Many thanks to volunteer translator Liz Hengeveld! Liz took the article in the highest-circulation paper in the world that we previously blogged about and brought it into a language we can understand.
Contacts: Bicycles Play a Major Role
Yomiuri Shimbun
April 18, 2007
In our last column, we introduced you to an experiment underway in Portland, Oregon – a place that makes good use of even such public spaces as intersections in its quest to enrich interpersonal relationships.
The foundation of the concept is that people make contact with each other when they go “outside†the closed-in private spaces of their homes and cars. In Portland, even in those large areas where pedestrian access is limited, residents are particular about “outsideâ€. A leading role is played by bicycles.
On weekday mornings and evenings, one is struck by the large numbers of people moving around on their bicycles commuting to work or school. In the past 10 years, bicycle ridership in the city has grown 5-fold and every day 10,000 people commute to the downtown area by bike. You can even see people loading their bikes onto the outsides of busses or boarding streetcars with their bicycles. Almost everyone is wearing a helmet and riding a sports-type bicycle. If you look at the area on the special bike map available for six dollars, bike routes that have been configured for safety cover the city like a net.
Even this journalist took a ride on a rented bike. Riding through the Waterfront Park that runs along the Willamette River which flows North – South in the city, the spring breezes hitting my face felt good. Many people were riding their bikes, making eye contact with each other.
Lisa Howlett, 42, was cycling with her 11-year old daughter. “I have more opportunities to interact with people than when I travel by car. And I also like being able to savor the city itself,†she said.
The not-for-profit Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) encourages the use of bicycles. Evan Manvel, 35, is the Executive Director of the BTA. “Of course, it’s great for the environment and for health, but bicycles have a role to play in enriching connections between regions,†he stressed. Starting with neighborhood citizen bike patrols, examples even exist of the bicycle’s usefulness in anti-crime initiatives.
The BTA also holds bicycle classes aimed at children who might ordinarily ride back and forth to school in their parents’ cars. Sierra Newby, 10, who took a BTA class at the Vestal Elementary School says, “In a car, you just sit so it isn’t good for you. On a bike, you can feel the air and it’s a lot of fun to ride.†Even the parents who ride to the bike parking area to meet their children after school start casual conversations with each other as they wait, and social interactions are born.
In Japan, too, many people ride bicycles – so much so that bicycle parking enforcement measures have become an issue. However, “Riding as a means of transportation because you don’t have a choice is different from riding in a way that gives you pleasure,†says Manvel.
“Building a bicycle-centered city is also important in the prevention of city-center decayâ€, says Bernie Bottomly, Vice President of the local Portland Business Alliance. As highways increase, city functions spread out to the suburbs in an unregulated way, “… and the city center dies,†warns Bottomly.
In Portland, they say, that kind of consciousness sprouted beginning in around 1970. Even today, the aftermath remains of a decision made then, in accordance with the strong will of the local people, to tear out a high-speed freeway. That place is now the riverside park where I rode the rental bike.
