How I learned to be vulnerable

I used to be a cyclist. I tried not to be the asshole type, but I was the ride hard, in the road, nothing can stop me type. I didn’t worry too much about the traffic, I could manage. I knew they didn’t see me, I was ready to react and adjust. I was even a ride hard without a helmet type idiot for a few years until a nasty wipeout going over 20 mph south of Iowa City (during which I was luckily wearing a helmet) caused me to re-evaluate my position on that level of risk taking. Damn I was dumb.

I rode wherever/whenever I wanted. I was a young white male with nothing to fear and all the privilege in the world. In 2016 I rode my bike around Lake Michigan, a life changing experience for me and helped foster my love of cycle touring. It was a trip that I found myself often in conflict with traffic, including an arduous stretch along Highway 1 in the upper peninsula which I rode in the wake of many a logging truck for mile after mile. I didn’t feel particularly safe during it, but I also didn’t worry too much. I was a young, strong cyclist.

When I moved back to Des Moines in 2018 I continued to ride as a cyclist, taking advantage of our vast trail network, and pedaling along our on-street “bike network” of painted bike lanes and sharrows. I didn’t mind, hell more painted bike lanes look great on google map views of a community’s bike network. Green it up baby! I do distinctly remember a trip on the east side where I was honked and yelled at multiple times by drivers to “get on the sidewalk”, but outside of that my riding experience in Des Moines fit my wants and needs.

As I mentioned before, last year I began my decent into urbanism, which itself has multiple threads, a prominent one being safe streets infrastructure. I’m not really sure how it all happened, I started following a couple more twitter accounts, I found a couple Youtube channels, and the next thing I knew I was consumed by it. I learned about Dutch cycling culture, and more importantly I learned about Dutch infrastructure.

There’s so many design elements that could be noted but the main one is each travel mode (vehicles, bikes, pedestrians) has its own designated space.

I learned about the paradigm shift that happened there over the course of 50 years. One that was not some quirky European behavioral pattern, but rather a direct policy choice made by local leaders to address traffic safety and pollution issues. One that specifically started with a need to protect the lives of children from vehicles. I learned that these choices have created a culture where everyone rides a bike, and very few of them are cyclists. I might be a decade or so behind a lot of urbanists in America in parroting the Dutch example, but at least I started learning.

And then I went outside and looked at our streets and roads and I understood why it was just me, riding in the bike lane, alone.

You’d have to be a privileged, young, white male with a huge appetite for risk to feel comfortable riding on a street where the only thing preventing a distracted driver on a cell phone in a 2 ton killing machine from melting you into the payment is a thin strip of paint. You’d have to be a stupid, arrogant bastard. What woman, child, commuter, pedestrian, etc. would ever feel comfortable making this decision?

We are a driving culture not only be cause we spend 90% of our infrastructure money on roads, but also because we prioritize the convenience of drivers over the safety and wellbeing of literally everyone else. This is not a Des Moines problem, this is an America problem. We have our own national health crisis going on in road safety right now. And in an unfortunate parallel to our gun violence crisis, we often times throw up our hands and say “yes but what can we do?” to address a problem that is unique to our country.

There are bits of progress here, we have started building some better infrastructure, we are doing tiny little bits of things to try to slow drivers down and make them pay attention. But we need to move 10x faster, and spend 10x more on infrastructure that promotes active lifestyles and allows non-drivers enjoy a higher quality of life here. We need to never paint another unprotected bike lane in this city, and god help us if we ever paint another sharrow. We need to stop expecting every street to have ample access and parking for cars first, leaving everyone else with the scraps of what’s left of public space. We need to start reclaiming even just a couple blocks of our city back for people first instead of cars. And then claim a couple more. And a couple more.

Ingersoll Ave, Des Moines IA

We need to plan for the vulnerable users first, make sure they are protected and accommodated, and then the cars can come second. Maybe then kids can ride their bikes to school again.

Credit: Tom Flood

The cyclists can still have the roads to ride fast. In fact from time to time I still like to throw on my helmet and ride fast in the roads, let’s piss off the drivers! But more and more frequently I ride Dutch, slow and easy in my normal clothes for an errand, and I think about women, families and children taking the same route I take, and whether they would feel comfortable doing so. The answer is always no.

My journey to becoming a vulnerable road user took less than 6 months, and I share because I know many in our community have the same mind set I used to. I share because change is possible, we’ve seen the results across the pond, and some communities in the US are starting to learn too. We can choose to be amongst the leaders, or we can choose to be 50 years behind again. But it is a choice.

I don’t write these posts as a marketing tactic, but then I get to the end and realize I’m missing the opportunity to promote Momentum DSM, and the fact that we are working to 10x those changes I mentioned earlier. And of course I need to shout out the Des Moines Streets Collective who have been active in promoting safe streets for a long time!!

It’s 2023, what’s our vision for 2073?

*For the record I still am not great at emotional vulnerability….which is also a male thing. But I’m trying to work on that too… *