On occasion in the history of my blog, I have deviated from talking about arts, culture, philanthropy, cultural policy, to talk about other things on my mind. Many years ago, when I became a father for the third time, I wrote about fatherhood, and being an "older" dad.
Today, I want to share some thoughts on alternative transportation. I have been a lifelong bike rider, both for recreation and commuting. And in my family my wife and I share one car, so I am often using alternative modes of transportation. I was an "early adopter" of ride share programs like Uber and Lyft. Apologies in advance, because I am going to ramble a bit.
Growing up in New York City, using mass transit was also second nature - hardly anyone I knew owned a car. And despite the recent woes of the aging mass transit system, it is still the dominant mode of getting around. While there is now an active bike share program, and a much better network of bike lanes (thank you Mike Bloomberg), and of course taxis, Lyft and Uber, I feel like mass transit is still the beating heart of the city. It is also is a great equalizer - used by janitors and Wall Street traders alike. People of all races and classes literally bump against each other every day, and I think that has an impact on the culture of the city, and makes New York feel less economically and racially segregated. When I return to New York to visit, taking the subway is actually something I look forward to and marvel at how easy
it makes going pretty significant distances around the city and between boroughs. I remember Donna Walker-Kuhne telling the story of George C. Wolfe giving her a charge to make the theatres of The Public Theatre "look like a New York City subway car." What a perfect image for truly welcoming all people into our cultural institutions!
By contrast, when I lived in Philadelphia I was startled at how segregated the train system was, used largely by people of color, and students (Temple on the Broad Street line and Penn/Drexel on the Market Street line). When I would take the subway to meetings or events, there was often shock that I had actually taken the subway - the shock usually came from wealthy or middle class White people who would never dream of taking the subway. Much more than in New York, it seemed like in Philadelphia races lived in parallel universes. The largely Black and Brown areas of West and North Philadelphia never were seen by the White populations of Center City and the suburban Main Line areas. And I think the lack of physical interaction through transit fosters a culture where the largely White people with wealth can live in a bubble and never interact with or even see people who are poor, Black and Brown, neighborhoods that are dis-invested, commercial corridors where all the stores are boarded up. As a result, the people with wealth do not "own" or take responsibility for the fact that the City has a 28% federal poverty rate, a challenged under-funded public school system that limits opportunity for young people to break the cycle of poverty. New York is by no means perfect, but in New York I saw vastly more interest among people with wealth in addressing the challenges of poverty - look at the huge success of the Robin Hood Foundation, or Harlem Children's Zone.
So, now here I am in Denver, a thriving economically successful City that is trying to create a much better alternative transportation infrastructure. So regarding the social impact of transit, I feel like Denver is somewhere in between Philadelphia and New York, but much closer to the former. The light rail system is relatively new, and I think is still largely used by suburban commuters coming from middle-class communities downtown for work. Buses seem to be used more heavily by poorer folks and people of color. These are just my impressions - don't know what the stats are. I know that my grown daughter, who makes regular use of buses here, says that her Millennial peers are often surprised that she takes the bus. Denver is still rooted in car culture.
There is a growing network of bike lanes but very few of them are protected lanes, and of the ones that are, even fewer are protected with permanent concrete curbs. Most have those flexible plastic poles. The result: even when there is a protected lane, it is frequently blocked by cars making left turns and delivery trucks. Even the city and entities like the Downtown Denver Partnership BID are guilty of exacerbating this problem. With all the events in Skyline Park, the trucks that are loading and unloading, delivering materials, etc., regularly park in the bike lane on Arapahoe Street. FedEx trucks park in the bike lane. Uber and Lyft drivers dropping off or picking up passengers pull into the bike lanes. Advocacy groups like Bike Denver have tried to shine a light on this, but I have seen no sign of enforcement - if anything it seems to be getting worse. And another big issue with the bike lanes is that they do not connect in any sort of logical way based on commuting patterns. Lanes randomly end, without even directional signage on how to connect with nearby bike routes, or dump you onto heavily trafficked roads where it is not safe to ride a bike.
Denver was lucky enough to have the first bike share program in the nation - B-Cycle, and it is a great resource, but one (like most City bike share programs) with some equity challenges. There is a high cost to each docking station installed, resulting in few docking stations in poorer neighborhoods, and poor people who could benefit from this low cost alternative to driving, are less likely to have a credit card to use the system. Even though I regularly ride my own bike to work, B-Cycle is a great option if you are going to need to mix up multiple transportation options, or do not want to hassle with locking your own bike. For example, I might use B-Cycle to go to work, rather than use my own bike if afternoon rain is in the forecast, or if I have an end of the day meeting in bikable distance to my home, and don't want to lock my bike up on the street.
