Why I Pedecommute (and Pedal Commute)

 

Walking to work has its challenges

When I was waiting to cross 1st Avenue on my bike on the first Monday of Earth Month, I saw a colleague getting out of her car. She's younger than me, and lives closer to the college. But driving is clearly the default option in our town, as in most places in America. Cars are seductive--for their convenience, for their accessories, and I guess for a certain type their power. I chose differently long ago, and I'm glad I did.

I need to note that my commuting mode is not strictly car-free, and my core motivation is hardly ethical. I simply enjoy walking, or riding my bicycle, over driving. I may well, though I hope I don't, counterbalance the environmental benefits of my commute in some other sector of my life.

I walk or ride because it gives my head time to clear before and after work. A time spent moving at a human pace, being truly able to see things and people around me, without the onrush of stimuli in and out of my car, is good for my mental health. It gives me time to process whatever is going on that needs processing. (For citations of actual research on this, see Rose 2016: 333-334.)

Jeff Speck in Cedar Rapids, 2015

Jeff Speck says in Walkable City that in order to encourage more people to walk, walking needs to be safe, interesting, useful, and comfortable (2012: 7-11). Cedar Rapids has made significant progress in some areas of town, but most of the city falls far short of these ideals, so I understand why I don't encounter more people on my walks. Most people will walk if there are places they need to go within easy walking distance, if they feel safe from cars, if buildings and trees provide a sense of enclosure, and if there are plenty of signs of human activity. That to some extent describes downtown and some parts of the core neighborhoods. Less than 30 percent of Cedar Rapids children walk to school, and that number will surely decline as schools are closed and attendance areas get larger.

Walking is good exercise. You can, and should, seek out aerobic exercise at a pool or gym, but most people don't. Most people get what exercise they get incidental to their daily tasks, which means if those tasks aren't achievable by a reasonable walk, most people drive and get no exercise. Exercise is good for the body and for the soul, but the way we design our towns makes it difficult. As a result, arguably a bigger factor than diet, over 30 percent of American adults and over 20 percent of teenagers are obese (higher in the Midwest).

Walking is also beneficial to social relations. You notice more of your surroundings when you are moving slowly within them, as opposed to moving fast through them. That is particularly true of the people we live among. A lot of my fellow humans don't look or act like me, but walking among them helps me get used to that. Walk the neighborhood day after day, year after year, and you begin to recognize people--and their dogs--you wouldn't have time to see from a car. Eric O. Jacobsen (2012: 173-174) cites Jane Jacobs (1961: chs 2-4) on the interaction of people on city sidewalks: watching each other means watching out for each other, repeated casual contacts build public trust, children have a chance to learn about the complex world around them. He concludes:

Implicit behind Jacobs's confidence in the city and neighborhood to function coherently is some sense of structure and order that emerges when people live in proximity to one another. There may be a number of ways to account for this implicit structuring and ordering, but one coherent way to think about it is to envision a gracious and sovereign God who both created humanity in his image and is drawing the human creation toward a communal experience of wholeness and harmony. (2012: 179)

One man walking can't make street life, but enough people walking make possible not only street life, but safe routes to school, third places, and other locally-owned small businesses. Cars make possible acres and acres of parking lots.

A Coe hawk by the sidewalk

Walking you notice more birds, too, not to mention the ways that humans thoughtlessly impact the natural world. Transportation accounts for 28 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, and in suburban-style development about doubles emissions from household energy use. Air pollution from motor vehicles costs about $10 billion a year if you factor in respiratory illnesses caused by pollution. New development, typically large lot subdivisions, takes two million acres of undeveloped land each year (cf. Hester 2006: 201-204, Speck 2012: 51-63). 

Walking and cycling accommodate the environment in ways that cars cannot. Speck (2012: 51-63) criticizes what he calls "gizmo green," which is selling and buying gadgets from electric cars to LEED-certified buildings that improve on comparable older products without as much overall impact on the environment as walking. "It turns out that trading all of your incandescent lightbulbs for energy savers conserves as much carbon per year as living in a walkable neighborhood does each week." He quotes Witold Rybczynski, author of Makeshift Metropolis: "[A] solar-heated house in the suburbs is still a house in the suburbs, and if you have to drive to it--even in a Prius--it's hardly green."

But hybrids are only one trend in American vehicles. Without the high gas prices we had ten years ago, vehicle sizes in America and elsewhere are gigantizing. As Andrew Simms of the New Weather Institute in Britain says, "One of advertising's biggest manipulations has persuaded urban families that it's perfectly 'normal' to go shopping in a two-tonne truck" (Harrabin 2021). 

I'm glad walking and cycling to work lessens my impact on the environment, and helps to develop community feeling in our area. But, as I said, mostly I do it because it feels good.

SOURCES

Randolph T. Hester, Design for Ecological Democracy (MIT Press, 2006) 

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Vintage, 1961)

Eric O. Jacobsen, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic, 2012)

Jonathan F.P. Rose, The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life (Harper Wave, 2016)

Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities (Scribner, 2010)

Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012)

POST SCRIPT

This is based on my personal experiences, which are as an able-bodied person... for the time being anyway. I do not for a moment want anyone to think that making a city more walkable does not also help those with disabilities. See this Strong Towns interview with Heidi Johnson-Wright, an Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in Florida (Quednau 2018).