Meet Doris

This week while running some errands, I noticed a rusty-fendered women’s bike with a duct-taped seat in front of a bank. Continuing my errand, I hoped to get that photo on the way back, but the woman was walking off with her bike when I got there. I chased her down, calling to her, asking her if I could indeed take her photo. 

So it turns out I had met her before. Her name is Doris, and she lives in my neighborhood. She had her yoga mat rolled up and stuck in the rear rack on her bike. 
Doris rides to her exercise class two or three times a week. She participated in the The Epic Spartanburg adventure film series; her adventure: crossing a major arterial road leaving her neighborhood to get to class.

Her son had found the bike, she told me, and she liked it better than any other bike she’d had. But it caused some funny stories. One time, she said, she was walking her bike across one of the must streets that bisect Spartanburg, when a man in a car came to a sudden stop, jumped out of his car to hand her a $20 bill.

“Here, take this.”

She stepped back from her bike. “I don’t need your money,” she told him. 

He insisted. “No, take it, buy yourself something.” Doris chuckled as she told the story.

He thought she was homeless, you see, because she was on her old bike. The yoga mat, she said, must look like a bedroll. She chuckled again.

Doris’s story brings up an important part of the culture we need to change here. If you ride a bicycle (especially a beat up one) or if you walk for transportation, you are suspect: too poor to own a car, to drunk to have a license. The examples of poor bike/ped infrastructure confirm the feeling of inferiority.

There is some piece of truth to the "too poor to own a car" view. Partners for Active Living runs a bike-lending program, fixing up donated bikes, lending them for three or six months for a $15 deposit, which is returned when you return the bike. The program has been very successful and moves about 350 bikes in and out regularly. 

PAL started the program to encourage more recreational cycling for exercise, but it turns out that about 40% of the borrowers have no other transportation. More than one person has come in to borrow a bike and told us that he needed it to get to his new job. One woman has been riding her bike to work for several years, and returns and re-borrows bikes several times a year. 

One man returned his bike early. When we asked why he was returning it, he pumped his fist, the excitement in his voice was palpable. “I bought a car.” 

You wouldn't walk here unless you
had no  other choice.

And, we say, these are excellent reasons to improve conditions for cycling and walking. Talk about economic development: this is real, on the ground economic growth. If only "buying a car" wasn't such a sign of prosperity.  

The mark of the sin of poverty is apparently found in our transportation choices. Doris lives in a nice house in a desired neighborhood, and owns a car. But on her bike, she looks homeless. She is less than us, and surely she wishes she could share in our petroleum fueled bounty.

As we work in Spartanburg to improve our bicycle and pedestrian facilities— and thereby improve our transportation system— perhaps it will feel more inclusive, and those of us who ride for transportation will be more visible, and Doris won’t be categorized by her choice of transportation.

Raceland, Kentucky asks Why not here?

I spoke by telephone with the Raceland, Kentucky Chief of Police Don Sammons the other day about the town’s and Greenup County’s work to create a bicycle culture in their case to spur economic development. 

The story has been well told in the local press (here and here) and Chief Sammons has presented at some conferences, he told me. And while he didn’t ask it the way I do, the drive for the Chief’s efforts came from looking for the answer to our question, “Why not here?”

Sammons told me that he started his work in 2012 because he loves history and wanted to preserve the history of Raceland, named for a race track built there in the 1920s. As he researched other communities’ economic development initiatives, he hit on bicycling, and a walking tour around town became a bicycle tour out to the racetrack 6 or so miles from town.

The old Raceland Race Track, built in 1924.

Sammons is not a cyclist, and so he looked around the area for experts. Hitting on the ACE Bicycling Club based in Ashland, Kentucky, the Chief set up a partnership that continues today. A Commonwealth of Kentucky program called “Trail Town” provided some parameters for being so designated, and 12 miles became 500 miles. Using routes the cyclists already ride, and looking for connections to the nearby Greenbo Lake State Park and other destinations around Greenup County by way of scenic and lightly travelled roads. They named their system the EK Bikeway.

