Post No. 500: Transition

Getting to the 500th post on this 10+ year old blog caught me by surprise. The school year at Coe College just ended a couple weeks ago, and congratulations to the class of '23 as well as long-time colleagues who are retiring. I then spent a week or so immersed in thinking about bicycle commuting--luxuriating in that much time focusing on a single subject! This week I'm off to Charlotte for my first-ever in-person Congress for the New Urbanism. Somewhere in all this my birthday happened. But despite all this whirl, I am not one to let a milestone pass uncommemorated.

               When times are mysterious, serious numbers will always be heard--PAUL SIMON

When I started writing this in 2013, I was needing a place to park and reflect on the information I was amassing for a first-year seminar course on place I was teaching at Coe. That course soon begat another, Politics of the City, for the Department of Political Science. Presently I was connected, to my delight, with communities of fellow urbanists outside the college, both locally (Corridor Urbanism started meeting in January 2015) and worldwide (through Strong Towns and eventually CNU). My blog thus became a means of participating in broader conversation about our city and cities in general, on top of being a resource for teaching and occasional public speaking engagements. All that in turn kept me writing.

This is my town

My year-old reflections from number 450 stand pretty much unchanged. Yet from my vantage point atop this pile of now 500 posts, I am aware that the context for writing is changing. In a year or three I will be retiring from my faculty position at Coe, so I'll no longer have a professional rationale, nor the salary to fund urbanist initiatives (trips, books, memberships). At the same time my urbanist communities are going through changes, and so those connections doubtless will be altered as well. Who will I be, when I'm no longer a college teacher who co-runs a civic group on the side? Who will be my tribe, and where will be my place(s)? What will be my relationship to my neighborhood, and my city? My path is murkier than it's been for a long time, when I was a lot younger. Reply hazy--try again.

Role model: Everywhere she lived, Jane Jacobs
contributed both theory and activism to her community

I'm thinking I might could take a crack at local activism. I came out of Bike to Work Week feeling that I have some things to say that nobody else was saying, and that I could become an advocate for commuter cycling and other active modes of getting places in town. Until now I've never been comfortable as an advocate: teaching as I practice it is analytical not argumentative, and so frankly is my brain. But spending a week thinking only about bicycling enabled me to focus and gave me confidence I knew of what I spoke and had (have?) something to contribute to the community.

After 2013 I narrowed the focus of Holy Mountain from the broad topic of "place" to the ingredients of human community ("our common life," in a felicitous phrase I snatched from a correspondent a few years ago). I focus on what I feel I can contribute to the dialogue, and don't feel at all compelled to track current headlines. I'd probably need to narrow my scope even further to have enough knowledge to be an effective advocate, maybe to three core issues like active commuting, affordable housing, and local business development.  

Local businesses are essential to successful communities,
just as coffee is essential to successful blogging

A narrower scope would retreating from other important aspects of our common life (the environment, equity, parks, transit, &c.), though there could be opportunity to incorporate those as well. For example, one reason bicycle commuting is crucial, and not just valiant, is the increasing stress cars put on our environment. 

Crosswalk sign took one for the team
(Czech Village, 2023)

One thing that gives me pause in all this is awareness that I am easily frustrated and discouraged. Zach Mannheimer, who gave the keynote address at the Iowa Ideas in-depth series on creative placemaking this month, told the audience that every initiative he's ever undertaken has required four years to overcome resistance. If I'm going to make it through four years, I'm going to need a team of  friends/colleagues/partners, a veritable quantity of quality people. 

I also don't want to become a crank. I've known quite a few people, typically retired people, who get one or more ideas that they can't stop talking about. They are not, to say the least, effective promoters of those ideas, but they don't know enough to improve or quit. I really don't want to become them.

Then just when I needed an infusion of courage, Addison Del Maestro reflected on his time at his blog, The Deleted Scenes: 

Newslettering is like telling a long story in many pieces. Each article stands alone but isn’t necessarily meant to stand alone. The really fun thing about a newsletter is getting to write almost the same piece over and over—not beating the dead horse and filling column inches, but slowly sharpening an idea until it’s just right.

Del Maestro used examples from three of his posts on small towns, concluding on his most recent If I hadn't written several previous iterations of this, I would not have been able to put it just right here. 