Now we have electric scooters, adding a new alternative transportation option, as well as dockless electric-assist bikes (JUMP, owned by Uber). To promote competition, Denver has issued permits to multiple scooter companies - Bird, Lime, Lyft and Razor with more (I believe) to come - as well as more dockless bike companies. This makes using the scooters or bikes frankly challenging. No one company has any scale, so you need to have on your phone separate apps for each company, and sometimes check each company until you find a vehicle near you. THEN, because you cannot reserve the scooter in advance (JUMP actually does allow you to reserve), you must start walking to the scooter, and often it gets rented by someone else before you get there, and you have to start the process all over again.
I have used the scooters, and they are fun, easy to use and I think add a valuable new transportation option to the mix. I think they are especially useful for the "last mile" challenge of getting from a train or bus stop to your home or office, which might be a long walk away. And in my case I have, for example, found them really useful to get from our offices in the D&F Tower to locations in the Golden Triangle or Santa Fe, which are not that far away (but a long walk), but not easily accessible by public transit from where I am. But there are clearly problems to be solved. In addition to the issue above, there are several others. Under Denver law, the electric scooters are treated as toys, and legally must only be ridden on sidewalks, which many riders (and pedestrians) are unaware of, and on crowded downtown streets a scooter going up to 20 MPH can be a safety hazard for all. Seems to me they need to be treated like bicycles, and be ridden in the street, and in bike lanes wherever possible. People are also often riding them recklessly and intoxicated, and with the small wheels, a pothole or bad crack (on the road or on the sidewalk) can result in a tumble; as a result scooter related injuries are on the rise. These issues was covered in this recent Denver Post story. I have actually especially
enjoyed using the JUMP electric-assist dockless bikes. They give you some exercise, but the electric assist means you can cover longer distances and hills without working up a sweat if you are using them to commute or get to and from meetings
Another big safety-related issue for bike share, and scooters, is that for the most part people do not use helmets. It is understandable - who can or wants to lug around a helmet with you all the time because you MIGHT use a bike share or scooter. One exciting development on that front is a new start-up company, Park and Diamond, that is developing a collapsible helmet that meets or exceeds all bike helmet safety standards - pretty cool! They have already far exceeded their goal on Indiegogo, and I have contributed and eagerly await my new helmet - delivery is expected in early 2019.
One final note - with the introduction of scooters and dockless e-bikes, there is a bit of a Wild West feeling to getting around without a car these days. I see many scooter users and dockless bike users riding the wrong way in the bike lanes. Regular cyclists who use their own bikes or Bcycle know the rules, they ride more safely and know that bike lanes are one-way in the direction of traffic. These new users are often "joy riders" not used to alternative transportation, and they ride much more recklessly.
I think it is great that Denver is implementing so many alternative transportation options, but there is still much room for improvement. Here are my recommendations:
Growing up in New York City, using mass transit was also second nature - hardly anyone I knew owned a car. And despite the recent woes of the aging mass transit system, it is still the dominant mode of getting around. While there is now an active bike share program, and a much better network of bike lanes (thank you Mike Bloomberg), and of course taxis, Lyft and Uber, I feel like mass transit is still the beating heart of the city. It is also is a great equalizer - used by janitors and Wall Street traders alike. People of all races and classes literally bump against each other every day, and I think that has an impact on the culture of the city, and makes New York feel less economically and racially segregated. When I return to New York to visit, taking the subway is actually something I look forward to and marvel at how easy
By contrast, when I lived in Philadelphia I was startled at how segregated the train system was, used largely by people of color, and students (Temple on the Broad Street line and Penn/Drexel on the Market Street line). When I would take the subway to meetings or events, there was often shock that I had actually taken the subway - the shock usually came from wealthy or middle class White people who would never dream of taking the subway. Much more than in New York, it seemed like in Philadelphia races lived in parallel universes. The largely Black and Brown areas of West and North Philadelphia never were seen by the White populations of Center City and the suburban Main Line areas. And I think the lack of physical interaction through transit fosters a culture where the largely White people with wealth can live in a bubble and never interact with or even see people who are poor, Black and Brown, neighborhoods that are dis-invested, commercial corridors where all the stores are boarded up. As a result, the people with wealth do not "own" or take responsibility for the fact that the City has a 28% federal poverty rate, a challenged under-funded public school system that limits opportunity for young people to break the cycle of poverty. New York is by no means perfect, but in New York I saw vastly more interest among people with wealth in addressing the challenges of poverty - look at the huge success of the Robin Hood Foundation, or Harlem Children's Zone.
