Rained out in Baltimore: Gloomy thoughts on Bike to Work Day

Germans, well known for their "cheerfulness", have many ways to express gloom, failure, wash-outs and something falling victim to circumstance. One expression is: "it fell into the water". Well, that's what happened to Bike to Work Day in Baltimore Friday, the weather forecast was so bad that event planners postponed the national annual bike celebration day rather than having it rained out (new date: June 1). It seems, though, as if lately a lot more has been postponed than just Bike to Work Day.

I took my bike out during a brief break in the drizzle to go to a meeting anyway and encountered:

• two other bicyclists
• a car parked in the bike-lane with its flashers on
• an oncoming car making an illegal left turn across light rail tracks and cutting me off
• a pedestrian walking into the bike lane while distractedly talking to someone else
• a SUV squeezing by me while a bus came the other direction without enough space for all three of us (no bike lane)

All this in a space of about 20 minutes. None of this was particularly life threatening, all of it was somewhat predictable, and all of it was perfectly normal for any Baltimore bike ride, any day, rain or shine. None of this has deterred me from riding the bike to meetings or doing errands on it and enjoying the speed, efficiency and generally convenient manner of getting to places.  The best way to see your city, by far.

Walking fairs not much better when it comes to conflict. On my daily short walks frightening encounters with cars are just as frequent. Even downtown some cars are zipping inches from the curb in excess of 50mph, vehicles blocking crosswalks because they squeezed into intersections without being able to clear them are the most common infractions, followed by turning drivers who pay no heed to pedestrians in the crosswalk having the right of way. Earlier this week, when I raised my umbrella in a motion of despair on one of those who proceeded in spite of me being clearly in his path, the guy yelled out of his open window "get the f** out of the street". Still, I like to walk, but it sure could be more enjoyable.

A bus doesn't provide protection or peace either. Bus drivers get attacked by irate riders, sometimes a crazy boards and accosts passengers. Cars block bus stops or drive on red bus lanes with impunity, many downtown bus shelters are filthy encampments for those who use it as their hangouts all day, especially in the rain. In spite of some improvements and the contact with fellow riders, taking the bus still takes an extra strong commitment, especially for those who have other choices.

These experiences in aggregate sure can make anyone gloomy about where Baltimore stands with its bike network, its pedestrian safety, its street culture and where the City could go from here. Is it really "moving forward"? The Danish author Colville-Andersen uses bicycling as an urban litmus test because he gives this mode of transportation special place in urban planning because of its low speed and human scale. For him bicycling is not a matter of a small minority but sits right at the center of human centered city design. In that line of thinking Baltimore would needs a really big push:

We have been living together in cities for more than 7,000 years. By and large, we used those seven millennia to hammer out some serious best-practices about cohabitation and transport in the urban theater and the importance of social fabric. Mikael Colville-Andersen, Copenhagenize, Bicycle Urbanism by Design 

With such a broad sweep, it is tempting to zoom even further out and ask: where do we stand as a country? In many ways the street and the embattled bicyclist on it is only a microcosm in the new tribal thinking. All kinds of minorities are seen as crazy or as suspicious by those who think they represent the "silent majority" of people sticking with what they see as the traditional US values of cars, steel, coal and guns.  In that view a guy like Colville Andersen is just proof, how far astray liberals have taken cities, in a horrible social agenda about which they couldn't care less.

The other national tradition of cherishing diversity seems to have "fallen into the water", too, in favor of nationalism and turf battles. Never in history has "everybody just gotten along" per that famous plea after Los Angeles riots, but rarely before has not tolerating and accepting those who are different been seen as a virtue. None of this has yet discouraged me entirely or made me regret that I have picked the US as my country.

New York City 1970: Mayor Lindsay in front.

But the impression that everybody is at war with everybody else takes a toll. Gun rights people against gun control advocates, rednecks against elitists, rural against urban residents, nationalists versus globalists and white supremacists against people of color. The others are always the enemy, on Facebook, on NextDoor, in community meetings or in the street.  Fences and walls instead of a welcome. 

I am probably not the only one reminded of the big struggles of the seventies which had spread from the US to many other western countries. I frequently stood at my local town square distributing leaflets for progressive causes. It never took too long until some older person would look me up and down (I had long hair) and finally spit out "under Hitler they would have gassed you". I never expected to hear anything like this in the US, and so far, I haven't. But will it last?

Motorists walk out of a house and into a garage to get into a car for a drive to work. They park and enter an office. There is little interaction with other citizens in such a vacuum-packed life. Cycling through a city, however, you are closely connected with the urban landscape, using all of your senses. Mikael Colville-Andersen

Bicycling in Copenhagen is not just a fair weather activity. (Andersen)

Drivers against bicyclists is just a tiny puzzle piece of this daily culture war that has raised national stress levels to heights we haven't seen since the Vietnam War and the struggle for Civil Rights. In that climate peace cannot be engineered, no matter how well designed a space may be. If the mere presence of the "other" makes one's blood boil, the next battle is never further way than the next corner. Of course, bad engineering and design continues to be a problem.

The most surprising thing about traffic engineering is that it is largely unchanged in the decades since the 1950s. In our modern society we would be absolutely outraged if one vital profession lagged so far behind. Imagine if medical care were still using the same techniques and science as it did in the 1950s. Or education. Or parenting. That would be bizarre and unacceptable. And yet we accept that traffic engineering has failed to modernize. Or perhaps just failed. Mikael Colville-Andersen

Tour dem Parks, Baltimore

In Baltimore where kids and grandmothers get gunned down in broad daylight simply for being at the right place at the wrong moment, where people get shot simply for the color of their skin, the issue of safely riding bicycles seems oddly irrelevant. Yet, if we can't even accept that people get around by different means, how can bigger differences such as religion, cultural values, races or educational backgrounds be reconciled? It seems to me that just a few years back we were in a very different place as a society. The conversations were about "a bridge to the 21st century", a "peace dividend" a world of "livable communities" without hunger and borders, a welcome culture and about hope. 

Bikescore rankings: Top ten rated cities, happy places?

May should be the month when we celebrate life and the beauty of spring, enjoy the warmer outdoors together with our brothers and sisters. Not a month for gloom, for sure. Maybe there is just too much rain this week, maybe winter lasted too long around here, blossoms got ripped off by storms too early. 

Unfortunately, though, it looks like that something much bigger is afoot. Something else has been ripped apart too early as well, and Baltimore is right in the middle of it, a reflection of the nation at large. Something of a scale bicycling won't cure.

yet, chnage often comes from small things. For convivial fun, getting to know others and enjoying the beauty of our many green oasis in Baltimore, "Tour dem Parks, Hon!" through Baltimore City's park system will take place Sunday, June 10.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
the article was re-worked to eliminate some ambiguous or poor phrasing

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Next City: Bicycle Urbanism by Design