DESPITE PORTLAND’S bike pride, one statistic isn’t mentioned nearly enough: According to the US Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey, only 6.1 percent of Portlanders ride bicycles as their primary method of commuting. [We actually mention this statistic a lot in this issue, as Erik would know if he’d bothered to read anyone else’s contribution. -Eds.]
That’s crazy, right? Despite all of Portland’s bike funding, bike advocacy, bike lanes, bike boxes, bike racks, bike traffic lights, bike shops, bike boulevards, bike festivals, bike porn, and—god help me, I’m actually going to type this stupid word—sharrows, the vast majority of Portlanders, 93.9 percent, don’t regularly bike to work. And the number gets even lower when you zoom out: In the greater Portland metro area, only 2.3 percent of residents consistently commute by bike.
To be fair, Portland’s percentages are higher than every other major American city. But while our numbers are holding steady, other cities are raising theirs, finding more bike commuters and working harder to integrate bikes into city life. If Portland wants to keep its bike-friendly reputation, more than 6.1 percent of its residents need to feel like cycling is a safe, sensible way to get around.
In theory, I should be cycling all the damn time: I’m 34 and all of my joints still bend (ladies), I live in a central Southeast neighborhood that’s infested with sharrows, and my downtown office has a room set aside exclusively for bike storage and covert handjobs. Hell, I even have a bike—a Jamis hybrid I bought a few years back, in an ambitious moment of deciding to actually back up my belief that bikes are better than cars, both for cities and the people who live in them.
Yet I’ve ridden my bike exactly twice in Portland, which perhaps indicates I’m not yet convinced cycling is the safest, most sensible way to get around. Like a lot of commuting Portlanders, I still walk, take the bus, and sometimes drive to work—and I’m guessing my reasons for doing so are shared by other bike-curious (but hesitant) commuters.
• CYCLISTS CAN BE DICKS. “Not all cyclists!” Yes, I know. Drivers can be dicks, too! But even in a city where bikes are familiar, the relationship between Portland’s drivers and cyclists isn’t always a healthy one. Unlike in traffic—where drivers can be relatively sure what other drivers are going to do, because, you know, drivers’ licenses—it can be hard to predict what a cyclist will do. Would I be an unpredictable dick? Perish the thought. But when I’m on my bike, you know who I don’t need driving behind me? Somebody who’s used to dealing with unpredictable dicks.
• THE GRINNING VISAGE OF DEATH. Everyone I know who commutes by bike has been hit by a car at least once. Everyone. At least once. (None of them have died! Yet!) Maybe my dumb friends suck at riding bikes, or maybe Portland’s obsequious driving mentality is a coverup for something more sinister. Regardless, the fact that bike-car collisions are that common? Not a confidence booster.
• ROAD RULES. The most convincing argument against cycling in Portland? Driving in Portland. It wasn’t until I drove here that I realized how invisible many of the city’s cyclists unwittingly are—and how many helmetless, lightless cyclists there are who’re happy to hand over responsibility for their lives to strangers behind 3,500 pounds of glass and metal. Until Portlanders get better at both seeing and being seen, cycling in the city—particularly at night—is going to feel dangerous.
• TALL BIKES. As Thoreau wrote, “The further I distance myself from those who ride tall bikes, the richer the life I lead.”
Here’s the thing: All of those reasons that make riding a bike alongside cars seem like a terrible idea? They’re fixable. (Except for tall bikes. We’re just stuck with those.) And for the most part, they’ll fix themselves—if Portland can get a higher percentage of its residents cycling.
For years, Portland has bent over backward for a vocal but tiny segment of the population, making cycling as integrated into the city as can reasonably be expected. But the final step in making Portland a bike-friendly city in practice and not just name is a step that’s up to us. Once those of us in the 93.9 percent start riding to work regularly and safely, the city will have a higher percentage of Portlanders—both on bikes and in cars—who know, first-hand, what it’s like to share the road.
In other words, the very things keeping whiny little babies like me from commuting by bike? They’re the things that will get better once more of us start to ride.
Shit. Apparently I just talked myself into riding my bike to work tomorrow.
My commute doesn’t allow me to bike to work as it once did.
The weather is a biggie too.
You are also neglecting the fact that not everyone is in our 20’s anymore, and it ain’t as easy as it used to be when I’d bike 15 miles to work.
Good article. (and to think all I thought you were good for was some good reviews and insights into film…)
I no longer ride my bike in traffic. When I lived in SE and worked downtown, I could count on nearly dying once during my morning ride and at least once again on the way back. Fuck that.
Would the obliviousness/possible bloodthirst of drivers be counteracted by more of us riding in traffic? I’m not sure that follows. There’d be more of us there to serve as witnesses, I guess.
