Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Bicycling

When Bicycle Trailers are Outlawed…

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To some, this scene of a Kidical Mass ride may represent a wholesome, healthy way for parents to spend a summer afternoon with their kids. But one Oregon congressman sees something altogether more sinister happening here.

Representative Mitch Greenlick has proposed a state law, punishable by a $90 fine, that will, if passed, make it illegal for parents to bicycle with a child under six in a bike seat, trailer, or on a tow-along bike.

Portland has long been revered by bicycle enthusiasts for its bike-friendly culture and infrastructure. It boasts the highest number of bike commuters of any large U.S. city, and it’s the only city in the nation that has been awarded with the League of American Bicyclists’ platinum status. The city council unanimously approved the 2030 Bicycle Master Plan last year, envisioning Portland as a “world-class bicycling city” and outlining a goal of building three times as many bicycle routes as the city currently has.

So why would Greenlick, a Democrat representing Northwest Portland, introduce a bill that would keep a large segment of the cycling population from using their bicycles as transportation?

Greenlick cites child safety. He says that while there’s no data to suggest children are unsafe in bike trailers, bike seats, or on tow-along bikes, he wants to “start a conversation” about the topic and hopes his proposed bill will compel a study. He points to a recent study of serious male riders who bike to work on a regular basis, which he says found that 30 percent of riders suffer a “traumatic injury” each year and 8 percent suffer an injury serious enough to require medical attention.

“I was not able to resist asking myself what would have happened to a young child strapped into a seat on the bike when the rider suffered that serious traumatic injury,” Greenlick wrote in a statement. “The study clearly leads us to work to reduce the environmental hazards that make those injuries more likely.”

The study Greenlick cites actually found that 20 percent of serious cyclists experienced a traumatic injury each year and 5 percent required medical attention. And, Mia Burk, the former bicycle coordinator of the city of Portland and current CEO of Alta Planning and Design, points out that the language in the study is misleading, because the emotionally-loaded words “traumatic injury” actually denote minor injuries, like bumps, bruises, and scrapes. As she points out, doing any sort of outdoor athletic activity brings some risk of minor injury, as does cooking. Moreover, the study says nothing about the safety of bike trailers, tow-along bikes, or bike seats.

Greenlick is simply concerned that transporting kids on bikes may be dangerous. I’ve heard the same concerns before, notably from my own parents. And here’s where, at the risk of destroying my status amongst adventurists and the free-range parenting community, I have a little confession to make. My husband and I are, um, cautious. Okay I said it. We’re not into heli-skiing or sky-diving, bull-riding or rugby, motocross or sword swallowing. I teasingly call my husband “Safety Dad”, because he seems to have the vision of a condor when it comes to detecting danger. “Be really careful,” were some of our son’s first words, which perhaps tells you how often he’s heard that phrase.

When we ride our bikes, we take quiet roads and bike paths, wear helmets, and look both ways before we cross streets. And we — cue the scary music — strap our son into a bike trailer, which we both feel is safe, and which my son loves riding in.

Not surprisingly Greenlick’s bill has outraged Oregon’s cycling community, including the small but growing number of people who live car-free. Greenlick says he’s received hundreds of angry letters in the last week, and he’s already considering amending the bill to get rid of the violation portion and instead ask for a study on child safety.

I’m glad Greenlick is reconsidering this bill, because I believe it is misguided on a number of levels. Oregon is suffering during this economy, and the bill would hurt one of the most economically vulnerable populations — those who can’t afford cars.

I agree with Greenlick that we should have a conversation about bicycle safety, because we should be encouraging more people to ride bikes. We know that bicycling is good for the health of people, society, and the environment. We also know that a large percentage of Americans say in surveys that they would like to ride a bike, but feel scared doing so. Bicycling does not have to be as risky as it is in most American cities.

I like to envision a city where the roads and sidewalks are safe for pedestrians and bicyclists, a city with lots of bike lanes, bike paths, bike boulevards, and bike boxes. A city where goods and services are within walking distance of where people live. A city where sprawling parking lots, 12-lane highways, and neighborhoods without sidewalks, which are deadly to non-motorists, are replaced with human-scale development. A city where the air and water are clean and people are healthy.

