. To make a significant dent in bicycling mode share in Portland, and in the region, we need not only big bold infrastructure ideas, but we need to take significant steps to limiting the convenience of driving a car.
There are many reasons why Copenhagen has made such great strides in reducing car travel and increasing use of bicycling, walking and transit. They have developed wonderful facilities for active transportation. However, that wasn’t enough. They went the extra step and directly went after the convenience of driving.
Not convenient for driving; but a
great place to live and bike.
Imagine the neighborhood where you wake up in the morning in a bit of a rush. You think about the choices you have to get to work and realize that the only way to make your meeting in time is to bicycle. You know that if you get in your car, you’ll have to go the long way around the neighborhood to get out and your parking options downtown are limited and very expensive. If you bicycle, you’ll be able to park right in front of the office or perhaps you’re one of the growing workers who have indoor parking inside your office.
Residents of the Ladd’s Addition neighborhood in Southeast Portland already know that a helter-skelter street design doesn’t make the neighborhood less attractive, it does the opposite. Folks crave the opportunity to move in. Property values are consistently higher than surrounding neighborhoods.
We don’t need to redesign all of our streets to go diagonally to make this happen. We just need to develop significant traffic calming tools and divert traffic toward major arteries. We can change the traffic timing of our lights to make bicycling faster than cars. We can add congestion pricing and parking to our already congested areas. Plus, we need to take fees earned off congestion pricing and reinvest it in neighborhood design and transit options for all.
Of course this will take a great deal of political will. The great thing about the idea is that this will comes not from just bicyclists but neighbors who will benefit from quieter, cleaner and kid friendly design.
— Sadowsky is moving to Portland at the end of June and is set to officially take over at the BTA on July 1st. For more on his advocacy style, read this recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Thanks for reading.
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Rob: it’s definitely time we started going about this whole idea of re-designing how our streets work from a less-bicycle-centric point of origin…
that is, we need to start making it clear that re-designing how our transportation systems work makes our neighborhoods more enjoyable, makes our children safer, makes our public space actually public, saves people money, saves lives, and – as means to those ends – makes it easier and more convenient to ride a bike or walk than to hop in a car for many trips.
Cars are great, but they should be used primarily for trips where they are actually really useful over and above walking or biking. Making it less convenient to drive will help to bring things back to that point.
Hear, hear!
we’d better off making driving more expensive and we could start by ending subsidies for motorists and making them to pay the full price for gasoline at the pump, including all the ‘external’ costs like environmental restoration, foreign oil wars, etc.
“We can change the traffic timing of our lights to make bicycling faster than cars.”
I applaud your commitment to rebalancing the streets in favor of modes that don’t rely on fossil fuels, but one thing to think about is whether speed should be the goal or something more comprehensive? Convenience is often assumed to adhere to cars, but I find the advantages of biking for me are less about speed than about the ease with which I can get places, the minimal investment in time and money I have to make in my vehicle, the fact that I can put the bike on Trimet or carry it up a set of stairs.
I guess what I am saying is that I already find biking way more convenient than a car, but the trick is to nudge others toward discovering this for themselves. Sometimes it requires not having a car ready at hand. How about a car-free day a month? Reducing the cultural and infrastructural advantages cars presently enjoy is an important area to focus on, however, and for me cheap parking for cars rises to the top of that list.
In my opinion, people need to simply think about the total costs of their choices. owning and insuring a bike costs maybe 50$/year in depreciation if its a nice bike, whereas owning and insuring a car costs ~ 2000$/year (0 miles driven). Add to that the fact that every mile you drive costs you about $.33 whereas every mile you bike costs you about $.10.
Plus the costs of parking if your employer doesn’t provide it free (we need to remove this subsidy).
On top of that, biking rewards you with better health worth roughly $.80-1.20/mile in reduced medical costs (which you probably don’t benefit from). Reduced road maintenance (societal benefit) $.10/mile. Less gas (we need carbon taxes to reflect the true costs here).