These on-road routes, marked and mapped to attract out of town visitors, go along with Sammons’s other push—walking tours and community development. He tied the town’s commitment to sidewalk repair. Working with some local artisans, he approached owners of vacant buildings until one of them gave him free rent in return for the labor and capacity to improve the interior and set up shop. 

“I told them I had no money, but I do have workers,” he said. "Eventually one owner gave me a part of his building, and re-opened his tire shop to try to help push traffic." The complex has expanded to include a local authors shop, where local writers can sell their work in return for spending Saturdays in the store. 

Chief Sammons has convinced several of the other towns in Greenup County to join in, making changes in their own communities as they work to stir a faltering economy. He has convinced the town to change the speed limit in the downtown area to 15 miles per hour, and the signs read, “Watch for Our Children,” “Watch for Bicycles,” “Watch for Walkers.” He hopes to begin to attract businesses to the town, a bike shop, cafes, another bookstore. 

Chief Sammons also said, “I feel like I’m in over my head sometimes.” I suspect it is this very quality that makes him a visionary. He is willing to create the partnerships that fill the gaps in his own expertise, and by his leadership he has brought Raceland and the other towns along with him on their journey to renewed prosperity. The story, which of course continues, serves as an example for us all.

Trails: Good for you and good for business

Originally published in the Spartanburg Herald Journal:

As part of its Active Living Series, Upstate Forever convened a panel discussion on Feb. 6 in Spartanburg of a group of us involved with developing walking and biking trails. The room filled to capacity, with more than 75 people in attendance.

Follow the link to read the rest of the article.

Riding to work

I ride to work most every day. I don’t really like riding in the rain, and some days I have meetings that take me beyond my bicycling limits for workday travel. But any other day—and I've ridden when it’s over 100 degrees and when it’s below 10 degrees—I saddle up and pedal the two miles from my house to the office.

I’m fortunate that about half my ride is in my neighborhood, with calm streets and little traffic. That’s not to say drivers don’t occasionally forget that there may be someone else on the road and roll through an intersection. Crossing Pine Street is generally easier than I expect. (Here's a video I made of a little bit different commute.)

As I ride into downtown, I take back streets—St. Paul Street, which goes behind the Farmer’s Table, and Real Estate Way make my usual route; sometimes I take the road in front of the Y. From there I come in Kennedy Street, wide enough that all the traffic gets into the inside lane, leaving me with a 12-foot bike lane.

Most days, my ride is pretty causal. I often say hello to people walking on the sidewalk. I think about different things—my work day, the letter I started, what that thing was moving in the grass. I try not to get too warmed up, and have found that 10 miles an hour is the threshold for sweating in the summer. And though occasionally I think I’m too tired to ride, I always feel better when I do. The 15 minutes twice a day does my body and mind good.

Paths to goals

Recently I heard someone say, and I can’t remember where or who, that a community’s issues are generally not “goal” issues, but “path” issues. The idea has been stuck in my craw ever since.

Most of us want to live somewhere that has public spaces 

like this one, in the other Carmel (California).   

Being intimately involved in pushing forward some of our community goals, I have seen this perception as a kind of truism. We want an equitable and healthy community, a vibrant and profitable economy that benefits all citizens, citizens happy and engaged with access to a strong education at all levels, and to the arts, activities and good food. We want a community whose residents love living here, and we want to be governed by thoughtful people full of integrity who respond to the needs of the community. The arguments we have in our community mostly result not always from competing goals, but from differing views about the paths we choose. 

One thing is certain: investing in walkable downtowns, bike and walk-friendly neighborhoods and commercial areas and good land use policy that supports it all. I recently saw James Brainard, mayor of Carmel, Indiana, speak about their experience.

Carmel has been in the community-development news for a while, and I can’t pretend to any great scoops about how they did it. But a few things he said in his talk really struck me as something that is possible in small cities and towns everywhere. I would say all of that starts with commitment and policy. 

