The Seattle Times just did a story on some of the history of cycling in Seattle and a few of the diverse groups of cyclists. They did a good job and it is worth reading.
We’ve been thinking about cycling and infrastructure in terms of the different communities of cyclists. Each community has different needs, different things that prevent the community from growing. Often the thing that one group of cyclists pushes for, like road riders pushing for sharrows, is either not useful for some other cyclists like cyclocross racers, or scary for other groups like parents with small children. When we operate as bicycle advocates, we need to be careful that we don’t build ourselves into a corner where we block other communities of cyclists.
We aren’t all vehicular cyclists who are confident on the road. While we’d love for all cyclists to become vehicular, there will always be 6-year olds who aren’t visible enough for safety and very un-athletic cyclists who can’t pedal faster than walking speed who won’t be very safe in traffic.
Just a few of the diverse communities are:
- Commuters, carrying their laptops and clothes to work every morning and home every evening.
- Club event rider, knocking out a 100 mile, century, ride in an afternoon.
- Utility riders, carting groceries and other goods from
- Parents, ferrying children between home, daycare, school, and other events on xtracycles, trail-a-bikes, tandems, and/or trailers.
- the store to home.
- Randonneurs, going on multi-day self-supported bicycle vacations.
- Track racers, using a velodrome to go as a fast as possible around in a circle.
- Cyclocross racers, racing on dirt tracks through trees, mud, and tossing the bicycle on their shoulders for sections as they sprint around obstructions.
- Bicycle Polo participants, just needing a small flat surface either hard or grass where they can manuver.
- Bicycle Music Festival audience members and performers, needing a stage and a place for the pedal powered generators that provide the juice for the amps.
- Children bicycling to school, needing safe routes and slow streets.
Are you a member of a community that we didn’t list? What barriers are there for new members of your community? What would help your community grow?
Tags: Communities
As I was riding along with my one year old on my bike with my three year old riding along on his own this evening, I identify with the Totcycle people who want to bring Europe to America and make cycling safe for children. As I ride to work, I appreciate the bike lanes, feel empowered by the sharrows, and hope that people will be awakened by the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and clamor for a huge tax on carbon so that we can develop a different world. And as I ride around the state with the Randonneurs, I can’t help but wonder why WSDOT seems intent on making cycling as difficult and dangerous as possible by putting rumble strips across the shoulders and not fixing the bridges which serve as choke points for our transportation system.
I’m all three of these kinds of cyclists and yet I am just one cyclist. At the same time that sharrows work perfectly for me, I can see that many don’t trust them; yet it is so difficult to convince political higher ups that you need a myriad of cycling “furniture” to get the many to use it, and you need outreach to teach people to use it.
But don’t forget the bmx’ers and the mountain bikers. There is quite a community of those too. Come to think of it, the immigrant and not so immigrant laborers who bike in the early mornings but would drive a car if they could are also bikers whom we should reach and include.