So, now here I am in Denver, a thriving economically successful City that is trying to create a much better alternative transportation infrastructure. So regarding the social impact of transit, I feel like Denver is somewhere in between Philadelphia and New York, but much closer to the former. The light rail system is relatively new, and I think is still largely used by suburban commuters coming from middle-class communities downtown for work. Buses seem to be used more heavily by poorer folks and people of color. These are just my impressions - don't know what the stats are. I know that my grown daughter, who makes regular use of buses here, says that her Millennial peers are often surprised that she takes the bus. Denver is still rooted in car culture.
There is a growing network of bike lanes but very few of them are protected lanes, and of the ones that are, even fewer are protected with permanent concrete curbs. Most have those flexible plastic poles. The result: even when there is a protected lane, it is frequently blocked by cars making left turns and delivery trucks. Even the city and entities like the Downtown Denver Partnership BID are guilty of exacerbating this problem. With all the events in Skyline Park, the trucks that are loading and unloading, delivering materials, etc., regularly park in the bike lane on Arapahoe Street. FedEx trucks park in the bike lane. Uber and Lyft drivers dropping off or picking up passengers pull into the bike lanes. Advocacy groups like Bike Denver have tried to shine a light on this, but I have seen no sign of enforcement - if anything it seems to be getting worse. And another big issue with the bike lanes is that they do not connect in any sort of logical way based on commuting patterns. Lanes randomly end, without even directional signage on how to connect with nearby bike routes, or dump you onto heavily trafficked roads where it is not safe to ride a bike.
I have used the scooters, and they are fun, easy to use and I think add a valuable new transportation option to the mix. I think they are especially useful for the "last mile" challenge of getting from a train or bus stop to your home or office, which might be a long walk away. And in my case I have, for example, found them really useful to get from our offices in the D&F Tower to locations in the Golden Triangle or Santa Fe, which are not that far away (but a long walk), but not easily accessible by public transit from where I am. But there are clearly problems to be solved. In addition to the issue above, there are several others. Under Denver law, the electric scooters are treated as toys, and legally must only be ridden on sidewalks, which many riders (and pedestrians) are unaware of, and on crowded downtown streets a scooter going up to 20 MPH can be a safety hazard for all. Seems to me they need to be treated like bicycles, and be ridden in the street, and in bike lanes wherever possible. People are also often riding them recklessly and intoxicated, and with the small wheels, a pothole or bad crack (on the road or on the sidewalk) can result in a tumble; as a result scooter related injuries are on the rise. These issues was covered in this recent Denver Post story. I have actually especially
Another big safety-related issue for bike share, and scooters, is that for the most part people do not use helmets. It is understandable - who can or wants to lug around a helmet with you all the time because you MIGHT use a bike share or scooter. One exciting development on that front is a new start-up company, Park and Diamond, that is developing a collapsible helmet that meets or exceeds all bike helmet safety standards - pretty cool! They have already far exceeded their goal on Indiegogo, and I have contributed and eagerly await my new helmet - delivery is expected in early 2019.One final note - with the introduction of scooters and dockless e-bikes, there is a bit of a Wild West feeling to getting around without a car these days. I see many scooter users and dockless bike users riding the wrong way in the bike lanes. Regular cyclists who use their own bikes or Bcycle know the rules, they ride more safely and know that bike lanes are one-way in the direction of traffic. These new users are often "joy riders" not used to alternative transportation, and they ride much more recklessly.
I think it is great that Denver is implementing so many alternative transportation options, but there is still much room for improvement. Here are my recommendations:
- Expand the bike lane network, adding many more permanent protected bike lanes, and better interconnect the bike lanes. Add a dedicated protected bike lane to both 13th and 14th avenues, and create some dedicated bike lanes that go North-South (right now going North or South is very difficult via bike)
- Introduce a Metro-card like system for RTD that makes it really easy to use buses without exact change, and have kiosks that make it easy to replenish the funds on the cards.
- Ultimately settle on ONE electric scooter company to avoid the problems of having so many different providers.
- Change the law so that electric scooters are treated like bicycles.
- Educate the public about alternative transportation safety and begin warning and then ticketing scooter riders who disobey the rules.
- Add designated Uber/Lyft pick up and drop off zones at poplar locations like the Performing Arts Complex. Right now it can be very confusing.
- Strive to expand bike share, scooters and dockless bikes into poor neighborhoods, and provide programs that educate and even subsidize their use in those communities.
- Continue to invest in building out the light rail system
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