Urbanists like to distinguish streets from roads. The somewhat distasteful neo-liberal conception is that roads exist to connect productive places, and streets exist as a platform for building wealth. A similar dichotomy exists with bike infrastructure; bike roads get us from place to place efficiently, and bike streets are interesting places to be.
Columbus is the host of the Tour of the Scioto River Valley (TOSRV), one of America’s longest-standing large group rides. TOSRV makes the claim, with some credibility, that its popularity led to the original U.S. bike boom back in the 1970s. So, social riding is part of the culture around Columbus, and I was able to hook up with the regular Tuesday night social ride. The leader of the ride, Ray George, is one of the founders of Yay Bikes!, and he was more than happy to talk about the organization.
Heading towards downtown Columbus from Old Towne East, you see a tall building with a sign that reads “Motorists,” which seems to emphasize the transportation hierarchy in town. There seems to have been some nasty conflict between bike groups here, and one thing we know about subaltern groups is that there is a tendency towards infighting and competition amongst themselves. Instead of banding together to fight for their interests, they can fall into disputes over goals and methods–especially, whether to work within the system or to disrupt it.
I’m thinking of using the term indigenous instead of natural to describe the existing infrastructure of a city prior to the construction of any bike-specific facilities. The OED defines indigenous as “Originating or occurring naturally in a particular place,” which I think captures the idea I want to get across. Indigenous bikeways aren’t entirely natural, but they exist (or don’t) based on decisions that were made decades or centuries ago.
The term also has a slightly unsettling connection to colonialism which I actually think is good, because I think urbanism often has a slightly unsettling connection to colonialism, or more specifically Orientalism.
And I happened to be visiting a city named for America’s favorite colonialist.
There have been a number of different attempts to categorize bikeways based on different criteria, some related to the facility design, some related to its users. I’m not really happy with any of them. I’m working on developing a taxonomy that could improve our discussions about bike facilities.
I did a ton of riding in the Twin Cities, largely thanks to my friend Max who provided both a nice bike and a whole lot of guidance on where to go. People who race alleycats know a lot about how to get around the city. I totaled over 300km, and hit almost everywhere I needed to get a sense of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
