Every so often, I commute from home to
my office by bicycle. I almost always really enjoy the ride, and I
have an almost entirely pleasant route to take. I ride from my house
through some beautiful neighborhoods for a few miles. Then, I hop
onto a bike trail that takes me along a creek for seven or eight
miles. The worst part of the commute (worst = most dangerous and
unpleasant) is the one mile between the bike path and my office.
That first part of my route is in the
city. The second part is on a dedicated bike path. The final part
is in the suburb.
I'm no expert in the history of urban
and suburban development, but here's what I think. Urban areas,
which were designed and engineered in the days when more people would
walk to where they needed to go, are easier to navigate on a bicycle.
Suburban areas, though, were designed in the days when 'regular'
people were beginning to be able to afford cars; and more recent
suburban areas were designed in the days when having a car is the
norm, when it's unusual to not have access to an automobile.
Suburban areas were designed with cars
in mind ~ to ease the traffic flow for cars by creating fast-moving
arteries that could handle lots of traffic. These arterials do a
great job of moving automobiles very efficiently. However, they make
it considerably more dangerous to navigate on a bicycle.
We've built our road system around the
assumption that everyone will have a car, and that those who don't
will work to get a car.
Recently, social media has provided for
me some interesting food for thought. I've been learning about the
new(ish) bicycle superhighway system built in the city of
Copenhagen. It may be because I've lived my whole life in USAmerica,
but it's somewhat inconceivable that a government would invest so
heavily in infrastructure for cycling.
It turns out, though, that
at one point, Copenhagen was just as clogged with automobile traffic
as any other city. A few decades of investment in cycling
infrastructure has led to 50% of people in the city using a bicycle all the time for transportation.
One difference between Copenhagen and
most cities in our country is that they've decided to value cycling;
and further, they've decided to value the health of their citizens.
We don't do either.
When we assume that everyone will, by
default, commute by automobile, we're assuming that most people will
be overweight and unhealthy because they sit in their cars for far
too great a percentage of the day.
We further exacerbate the problem of
obesity and early-onset diabetes by the ubiquitous access we provide
to ridiculously cheap and ridiculously unhealthy “food” (a topic
for an entirely different post).
Copenhagen has chosen to invest in
cycling infrastructure. The result is that more people cycle. The
result of more people cycling is that fewer people are obese or
overweight (which leads to reduced healthcare costs). I would
suspect that Copenhagen's investment in the health of its population
is also paying off in lower prevalence of mental health problems,
decreased dependence on foreign oil, and a greater sense of
individual and communal satisfaction and well-being.
We in USAmerica have made the default
assumption that most people will be unhealthy. We make the default
assumption that there will be a continuing increase in the prevalence
of asthma and other respiratory ailments caused by the increase in
pollution from tailpipe emissions. We make the default assumption
that because more people can afford to travel by automobile (and pay
for the requisite insurance, upkeep, and fuel costs of an
automobile), that we're better off.
I'd like to challenge those
assumptions. Of course that may well mean challenging everything we
hold as sacred in our society.
Of course the solution to our problems
is more complex than simply getting everyone to ride a bike. I mean,
cycling isn't some sort of magical activity. Though, when I first
learned to ride, it felt like it … in fact, sometimes cycling feels
magical even today.
$0.02