Reflects on writing:
Blogger Addison Del Maestro (from substack.com)

I realized instantly that he was right, that through my own blogging exercise I too was refining my thoughts about the various subjects as I engaged with others, responded to new information, and reflected on my own expression. That's true, for instance, of all three subjects I dealt with this month: the Iowa state legislative session, bicycle commuting, and housing.

I wonder what this blog will become once it's abstracted, as it inevitably will be and probably soon, from the context in which I have been writing. Maybe Del Maestro provides a clue to the answer with the title to his May 22 newsletter: "Just Write." If writing is what I do, then by gum I will "just write," and purpose(s) will appear. And if I become a crank, it's easier for everyone if I'm doing it online instead of across from your face.

Top Posts on Holy Mountain by Time Period

Posts 1-100 (2013-2014)

1. Am I Blue, 6/4/2013

2. Shutdowns and Sillypants (and the Statler Brothers), 10/8/2013

3. No CR Casino... Now, What?, 4/17/2014

100. Climate Change and the Dysfunctional Congress, 6/27/2013

Posts 101-200 (2014-2016)

1. Post No. 200: Next to the Arena, 5/26/2016

2. Touch My Street and Die, 5/15/2016

3. MPO Ride 2016, 5/15/2016

100. What's Happening to the Bike Lanes, 5/21/2014

Posts 201-300 (2016-2018)

1. A Silent But Needful Protest, 11/1/2016

2. Snout Houses? In Oakhill-Jackson?? 10/16/2016

3. Crime and Our Common Life, 8/1/2016

100. Education Update, 6/16/2017

Posts 301-400 (2018-2020)

1. LGBTQ Presidential Forum, 9/22/2019

2. Three Questions for Places in the New Year, 1/4/2019

3. The Hearts of Cedar Rapids, 4/11/2020

100. City Design After the Pandemic, 6/3/2020

Posts 401-500 (2020-2023)

1. Black Friday Parking 2021, 11/26/2021

2. More New, Less Bo? 7/4/2022

3. Move More Week Diary, 10/10/2022

100. Greetings from New Carlisle, 4/23/2023

Community Land Trusts and the future of housing

(Source: clipartpanda.com)

Community land trusts are typically described as an answer to gentrification-fueled displacement: In the words of M. Nolan Gray (2022: 172), "How can we enjoy the benefits [increased investment, better services] of this type of neighborhood change, without all the costs [rents and real estate taxes becoming unaffordable for current residents]?" In theory, I think the same approach could be used in places needing to increase affordable housing stock in the absence of a strong push from gentrification (Cedar Rapids, northeast Iowa), but I think it would be more difficult. CLTs, at least the ones I've read about, survive by capturing some of the increased investment brought by gentrification; in the absence of such an influx, the CLT would have to be funded by private grants and/or government funding.

In 2019, there were 225 CLTs in the United States, containing 20,000 rental units and 15,000 privately-owned homes (Fannie Mae). Usually, cities use some of the additional tax revenue generated by gentrification to provide seed money for the trust, which acquires property that may or may not have existing housing. The trust uses its property to build or rehab housing, which it then sells to low- or moderate-income buyers, while the trust retains ownership of the land. Part of the deal is that the new home owners can sell their house only to another low- or moderate-income buyer. Cities can also give CLTs first-crack at city-owned land, like the swath of vacant property along the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids created by buyouts after the 2008 flood.

Used to be a working class neighborhood:
view from 17th Avenue SW, soon to be developed

(I don't know if Cedar Rapids has contemplated a CLT; I certainly haven't heard of such an effort.)

NewBo Lofts, 16th Avenue SE

Other models are for cities to reserve a portion of tax-increment financing to subsidize affordable housing (for the Portland OR case see Cortright 2019), or funding a non-profit community development commission (CDC) to raise public and private money to fund housing. San Francisco's Mission Economic Development Agency was founded in 1973 for business development but got into real estate 2014 to combat displacement of low/moderate-income Latinos. The agency acquired 400 units when San Francisco sold off public housing, and since ahs been deriving income from developer fees as well as grants (Abello 2018). 

Ribbon cutting at 2828 16th St (source: medasf.org)

The Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation sounds like a CDC, though they don't call themselves one, and their major initiatives at this time don't include housing.

Capturing a share of the increased valuation of real estate in one of these ways is seen as more effective than achieving affordable housing via incentives to or mandates on developers (known as inclusionary housing; the cite I have is Hamilton 2019 from the libertarian Mercatus Center, but I think this point of view is pretty widespread).