Proceeding from the belief that design governs all matters, Carmel developed a set of design standards intended to create the old town feeling they sought. The overlay ordinance, Brainard said, makes it so “you can't tell if a house was built in 1910 or 2012.” Streets designed for traffic calming (1 1/2 to 2% of Carmel’s budget is for street trees, Brainard said) make active transportation comfortable and easy. Requirements for second floor (at least) residential space above retail stores in the downtown core and underground parking (paid for with tax increment financing) make for a human-scale downtown. Eighty-five roundabouts in the city give it an efficient, safe system for vehicles, and walking and biking are included in the designs, it appears.

I should add first that Mayor Brainard’s presentation left me wondering where the battles were. Especially when he (maybe) glossed over the details of a $95 million DOT swap to create an arterial under passing a spectacular double-roundabout intersection.

The Indiana Department of Transportation wanted to 

put up traffic lights to solve this problem 

caused by Carmel's rapid growth. The city taking over 

ownership of the intersection (at least) helped 

work out the $95 million in funding from INDOT. 

photo: Carmel, IN official website 

Even my live tweeting of the speech brought out an opponent (along with several new followers from Carmel).

Mayor Brainard did comment frequently on another piece of the puzzle that I think probably facilitated the process: they had no real old downtown to redevelop. In fact, when he was running for mayor and knocking on doors, he asked about their downtown. He realized after a while that people were referring to different places when they talked about it. “People need to know where the center of town is,” he said. 

So they moved over a few blocks from what they agreed was a commercial center of town, and put in place a set of incentives and design standards that did indeed attract the investment they hoped for. Building up from scratch, it seems, is easier to control, especially when you have the commitment to design that Carmel has. 

I should also say that Carmel sounds a bit too contrived for me. I have never been a big fan of the kinds of giant developed communities like Ashburn, Virginia or Irvine, California. I like my urbanism messy, I guess, the way I like my nature.

But none of this detracts from the remarkable example that Carmel provides: with commitment, political will and influence (how else do you get $95 million dollars from a department of transportation?), and including walking and biking comfort in your design—and luck—you can get what you want for your community. 

Walking to Work

I’ve been walking to work lately. Since the first Snomaggedon of January 2014, my bike has coincidentally been under the weather. The subsequent Snopocalypti-quake and one

Downtown from a new perspective.

thing and another, and I’ve missed my once-a-week mechanic at work. 

So I walked. Of course it is much slower than my usual bike commute. Two miles on the bike is 10 or 12 minutes; the walk is a half hour door to door. I take a slightly more direct route, using Henry Street, a major arterial that I avoid when riding to work. 

I’ve ridden my bike to work or school for the past 30 years almost, some from necessity and some from choice. I’ve ridden in cities and small mountain towns. For the past seven years, I’ve ridden roughly every day into downtown Spartanburg, South Carolina. I certainly get more out of riding than I give; I have conversations with folks who are otherwise invisible to drivers, I get to experience dramatic cold and heat on my face and hands, I pass the world at 15 miles an hour instead of 35. 

So the walk has been a fairly eye-opening activity. Aside from walking to classes throughout college, I have generally chosen the faster, more athletic cycling for transportation. But as a runner for exercise, and now having gotten more into ultra marathons, walking is an activity I early practice but often employ in races. 

Scary narrowing of sidewalk
into the turn.

As with my biking, the walk has made me more aware of need for the types of facilities I advocate for—pedestrian oriented, even pedestrian prioritized. Walking along the Mary  Black Foundation Rail Trail I am relaxed, and look at vistas and skylines. I am slower than on my bike, so I can see more details in the neighborhoods I pass through. I notice impediments I don’t see from my bike or car.

I feel the difference between a buffered sidewalk and a sidewalk that is right on the curb. I feel the difference between crossing a narrow neighborhood street and a wide arterial at funny offset angles and right turning vehicles. 

And I see what a difference pedestrian friendliness does for travel. We move more slowly, ambling and enjoying the morning. On the Rail Trail, we say hello. 

Why not here?

Street artist scrubs images into the urban landscape