In the same boat, down to ambitiously buying a bike, then riding it twice. Carrying around a helmet everywhere I go? Ugh. (I will not be biking without a helmet anytime soon either.) The invisibility factor is a definite truth — we’re a city of people who only dress in earth tones, and with all of our tree cover or narrow streets, other cars can be tough to see in anything other than bright daylight, much less people on two wheels.
My biggest personal concern is competing with cars — and I don’t blame drivers for that. But if I’m going to be sharing the roads, I feel like I need to be going as fast as I can, which takes a lot of the leisure out of riding and adds a lot of stress. If we had protected bike lanes, I would be more likely to ride. But if I’m sharing traffic roads, I just… don’t really see it happening.
Erik – I would encourage you to find a bike buddy in your neighborhood or use a tool like stickk.com to force yourself to bike every day for a week and see how you like it.
Your intuition that more bikers will make biking better is backed by research – in European cities, the more bikers you get the less injuries per miles biked (some get over 50% bikers and scoff at our measly 6%. BTW – if you haven’t heard the 6%, you must not have talked to or read about anything related to biking in Portland because that is pretty much always in the first sentence). It appears that when there are more bikers around, cars get more used to seeing them, making the bikers magically more visible.
Presumably these cities are also building more bike infrastructure to cater to their near-majority commute mode — bikers — thus helping everyone be more predictable. Bikes may sometimes be unpredictable because they are dicks, but often it is because the infrastructure doesn’t lend itself to bike predictability. Streets are built for cars, and it is clear how cars are *supposed* to act. Not so for bikes. I’m a mom and usually have my toddler on my bike, so I am pretty careful and try my best to follow the rules. But there are many situations where it just isn’t clear what the best behavior is. Technically, I am a vehicle, so I should cross an intersection just like a car. But I can’t get across fast and cars don’t see me as a car, so I usually cross in the cross walk like a pedestrian. Unpredictable? Intersection improvements can help solve this for me and the cars.
Need more separated bike lanes. That will make things a lot safer. Less sharrows. For those who need some help on the hills try an electric assist bike. I have over 10,000 miles on mine. Its great!
I am 60 years old, and even I (partly) commute pretty often. I drive to Sellwood with the bike on my car, and ride the Springwater Corridor and Esplanade to town. Then I park the bike near the waterfront and walk in town (except for Oak Street and Stark Street) No cars. We need more completely separated bike lanes.
God bless you, Erik Henriksen. For the longest time I’ve felt like the only resident of inner SE who cringes over the current Portlandia bike love-in. I was car-less for years at a time in Portland when seeing another lone cyclist on the street was cause to exchange friendly bell-rings of solidarity. But these days it’s strictly amateur hour as hordes of unpredictable, clueless, entitled, helmetless, unlit, slow-ass cyclists rule the streets. (Or so it seems to me.) “Bike-friendly” does not mean ride anywhere you want, however you want. Thanks for offering a critical (and hopeful) perspective when everyone else is chugging Kool-Aid.
I’m amused by people telling Erik what he forgot to include in his list of reasons why he doesn’t ride his bike. Those people are way more in-tune with Erik’s life than he is, obviously.
Guys, I’ve been a bike nut since Greg LeMond was a young hopeful; I rode almost daily for fifteen years all over LOS ANGELES, fer chrissake, and I’ve never even had a particularly frightening close call.
If Portland’s bike corridors scare you, you might want to stay off of the freeways in your car – the cocoon of safety you feel you’re in there is almost entirely an illusion. If one of those semis does something stupid enough, you are going to die, period. Your side-curtain airbag will get squashed just as flat as your gooey, dead-ass torso. It is –statistically– the most dangerous thing you do with any regularity, yet you take a few precautions, stay aware, and get on these death factories all the time without a second thought.
Feeling naked and defenseless on a bike is natural. But the idea you’re any better defended in your car against a tanker truck than you are on a bike against an Escalade is based more on your feelings than the laws of physics.
Part of my spotless bike record is luck, yes, but so is your (and my) ability to survive I-5. But most of my staying upright is due to following a few simple principles of safety and staying in a high state of mindfulness. Also, if a part of your regular route is stressful and gnarly, find a way around it. The extra few minutes are usually more than worth the peace of mind, and it is NOT hard to find mellow alternates in PDX. And really, y’all, if breezing down Ankeny or Clinton is your idea of terror, you need to harden up in a general sense. I mean, come on.
“I don’t ride my bike because some bikers are dicks.”
^a lame, illogical excuse by a lazy person.
Well, I don’t “need” to do anything, actually. I just don’t feel like riding in traffic anymore, so I don’t. Not least because I got tired of that repeated interaction where someone in a car nearly kills me, this makes me mad so I yell, they get all hurt about it and make it seem like nearly killing me is somehow a lesser bad act than me screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?” Because they’re embarrassed now, so they’re defensive, and then their ego comes back with: “Well, it is right and good that you nearly killed this person. He uses profanity on strangers.” As I said; fuck that.