If it’s hard to imagine such a city, my vision looks a little bit like this:

I hope Greenlick’s bill will start a conversation about how we can get closer to this vision. Criminalizing riding bikes with children is certainly not that way.

Besides, as my husband, points out, “When bicycle trailers are outlawed, only outlaws will tote their kids in bicycle trailers.”

If you liked this post, check out these related posts:

What do you think of Greenlick’s bill? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Confessions From the Car-Free Life

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“Maybe we should get the car fixed,” I mutter to my husband as icy rain pelts my face

It’s a pitch-black, moonless evening. It feels more like midnight than 5:30. We’re on our way to a birthday dinner for my husband’s colleague, pedaling onto a bike bridge that crosses a busy street. Below us cars zooms past, a snake of yellow headlights.

“You’re telling me,” my husband says. One of his bike spokes broke earlier in the day, and his back wheel lets out a shrill whine every time he pedals.

Our two-year-old son seems oblivious to our harrowing adventure. “We’re going to the pizza shop,” he sings in his trailer. “The pizza shop, the pizza shop.”

My family is in the midst of an experiment in car-free living. Our Isuzu Rodeo is still parked in front of our house, but we haven’t driven it for three months. It needs major repairs, and we can’t decide whether to invest money in it. Even our mechanic, who stands to gain mightily from us continuing to drive this car, looked hesitant when he told us about the repairs. “When things start going on these…” he said, trailing off and shaking his head. But we also don’t want to take out a loan to buy a newer car right now.

So we’re weighing the pros and cons of car ownership, and it occurred to us that we needed more information to aid our decision-making. After all, we didn’t really know what it was like to live without a car. So we decided to try something I’ve long been fascinated by – car-free living.

I’m not fond of driving. I love to walk and ride my bike. I’d usually prefer to be in tune with the weather, the seasons, my neighbors, and my city, rather than experiencing them from behind a windshield.

Moreover, I don’t like what car-dependence has done to our culture. I don’t like gulping down smog. I hate the constant roar of traffic in our backyard. I hate sitting in gridlock. I don’t care for behemoth box stores with sprawling parking lots. I’m saddened when I think about oil wars, spiraling obesity rates, growing social isolation, and thousands of people dying in unnecessary accidents every year.

But this night, as we lock our bikes to a rack and trudge toward the pizza shop, I want a car.

At the restaurant, our party is sitting at a long table in the corner. We cross the room. My husband’s rubber rain pants squeak with every step.

Everyone stands up to say hello. Most of them are accountants. They’re dressed up. I sit down across from a financial planner, who’s wearing a white button-down shirt and ironed slacks, and stow my helmet under the table. I smile and try to pretend like riding a bike to a dinner date on a freezing cold, drizzly night is a perfectly normal thing to do. But, at the moment, I’m sure I look like my grumpy tabby cat when he comes in from the rain.

Our car-free experiment has actually been much easier than I imagined it would be. My husband is having a great time riding to work with a coworker. We figured out how to pick up chicken feed with our bike trailer. Most of the time we don’t even think about the car. And that’s the thing about car-free living, it’s not that hard once you get used to it – if you don’t let yourself think about how effortless it used to be to zip to the store or restaurant in a V6.

We munch on slices of pizza, and I make small talk with the financial planner. During lulls in the conversation, I dream about cars. Leather interiors. Seat warmers. Air conditioning. Cruise control.

After dinner, we bundle up and brace ourselves to head back out into the freezing rain. But it’s not raining anymore. And after only a few minutes on my bike, the heaviness of my pizza dinner lifts. We glide down the bike path, our lights glittering in the darkness, and talk about the night.

As we pedal onto the bike bridge and soar down the other side, I realize that if we had a car, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be flying through the night. I wouldn’t feel so light, so healthy, so free.

“Do you really want to fix our car?” I ask my husband.

“Well, it can’t get much harder than tonight, right?”

I wonder if someday soon, we’ll laugh at that question. But for now, our experiment continues.

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If you liked this post, read more of my popular posts about car-free living:

Do you live, or have you ever lived, car-free or car-lite? I’d love to hear about it.

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Lessons in Car-Free Living

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My family is doing an experiment in car-free living. We’re considering going car-free for the winter, mostly because our only car needs major repairs, and it’s too old and unreliable to sink much money into. We want to save money to buy a better, more efficient vehicle next year, and the best way we can think to do this is by living sans automobile for awhile.

