For the Portland State students on the trip, we were assigned Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities to read and comment on as we were experiencing the Netherlands. Now that I finally have my book back (was in my lost luggage, which is a whole other story), I'll be catching up on summarizing some of the chapters soon.
For the Northeastern students, they were assigned Mia Birk's book Joyride, which is about how Portland's bike culture started to develop. Peter Koonce (our instructor) shared with us a great cliff-notes video of Mia Birk giving a live presentation over the story.
I found her story very interesting. She's a lively person that has a unique style of presenting and I feel the 15 minute video is worth a watch. I had no idea Portland was at one time like other cities, I just took it for granted that the city always had a bike culture. Mia Birk just showed me that it wasn't true, that even Portland had to start somewhere, and the journey wasn't extremely quick or easy. She gives a great step-by-step account of how Portland adopted more bike lanes (using Bike Fest on the Burnside Bridge to install bike lanes) to even how the bike parking areas are increasing in popularity (my capstone was a impact study of the new bike corrals). She also touches on the benefits being seen by people riding their bikes and goes into how it is starting to spread to areas outside Portland (including Texas!).
I think Portland is far from finished on evolving into a bike focused city. Portland has definitely come a long way (from less than 1% ridership to 8%), but compared to the Netherlands (40% ridership), we have barely scratched the surface. Portland does have plenty of bike lanes, neighborhood parkways (bike boulevards), bike parking, and even a few bike signals, but it will need more frequent use of the infrastructure as well as education to bring the ridership up more. I've heard some people think the next step should be to limit automobile access to some areas and leave it open to only bikes and pedestrians. I personally believe our next step in promoting cycling will not necessarily be by penalizing the automobile drivers, but rewarding the cyclist and pedestrian. Sooner or later, a motorist will see the grass as being greener on the other side and cross the fence. Maybe instead of reducing access to cars, develop better short-cuts that are more efficient when using to reach a destination.
A couple years before I got my driver's license, I used my bike to ride the 5-6 miles to school and around the small town I lived in. I have a few negative memories of bike riding, like a couple problems with slashed tires when people on the school grounds would find my bike (there was no dedicated parking so I chained up to the fence around the swimming pool) and the five hills between town and my family's house in the middle of no -where. The one benefit I remember was that if I rode my bike 5 miles, I'd make it home in less than an hour, just in time for weekday afternoon cartoons. If I took the bus, the trip took me over 2 hours (I was the last one off the bus).
The weekend I hit 16, I bugged my parents to take me to the DMV and I received my license. It felt like a milestone in my life, to finally be able to drive a car without supervision. I used my new-found freedom frequently to drive my two sisters or high-school friends around. I even had a car-pool system going with two friends that needed rides to school. Before now, outside of the occasional trip mountain biking, I never thought of using a bike as a regular mode of travel, just something for fun. Now, however, I'm eager to find a bike to begin making my one trip a week to a destination, all thanks to my trip to the Netherlands.
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