Community land trusts have received positive press in Houston (Kimble 2020) and Oakland (Reynolds 2018). Reynolds quotes Steve King, the executive director of Oakland CLT, to the effect they've done good things but it's been a drop in the societal bucket: Certainly we have had a significant impact for the folks we've already worked with, but in terms of us impacting the ownership and control of land in Oakland, we have a long way to go.

house available through OakCLT

I have seen citations for, but not reviewed, research that suggests:

• the success of CLTs (and CDCs) varies widely based on funding base and effective management (Nathaniel S. Wright, "Transforming Neighborhoods: Explaining Effectiveness in Community-Based Development Organizations," Journal of Urban Affairs 40:6 (2018), 805-823)
• CDCs are criticized for working within rather than challenging the economic status quo (Mark C. Chupp, "The Long-Term Impact of CDCs on Urban Neighborhoods: Case Studies of Cleveland's Broadway-Slavic Village and Tremont Neighborhoods," Community Development 37:4 (2006), 3-52; Neal Pierce, "An Urban Agenda for the President," Journal of Urban Affairs 15 (1993), 457-467)
• CLTs have received the same criticism (James DeFilippis, Brian Stromberg, and Olivia R. Williams, "W(h)ither the Community in Community Land Trusts," Journal of Urban Affairs 40:6 (2018), 755-769)

Other research I've seen cited but haven't read:

Jeffrey S. Lowe and Emily Thaden, "Deepening Stewardship: Resident Engagement in Community Land Trusts," Urban Geography 37:4 (2015), 611-628

Myungshik Choi, Shannon Van Zandt and David Matarrita-Cascante, "Can Community Land Trusts Slow Gentrification?" Journal of Urban Affairs 40:3 (2017), 394-411

SOURCES

M. Nolan Gray, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It (Island, 2022)

Allan Mallach, The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America (Island, 2018) [I haven't read it... among other comments on housing, he criticizes CDCs for achieving results in high-poverty areas but not in less concentrated areas where poor people can connect to better jobs and schools]

On gentrification in Texas: Yichen Su, "Gentrification Transforming Neighborhoods in Big Texas Cities" (Q4 2019), https://dallasfed.org/research/swe/2019/swe1904/swe1904b

OTHER THINGS I'VE WRITTEN: 

"What We Can Do About Housing," 18 March 2022 [based on talk by Jenny Schuetz, author of Fixer Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems (Brookings, 2022)]

"Housing Policy," 1 July 2021 [more general overview by issues of (1) affordability/supply, (2) connections, (3) gentrification/stability]

Reflections on Bike to Work Week 2023

Bike to Work Week: Gathering at New Bo City Market
 for Thursday night's group ride

"Small cities must become safe. They are not safe just because they are small."--GILBERT PENALOSA 

I feel bad about criticizing last week's Bike-to-Work-Week because I had a lot of fun, and the people who ran it were friendly and I know they worked hard to pull it off. But I don't feel bad enough to refrain from criticism, because this year's heavy tilt towards recreational trail riding missed the opportunity to do the vital task of promoting bicycle commuting on the streets where we live. 

From Cedar Rapids Climate Action Plan (2021):
You can't get there in an SUV, nor in a giant truck
even if it's electric

Should we not celebrate the tremendous strides our community has made towards a trails network? We are about two years away from connecting all parts of the city as well as outlying areas in a way that will serve daily commuters as well as recreational riders. 

Yes, we should celebrate! But the dailiness of bicycle commuting makes it uniquely crucial to solving the problems caused by decades of auto-centric design.

(1) Bicycle commuting is different from trail riding. 

Commuting differs from recreational riding in a lot of ways. It's a choice among lifestyles, not just a choice among activities. It requires, in most cases, negotiating space that is particularly crowded during traditional business hours. Even the longest, best-connected trails are only part of the journey; connections to the trails will be made at the start and end of the trip from streets, and those streets were designed for cars. 

This is unavoidable: There are limits to how much land and money we have to work with, and expanding infrastructure, even for worthy reasons, puts more distance between destinations. (Widening streets to accommodate protected bike lanes, for example, makes for longer intersection cross times for pedestrians and wheelchair users.) So we need to get serious about the streets themselves (Negroni 2023).

And once we arrive at work or school--or the store, or your friend's house (see "68% of Ontarians" 2023), bicycle commuting requires secure storage for the hours we're going to spend there. 