It is too bad that we aren’t transferring the road maintenance costs and carbon costs on to individuals, but even so, biking is a huge win for the individual.
@Allan: the problem with that, is that it’s been shown over and over that people simply gravitate to what is most convenient, sometimes at their own personal disadvantage and harm.
The same applies to how we eat. It’s cheaper and healthier to do a lot of your own food production, but it’s much less convenient than just buying everything prepackaged and frozen to be reheated in the microwave.
Only a few people will start biking because it’s cheaper or because of the health benefits.
“… and divert traffic toward major arteries.”
If we do this, we MUST provide excellent crossing infrastructure for bikes. Could you imagine crossing 39th & Clinton without the bike box and car diverter?
If you want to see what this looks like, just head past 50th Ave in SE. The residential areas are super calm, without much cut through traffic because everyone is on Division, Powell, Holgate, Foster.
But trying to cross these car-heavy streets is a disaster, and restricts the appeal and safety of cycling.
I agree with Fabo – as it stands now, one of the biggest problems with biking in Portland is crossing the arterial streets.
“people simply gravitate to what is most convenient”
Yes/no/maybe. Convenience is a social construct. Habit is probably even more important. Using a car to go downtown wouldn’t be convenient for me in part because it is not my habit. Then there’s the issue of how cars intersect with social class, status, or one’s economic circumstances. Once you’ve invested thousands of $ in your car, it may be less the convenience (however measured) but the simple fact that you’ve put your eggs in that basket. Most of the cost of owning and using a car is fixed, not variable. Riding a bike isn’t yet fixed in everyone’s mind as a marker of achievement in the same way as driving a car is. Lots of hurdles that go beyond this notion of convenience.
Ladd’s Addition was a planned community with architecturally pleasing houses. The surrounding neighborhoods not so much. It is not just the street layout that makes a neighborhood, though if Portland were to announce neighborhood with a ROW closed to through traffic, I would buy into it asap.
@9watts: yeah, very true.
Carrots work better than sticks.
for donkeys, yes.
yes, carrots work better than sticks… but right now we have ZERO sticks. We need to balance the carrot/stick but we can’t make any significant improvements for urban biking if we aren’t willing to get out the sticks and spank a few sacred cows on the behind.
if Portland were to announce neighborhood with a ROW closed to through traffic, I would buy into it asap.
backwards thinking. cycling needs connectivity, and neighborhoods with ROW closed to through traffic don’t provide that.
They are also plenty common – in the cul-de-sac suburbs.
One small solution to shortening the pedestrian/bike commute would be to give priority to the walk signal at intersections. I have several on my route that are absolutely infuriating.
I’m assuming this is the scenario, I pick routes that are less traveled. That results in less priority for me with pre-programmed traffic signals.
Let’s not forget the back-scratcher masquerading as a stick called ‘drive less save more.’
If the City is (we are) serious about this effort to get folks to drive less, or better yet phase out their reliance on cars, then we need to have hard targets and milestones and policies in place that stand a chance of ushering in the changes we know we need. Someone knows now how many gallons of gas are sold in Multnomah Co. Let’s figure out how to work toward reducing that figure by 10% per year.
The BP oil thing has got some folks rethinking their reliance on the stuff.
There’s an 800 pound gorilla in the room, and that’s the weather. For me personally, I don’t ride in the winter, because the combination of darkness, rush hour traffic, and wet roads makes me very uncomfortable on a bike. Even if driving were less convenient, I just don’t see vast numbers of people giving up physical comfort during their commutes. Until we can do something to address that, this discussion seems quixotic. I think most people who are going to ride from November to March already do.
Just think how sad your familly would be if the fire truck, ambulance, police… have to take a longer route to get to your house. Dont mess with car traffic, stay with bikes.
jim,
emergency response times are a red herring. we can “mess with car traffic” a lot more than we do while not significantly decreasing response times. that issue is about a lack of will and innovation/imagination to find ways to deal with it.
