Please nominate comments by replying with “comment of the week” or “COTW” so I can more easily find them via search. Thank you.
This week’s COTW is about the benefits of bicycling that aren’t always front-and-center in debates about policy, projects, and politics — and why those benefits don’t change depending on geography and shouldn’t succumb to the whims of what “makes sense” for an elected official. Reader Lois Leveen’s initial comment touched off a lively set of responses and she followed-up with an explanation of why she believes bicycling is important and worthy of support citywide.
I’ve shared her follow-up comment below:
Perhaps my initial comment misled people into thinking that climate crisis is the only measure of public health or public good. It is not. I bike commute 18 miles roundtrip to my job. My workplace is not very easy to get to on public transit and bicycling requires a particular commitment because of our location, even for folks who live closer to our workplace. Yet my colleagues who commute by bike generally describe their commute as one of the best parts of the day. I haven’t heard that from any of those who drive to campus, even though they are the vast majority of my coworkers. Oh, and although it’s anecdotal, I’ve noticed my driving coworkers get sick a lot more than I do. So yes, we need people to understand the emotional, cognitive, psychological, and physical benefits of bicycling and walking. And the social benefits of all of those and of taking public transit. I often interact with friends/acquaintances I happen upon during my commute. I also get to interact pleasantly with strangers just by saying hello as I pass them. Transit riders can have the same social interactions (please spare me the comments about how dangerous public transit is; statistically, drivers of motor vehicles are injuring and killing and threatening way more than people on transit).
And also just a reminder, even with abundant clean energy (which we do not and likely never will have), electric cars, trucks, and SUVs would still pollute, as tires on the road cause devastating pollution and so does the manufacture of electric vehicles. And electric vehicles still injure and kill when driven recklessly; in fact, drivers’ ability to accelerate faster in electric vehicles — even when not driven aggressively — makes them deadlier in collisions. So, um, yeah sorry to disappoint everyone who went sideways in response to my initial comment but public good/public health takes many forms and government should advance rather than undermine it.
They don’t call it the “comedy of the commons”, nor the “romance of the commons”.
I chose this comment because I appreciate when someone stays engaged with a thread and doesn’t just comment-and-run. I also like how Leveen took time to expand on her point and shared her views without going negative on other road users (or readers). As for the contents of her comment, I think given that societal breakdown is the cause of many of our problems, the positive impact of non-driving modes on community (re)building is something that deserves more attention.
There have been some very lively, high-volume comment threads lately. (I’m not sure why.) But with just one moderator (hi!) these days, I am very grateful at how productive and thoughtful almost all of them are. Thanks everyone for helping make BP comments a useful platform and helpful resource.
Remember to reply with “comment of the week” or “COTW” if you want to nominate a comment this coming week.
Thanks for reading.
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I love public transit much more than the next guy, but I think the public health benefits of public transit are not as clear as they would be for biking. In cities with really high ridership, overcrowding is the normal state of operations and there are serious public health downsides to this. Running more buses isn’t always an option either (though it definitely is in Portland). I’ve been on Mission Street on a #14 bus packed to the gills with something like 30 buses per hour serving the route (including the 14R), and there’s BART beneath Mission too. I got a kick out of it, but if it were my daily commute I’d have a hard time imagining it being all that much less stressful than driving.
And in my Portland-based commuting life, I’ve taken the #12 to/from Tigard (with my bike in tow). It was a fine commute, and I preferred it to driving (because I love buses). But the #12 would be inexplicably late, trips would be dropped, and it would be generally frustrating. I much preferred to bike home, though would only do that in the summer months.
Anyways, I do think there are very tangible benefits to biking for public health, and that public transit is better than driving. But that biking has those benefits basically no matter what, and that transit is much more contextualized to the specifics of your transit commute. I like my current one (the #14 to downtown, then a walk to PSU), but I would feel differently if I lived in Brentwood-Darlington and relied on the #19 or the #71 to get places. I don’t mean to rain on the parade of this comment though – I think it’s well thought out and basically right. I just think we should be willing to state the public health benefits of biking without having to bring in public transit, which has benefits over driving but which are different than biking.
