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.