Oh dear. (Czech Village, May 2023)

(2) Bicycle commuting requires more than just infrastructure. 

Cedar Rapids has in the last decade built some excellent things: added bike lanes, some of the downtown ones separated, and restored two-way traffic on one-way streets. We pulled off a heroic effort to replant street trees after the August 2020 derecho (cf. Steuteville 2023). This has helped get people onto bicycles--but those riders are and will remain a tiny minority of those going to work or school or errands unless more is done to change the context. 

Huge connection: tunnel under 1st Ave
at about 30th St E

Our goal here is more than infrastructure--way more. Infrastructure is one important means to the end, but it's not the end. The end/goal is to replace car trips with bike (or walking, or bus, &c.) trips on a large scale. To impact everything that needs impacting, we should expand the set of bikers tenfold, from maybe 2.5 percent of the metro population to around 25 percent. [NOTE 7/17/2024: These are numbers I made up. Pro tip: Never do this! According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 2022, the actual proportion of commuter cyclists is 0.1 percent.]  That's going to require expanding the current profile of bike commuters to include the less confident, women, people of color, and children. (This People for Bikes report from 2021 looks like it might be very interesting in that connection.)

(3) Bicycle commuting addresses public problems, so it should be a priority for policy makers. 

As The War on Cars says, "#carsaretheproblem." Transportation is a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, and any city serious about its climate action plan needs to think seriously about how people get around (See Litman 2022). To address the rising incidence of traffic deaths, environmental destruction, super-empowered multinational corporations and despotic regimes, traffic congestion, land lost to parking, and household transportation costs, we have to make it attractive for people to drive less. Or not at all. We achieve this only by having safe, reliable alternatives. That's going to require government policy making, if only to help undo the unintended policy consequences of former times. I'm not confident it is city policy, but with all those reasons it should be. 

Awkward interface: Wide sidewalk on C Avenue NE
crosses Collins Road in front of right-turn lane
on the way to Collins Aerospace

Among other things, therefore, elected officials need to take part in Bike to Work Week activities, partly for symbolic support, but mostly because they need to participate in the discussions that will lead to  policy solutions. To be sure, the mayor and city council were elected by constituents who predominantly drive everywhere, but they are also responsible for leading policy making in response to public problems.

(4) But, alas, what needs to be done is less clearly perceived and more difficult to do. 

One of the attractions of trail-building, I expect, is that whatever the difficulties in getting them built, the task itself is quite straightforward. Plan the route, acquire the land, build the trail. And then people use them, even in Iowa with our wildly variable weather. In town, the bike lanes and two-way streets have helped, but we need to do more than accommodate biking, we need to encourage it. How that is done is not clear, but it probably involves working with people more than building things.

In a post last winter, I spitballed some ways policy makers and cycling advocates could encourage more cycling in town. During Bike to Work Week, I pulled some of them to add to the city's wish list boards. I tried to stay away from infrastructure, because as I've said, the obstacles are more and trickier than infrastructure alone can solve.

Opportunity: Loftus Lumber on 3rd Street SE,
 site of future mixed-use high-rise

• Aggressive promotion. Take advantage of the 2,000 or so living units that are coming online in the core of the city over the next year. Shower the new residents with love and attention. Work with building management to schedule biking events, invite them all, get them together with bicycles, get them bus passes. Find out where they work and use that information to improve connectivity.
• Focus on key streets, like Wiley Boulevard SW near the new Westside Library, and the areas around the new schools. How safe is it for a child to walk from the affordable housing clusters to the library? Make it safer. How do children negotiate the crossing of, say 27th or 29th Streets by the new Trailside School? As the video at the bottom of the post argues, the proportion of children walking to school has plummeted in 40 years for a variety of intertwined reasons. As Cedar Rapids enlarges school attendance areas, that will make walking less likely but for older children might not rule out biking.

Truth in mapping:
Stop calling C Avenue NE a "bike-friendly street"

• Slow the cars. Nothing's going to stop someone who's determined to be aggressive, but design choices like narrower lanes can reduce average vehicle speeds to where collisions will be survivable. (See, for example, Gardner 2023.) I'd also like to see more traffic enforcement; I doubt we can enforce our way to safe streets, but I'd like to see some consequences for recklessly dangerous behavior. Finally, the city could push for weight and height limitations on SUVs and pickups, or at least be able to tax them more heavily. (On the dangers of vehicle gigantism, see Benfield 2023 and Muller 2023.)
• Invest in a large random sample survey of public attitudes about cycling. Who isn't cycling that could be, and why not? (Right now we're just reaching a convenience sample of cyclists.) What are concerns unique to women, the physically handicapped, parents of small children, and people of color? What are non-cyclists' attitudes about cyclists, and are there concerns we could address?