We tried the car-free life last month to see how difficult it would be. My husband rode his bike to and from work. My son and I walked and rode everywhere. Honestly, it’s been great. My husband has been enjoying getting exercise outdoors each day, since he has to be inside all day. Our son is getting older and can walk further distances, making it much easier than the last time we tried this a year ago. And we’re having a great time riding bikes together to the store, park, library, and farmer’s market on the weekends.

This feels like a normal, sensible way to live. But what we’re contemplating is downright radical. Just look at these statistics:

It’s no secret that driving is not good for us, the environment, or our society. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Driving a private car is probably a typical citizen’s most “polluting” daily activity.” Cars spew hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide into the air, and air pollution is linked to asthma, heart disease, cancer, and even diabetes. According to a 2004 study, each hour we spend in a car each day is also associated with six percent greater likelihood of being obese. And driving isolates us from each other, and too often, leads to rage and aggression

It takes about 30 minutes to walk two miles, and about ten minutes to ride a bike that far. Most of us can use more exercise. So why are we driving so much? City planning – suburbs, strip malls, cul-de-sacs, drive-through restaurants, and box stores with gigantic parking lots – undoubtedly plays a huge role. But even in places where it’s easy to walk, ride, and take transit, like where I live in Eugene, Oregon, the vast majority of people still drive alone nearly everywhere they go.

My family is learning many lessons from our experiment in car-free living. Maybe they can help others who want to drive less or ditch the car altogether.

  • Plan trips wisely

During a downpour a few weeks ago, my husband made four (yes, four) trips to the hardware store to get materials to fix our faucet. If he’d been driving, it would have been annoying. Because he was riding his bike, it was also exhausting. I don’t think we’ll make that mistake again. We are learning to plan all of our trips much more carefully.

  • Break old habits

The hardest time to be car-free is in the evenings. We want to zip out for take-out or run to the store to get a dessert. Like quitting any habit, we’re just having to change our ways – as painful as it feels sometimes. The good news is we’re saving a lot of money (and keeping packaging out of the landfills) along the way.

  • Make the journey part of the adventure

I interviewed a car-free family with four kids for an article awhile ago. Monica Adkins told me that riding bikes often sounds difficult before her family sets out, but once they are on the bikes, “It feels good on my face and on my hair. My kids are giggling and talking and closer to reality. And we’re getting exercise. Everything about it feels really good.” I think about her quote all the time. We often lose a lot in convenience and ease when we leave the car at home, but we gain lots of fun and fresh air on our journeys.

  • Learn to barter and ask for help

“The hardest part is asking people for rides,” my husband lamented recently. He’s right. But it’s also the best part. Our neighbor offered to drive us to the airport, and we got to know her a lot better during the drive. A friend helped us pick up chicken food in exchange for some fresh eggs, and we were both excited about the trade. We’ve also started car-pooling with some friends to a weekly get-together, and we always have a great time on the way over. So even if it’s hard for us to ask for help, we’re building a tighter community and closer friendships.

  • Set a goal and celebrate

We’re not planning to be car-free forever, but for now we’re sort of reveling in it – in how healthy it is, in how much money we’re saving, and in the little bit we’re doing to make the air cleaner for everyone. It’s also freeing not to worry about maintaining an old and ailing vehicle – at least for now. We  know the idea of living without a car may sound crazy to a lot of people, but it’s starting to seem a lot less crazy to us.

Looking for more on car-free living? Check out these posts:

Are you trying to drive less? Do you have any tips to share?

Plan a Car-free Vacation

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Credit: Tammy Strobel

Do you want to leave the traffic jams, parking, and high gas prices at home when you head out for your vacation this summer? Make it a car-free trip. (Bonus: you’ll feel great about conserving gasoline as we watch oil spew into the Gulf.)

Here are a few tips for a successful get-away sans the automobile:

  • Travel to a car-free destination or a pedestrian and bike-friendly locale.

Did you know that there are a number of car-free islands off the coast of the United States? One is 50 miles from Manhattan, another is 60 miles from L.A., and there are also some near North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Michigan. You can find out more about them here.

