Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Jason Henderson at the National Bike Summit


Jason Henderson went to the National Bike Summit and reported on it last week for the Bay Guardian (Bicycling and Equity):

In the face of increased gasoline prices and congestion, more public awareness of the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and driving, and interest in physical activity, bicycling has experienced a mini-boom throughout the US...In San Francisco, 3.5 to 6 percent of all trips are made by bicycle, amounting to roughly 150,000 bicycle trips in the city each day, a jump from around 1 percent of trips in the 1990s.

I don't know where Henderson gets his numbers, since the city's most recent study (Mode Share Survey, page 5) says that cycling is only 3.4% of all trips in the city---73,071 trips per day. Call cycling a micro-boom in San Francisco. Gas prices? According to AAA (Winter 2014 Gas Prices Creep Up), "California motorists are starting to see a slight upward movement at the gas pumps," not exactly enough to make people give up their cars in favor of bikes:

In many respects, bicycling is among the most equitable forms of urban transportation because it is affordable and accessible to almost everyone. Bicycling is far cheaper, safer, healthier, and cleaner than driving, and when considering global equity, far saner for a national climate policy. And for many low income workers, bicycling is also an affordable conveyance that enables not just physical mobility but also financial stability.

Safer? According to that widely-ignored UC study, cycling is a lot more dangerous in San Francisco than anyone except me thought. And it's mostly white men who ride bikes in the city: "75 percent of Hispanic, 71 percent of Asian, and 83 percent of African-American populations do not [ever]bicycle compared to 61 percent of white respondents" (2012 San Francisco State of Cycling Report, page 25). And less than 30% of city cyclists are women, a percentage that's stayed much the same over the years (2009 Bicycle Count Report, page 10).

I've been critical of feminist identity politics, but the above seems to show that women are actually smarter than men. Doggone it, I guess I'll have to re-think that issue. 

The Bicycle Coalition has tried over the years to get more women riding bikes but with little success. The NY Times has reported on that issue. Bike writer John Pucher: “I’m convinced that one of the reasons New York City has such a low percentage of women cyclists is that it’s dangerous.” Same thing is true about San Francisco.

From the 2009 Bicycle Collisions Report, page 33:

From 1999 to 2009, 3222 bicyclists injured in collisions or 76% were male, while 984 or 23.2% were female. This breakdown is generally consistent with the gender split of bicyclists counted in the SFMTA bicycle counts conducted in August of 2009. The 2009 bicycle counts found that 70.5% of observed bicyclists were male, while 29.5% were female.

Turns out that riding a bike is good therapy:

Social justice advocates and community organizers had a strong presence at the summit, which has historically reflected a whiter, upper-middle-class male constituency. One presenter discussed bicycling and women's prison rehabilitation, sharing how women who suffered from abuse, drug addiction, and imprisonment found bicycle riding to be normalizing and helpful for personal growth and for managing depression and anxiety.

But the same is true for any vigorous exercise, like running. A doctor even wrote a book about successfully treating schizophrenics with running as therapy (The Joy of Running):

One of the most inspiring personas at the Bike Summit was Terry O'Neill, director of the National Organization for Women...O'Neill prodded cyclists to ask: What do we need to do to make bicycling useful to women? And then she laid it out eloquently. Build affordable housing---lots of it---in areas where it is most needed, such as affluent Montgomery County, a suburb of DC, or in places like Hayes Valley and Silicon Valley. By creating the spatial proximity that makes cycling practical, women (and men) can incorporate cycling while balancing jobs, household chores, and children.

But this still doesn't address the question of why more women don't ride bikes, since women don't have a special need for affordable housing because of their gender. And do I detect a trace of sexism in the "household chores and children" usage?

Maybe women are worried about how riding a bike might impact their sex life, though men face the same danger.

An online comment to Henderson's column linked a website (Stuff White People Like) that provides some insight into bikes and race:

A good place to find white people on a Saturday is at a Bike Shop. Bike shops are almost entirely staffed and patronized by white people! But not all white people love bicycles in the same way, there is much diversity. First up, we have the younger urban white folks who absolutely love their fixed gear bicycles. These are seen all over college towns, Silverlake in LA, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Queen West in Toronto, and Victoria, British Columbia. Fixed gear bicycles meet a lot of requirements for white person acceptance. They can be made from older (i.e. vintage) bicycles, thus allowing the rider to have a unique bike that is unlikely to be ridden by anyone else in town. They are also easily customizable with expensive things...The combination of rare bicycles and expensive parts makes it easy for white people to judge other white people on the quality and originality of their bicycles. This is important in determining if someone is or isn’t cooler than you...

Labels: , , ,

12 Comments:

At 4:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rob, I think we could use your voice over on Socketsite to give an alternative view such as you wrote above to the many bike nuts who post there. An example is this update on the Polk Street fiasco....http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2014/03/polk_street_redesign_the_grand_plan.html#c546197

 
At 5:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Stuff White People Like, now there's a blog that takes number crunching seriously.

 
At 10:10 AM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

Of course Stuff White People Like is about mockery, not number-crunching. But what about those numbers? No comment?

 
At 10:22 AM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

Here's a direct link to that Socketsite thread on Polk Street. Looks like the critics of the anti-car bike project are doing well without my help.

Still waiting for the MTA to provide some evidence for their phony "safety" justification for the Polk Street project.

 
At 1:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The numbers showing that women don't bike as much as men? It's interesting that in some countries that men and women bike in equal numbers:

http://www.the-broad-side.com/close-the-bicycle-gender-gap

And in New York City, the gap between men and women decreased by 19% from 2001 to 2008.

Some might say that biking has gotten safer and that women have a lower tolerance for risk of injury than men do. But your numbers clearly show that biking is inherently dangerous and can't ever be made safer, so it's just one of those things we'll never understand, I guess.

 
At 11:19 AM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

It can be made safer in some ways, like keeping city streets in decent repair, since potholes can cause injury to cyclists. But no, riding a bike has intrinsic and obvious dangers.

And, as that UC study, found, "cyclist-only" accidents---those that don't involve another vehicle---are both the most under-reported cycling accidents in the city and just as serious as "cyclist-versus-auto" accidents.

 
At 1:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's odd that in NYC and in other countries where they add protected bike lanes, the share of women riding bikes goes up. It can't be because it's safer, because these measures don't do anything to make biking safer. Turns out women aren't that smart after all, I guess.

 
At 11:12 AM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

That still doesn't explain why a lot fewer women than men in the US ride bikes.

 
At 6:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, true, and also New York is just different. You can't just apply what they do and expect it work anywhere else. Same with other countries with other higher ridership of women. Things just are different here, and vive le difference.

 
At 9:23 AM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

The last I heard New York isn't different from San Francisco on the gender issue. Do you have some more up-to-date numbers?

 
At 10:17 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Do you have some more up-to-date numbers?"

Looking around, but haven't found them. However, anecdotal evidence from talking to my friends in NYC is that womens' ridership has crashed to single-digit percentages since word has gotten out of your expose of the SF and SF General accident figures. They're now terrified of accidents and no longer push for streetscape imrprovements which won't keep them safe anyway.

 
At 1:19 PM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

You can't argue with facts, so heavy-handed irony will have to do.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home