Awkward interface: The CeMar Trail,
 heading away from Cedar Lake along H Avenue NE

Besides a focus on making shared streets safer, I'd like to see the city look for ways to make cycling and walking more convenient, comfortable and secure. Availability of plenteous parking should not determine design, because the more parking there is for cars, the greater the distance between destinations, and hence the less convenient to walk or bike. At destinations like schools and job sites where people spend a lot of time, create secure bike sheds rather than relying only on bike racks. More people will ride if they can worry less about theft. 

I'd like to see more emphasis on specific groups who are underrepresented and hence easy to overlook. What about a morning group ride for women? Audits of routes from the perspective of disabled individuals? Outreach to communities of color? Who are the employers, retailers, and such who innovating in making it easier for their employees and customers to get their by bike? 

And then celebrate our progress during the next Bike-to-Work Week!

Much improved interface:
Cedar River Trail crossing 1st Avenue E, 2023

Same intersection, 2014

(I hope they don't make me give the t-shirt back.)

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: David Jones, "Bike Commuting Statistics: 74 Cycling to Work Stats for 2023," Discerning Cyclist, 5 March 2023 [HT Ron Griffith for this one]

VIDEO: Jason Kottke, "Why Did Kids Stop Walking to School?" (12:38, from kottke.org)

Bike to Work Week Diary 2023: It's Not Going to Work

My first Bike-to-Work Week in Cedar Rapids since 2019--I was in Belgrade last year--comes with much anticipation, though mingled with concern. The incredible weather forecast and four years of deprivation have me utterly psyched for this. However, this year's schedule is visibly thinner, missing some of the highlights of earlier years, and oriented more to trail riding than commuting. (More on the importance of this distinction later.)

The disorientation started early. The traditional mayor's proclamation was moved from  Monday morning downtown to the previous Thursday evening at New Bo City Market, and was delivered in the absence of the actual mayor by City Council member Ann Poe.

Ms. Poe read it like a pro, having done it once before in 2016

The proclamation was attended by maybe three citizen cyclists, along with city staff promoting various initiatives...

city displays included posters for Connect CR
and a planned intergenerational center

...and some rather puzzled citizens who were there for weekly Jazzercise. Later came the regular weekly bike ride connected to Meet Me at the Market, which I was not able to attend. (I also had to miss Saturday's MPO Ride.)

I had shown up to the proclamation 45 minutes early--did I mention I was psyched?--in a bright neon Bike to Work Week t-shirt. The young city staff setting up their displays had not seen this artifact. "From back when there was money," one said. Oh boy.

May 2019: Post-proclamation breakfast at Jimmy Z's

Monday, May 15

Cedar Valley Nature Trail pit stop at 2nd Avenue SE,
about 8:30 a.m.

Bike to Work Week started chilly and gray this morning, though the forecast for the week remains ideal. Pit stops around town return as a key feature of the week. I got to the downtown location about halfway through the 6:45-8:45 morning shift and, frankly, did not see much action. The guys at the pit stop, Steve Hershner from the city and a young man from Hall Bicycle whose name I didn't catch, reported more people coming through during the half hour before I got there, and a fair-sized group of trail riders at about 7. Steve was resplendent in his BTWT shirt from 2019, the one with the bike map of Cedar Rapids that long-time readers will remember I didn't get, albeit in the chill he had several layers over it.

snacks available at the morning pit stop

This afternoon, I visited the pit stop at Collins Aerospace. Getting there from Coe College was a little tricky through the after-school/rush hour traffic, but I made it. (I prefer side streets to main streets, even if there are bike lanes, so I forsook the chance to try out some of the newer bike infrastructure.)

By this time, the sun was out and the air was considerably warmer than the morning had been. We saw quite a bit of traffic on the Lindale Trail that runs along the north edge of the Collins campus. Derek Stepanek from Northtowne Cycling and Fitness was helping people test ride e-bikes. He was kept busy the whole time I was there. 

Betsy was there from the City, and it turns out she's also in charge of coordinating the bikeshare program, which gave me the opportunity to mention there's been a scooter in front of my house...

