BikePortland just posted a link to a LA’s Westside Bikeside blog, which features a somewhat bizarre discussion about bikes, race and Portland between LA’s bike planner Michelle Mowery and City Councilman Bill Rosendahl.
LA hired Portland’s much-lauded Alta Planning to write up its bike plan but, at least according to BikeSide and Rosendahl, the bike planners did not do good outreach or engage the community very well. What’s up with that? Was the money spent poorly? No, says Mowery, LA is doing a worse job of bike planning because it’s larger and more racially diverse. Notice that she begins her statement “with all due respect”:
“With all due respect the City of Portland is 450,000 people. It’s a homogeneous community that is very white, and very progressive with respect to transportation. They have a trolley system that works very well, as well as their transit overall. We are a very diverse, disjointed city of 4 million people. They are 30 years ahead of us in the development of their, well, they’re not quite 30, they’re more like 20 years ahead of us in the development of their bikeway.”
Alex Thompson at Westside Bikeside sounds off:
By saying that Portland is homogeneous and LA diverse, Mowery seems to be making an argument that diverse places are inherently slower to adopt bicycles, or inherently dysfunctional politically. It’s not clear to me, but it smacks of a freshman political science major selling a bad theory. I can think of two examples of racially diverse cities that are politically functional (at least as compares to LA), and are making huge strides toward bike friendliness.
New York.
Chicago.
Biking as a “white thing” is an issue Portland’s Community Cycling Center is currently exploring as part of a project identifying barriers to biking in Portland.
Portland’s population is about 575,000 people.
No shame in bein’ white, folks.
San Francisco is a small town full of mostly white people too I guess.
The issue for L.A. is size. Having lived in Houston I know what a big spread out city can mean for car vs. bike issues. L.A. is a much bigger, urban sprawl than Portland. I agree that race doesn’t make sense in this case unless you are suggesting language barrier is a hinderance to bike education which is possible. Alot of people in L.A. speak Spanish as a first language and this may be the commenter’s point. However, this shouldn’t dissuade people from also realizing that L.A. sucks a fat one and Portland cares about things like reducing oil consumption and looking out for one’s fellow citizens.
Come on, who could possibly do a drive-by on a bicycle?
all you people suck my balllzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By and large, white people are the vast majority of those who do some of the dumbest things, like bicycling through traffic in the rain and climbing mountains in the winter.
Cycling is for wack-ass honkies.
Mercury, please stop discussing race. You’re not black, and you don’t know any black people.
I think there is some truth to the diversity argument, but it isn’t the biggest hurdle L.A. faces. Historically non-whites have been denied property in wealthier, white neighborhoods, and they have used fancy autos as a status symbol. This has stuck culturally despite repeal of racist housing segregation. Today, the poor (and because race is tied to class, non-whites–especially blacks, hispanics and native americans) disproportionately suffer from the effects of air pollution, since housing prices are lower near highways. Perhaps L.A. planners could use this as propaganda for cycling. However, I think sprawl and general car culture (across all races) are the greater challenges. It’s really a shame– it would be much easier to cycle year round in their climate!
Let’s not get too uppity, Portland. Last night, walking to the grocery store in rush hour, I witnessed streams of cars, few with multiple passengers, and the occassional cyclist in my SE Brooklyn neighborhood. This city is still disgustingly full of cars.