I'm proud of my city this week: an article in our regional newspaper, The Oregonian, boasts that Portland is the first major U.S. metro area to receive the League of American Bicyclists' Platinum designation as a "Bike-Friendly City." Yes, I know my last blog post also had to do with bikes in Portland, but I firmly believe that bikes are important to any city's energy-transition transportation plan -- as well as having plenty of other benefits. Apparently Portland is doing some things right, having increased ridership 144% since the 2000 census. (Maybe the bike boxes helped?)

The only other Platinum-level city in the U.S. is Davis, California ("Bike City USA"), which attained that ranking in 2005. The relative scale of the cities -- Portland's 568,380 population to Davis's 64,938 -- ensures that "bike friendliness" in the two cities will look different. Based on what I've seen of Davis (on the Internet; I've never been there), the cities are indeed quite different. My favorite documentary of that city's cycling culture so far is Streetfilms' video, "In Davis' Platinum City Even the Munchkins Ride Bikes." And that recalls the comment Program Manager Daniel Lerch made on that last blog post of mine:

"The Dutch have learned that you have to make your bike network safe and easy enough for a child to use; and the Swiss have learned that you have to make your public transit system convenient, clean and timely enough for a bank president to use."

Tri-met is Portland's regional transit provider.

We'll consider the bank presidents another time, but for now: why is it remarkable that kids ("munchkins") ride bikes in Davis? Isn't riding bikes in the summer synonymous with certain linked nostalgic images of childhood and freedom? And aren't we, as a society, concerned about kids' health and levels of activity?

Regardless of all that, when I repeated Daniel's incisive quote to some local cyclist-friends, they were stunned for a moment. We'd been discussing bike boxes, and whether they were really safer, and techniques cyclists use to safely navigate those intersections in the absence of bike boxes. But all of the tip-swapping and defensive cycling of the experienced cyclists can't make the roads safer for littluns. Bright green markings (à la Portland's new bike boxes) might make a marginal difference. Separate bike infrastructure would sure make a huge difference. As they say over at bike culture blog Copenhagenize, "Segregated bike infrastructure is the foundation of any sustainable bike culture."

At this point, I have to give props to my neighborhood bike shop (pictured at top) for their efforts in getting bikes and bike safety classes to kids. Independent programs like this are also, of course, essential parts to creating a culture of cycling and safety. But they can't do it alone. They need the cooperation of those who design the streets and neighborhoods, those who create the infrastructure that gives the culture context. London provides one good example of a way this can be done.

I'm not looking to say that the ultimate and primary goal should be a 100% kid-proofed city. But kid safety is a good barometer of overall safety. If it's hard for confident cyclists to picture a child safely navigating common routes, that could be a problem. If the people who feel safest riding bikes even in Platinum Portland are predominantly young adult males (see this presentation ¹ by the City of Portland's excellent Transportation Options program), how welcoming is the bike culture going to be to older people here, let alone elsewhere? If the predominant image of a cyclist is the person with the fancy gear, then how do you attract the lower-income folks (who are statistically less represented among cyclists, despite the high cost of personal car ownership)?

I'm critical, but as I mentioned before, I'm proud as well. Portland and Davis are doing well, and setting examples for other U.S. cities. One of the conclusions of the presentation I linked to above was, The more people ride, the more people ride -- and that gives me hope that Portland's bike friendliness will continue to improve. I'm glad to see that just about all Portlanders writing about the award are stressing the need for further efforts and improvement; a transportation budget split that approximates the mode split is a frequently mentioned option, and admonishments to look to Copenhagen are appropriate but practically cliché.

What other cities are adopting policies that can help the next generation (and their parents, grandparents, teachers and neighbors) feel comfortable and safe, traversing their neighborhoods on two wheels? What does the next level of bike friendliness in the US look like?

Laurel Hoyt is the Program Coordinator for the Post Carbon Cities program.

1 ^ The presentation was given by Linda Ginenthal, Program Manager for Transportation Options, a division of Portland's Department of Transportation "promoting alternatives to traveling alone in a car." The very existence of Transportation Options is a boon to the city, and very duplicatable. The presentation was given as part of PDOT's "Bicycle Brown Bags" in 2007.

Photo credits:
Bike shop on alberta and 15th by Sarah Gilbert
Walk and bike to school by Jonathan Maus
Freedom by Patrick

The other day my friend Steve Darnley in "that other Portland" (i.e., Maine) sent me a link to an article about changes in his office building. He has sent me photos of the office before, because it's in a cool old converted mill. But now it's even cooler, because the new owners are taking advantage of the building's siting and construction to generate hydro-power, of which "a bit more than half goes to the grid, the remaining to the tenants." (Portland Press-Herald, 4 Jan 2008) It's as if high energy prices and greater awareness of consumption led to a realization of why that building was sited there in the first place!

Getting power locally, an alternative to relying on generic fuels shipped from far away, requires paying attention to the special qualities of a place. I'm seeing more and more examples of this as I read energy-related news. In some places, it's obvious: solar power in North Africa and the Southwestern United States. Offshore wind where ships once sailed: in the Great Lakes and off the California coast. But in others, it takes a little more consideration about what's there and what's going to waste. For example: a less-obvious source of windpower is our highways, where traffic creates constant breezes.

There's a principle in permaculture that "pollution is energy in the wrong place." It may be that the most profitable places to look are the places where we might otherwise just see a useless by-product of human activities. (I seem to remember Jane Jacobs predicting something like that in her 1970 book, the Economy of Cities.)

Harnessing waste heat from industry was the subject of an article by Bill McKibben in Orion last year. Biodiesel proponents have been collecting fryer grease for a while; the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland is going a step further and making biodiesel from grease from restaurants' kitchens' sewage. The utility district will power at least some of their fleet with the fuel, if it turns out as planned. As one of the Oakland engineers says, "if we can produce fuel from a waste, it's very exciting. There are other ways to derive energy from waste such as producing methane for electricity, but to have something that can replace transportation fuel, that's even more exciting."

Stockholm's Central Station

It gets more science-fictional in Stockholm and Japan, where the energy is coming directly from people. There's a project in Stockholm where they will capture the heat generated by the commuters that pack the city's Central Station each day to heat a nearby office building. That heat would otherwise be a waste problem to be dealt with through venting. The Japanese project is a power-generating floor, powered by the energy of people walking across it.

Developing these sources may seem like small potatoes, but they are examples of human ingenuity in the face of a large problem. Energy and fuel solutions that are locally-based will be more resilient, and can be better tuned to the specific resources of a place.

Photo credits:

• Waterwheel by Laurel Hoyt
• Rush at the Central Station by Jonatan Lindström
• toy windmills by Scott (munkt0n)

All photos