Even if you can’t escape from the internal combustion engine entirely, you can get around just fine in many American cities without a car. My husband and I have explored Manhattan, Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, Vancouver and a few other cities without a car, and we had a great time. Looking for a good car-free destination? Check out Bicycling Magazine’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities or America’s Most Walkable Neighborhoods on WalkScore.com.

  • Bring, rent, or share a bike

In Bicycle Diaries, the musician David Byrne, writes about exploring the world’s cities by bike when he toured with his band The Talking Heads:

I felt more connected to the life on the streets than I would have inside a car or on some sort of public transportation: I could stop whenever I wanted to; it was often (very often) faster than a car or taxi for getting from point A to point B; and I didn’t have to follow any set route. The same exhilaration, as the air and street life whizzed by, happened again in each town. It was, for me, addictive.

No matter how you get to your destination, consider bringing along your own two-wheeled transit. Check out bikeaccess.net for information on traveling with your bike. Or, if you don’t want to or can’t bring your own, most bike shops rent bikes by the hour or day. And some cities have bicycle sharing systems that provide free or affordable access to bicycles for city transport. You can find a list of those programs here.

  • Take public transportation

Many cities have excellent, efficient public transportation. And now Google Maps will help you get from point A to point B. If you have a smart phone, traveling by public transit couldn’t be easier. But I managed to get around a number of cities by bus or train with no cell phone and just a little advance planning. (And as my husband will tell you, if someone with my sense of direction can get around in a strange place without getting lost, you probably can too.)

  • Consider taking the train

According to the UIC, a Paris-based international organization of the railway sector, trains are three to ten times less CO2-intensive than road or air travel. Sadly the United States lags far behind much of the world when it comes to train travel, and Amtrak is usually not the most economical or reliable option. (It probably doesn’t surprise you that the Federal Highway Administration budget for 2010 was 50 billion as compared to 1.5 billion for the Federal Railway Administration.)

That said, my husband and I have taken Amtrak from Eugene to Vancouver, British Columbia and from Denver to San Francisco and we had comfortable and enjoyable (albeit long) journeys each time. And because train stations are often in the downtown centers of cities, it’s usually easy to find a hotel or hostel nearby. So, you might consider traveling by rail in the U.S. And if you’re heading to Europe or Asia, train travel is a comfortable, green, and efficient way to get around.

  • Pack light

One trick for successful car-free voyages is to only take along what you need. Bags with wheels might be a good idea too, especially if you’re planning to switch accommodations mid-trip. My husband and I have logged some miles on foot from train terminals to hostels to transit stations with our bags. But because they’re on wheels, it wasn’t a big deal. Eco and thrifty bonus: small bags make buying trinkets less attractive.

More eco-travel tips:

Have you taken a car-free vacation? I’d love to hear about it.

6 Tips for Raising Cooperative Kids

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I’ve been stirring things up on Shareable.net for the last few days talking about Alfie Kohn’s book No Contest: The Case Against Competition and some of his ideas for raising more cooperative, less competitive kids. My post begins:

In 2008, an interviewer admitted to Alfie Kohn that she considers herself a competitive person. “As long as you acknowledge that’s a problem to be solved; it’s not a good thing about us,” he responded. “People say to me, ‘Oh I’m really a competitive person,’ not realizing that it’s as if they’re saying, ‘I have a drinking problem.”

Competition, which Kohn defines as any situation where one person can succeed only when others fail, seems to be something of a state religion in the United States. But Kohn is convinced that we’ve all bought into dangerous myths about the value of competition in our personal lives, workplaces, society, and economic system. He laid out his arguments in his 1986 book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, and he’s been spreading the word ever since.

He insists that competition is not human nature; it’s something we learn. “The message that competition is appropriate, desirable, required, and even unavoidable is drummed into us from nursery school to graduate school; it is the subtext of every lesson,” he writes.

And according to Kohn, competition undermines self-esteem, destroys relationships, thwarts productivity, and discourages excellence, and he cites more than a hundred studies to back up his assertions.

I was surprised that most people who commented didn’t seem to have heard of Kohn or his theories and weren’t familiar with his research on the subject. So what ensued was a lively, mostly thoughtful conversation about the role of competition in our lives and society. You can check it out here. And feel free to add your thoughts to the discussion.

Shareable.net also published my story about Kidical Mass today. Kidical Mass rides are fun family-friendly bicycle rides where kids can learn the rules of the road.