GLV,
I think the impacts of weather/rain are often misunderstood. I think it’s a facility issue and not a physical comfort issue. People don’t like to ride in the rain because our inadequate facilities are even less attractive to ride on when they are wet, slippery and the skies are dark. If we had a real bike network with more connected and separated routes and safer crossings of arterials, the weather would be much less of a factor. Copenhagen, etc.. have similar weather as we do!
carbon tax
@jim – this is the case in suburban neighborhoods with winding cul-de-sacs now. they seem to be getting along just fine
Let’s not forget that the lights were reprogrammed on many of Portland’s busier streets a few years back as part of a carbon offset deal whereby PGE’s Boardman power plant that burns coal was given credits for upping the average speed of cars on these streets. That’s right, for helping cars go faster/idling less(!) As crazy as that seems to some of us, this is the kind of policy we don’t need.
There’s really no way to pursue these two goals simultaneously: increase efficiency of car-based infrastructure system-wide *and* get people out of their cars. We need to choose.
I would be happy
– if speed limits were enforced and lowered to 19.5 miles (harder to gage on the speedometer.
– To keep drivers from using neighborhood streets a speedways, dead-end them for car in the middle of the neighborhood, but keep them open for bikes and emergency vehicles…
I agree with making the city less dependent on cars, but I see the sole reliance on bikes as a privileged standpoint.
Personally, I am privileged enough to be an able-bodied person who can physically ride a bike and someone who has the luxury of working close enough to work to commute.
There are many folks I know that would love to be able to ride a bike and simply can’t.
Let’s make sure to include all these folks in our “ideal vision” and put further emphasis on alternative transportationS (like public transit) so we can ALL benefit.
Commuting on cul-de-sac streets could be quicker, safer and easier if the house at the bottom of the sac was removed and a path was installed.
most of the time the house doesn’t need to be removed, a path next to the house could simply be built with an easement across their land
J- I think emergency vehicles were able to move down Interste Ave a lot faster when it had 4 lanes. Now that it is “messed with” it is a nightmare during rush hour. Fire trucks are slower to get to their destination. I didn’t see all of those drivers hop onto the max after it was built. It just made things more congested, more cars sitting stuck in trafic with their engines idling, geting 0 mpg…
The aisland on Killingsworth and Concord that made it unmanueverable for fire trucks.
What about making Concord into a one way street?(going outof the neighborhood) Don’t you think that might affect how fast of a response you would get if the ambulance had to circle around that big area?
Closing access to other streets….
It worries me when cycling advocates look only at the cycling infrastructure of a city like Copenhagen and think “Hey, we can do that here and then we’ll increase bike mode share!” Copenhagen contracts out its bus and suburban rail systems to private companies that compete to provide that service. That helps keep public transit costs low while not compromising service. Here, Tri-Met keeps raising fares. Copenhagen’s new subway system is driveless, like Vancouver’s Sky Train, making the service extremely attractive for users and the city. When you don’t have to pay drivers, you can provide high-frequency service cheaply. Here, Tri-Met keeps cutting frequency, especially of bus service (but also light rail), making public transit less and less attractive, especially in comparison to driving. The importance of public transit to Copenhagen’s overall strategy of letting people get around speedily and affordably without a car can’t be underestimated. Copenhagenize says there were 1,845,669 bikes transported on S-train in the city and environs in 2007, and as we’ve seen from pictures of the massive bike parking facilities at Copenhagen’s Metro stations, many riders rarely even take their bikes onto the trains.
All of this is developed and developing as Copenhagen makes driving less convenient, not before driving is made less convenient. We have a long way to go before our multi-modal options can begin to compare. And we face huge obstacles from all sorts of constituencies, not just those desperately clinging to their cars. We need more density to achieve what Copenhagen has, but moves in that direction brings the historic preservationists out in force. We need to prioritize public transit frequency, variety and travel times so that it competes favorably with the private auto, but moves in that direction lead to howls from the business community, motorists, and cyclists alike. (Witness the recent post here on BikePortland discussing lawsuits about streetcar tracks creating hazards for bicycle travel, or just search the archives to get an earful of the vitriol a big segment of our city’s avid cycling community unleashes against bus drivers, Tri-Met, or public transit in general. Attitudes like that are considerably more marginalized in cities like Copenhagen than they are in Portland.)