I think your views and Lois’s are closer than you may realize. Lois wrote,
So the only benefit Lois mentioned in regard to public transit was the social benefit, not the others that were mentioned for biking and walking.
Hate to be the “show me your sources” person for this, but please do. Outside of ’80’s Tokyo levels of overcrowding (which has largely been fixed there, through–surprise, surprise–even more transit provision), there aren’t any documented downsides of overcrowding that aren’t about comfort more than actual health. Even during peak covid era, there were lots of ways lots of places with very high transit ridership (and population density) managed the situation better than car-dependent, sprawling U.S. cities.
Overcrowding is something that people can get used to, and is itself ultimately subjective, based on expected amounts of personal space (surprisingly, often objectively defined more generously in places like Tokyo and Seoul than in, e..g, NYC). If you grow up in a dense place with lots of people sharing little space, that becomes your normal. The converse is opposite as well, I admit, but one of these allows for more people to live in a place, and the other doesn’t is therefore inherently exclusionary.
And the spontaneity of interactions enabled by transit and transit-friendly environments is important. Learning to be comfortable with a certain level of discomfort is an essential social adaptation, whose loss I think we are starting to feel in a really disconcerting big-picture way.
Using that definition, everything is exclusionary. You exclude people from your housing, as do I, as does the guy in who set up a tent on sidewalk who is excluding others from sleeping there. We could all make room for one more.
“Exclusionary” is one of those terms, like “NIMBY” that is just something to lob at things you don’t like but that doesn’t really mean anything specific.
Having lived in NYC for a bit before moving to DC (and kind of assuming they were similar) I was horrified to ride the Metro for a year. It was… so dull. I don’t know if it’s the percentage of people who ride transit (NYC is >50%) or the demographic, or some other variable that makes a significant cultural difference in who rides (maybe it’s just DC), but I even miss some of the bad parts of being on the MTA. I can’t remember much of the Metro.
One big difference I find biking in the US vs elsewhere: often times in the US it’s difficult to ride causally with friends because the space is so limited, or you’re required to ride more alertly or with cars. That social benefit of riding with people is huge and so underestimated. Combining public health with social benefits really makes casual social biking one of my favorite things, and something that still happens in the US but is limited more to events.
Lois’s comment is actually also the Comment of the Year.
And, potentially, the Comment of the Latter Half Of The 2020s.
Aw, shucks.
Wait a minute, the year is only a week old. So by definition, the comment of this week is thus far the comment of the year.
Health benefits of biking in Oregon (well the Shire)
https://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/Programs/ResearchDocuments/Bicycle%20Count%20Data%20What%20is%20it%20Good%20For%20-%20Research%20Note.pdf
Public health in America is schizophrenic; when it comes to drug addiction and obesity its about meeting people where they are–Suboxone, Ozempic, free needles.
But comments like this are more “meet me where I’M at”.
“Pull yourself up by the bootstraps!–Get healthy–bike across town, just like I do!”
People in America do not look after their health by making lifestyle changes–look around!! Not everyone is as mentally balanced/successful/organized as some of the people on this blog.
They work so many hours, there’s so many bills and accounts we keep track of and our matchstick houses require more and more work as climate BS gets worse.
The only hope is to make those options MORE CONVENIENT, SAFER, MORE RELIABLE. And yes, Max is often scary, as are the MUPs. Believe it.
I will add that bike and pedestrian centric media plus the advocate class send too many mixed messages.
On Monday, you get “Biking and walking great for your health and the planet! We should all be biking and walking more for stronger bodies, minds, and communities!!!”
Tuesday brings, “Biking and walking are DANGEROUS! Car drivers are all homicidal maniacs with no regard for laws or life!”
Wednesday greets us with, “Transit is more affordable and lower stress than driving! Use public transit more!”
Thursday? “Violence and weirdness up on Tri-Met in 2024! Too many addicts and mentally unstable homeless congregate near transit stops. Be very careful!”
