Bicycle language

What role can a new bicycle language play in achieving an equitable, diverse bicycle culture in Chicago?

Yes, language is critically important in our work to communicate in a way which is perceived and feels like its inclusive, respectful, and thoughtful. Institutions and some decision-makers use language as a tool to keep marginalized voices from entering public discourse. The tactic insist a certain level of vocabulary to be worthy of consideration. We should take care not to fall into this trap ourselves. Everyone has a voice and there is no better voice for what's needed in a community than the voices of people who live in the community. High level vocabulary or not. There should be room in this work for both intellectual and emotional conversations. Thoughts???

I think this is really important and gets at the heart of what we are trying to do. --Mary

See this first for how Seattle used a new language to achieve progress...

HOW SMART LANGUAGE HELPED END SEATTLE’S PARALYZING BIKELASH http://www.peopleforbikes.org/blog/entry/how-smart-language-helped-end-seattles-paralyzing-bikelash

And, from another listserve, read this thread next (start from the bottom)...

Hi all, I am really enjoying this conversation. While not focused on bicycle use or dependency, Mike Smart and I have a paper currently review which addresses the usefulness of the terms “carless” or “transit dependent” by looking at auto ownership over many years. We found that while many families may be carless at any given time, for most it is a temporary condition. Unsurprisingly, this is not uniformly true. A larger share of low-income, immigrant and minority families are carless for extended periods of time compared with more affluent, US-born and white families. I’ve included the abstract below. We’d be more than happy to share the paper off-list if anyone is interested. Title: Car Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Ephemeral Car in Low-Income, Immigrant and Minority Families

Authors: Nicholas J. Klein and Michael J. Smart

Abstract: Most transportation research in the United States uses cross-sectional, “snapshot” data to understand levels of car access. Might this cross-sectional approach mask considerable variation over time and within households? We use a time-series dataset, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), for the years 1999 to 2011 to test this question. We find that, for most families, being “carless” is a temporary condition. While twelve percent of families in the US are carless in any given year, only five percent of families are carless for all seven waves of data we examine in the PSID. Almost a third of the families without a car in 1999 had acquired a by 2001, and nearly half had acquired one by 2011. But we also find that poor families, immigrants, and people of color (particularly, blacks) are considerably more likely to transition into and out car ownership frequently and are less likely to have a car in any survey year than are non-poor families, the US-born, and whites.

Best,

Nick Klein, PhD nick.klein at rutgers.edu Post-Doctoral Associate Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center E.J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy Rutgers University

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 2:54:17 PM UTC-5, dave wrote: Transit-dependent is a terrible term. It’s definitely pejorative and not even accurately descriptive. Just think of the term “bicycle-dependent” to describe low-income bike users to see how absurd the term "transit-dependent" is.

Most of us "depend” on public transit for some of our trips. Almost all of the time we could choose other options, whether it’s a car or a bike or walking, but factors such as the costs of car ownership or the length of the trip or the safety of the streets constrain our choices. Our jobs as transportation justice advocates is to broaden people’s choices, especially the socially responsible ones such as (in priority order) walking, biking, and transit.

What’s wrong with the term "car-free?” That’s precisely to the point, even better than “transit-rich” because, well, some poor neighborhoods with low car ownership aren’t exactly rich with transit choices. I never use “transit-dependent.” And plenty of people who planners consider “transit-dependent” might find the bicycle a fantastic choice. Just

On Feb 10, 2015, at 6:34 AM, Adonia Lugo [email protected] wrote:

Hi all, I've been talking with Gerardo Sandoval at the University of Oregon about applying the same concept of "transit-dependent" to low-income bike users. Gerardo is a critical planning scholar who works on equitable transit-oriented development and Latinos, but has been obliging me by turning his eye to bikes as well. Do any of you work with the term "bike-dependent"? Transit-dependent and "captive rider" are problematic terms, I prefer Stephanie Pollack's "core transit users" (see for example her co-authored report on Maintaining Diversity In America’s Transit-Rich Neighborhoods: Tools for Equitable Neighborhood Change) but I can see why it makes sense to extend the category to understudied biking populations to have a shared equitable transportation discussion. Thanks, Adonia

Adonia E. Lugo, Ph.D. Bicycle Anthropologist www.urbanadonia.com