By all means, we need better cycling infrastructure too, but that’s far from the only thing we need. We need a comprehensive strategy that eliminates the need for a car for as many Portland residents as possible. Some of that strategy will necessarily (but incidentally) make driving less convenient, which is fine. But focusing on a “need” to make driving less convenient is just going to alienate those who aren’t inclined or able to get on a bike.
don’t worry–in your description it is the cars that are keeping things bottled up. As folks switch to bikes, the emergency vehicles will get through a lot better. Besides, on the bigger streets the emergency vehicles have transponders that switch the lights in their favor. Like Jonathan said, this is mostly a red herring. Certainly not a valid reason to keep us from re-building our infrastructure to work without fossil fuels.
By the way, this is an incredibly stupid idea from a political perspective, no politician in their right mind is going to say that they want to make driving less convenient if they want to get reelected.
Transpoders are not going to do any good when Interstate Ave is backed up for 10 blocks, and they cant use concord.
They said people will use max after it was built and they didnt, what makes you think those same people are going to jump on a bike?
jim
“They said people will use max after it was built and they didnt, what makes you think those same people are going to jump on a bike?”
(1) peak oil
(2) climate change
(3) policies that anticipate (1) and (2) and/or take Rob’s suggestions to heart.
I’m under no illusion that this kind of change will happen overnight but it will happen.
No more cheap oil, no more free atmosphere; just wait…
Besides, for many who now ride bikes as transport (under existing economic conditions and with an infrastructure highly favorable to cars) they probably wouldn’t switch back to bikes. How can we be so sure that this wouldn’t also hold for a substantial fraction of the rest of our fellow citizens?
Interesting. but people r still car stuck,
i’m not sure where you guys work/if you work, but no matter how inconvenient it is, getting to work by car is my only way right now.
there is no way i could go to work all sweaty/wet/stinky/mussed up hair, go into the tiny bathroom stall and change into a suit and tie, and then proceed to meet with clients all day.
so by making it less convenient for me to drive, you’re just pissing me off.
branden –
this is a dynamic problem if there ever was one. Of course there are also dozens, even hundreds of obstacles and valid reasons why *everybody* doesn’t or couldn’t switch to biking for all their transport needs–overnight. But that isn’t the point. The point is that we can and must figure out how to transition in this direction. It will be easier for some than for others.
The problem, though, is that we have folks who think that cars and oil are always going to be there.
I’m more interested in working toward better infrastructure, a more level playing field, identifying obstacles, getting the conversation going about what is involved in either getting people to work over distances where bikes won’t easily work, or finding alternatives that do, or coming to terms with the fact that _at some point_ we’re probably all going to live closer to our work.
How about covered bus stops with better accountability as far as running on time. I personally get angry when the every-half-hour Trimet bus whizzes by the stop five minutes *ahead* of schedule. That isn’t something we should have to put up with if we’re going to rely more heavily on buses (of course many already do).
I’m glad to hear the new director of the BTA taking this position. Driving needs to be made less convenient and the true costs of it need to be paid.
it’s a great idea that will take a miracle…
I don’t want to be too politically incorrect (alright, maybe I do) but I think we need the two or three oldest generations to die off before politicians can sell the idea of making driving less convenient.
The problem, though, is that we have folks who think that cars and oil are always going to be there.
We also have people who think that cars are always going to run on oil-based fuels. But we are already beginning to move away from that. Once the effects of peak oil are really felt, that transition will accelerate. Don’t underestimate human ingenuity.