...since Friday night, and another one two doors down, which I can't report through the app because it won't allow me to upload the picture it insists on having. She suggested I try the phone number, and pointed out other people are reporting wayward scooters without this problem.

I have problems other people don't have? Story of my life...

Tuesday, May 16

Today's Bike to Work Week event was the Bike to Lunch Business Challenge, initiated in 2019, and this year timed to coincide with the New Bo City Market's weekly Food Truck Tuesday. I enjoyed West African peanut and sweet potato stew, the weekly special from The Full Bowl.

(Note: this is not a truck)

Roman Kiefer from the Corridor MPO and Haley Sevening from the City were on hand to answer people's questions about trails...

...particularly the planned completion of the Lindale Trail (in 2024) and the CeMar Trail (in 2025), which when completed will not only be useful for commuters but for recreational riders will create a huge loop between downtown Cedar Rapids and Uptown Marion.

Visitors left a fair number of wishes as well, mostly related to trail riding.

Not everyone in the considerable turnout was there for Bike to Work Week, but the level of interest in cycling, particularly trails, was encouraging.

This morning I joined a webinar this morning on safe streets hosted by Gilbert Penalosa's organization, 880 Cities, featuring guests from Hoboken and Seattle. Ryan Sharp, director of transportation and parking for Hoboken (pop 60,000), which has had no traffic deaths in 6+ years, credited "a lot of good fortune" but also 13 years of deliberate preventive actions like protected bike lanes, curb extensions, "daylighting" parking areas, road diets, pedestrian islands to reduce pedestrian crossing distances and vehicle speeds. Allison Schwartz and Brad Topol from the Seattle (pop 730,000) dept of transportation noted that despite that city's increase in pedestrian and cycle deaths since 2019, where there have been separation and slowing vehicles those have gone down. 

The Seattle presenters stressed shifting away from consideration of isolated individual blame to system accountability. (On the contribution of design factors see also Sheppard 2023). The core goal is to go beyond reducing tragedies, and to design a system where everyone feels safe moving around the community--regardless of transportation mode, race, sex, and income level.

Getting there requires more than trails, and more than bike lanes. This morning I drove--heretic!!--from my house to the YMCA, which is a little more than a mile, and spotted three cyclists (all white men). What would it take to get three to, say, thirty? with more diversity to boot? Is the city mentally prepared for this to happen? Can we help it happen? Do we even want it to happen? (The last is meant ironically, of course. I may be a backslider but I'm no heretic!)

May 2016: Bike to Lunch with the mayor at Kickstand

Wednesday, May 17

The Ride of Silence is where Bike to Work Week shows its serious side, commemorating those who have been killed in road crashes, typically from being hit by motor vehicles. Roman Kiefer of the Corridor MPO (pictured above) began the ride by citing recent statistics from the area: no one killed so far this year, one serious injury, with four last year in 267 collisions. It shows the frustrating limitation of infrastructure; even with a network of connected trails and protected lanes, sooner or later one has to cross paths with motor vehicles, and as those get bigger and faster (see Benfield 2023) tragedies will happen unless something can be done to address that.

Car-dependence is also bad for nature and public health. Last night's The War on Cars podcast featured an interview with Amy Westerveldt, host of the podcast Drilled. She is currently reporting on environmental damage and political corruption caused by Exxon's oil extraction in the South American nation of Guyana. This week ProPublica has a story on the aftermath of oil extraction in California, which has left a bill so large that neither industry nor government can cover it (Olade 2023). Our thirst for oil has all sorts of harms, which makes the promotion of bicycle commuting all the more vital.

The ride began and ended at City Square in Marion, wending 5.6 miles through the streets of Marion and far northeast Cedar Rapids. We had a Marion police car before...

...and a Cedar Rapids police car behind. We rode Marion Boulevard to Blairs Ferry Road to C Avenue to Boyson Road, then back on Central Street. Those are some serious stroads. I don't recommend doing any of that without a police escort!

Riding east on Boyson Road in Cedar Rapids

The ride really did happen in silence. Most other people we encountered were respectful, and we got some cheers from people sitting outdoors at Villa's Patio. Coming back in on 10th Street, I heard a little girl ask her father, "What is that? It looks like a parade." I thought particularly of Dan Lehn, my Coe College colleague who was hit by a truck in July 2016. Dan loved people--his family, his friends, his students, and everyone else, too. How tragic to have such a sweet spirit taken from us too soon.

