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The Politics of Bike Lanes

After 40 years of riding my bike as kid, commuter, messenger, and traveler, I still don't know what a bike lane is. To paint lines on the street and call it a bike lane isn't completely stupid, however, even if the enterprise smacks of the lowest form of bureaucratic politics.

To begin with, consider the gamut of bike lanes. In Seattle, we have the stripes painted on various main streets such as 12th Avenue on Capitol Hill and 2nd Avenue downtown. We also have the sanctioned bike lane/bike paths such as the Burke Gilman Trail and that thing around the south end of Lake Union. Although these "bike-friendly" zones are by no means as hostile as the bike lanes of Phoenix (sidewalks along major arterials) or as superfluous as the bike lanes of places like Snohomish (kiddie paths to nowhere) or as wacko as the bike lanes of San Francisco (follow number 47 to destination), they aren't necessarily the primary routes a cyclist must travel. These routes are called "the streets." We pay for these roads and we mean to use them.

Maybe the City will give cyclists the same rights pedestrians enjoy in crosswalks (or an extra point total, as awarded in mayhem video games) if we get hit by a car in the bike lane.

But I digress. The advantage to spending money on "bike lanes" that are painted lines in the street isn't negligible. It's as good a public relations play as bikers are likely to get. The disadvantages are that this PR gambit virtually restricts bikers to using specific streets, it creates false "safe zones" where bikers are supposedly immune from cars, and, as Maria Tomchick pointed out in the June 14 issue of ETS!, it spends a lot of money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Rather than blame the weather or the hills for keeping people from riding bikes, however, I would say the biggest factor discouraging them is fear of traffic. This fear is absolutely realistic and practical. Unless you grew up riding a bike in traffic, I don't know how you overcome it. Some people manage to become regular cyclists as adults by sheer force of will, but most of us who ride regularly learned to love riding bikes as kids.

So then, what good are bike lanes? Take the Burke-Gilman trail--not just a lane but a bona fide bike path. In theory, this is the perfect place for kids to learn how to ride bikes, protected from traffic. In practice, it's Blood Alley. Bike-to-bike accidents can litter the causeway on a crowded Sunday, and the sequestering of bikes, pedestrians, and skaters from the roads actually creates more opportunities for contact with cars than a biker normally encounters, thanks to the many intersections with roads. Assuming your kid survives this proving grounds, how well does it prepare her or him for riding in the real world?

Fortunately, there are some bike lanes in the real world that are safe and useful, such as the I-90 path over Mercer Island and some of the freeway intersection by-passes in Renton. In a way, though, the greatest bike lanes are, contrary to what bike messenger Rick Giombetti asserts in his laudable plea to defeat I-711, created by traffic. Double parking, gridlock, and all of the other inconveniences of city driving make riding your bike more fun than ever.

In the words of W.C. Fields, "Go out into the street and play."

Doug Nufer, Seattle

How Gentrification Begins

I found your web page while searching for an organization in Oregon that may be able to help us out here in Minneapolis, MN. Please help me find people that could direct me, inform me, and that may be able to help support what I am trying to do.

In Minneapolis there is an area called the West Bank, this area has been preserved for years and years and was the original skid road of Minneapolis. People in our neighborhood have a history of resistance. People in our neighborhood are known as free thinkers, anarchists, punks, freaks, as well as many immigrants from East Africa and Somalia who have been accepted into our community and probably choose to live on the West Bank because of this acceptance and community made up of all walks of life.

I have lived in many parts of this city and have not felt as safe as I do living on the West Bank. The neighborhood also has many cooperative grocery stores that buy only from local farmers and sell only organic fruit and vegetables. There is a cafe/coffee shop called Hard Times on the West Bank; this coffee shop MAKES the west bank what it is. They serve only organic vegetarian and vegan food, they are open all night. They refuse to charge a minimum, despite the city's attempt to force them to charge a minimum, because they do not want to discriminate against people who have no money to spend.

Hard Times has a clothes box that many people utilize, especially during the winter. Many homeless youth come and hang out at Hard Times during the winter not only because they are welcome there, but also because they have no where else to go. The cafe is not-for-profit and is ran by a collective group of people who make minimum wages after splitting the profits. Our cafe is full of art, people from all walks of life, people talking about issues, people playing cards, etc. I've been to many cities and haven't found a place like it.

Because of our neighborhood's history of resistance, the Minneapolis police have not been friendly with us. They spent a year--an entire year--trying to find a way to close down the Hard Times, as the closing of Hard Times would completely change our community for the worse. An undercover policeman finally bought $40 worth of marijuana at Hard Times, and the city council voted to close the Hard Times Cafe despite the judge's statement: "Hard Times did not tolerate drug trafficking, nor were they involved in drug trafficking." The judge recommended the minimum penalty. Instead, the city council voted for the maximum penalty, revoking their license.

We organized. We protested. We stopped traffic, we marched through downtown Minneapolis to the city council and held signs. We piled into the mayor's office to ask her to veto the vote. The mayor was "out of town" but her "representative" let us talk to her for an hour and a half, basically just to appease us. We spoke about how this is an attack on small independent business, how the city really wants gentrification of our neighborhood, and how it is an attack on people who are simply different. We pointed out that you can buy pot from employees or customers at any Taco Bell and that they would never just go and strip them of their license because of it.

Yesterday the mayor signed the city council's decision and simply stated that even if she agreed with us, that it would be a long process to undo the city council's decision. Please help us!!!! If the city can just arbitrarily close down a business because they don't like the clientele that go there and they have development plans for the neighborhood--what's next???

Please help with any suggestions you may have ... we are willing to do anything!!!! The city council says that other businesses in the area want Hard Times closed too, but I have a video made of all the closest businesses to Hard Times and the owners all state that they completely support Hard Times, and two of the local business owners were at the protests! They are pushing us around and trying to push us out, and we never believed they would get away with it because they have no grounds other than they just don't like us.

The neighborhood belongs to us and always has and they are trying to turn it into the suburbs. They want to take away all of our independent shops and build McDonalds. All the hard work it has taken to build up Hard Times for years can just be ripped away from us because they want development, and taking away Hard Times where all the vegans, anarchists, and punks and everyone else who wants meat-free food and social change is the first step to gentrification.

I have videos of every protest so far and videos of the cafe. Please forward this letter to anyone who may be able to help or give us suggestions. We need help from other cities!!!

Misty Johnson, Minneapolis, MN