I stand by my earlier assertion that people will never abandon, en masse, the comfort and convenience of climate-controlled vehicles that don’t require physical exertion to operate. Maybe in inner Portland they will to a certain extent, but across the country? Call me a skeptic but I don’t see that happening.
The only real inconvenience people understand is price & costs. Driving is subsidized, only when that ends and people pay the true price for fuel (oil spills) and roads, then will we see the alternatives as a more appealing choice. Blumenauer wants to Subsidize rail car construction. Instead of subsidizing rail car production, they should end the auto subsidies and allow transportation options to compete on a level playing field. The country can’t afford to subsidize both sides of the transportation options.
If we just drop all subsidies, it would be better than what we have now, however, the historical subsidy will take a long time to wear off. we should be working to speed up that process.
Think smaller. Too man people automatically think that building a bazillion dolars worth of new bike paths, bulldozing neighborhoods, and wholesale city redesigns are the answer.
Fiscally it makes much more sense for the federal government to eliminate subsidies for employer provided parking and to require employer paid parking be reported as taxable income for individual workers. Coupled with rising gasoline prices as peak oil is realized, many people will begin to start using mass transit, bikes, shared vehicles as their true cost of commuting skyrockets. In many metro areas, $5.00+ gas and a $300+ monthly parking bills will create rapid behavior changes amongst the working and middle classes that comprise 80% of daily car traffic.
I’m with # 39 and # 40 here.
And I’m willing to go further. I’m willing to suggest that the enormous, tangled web of consumerism, convenience, overpopulation, laziness and overblown sense of privilege that the car-centric landscape (subsidized heavily by Big Oil, Big Auto and a host of other institutions) has helped grow and shape, is NOT something we can blithely “evolve” our way out of. We don’t have that much time.
It is something that will likely have to be brought crashing down by an economic and/or environmental crisis of such global proportions that people — even here in “safe” Portland — WILL actually die, and not necessarily of old age.
I have grown impatient with the rate of change offered by the baby-steps-masked-as-Big-Ideas-thinking that political organizations are required to engage in.
I have grown impatient with politics.
And I am tired of trying to tell people that getting out of the car is simply “because bikes are fun”.
Getting out of the car –AND living a much more local, simpler. less consumerist-oriented life — is about SAVING THE PLANET, and nothing less.
@Brad-43: I think the parking bills would be sizeable and transformative, however I think they would ultimately make gas cheaper (supply & demand). I agree that is a great idea, just want to check your math.
One thing is already working for us in this area: gas prices. That’s a built-in inconvenience, and they’re only going up.
Allan (#2) – The average cost of maintaining a car in Oregon is currently about $7,000 a year. $50 for a bike is probably a bit low – the year that I rode 6,000 miles, I spent over $100 in tires, tubes and brake pads. Still, even if you’re really rough on your equipment and ride 10,000 miles in a year, a bike still will cost less than $500 a year, plus insurance (in my case, about $250 a year for my renter’s insurance).
John (#12) – Sometimes. The most effective strategy is both a carrot AND a stick (or perhaps a stick and 2 or more carrots?).
Anonymous (#24) – Are you willing to have that standard enforced on bicycles as well?
christopher (#25) – I don’t think anyone is advocating a sole reliance on bikes. Remember, you’re commenting on a story by the new Executive Director of the BTA, on a bike-focused blog – there will be some inherent bias there. The policies and methods that make the environment better for bikes and less convenient for cars also enhance walking and transit.
jim (#28) – “fire trucks are slower” on Interstate. Do you have a source for that? There are parallel streets that are pretty quick, including I-5 (granted, access to and from I-5 is limited). As for Concord, why pick the most extreme example? If this hypothetical plan were implemented, it would never be planned in that fashion, for exactly the reason you state.