Scenes from earlier today:

Morning pit stop downtown

Afternoon bike ride: Transamerica campus

Also today, the Veo scooter disappeared from in front of our house, after four-plus days. It happened without our intervention, as I never did get the app to work.

Thursday, May 18

Bad news for someone in Czech Village this morning

This morning I rode across the Bridge of Lions into Czech Village to meet a friend for coffee. I found this sad remnant pictured above as I locked my own bike. If nothing else, the theft shows infrastructure is far from being the only or even the primary existing obstacle to confident bicycle commuting on a mass scale. 

Another issue is the size and speed of vehicle traffic, which is unusually high on 16th Avenue these days because of the major construction project on the 12th Avenue bridge. As motor vehicles get bigger, streets are more crowded and cyclists, pedestrians, wheelchair users, and others are less confident of even being seen.

Today's Bike to Work Week events included a pit stop at New Bo City Market, sponsored by Goldfinch Cyclery.

I chatted with Lillian Pope from Goldfinch, who in addition to bicycle expertise has a passion for social justice, but is unsure how bicycling can help. It seems cycling can speak to economic and racial equity--and the viability of small local businesses--as well as environmental sustainability, but it doesn't happen automatically. It will take intentional effort, along a path that is murky at best.

Lillian also suggested a fix for my floppy handlebar grip, which involved walking my bike over to the shop and getting a new cap put on the end.

Good as new! Thanks, Goldfinch!!

At 6:00 the weekly Meet Me at the Market ride departed. Eight of us took the Cedar River Trail south to Hoover Park and back, about 15 miles in all.

The suburban subdivisions sprouting on the southwest side have rather nice trail access to the core.

After the ride, there was a small Corridor Urbanism meetup at Kickstand in New Bohemia.

The beer and conversation were good, but I was stunned by the number of bikes at the bar on a Thursday evening.

Maybe we should change it to Bike to the Bar Week!

What we've been missing, by failing to keep the focus of the week on bicycle commuting, are the sorts of events held in earlier years that were specifically focused on commuting, such as how to encourage more of it...

May 2017: Nikki Northrop Davidson, Bike2Work Consultants
presents "Bike to Work 101" at the Metro Economic Alliance

...and bike-friendly workplaces (featuring the building where I am now writing!).

May 2014: Geonetric's bike-friendly building under construction
(destination of group ride with the mayor)

Maybe these aren't exactly the ticket, though as an academic I'm always up for a panel, particularly if there's coffee! And with all the construction going on in the core, and elsewhere in the city, it would be nice to feature what architects and employers are doing.

It is good to celebrate the increase in the size and connectivity of our metro's trails networks, but trails won't save the world. Bike commuting could save the world, if we wanted it to.

Friday, May 19

Bike to Work Week culminated, as always, in an after-party, tonight at Sag Wagon, a bike-themed bar overlooking Cedar Lake.

Ron Griffith pointed out the Sag Wagon has a trail map painted on one outside wall.

We gathered at 5, mingled among the other bar patrons; I sat with fellow BTWT enthusiasts Chase and Desiree. At 6 they started handing out prizes. Based on the number of cross-outs on my Bike to Work Week bingo card...

...I had first crack at the prize table, and I scored a water bottle from Goldfinch and a t-shirt from Hall Bicycle. Other than the fact that the t-shirt appears to say "Smack me," which I certainly don't want to encourage, this was arguably my best Bike to Work Week ever from a materialistic standpoint.

(photo by Haley Sevening)

Bike to Work Week 2023 was a lot of fun, but also missed opportunities. This will take another blog post to work out, however, as it is high time I closed this one.

See also:

"Trails and Bikeways Ideas," 19 February 2023

"Bike to Work Week Diary 2019," 13 May 2019 [includes links to earlier posts]

Kaid Benfield, "CARZILLA: Are Huge SUVs and Trucks Hurting Pedestrians and Walkable Communities," PlaceMakers, 5 May 2023

Alec Davis, "Can You Live a Car-Free Life in Des Moines?" Waste of Space, 6 May 2023 [includes ref to bike neighborhoods]

Bill Pugh, "Bike Bike Baby: How Greater Washington Can Boost the E-Bike Revolution," Greater Greater Washington, 10 May 2023

David Zipper, "Bikeshare's Proud Past and Shaky Future," Paved with Good Intentions, 8 May 2023