Uneasy Rhetoric

As the Amgen tour gets ready to roll through Sacramento (or at least the tiny part of it between the Tower Bridge and Capitol Mall), attention turns to bicycling. According to yesterday’s Bee, Sacramento ranks sixth among large cities in percentage of trips by bicycle. At 1.9 percent, Sacramento has a skosh over half as many trips by bike as the mighty Portland, Oregon, the city that wrote the book on bicycle friendliness.

What would increase Sacramento’s share? The article states:

Advocates who push for amenities such as bike lanes and racks make a difference, and so do cities and counties that hire people primarily to be responsible for bike issues, said Walt Seifert, executive director of the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates.

Is that what makes Portland so different?

Partly. Portland’s transportation department does have bicycle specialists. Portland also has a program to help business owners install bike racks. Portland also has plenty of bike lanes and an inherent understanding of what a “bike route” (a designated street without a bike lane) is — “bike routes” in Portland will have minimal controls such as stop signs in the directions of travel. Not so, Sacramento, at least not in the residential parts of the grid, which I call “land of the four-way stop.”

But really it’s about attitute. Portland is:

Hippy-dippy. Portlanders take their environmentalism seriously. The city that was originally self-righteous about its recycling was determined to maintain its lead once other metropolitan areas got in on the act. What better way than to become self-righteous about, er, promote cycling? Heck, even former city commish and current Congressman Earl Blumenauer commutes by bike.

All wet. Portlanders say you call tell a native because he is the one without an umbrella. Even though that’s basically bullshit, it is true that Portlanders have learned to cope with doing more outdoors in mildly crappy weather, including bicycling. You’ll see ponchos, fenders, people packing towels, even the occasional cyclist with an umbrella (stupid, but true). If you watched the Blumenauer video you heard a quip about weather in Portland.

Prone to mythology. Almost every Portlander either knows someone who, or knows someone who knows someone who, took a Kryptonite lock to the windshield of a pickup truck from Gresham. See also cyclists who compare speeding tickets at the local coffeehouse.

I think a little mythology couldn’t hurt, but I’m not suggesting that Sacramentans suddenly become patchouli-wearing, bongo-playing, hippies or that we flagrantly disregard the danger of riding in century-mark heat.* Instead, I think we need to be more aware of what we have: a city that is increasingly catering to cyclists, that is flat enough that poor, overweight me could do a 50 mile ride in summer heat without training and without any lasting side effects, that has a strong cycling community already (groups like SABA, the Bike-Hikers, and Bicycle Kitchen), and that has plenty of wide, suburban streets (they must be good for something). There is also the American River Bike Trail, which is far more than a park with a ribbon of asphalt. It is a bicycle highway connecting suburbs to downtown (albeit not as efficiently or safely as it could), a training ground for cyclists of all stripes, and the best publicity a city looking to increase its cycling profile could ask for.

*It can be done. Ride slowly, keep hydrated, wear your sunglasses, change into something more comfortable, and feel free to stop and smell the roses, or chat with the neighbors, or sit and have a cup of iced coffee at Peets, etc.