John R with four one-way vehicle lanes and negligible traffic -- an urban cyclist dream street.
We think so.
Apparently former New Yorker Toby Barlow may as well according to this Metromode article:
Toby Barlow finds it ironic that Detroit is known as the “Motor City”, since its flat and relatively calm streets make it the country’s most perfect bicycle city as well.
Yesterday the New York Times ran an opinion piece from Barlow about biking in Detroit:
While bike enthusiasts in most urban areas continue to have to fight for their place on the streets, Detroit has the potential to become a new bicycle utopia. It’s a town just waiting to be taken. With well less than half its peak population, and free of anything resembling a hill, the city and its miles and miles of streets lie open and empty, beckoning. And lately, whether it’s because of the economy or the price of gas or just because it’s a nice thing to do, there are a lot more bikers out riding.
Our abandoned landscape suggests an opportunity that alternative-transportation proponents should consider: instead of raging against their cities’ internal combustion machines, they might consider a tactical retreat to the city that cars have pretty much abandoned.
A Seattle blogger responded with the suggestion of moving to Detroit: “Not now, of course, because it’s warm and sunny in Seattle, and we’re not broke yet.” It’s warm and sunny in Detroit, too.
National Recognition?
Just because Detroit is a bicycle-friendly city, don’t expect to receive a bicycle-friendly designation from the League of American Bicyclists.
The scoring for that award is based on assumptions such as:
- government has the lead role in developing and managing bicycle facilities
- the city does not have significant vacant land
- that urban streets have traffic levels that necessitate bike lanes
None of these assumptions are correct in Detroit and so we do not score well.
Erroneous Benchmarking
And similarly, the Alliance for Biking and Walking is currently benchmarking U.S. cities. Most of the benchmarking questions asked were not relevant to Detroit’s reality, so we can expect to be erroneously scored. (This should not be unexpected as the Alliance’s 2007 benchmarking estimated that the city of Detroit had 34 bike shops and that Detroiter’s spent $92/person annually at these shops!)
In my role as MTGA’s Detroit Greenways Coordinator, I’ve discussed this with the Alliance, but they don’t seem to grasp that not all cities fit their expected mold for bicycle friendliness.
Of course it doesn’t help that they’ve never biked in Detroit either.
It’s apparent that the surveys and assumptions are made so that the cities they expect to score well do so. In other words, recognition is reserved for cities following in Portland’s footsteps.
Detroit’s not. We’re making our own trail.
We may not get recognized by the big nationwide bicycle advocacy groups, but we’re sure to keep getting recognized from cyclists like Barlow and others.
There is a somewhat popular bumpersticker saying, “Friends don’t let friends ride junk.” It’s intended message is to encourage people to buy higher-quality bikes at independent shops rather than low-cost department stores bikes.
