Hey Ya’ll,
We’ve been changing a few things up around here at the Hub.  As part of some changes we are going to try updating the website more often so it becomes a destination for you to check out on a regular basis.
As part of that I wrote an opinion piece that I thought up while riding home the other day.  The Hub of Detroit is not a political advocacy organization.  Mostly we get kids on bikes, but there are some politics linked to what we do.  We want our youth to grow up in a world where they are free to move about their neighborhoods in safety!  So with that in mind, these opinion articles aren’t official Hub policy statements, but just thoughts from individual collective members to get conversations going.  Enjoy, agree/disagree, start your own blog, ride your bike!

Sharing the road as an everyday practice vs. owning the road as a political statement

By Jason x

Biking may not always be a political act. Some people simply ride for exercise or cannot afford other transportation options. The economics of those situations may have tangential politics, but the simple action of movement by bicycle is not political in itself. I think driving a motor vehicle is the same. Simply driving is not political, though the economics of owning a personal motor vehicle may be. However, the personal, direct politics come into play when a vehicle user demands ownership over a roadway. This article is written for people with such attitudes.

As a person who uses a bicycle to get around a majority of the time I have found that sharing the road is not difficult for me or others. Most motor vehicles simply changes lanes and pass me without any issue (and occasionally I pass cars!). There are times when I encounter those that yell, “Get out of the road!”, “Get a car!” or something else as equally ill-thought out. Sometimes these words don’t need to be said and a driver’s actions speak for them when they cut me off or pass too close, therefore endangering my life.

These words and actions demonstrate the ignorance and entitlement of such road users. I don’t think they see it that way, but ignorance can often be blinding. The entitlement piece is where things become political. The idea that motor vehicles are entitled to the road comes from ideas that roads were “built for cars” and that “motorists pay taxes to fund the roads” which bicyclists do not. Both of these ideas are untrue assumptions and very political. Let me break it down for you:

• I ride bicycles and I pay taxes. Different taxes fund different services, but paying taxes is not a direct payment for things. To pay taxes isn’t to buy anything directly. If it was, than only people who pay property taxes or buy lottery tickets in Michigan should use the public schools. This idea simply doesn’t make sense. Truth: Some bicyclists do pay taxes.
• Taxes are a system to which society pays into so all can benefit. Those with economic privilege pay taxes so those less economically fortunate can still survive in the same society. Taxes are (supposed to be) for society’s benefit as a whole, not just individuals. Besides, what causes more damage to roadways: bicycles or motor vehicles? Truth: Taxes are for society’s benefit, not for individual entitlement and gain (no matter what capitalism tells you).
• There is an assumption that bicyclists cannot afford a car. This idea identifies all bicyclists as poor and therefore unable to afford the luxury of using roads. I ride my bicycle most days but I do also own a car. Many cyclists do. However, I refuse to believe that my fellow cyclists that cannot afford a car are any less of a human than I. Truth: Some bicyclists own cars.
• The idea that people with low income and cannot afford a car do not have the right to use the roadway to get around is a social justice issue. This view of the world furthers ghettoization of people with low income by denying them movement and access to the public resources in neighborhoods separated from them by highways, freeways and other high motor traffic spaces. Truth: Entitlement of the roadways is classism and in our society has a direct link to racism. Basically rich folks cannot “occupy” poor neighborhoods by claiming rights to the roads that make up those neighborhoods. Whose streets? Our streets!

Maybe I’m off, but I believe that taxes are paid so society can share in needs, goods and luxuries such as roads for mobility, sewers for sanitation and arts for enrichment. Those that aren’t willing to share the road do not believe the same thing as I. Instead, their taxes are a direct purchase that is personal. It is a libertarian gross misunderstanding that isolates and divides us all. It is the ugly side of our American individualism that misunderstands how our country and society operates.

Detroit has the reputation of being the “Motor City” that put The United States of America into cars. If you look closely you will see the history of bicycles here. Henry Ford was a bicycle builder before giving those bicycles four wheel and a motor to call it a quadricycle and then eventually…a car (not a Detroit connection, but the Wright Brothers also built bikes first). There has been much attention lately to the partially rebuilt Dorais Velodrome where many bicycle races happened in a large outdoor venue right in the “Motor City.”

When I see this history, I see a world where bicycles and motor vehicles can share the road and coexist without too much harm. The high speed, bicycle free spaces known as expressways did not come about until the actions of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s to create the national interstate system. The interstate is a motor vehicle only space and a concept that is not very old when you look at the history of mechanical transportation. So the question is, how old is the mentality that people that are economically privileged own these roads? When did this entitlement idea permeate the American mind? Dwight Eisenhower was a president remembered for warning America against the Military Industrial Complex. His warning was about privatization corrupting influence on our public property and crumbling our democratic process. With this in mind, I doubt Eisenhower expanded our national road system to divide people and create entitlement to a small sector of the population. If anything, the motor vehicle made it easier for folks to go farther under their own power, just like the bicycle did many years before it.

The national interstate system is a motor vehicle only place, however there has begun to be an attitude that this extends to all roads. This is simply not true. When did this mentality begin? When did we give up on the American concept of a “great society” to focus on the “great individual”? I hope those mouthy and entitled motorists have the answer, because when they verbally or physically attack a cyclists there is history and wide reverberating opinions of democracy behind them.

• jason x

As a post script this attitude can be attributed to cyclists as well. Being holier than thou because you don’t own a car doesn’t help anything either. Roads aren’t meant for only cyclists, that is where the sharing comes in (You know, “share the road”?). It is as much entitled, ignorant and even ableist to assume that everyone has the capacity to ride a bicycle everywhere.