BURR (#31) – It works, though, just not by calling it like it is. And certain jurisdictions in the east (cough, Chicago, cough) have “politicians for life” who are above the electorate so long as they don’t do anything eggregiously stupid.
jim (#32) – people *do* use MAX – Yellow line services 14,000 trips per weekday, and every time I ride it, it’s at least half full.
branden (#35) – bike does not necessarily mean sweaty. How far do you drive? A 10-mile commute can easily be made in an hour by bike without breaking a sweat on fair-weather days. 9watts comments in (#36) are valid, eventually we have to switch, might as well do it now under our terms before time and circumstances force us to do it anyway.
Spiffy (#38) “Miracle” is shorthand for “effort and dedication”. All it takes is a few handfuls of people to get out of their chair and get involved. We don’t even need the BTA for that, though dedicated advocacy organizations help A LOT.
GLV (#40) – MAY accelerate. We also are having a crisis of metals, especially the rare earths used for batteries and other hi-tech solutions. People won’t abandon them willingly, but nature will force the issue within 25 years. The current path isn’t just unsustainable, it’s insurmountable. Technology and market-based solutions are not going to conquer this predicament.
Jeff (#41) – And time and effort. There are a lot of people with money who are willing to spend it if it will save them from doing the work themselves, or taking the time to do it, or figuring out how to do it. (your own business capitalizes on that fact) Plenty of them are willing to pay whatever they have to in order to keep motoring, and to keep their privileged status. I agree with your remarks, though – stop the subsidies.
Brad (#43) – Amen.
beth (#44) – it’s already happening, it started in 2005. The thing is, is that the collapse is not fast enough to be seen as such, and will be much more involved than many think. We won’t have an apocalyptic scenario. We have an opportunity to move with history, or be run over by it.
Allan (#45) – It might reduce the price of gas due to people driving less, but only if they drive less – which is the point. If that happens, then it’s been successful. Also, even if it’s not successful in reducing mileage, it will increase city parking revenues which can be used to continue to fund existing services.
Gasoline will only get more expensive as the years go on. First, peak oil is a very real concept. Secondly, China and India will be competeing very hard for the finite supply of crude to fuel their economic ambitions and that will drive up oil prices. Lastly, the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is going to usher in a new era of regulation that will make offshore production more expensive. If taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the cleanup (and we will!) then populist anger towards Big Oil will cause even the GOP to allow new environmental and worker safety regulations to be implemented.
@47: there are 2 separate costs: 1 is the cost of owning & insuring the car/bike and the other is the cost of using it. The car costs 2000$ in depreciation (years based) and insurance to drive 0 miles. It also costs ~ 30-35 cents/mile to drive in maintenance, depreciation (mileage based), etc.
I provided estimates for biking as well.
I’m more inclined to John Reinhold #12 ‘carrot/stick’ analogy as a means to less dependence on motor vehicle travel.
More effort expended on enhancing the attractiveness and natural enjoyment of neighborhood walking and biking routes to nearby destinations would go further to draw people out of their cars than would making the streets more miserable to navigate a motor vehicle through.
I think that many people that are physically able, really would like to walk or bike, but don’t, simply because the route has been made so ugly and depressing through subservience to motor vehicle demands. Nothing ruins a good walking or biking route quite the way the presence a lot of fast moving motor vehicles in close proximity to the non-motorized travel infrastructure can.
It would cost some money to buy the properties to blow them out, but removing some of the old cul-de-sacs could be enormously helpful in creating good, very enjoyable straight through routes for non-motorized travel modes.
GLV #18…advances are being made in the development of bikes with shells that enclose the rider. The shelter they provide their riders with from wind chill and the rain could greatly counter the aversion some people experience associated with the weather and the winter season. For relatively flat, short trips, these vehicles could be a very attractive alternative to firing up the gas burner.
“Nothing ruins a good walking or biking route quite the way the presence a lot of fast moving motor vehicles in close proximity to the non-motorized travel infrastructure can.”
Good point. And since these are ‘our streets’ we’re talking about it is hard to see how making it less convenient for those fast moving vehicles to move so fast wouldn’t help advance this goal.
Why not lots of carrots, lots of sticks, and lots of public discussion?