So briefly, a reality check: There have been several studies (including one in 1995 from the Bicycle Transportation Alliance) that have established that bicycle riders actually subsidize the roadways for people in cars, and the logic for this is fairly simple. Nearly all bicycle riders also contribute, whether as property owners or renters, to the property-tax systems that underwrite most of our roadways, as well as other taxes—federal and state— that do so as well. Most also own cars, so they're also paying licensing fees and other associated charges that contribute to roadway construction. The only tax they're not paying—when they bicycle, anyway—is the gas tax, which only contributes a portion of the cost of roadway construction. In contrast, the amount of road wear that bicycles cause is insignificant next to that produced by cars and trucks. So bicyclists wind up paying significantly more in road costs than automobile drivers.
On the other hand, some of the animus coming from automobile drivers can be well earned. Some commuters—especially the inexperienced ones—are capable of all kinds of dangerous stupidity, including riding against traffic or without a light at night. And then there are the downtown bike messengers, whose athleticism and grace—as well as their competitive drive—can be awe-inspiring, but whose open flouting of traffic laws often leaves mouths agape and people stuck in traffic chafing.
Renee McMahon
Renee McMahon
Details
Related Content
More About
Among the people who chafe the most, though, are the law-abiding cyclists. The scofflaws create a hostile environment for other bike riders, if for no other reason than they are so conspicuous. Drivers notice them because, well, they pull stunts that get your attention. And they certainly create an image of cyclists as people who see themselves—perhaps by dint of their superior virtue as physically fit nonpolluters—as somehow above ordinary traffic laws the rest of us have to obey. If you talk to some of them, you'll find that that attitude really does exist.
In the meantime, the law-abiding and conscientious cyclists go unnoticed, because they're trying to be. A skilled and experienced bike commuter is usually good at blending into traffic so that your encounter with them hardly registers.
The Cascade Bicycle Club's Hiller notes that every bloc of roadway users includes some lawbreakers, but for a community trying to gain credibility, as bicyclists are, the "scofflaws definitely hurt," he says. "It's important for cyclists to be seen as cooperative, law-abiding co-users of the roads, and when people ignore the law openly, it hurts."
The relationship between cars and bikes in Seattle has historically been tendentious.
The recent arrests of a couple of cyclists participating in a Seattle Critical Mass demonstration (in which large numbers of riders traveling in a crowd intentionally clog city streets) by King County Metro Transit police—the brutality of which raised a lot of eyebrows—underscored the cultural tensions that continue to exist between cyclists and motorists in Seattle. While the sheriff's office defended the arrests as appropriate, even County Executive Ron Sims wondered out loud just how necessary it all was.
Bike commuters have, by themselves, created their own sort of critical mass— one that seems to have undermined, if not erased, the long-held doubts about the effectiveness of building a bicycle-friendly infrastructure. If we build it, they will come.
There's a building principle involved: "Bicycling isn't terribly dangerous," observes Hiller. "The more people that are riding, the fewer accidents there are per cyclist; the accident-injury index goes down. The peripheral awareness of motorists goes up. So if you're thinking of getting out there and joining this growing group of transportation cyclists, you're making it easier for everyone, including yourself. The more bikes that are out there, the safer everybody gets."
That, in turn, helps build a mainstream cycling culture within the community that makes using a bike practical and attractive for more than just commuting.
"Only one out of five trips in the city is a commute trip," notes Lagerway. "It's really important to remember that we're going after all the trips. And a commute trip, a utilitarian trip, a school trip, a recreational trip—they're all equally important, because those are trips when you're not taking a car."
What makes it all tick is a robust infrastructure that creates a functioning network, enabling people to get to their libraries and grocery stores as readily as they might ride to work.
Necessity, however, may prove the biggest reason for Seattleites to start biking to work. Seattle is pretty much built out in terms of its traffic capacity, and as volumes continue to increase, traffic speeds are going to bog down even further. It's already easy for bikes to keep up with cars downtown because of the decreasing speeds, and as things get more and more jammed up, it's easy to outdo them. That's only going to become more the case in coming years.
"I'm very optimistic about the future of bicycling in Seattle," says Lagerway. "It's a built environment, but at the same time, the disadvantage that we have in the sense that it was built years ago and we only have so much room, it's also our biggest advantage. Because we're really at a point now where we cannot build our way out of congestion. The space isn't there, the dollars aren't there. We're not going to tear down buildings to widen streets. There is no other alternative but to do something other than be in a single-occupant vehicle if Seattle continues to grow. So once we get more people on bicycles, well, success builds success."
info@seattleweekly.com
David Neiwert is a Seattle freelance writer and author who also edits the Web log Orcinus. His most recent book is Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community.