Friday finishes the week with either sermonizing for alternatives, lamenting the lack of funding/political will for improvements, demonizing some party for their ways or their lack of action, or advertising some form of weekend bike recreation.
It’s much like consuming regular media. After a time, half of us become smug know-it-alls convinced of our righteousness and zealotry while the other half is so anxious that they just decide that the car life is safer and far more pleasant than the alternatives. I’m not sure how this changes without going full doom/scold or Pollyanna? In any event, rising fuel and insurance prices, crowded and crumbling roads, and e-bikes are not stopping the downward slide of alternative transportation use from pre-pandemic levels.
Please remember the comment Jonathan has raised up was a reply to replies to an earlier comment I made on another piece … all of which was about how *city government* or electeds more generally should approach public health. So guess what, if transit were free, convenient, and well maintained, and streets were designed to emphasize the safe passage of people rather than of motor vehicles, etc. it wouldn’t be “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” it would be healthy, unpolluted water raises all boats. This isn’t “bike and pedestrian centric” it’s health and sustainability and stewardship-centric. But first government needs to recognize that car culture is antithetical to health, sustainability, and stewardship.
When PBOT caves when a few people complain about “equity” and remove some safety (for all of us) striping for bikes lanes, I think it’s going to be very hard to get our government to stop playing woke politics, and look at helping all, regardless of skin color or gender affiliation.
Safety works for all, not just a minority of people.
I think most people expect streets to be “transportation-centric”. This means an orientation towards functionality rather than impacts like “health” and “good stewardship”. In 2025 American society, for most people, transportation means cars, but if TriMet could magically work a whole lot better for more folks, it could perhaps escape the “alternative” designation and elevate to become a first-class player in the public mind.
I think bikes are permanently consigned to the lowly “alternative” bucket, but I like them anyway.
Lois’s follow-up comment was valuable for the last line alone – about “the romance of the commons.”
I think often about the tragedy of the commons, but generally Portland has been an exception – it was one of the reasons I moved here many years ago. I’d say that people in my area of SW Portland still mostly care for the place and take care of the place, but the care does seem to be fading and the place is getting crappier, which maybe happens to every place as the population grows and new people care less or can’t be bothered to care. A few years ago, a new neighbor moved in and asked, “Who takes care of this street?” My reply: “WE DO!” But he never seems to leave his house and takes care of nothing – not even his own yard (hires a yard-care company). That seems to be the way with many new arrivals.
My experience has been that people who are the most socially isolated hold the most negative views about humanity and people they do not know. They are the least interested in supporting or promoting a common good.
Driving and the infrastructure and zoning that go along with it accelerates loneliness and social isolation. Loneliness in itself is strongly correlated with bad health outcomes and premature mortality. It is considered an epidemic, by some like the Surgeon General, in the US.
The self destructive political choices that are so prevalent in the US reflect an unwillingness to foster a cooperative society. There is a common point of view that people who currently enjoy prosperity can band together and force the people in crisis to die off or be locked away. Ultimately, the much needed belief in functional governance is a belief in the human capacity to cooperate and promote a common good. The optimism needed to commit to these ideals requires positive real-life social interactions. Car-based transportation strips this away from society and replaces it with frequent stressful, negative social interactions. It turns the landscape into bad smells, loud disturbing sounds, visual blight and hard abrasive surfaces.
We know that “Using a car for over 50% of out-of-home activities lowers life satisfaction.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214367X24002175
It is also likely that using a car for over 50% of activities also lowers the individual desire for others to be happy as well.
But how do we really get people to be healthier?
We can’t get people to stop doing things that aren’t healthy now, drinking alcohol, cigarettes, smoking pot, popping hallucinogenic pills, etc.?
What will it take to get people to stop the bad stuff and embrace the good stuff?
I don’t think this discussion has been about trying to get people to stop unhealthy vices, so much as making healthy options available to everyone. When it’s cheap, convenient, safe and healthy to pursue an alternative, it’s reasonable to assume many people will choose to switch their mode.