One thing conservatives and liberals should agree on is that streets are shared infrastructure. They’re controlled by the government, in the name of the people.
But that’s not how things work in real life. In America, streets are controlled by cars. All streets, by any cars.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a six-lane freeway, a four-lane artery, or a two-lane neighborhood road. From one sidewalk to the other, cars rule. Get behind the wheel of a car and you feel free to go anywhere, even onto your neighbor’s lawn. Who is going to stop you?
This is what makes American cities, and suburbs, dangerous and isolating. Making cities habitable by people requires that we control cars.
In the Netherlands, it took a decade of political agitation to turn things around, and another half century of construction to make the change stick. Half of the country’s bike paths date from after 1996. Had I visited there early in my career, I would have found the same thin paths, with cars controlling the roadway, that we have in the United States today.
The struggle was real, despite the Netherlands being flat and having a long history of bikes as transportation. Demonstrators could have called on that history, geography, and density to make their case, but it was kids getting killed that made the difference. Even today, many Dutch people, especially in the east towards Germany, consider fietspads effete and barely use them, because they’re traveling long distances and there’s room for their cars on the roads.
The Issue
There is plenty of room for cars and bikes if cars only use the roads for driving.
They don’t. They park there. Atlanta drivers assume on-street parking is free, in the absence of a large parking lot the store pays for. Many assume the road in front of their home is theirs. Near festivals I often see sections of roadway blocked off, the property owner treating that parking place as their property.
Cars don’t just occupy the space they’re in. They’re using two lanes. “Dooring,” drivers opening car doors into a cyclist’s path, causes 20% of all bike accidents. People are dying from this. The number of cyclist deaths in the U.S. has more than doubled since 2010.
The way to prevent dooring is to end on-street parking. In fact, end free parking entirely, unless the car is on your property.
If cars aren’t on the road there’s room for cyclists, for e-bikes, for cargo bikes, for all kinds of e-transport. Just don’t expect action soon. Even in Amsterdam, there is still some on-street parking.
Winning the Streets
Despite the resistance it’s amazing how many positive things are happening.
In the City of Atlanta, where I live, the Beltline remains under construction, and paths are underway connecting it to neighborhoods across the city. Cyclists are creating their own routes, minimizing the danger we’re in. Even more gratifying is the attitude I find among most drivers when I ride here. Maybe it’s my white beard, but I no longer feel as threatened as I did 20 years ago.
There are still guys in loud muscle cars who explode from lights like they’re in a drag race, engines misfiring and rap music blaring. I still see giant pick-ups toting enormous trailers filled with landscape and construction gear, like bears tramping through the woods. There are people on sites like Nextdoor anxious to tell you how evil bikes are, how they should stop before signs at the bottom of every hill, how we all deserve to die. Every so often an idiot will pass within inches of me, or honk their horn when they’re right behind me, trying to throw me off. I know this because they laugh as they pass.
I don’t ride at night, either.
This is happening INSIDE the I-285 Perimeter, where the road network is at least partly amenable to bicycles. In suburban Cobb County, where alternate routes are few, where yards run right up to the street, and where even winding two-lane roads have posted speed limits of 45 mph (I’m looking at you, Paper Mill Road) I’m scared to even be in a car.
I doubt I’ll still be alive when the war of the streets is won. But e-transport options keep expanding, meaning there’s more competition for street space. Change is coming.
