Taking Eco-Advocacy For a Test-Ride
by Scott on September 29th, 2009
A friend of mine in Northern Minnesota bikes to work year round, even in the cold and snow. Oddly I found this inspiring. So this summer, I bought a bike and began riding it to work. I was a bit hesitant at first, but a month into it I was hooked! I was reducing my carbon footprint, saving money on gas, losing a little weight, and discovering interesting new parts of the city. I sometimes passed Chicago celebrities like Oprah Winfrey or Jesse Jackson Jr. on the lakefront trail. Biking was good.
I discovered interesting new places within the city that I might have missed in a car, including a tiny Lebanese neighborhood (with a bakery selling the best pita bread I have ever tasted), an awesome Romanian restaurant (Little Bucharest—it has since become one of my favorites), and many more museums, businesses, and parks (which I still have yet to stop and explore). After this first month, I felt I was becoming “A real Chicago bicyclist.” Then part of me said: “So maybe it’s time for you to join the Active Transportation Alliance, huh?”
Although we did previously blog on the Active Transportation Alliance (ATA), if you’re not familiar, they are a nonprofit that advocates for bikes (and other non-motorized forms of transportation) in Chicagoland. They have programs promoting bicycle safety, and they lobby to ensure that bike lanes are included on city streets. They also sponsor international events like “World Carfree Day” (which occurred last Tuesday, September 22) to encourage commuters to experiment with going for one day without using a car.
But I balked. Part of me felt that bicyclists in Chicago already had it good… maybe even “too good.” You see, there are a few bad eggs in the Chicago bicycle community who never obey any rules of the road. Insanely, they think that just having a bicycle makes you above the law! (I used to imagine Chicago cops observing a bicyclist on a crime spree, and saying to one another, “I guess there’s nothing we can do; he’s got a bicycle.”) But biking overall was pretty easy where I was.
So I procrastinated. Then, the next weekend, I decided I would take my bike to run an errand in a less bike friendly region nearby.
Let’s just say I joined the Active Transportation Alliance the next day.
As I rode in this un-named area, the demeanor changed dramatically for the worse. First, there were no bike lanes, and it was a struggle to figure out where to ride. Then, remarkably, I had people slow down their cars and roll down their windows to yell at me just for riding a bicycle! If you rode on the street, people would yell at you to ride on the sidewalk. If you rode on the sidewalk, people would yell at you to get back on the street. And perhaps most disconcerting of all, there were no other bicyclists.
I was shocked. Suddenly, the value of the inroads made by groups like the ATA was all too clear. It was also clear that I had taken them for granted. My little test ride provided a vision of how horrible things might be for bicyclists without nonprofits like the ATA working hard to advocate for them.
Yes, it still annoys me when an arrogant Chicago bicyclist acts like he or she doesn’t need to obey traffic signals, but moreover, I’m just thankful for all that we do have here in Chicago. There are miles of paved paths just for bikes. There are bicycle safety awareness programs for motorists. There are bike lanes on the city streets. And if people do roll down their windows to yell at you, it’ll be for some transgression other than simply “being a bicyclist.”
Tags: community development, green banking, green transportation, ShoreBank, triple bottom line
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