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Bicycling with Mark Parman Cyclists challenge car culture by seeking safer city streets Recently one of my wife's colleagues decided to ride her bicycle to work, something she had never done. It made sense since construction has shut down all but one thoroughfare from the east side of Wausau, Wisconsin, to the hospital where she and my wife work. While traffic sits backed up at the lights at one of the worst intersections in town, a bicycle can zip right by on the sidewalk, saving time as well as all those hits on the adrenal glands. Sitting trapped in that rat race made no sense to her whatsoever – or to me, for that matter – but drivers are willing to put up with it morning and evening, five days a week. Anyway, she was doing fine until she hit this nasty intersection, which brings six streets worth of SUVs and minivans together into a chaotic mess. Bravely, she ran the gauntlet, squeezed against the curb by the snarling traffic. No doubt some drivers cursed at her, wondered what the hell she was doing riding a bike – the usual here in Wausau. Unfortunately, she didn't know my shortcut around that intersection (through a couple of parking lots, down a back alley and over a couple of curbs). She did make it to work, though, but I don't know if she'll make the trip by bike again. Considering the threat to life and limb, it wasn't a pleasant first experience. For the most part, this is what urban bicycling in America is like but that should hardly surprise us. On August 15, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters essentially said on "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" that bicycles aren't transportation. She said the federal government is spending money on bike paths and trails – "projects that are really not transportation, directly transportation related." According to the Bush administration, bicycle facilities are pork, not "real" projects. So apparently bicycle commuters have been pedaling around for years on nontransportation devices. Bicycling is just an interesting hobby, I guess. I'm used to this – the lack of bike lanes, the rude drivers, the intimidation of a jacked up four-wheel-drive F-250, the total disregard of public officials to consider the bike as transportation – and I just deal with it the best way I can. Typically this means taking the path of least resistance and finding routes and shortcuts that are somewhat safer and reasonably tolerable. Even so, I find myself all too often on busy four-lane roads, dicing it up with a teenager driving a Grand Am and yammering away on a cell phone or a caffeine-addled office worker hell bent to get home in time for "American Idol." I've been thinking lately, though, that I've grown too used to this appalling situation. I've taken it for granted that things have to be this way, that cars will own the road forever and ever. When I first started cycling over 25 years ago, I simply assumed that might makes right on American roadways; the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest transferred to the highway. Most of us still subscribe to this idea, hence the Hummer, the Suburban, and my favorite vehicle name, the Armada. It's kill or be killed out there. No wonder most of the country is afraid to pedal a bicycle down the road or walk to the grocery store to pick up milk. Why would any decent parent send little Johnny to school on his bicycle given the carnage that could result? For some reason, my blind acceptance and these faulty assumptions have stayed with me all these years. However, cars don't own the public roads, they never have. Car culture would have us think so, but that's not the case, even though the apologists want even more miles of road and sprawl howl about all the billions of tax dollars that vehicles pump into the system. They argue that cars should own the roads because essentially they pay for them through taxes at the pump, or they claim that our economy will collapse if we don't continue driving at an ever-increasing pace. For years I believed this bunk, or rather, never questioned it – that roads were for cars and I should just be grateful to ride in the gutter. But cars have dominated roads for less than a century, literally taking over American streets and landscape in the 1920s when ordinary Americans could finally afford a Model T. It was from that point in time that cars started to own the road, excluding other forms of transportation – the horse, the bicycle and the pedestrian. Thus developed an asymmetrical relationship between cars and less powerful but more efficient means of transportation. This relationship becomes painfully obvious when driving through Amish country. The horse and buggies of the Amish (which don't provide nontransportation, according to the current administration, remember) get pushed off to the side of the road. The Amish are in constant danger as cars and trucks whiz by, while the "English" in the motorized vehicles fleetingly wonder why in the world someone would still use a horse and buggy in this day and age. If one must ask that question, the answer will probably never be clear. Let me offer a few shorthand explanations for the horse and buggy: religious conviction, a desire for a simpler life, a way to keep the community more closely knit, or maybe just a love of horses. I'm not suggesting that we ride bikes for religious reasons, but I can much more easily picture Jesus pedaling a bicycle than I can imagine him cruising around in a Corvette. At any rate, the proper response to the appalling state of affairs in the United States is to fight back. For some, this means taking part in Critical Mass rides, loosely organized mob of cyclists that literally take back the roads, if only momentarily. This may mean risking arrest. Other cyclists write letters to their elected officials demanding better bicycle facilities. Many join groups that lobby and advocate for cyclists, like the Wisconsin Bicycle Federation (www.bfw.org) or the League of Illinois Bicyclists ( www.bikelib.org ). Even the bicycle industry has jumped into advocacy. I'm impressed with Trek's new program, One World Two Wheels, aimed at bicycle retailers as well as bicyclists. Trek has hired Rebecca Anderson as their advocacy director, and Trek president Dick Burke has long been involved with Bikes Belong. Me, I'm serving on the Marathon County Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, hoping to make changes to the Wausau area, which is one of the worst places to ride in Wisconsin. We have zero bicycle facilities for commuting around the city, just a few paths along the river, which are nice for recreation, but not really useful for transportation. Our meetings can be painfully slow, and a few of my fellow members clearly have no interest whatsoever in alternative transportation. They see no problem with the status quo. The status quo, however, has numerous and serious problems. It's up to us to change it. Mark Parman lives in Wausau, Wisconsin, where he teaches English and journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County.
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