The article begins:

“Where are all of the cars?” asks Paul Adkins as we pedal down a quiet tree-lined street in Eugene, Oregon on a sunny May afternoon.

Adkins is leading a three-mile Kidical Mass bicycle ride. I’m one of 19 participants; more than half are kids. Adkins is navigating for the group and helping his four-year-old son Dare, who’s new on two wheels, learn the rules of the road.

“There’s a stop sign. We’ll come to a stop, then look, signal, and turn left,” Adkins says.

“Good job, everyone,” he calls as the group glides around the corner behind him.

Occasionally we pass people working in their yards, and a chorus of bike bells dings. We’re usually greeted by enthusiastic waves and smiles.

“Look, there’s a turkey vulture,” a mom near the back of the ride says, pointing out a bird to her daughter.

Later a cat runs past with a garter snake hanging from its mouth, and we see a couple of horses grazing in a field. Both are big hits with the kids.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Bamboo Bicycles

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(Originally published March 1, 2010, reprinted in celebration of National Bike Month.)

A couple of years ago, my husband and I were going to plant running bamboo along our back fence. Then we casually mentioned the idea to our next-door neighbor. She looked, well, terrified.

Bamboo is an amazing plant. It’s used to make musical instruments, toys, tools, weapons, flooring, paper, food, cooking oil, vinegar, and alcohol. But it’s also a bit noxious, at least in these parts.

When we were thinking of growing it, we visited a peaceful bamboo garden on the outskirts of town. The gardener showed us around and explained the difference between the many varieties of bamboo that rustled overhead in the slight breeze.

Then the conversation turned to warfare.

“You’ll need to dig a two-foot-deep trench all the way around your bamboo and bury this in it.” He held up a roll of thick, black plastic. “This needs to stick up at least three inches above the soil. The bamboo’s rhizomes will try to jump it. So leave a foot or so of bare ground all the way around the trench. That way you can see them coming over. When they do, mow them down immediately.”

It sounded more like prison-tower watch duty than gardening.

But there’s an upside to bamboo’s invasive nature. It is not only a useful plant; it’s an incredibly renewable resource.

And now you can get a bike made out of it.

Although riding a bike is considerably more environmentally-sound than driving a car, most bike frames are constructed out of materials that are decidedly not renewable. Think: steel, carbon fiber, aluminum, molybdenum, and titanium. Extracting these elements is labor-intensive, environmentally destructive, and can threaten public health.

For instance, I grew up 60 miles down-river of Leadville, Colorado, where the mining industry allowed heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and zinc to leach into the soil and water. The Environmental Protection Agency declared Leadville and the 20 square-miles around the town a Superfund site.

So imagine if we could make strong, light-weight, functional bicycles without mining, not to mention out of plants that grow like weeds. Well, we’re getting closer to that reality, although most bamboo bicycles contain some metal components.

You can purchase your own custom-made bamboo bicycle from Calfree Design. They claim that their bikes are tough, and they offer a ten-year warranty on them. They’re expensive though. All of the frames that are “on special” on Calfree’s website cost well over $1,000. But “if there were an award for ‘Bicycle with lowest carbon footprint’ (least amount of carbon dioxide emissions in the production of the frame), this frame would win, hands down,” Calfree’s site boasts.

You can also learn how to build a bamboo bicycle yourself.

Bamboo Bike Studio in Brooklyn offers workshops where you can learn to build one in a weekend. They’re also not cheap. The full bike workshop costs $932 and the frame-only workshop costs $632.

But some of the proceeds go to a great cause. The Bamboo Bike Studio is working with partners, including the Bamboo Bike Project, to establish bamboo bicycle factories in “Millennium Cities, starting with Kumasi, Ghana, Kisumu, Kenya, and Quito, Ecuador.” They hope the factories will, “provide a lower-cost, more durable, locally manufactured form of transport specifically designed for local terrain.” Unfortunately you’ll have to wait awhile to attend one of their workshops. They’re full through September.

But if you’re seriously into do-it-yourself, you could check out this how-to on Instructables. (However, as the disclaimer says, “Death or serious injury can result from a bicycle frame failure. … Be smart.)

Hopefully as more companies start to manufacture bamboo bicycles, the prices will come down, making bamboo bicycles a more accessible option for more people.

Would you ride a bamboo bicycle?