Where is the Love?
I have an established running route from my house. Exactly 5K in length (I’ve measured it with an app on my phone), it takes me out through the neighborhoods near downtown and loops back around to my doorstep. When I’m health-conscious, I jog this route two or three times a week. Too often, I go several weeks without running, until I find a sliver of motivation to overcome my laziness and get out there again.
As tough as running is, I feel good about most of my route. I start by passing the houses along my street, waving at neighbors who are outside and watching the trees change with the seasons. I head south on 14th Street past North Salem High School, and if it’s lunchtime or late afternoon, I weave my way through crowds of teenagers.
But after I pass the school, my shoulders tighten, my teeth clench and my eyes narrow. It’s because I know what’s ahead when I reach Center Street: the crosswalk.
A set of white parallel lines painted across Center at 14th clearly marks the spot where traffic must stop and wait for pedestrians (ORS 811.028). On good days, the oncoming drivers brake immediately. But most days I stand on the sidewalk, watching as one, two, three, sometimes four or five vehicles pass me, oblivious to my desire to cross.
My intent is clear. I get right up to the crosswalk, sometimes enter the edge of it, and look directly at every driver that passes. Sometimes I get so angry that I start yelling: “This is a crosswalk! I’m trying to cross!” If they still don’t stop, I resort to waving and pointing toward the painted lines. One driver I did this to recently slammed on his brakes, but waved back — and it wasn’t friendly.
I shook my head, as I always do, and continued on my run, righteous indignation on my side.
***
I’ve often glided past pedestrians waiting at that same crosswalk. I’ve been that driver who doesn’t stop while someone waits patiently to walk.
Most of those times, I didn’t see the pedestrian soon enough — I didn’t feel comfortable slamming on my brakes with cars right behind me, or I knew that if I tried to stop I’d end up halfway into the crosswalk. A handful of times, I saw a pedestrian start nearing a crosswalk, but I was in a hurry, not willing to wait to find out whether they intended to cross or planned to continue down the sidewalk.
Every time this happened, I winced and looked straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with the pedestrian. If my husband was in the car with me, I muttered, “I didn’t see them in time.”
But if I was honest with myself, I could typically pinpoint specific reasons why this happened: I was fiddling with my car radio, I was speeding a bit, I was engaging with my kids in the backseat. In other words, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the road.
Maybe if I’d been more present, more aware of what happened both on and near the street, things would have been different.
***
A few years ago, I pedaled my bike through the Capitol Mall, headed toward home after an afternoon playing with my toddler at Riverfront Park. He sat in the bike trailer I towed behind me, looking out at the world and asking questions about everything he saw or heard.
I was pregnant with my second child, and between my growing belly, my heavy cruiser bike and the trailer with my son inside, I wasn’t moving quickly. But heading east down Chemeketa Street, atop the sharrows that told drivers I was allowed to use the full lane, I felt confident, happy even, that at least I had the benefit of a well-marked, bicycle-friendly thoroughfare to get me from downtown to the safer streets of my neighborhood.
A car crept up behind me, and I pushed my pedals as hard as I could. I always feel guilty whenever I’m holding up a vehicle, especially when I’m towing the trailer, so I typically go out of my way to make sure I’m not blocking traffic. But with cars parked along the side of the road, I was forced to continue plowing ahead down the middle of the lane.
Then I heard it, a voice from the car: “Get off the road!” We were almost to the light on 12th Street, and the driver whipped his car around me to turn right, leaving me huffing and puffing behind.
I looked down at the road, at the sharrow’s chevrons pointing my way. My anger boiled, but so did my fear and my sense of being violated. My heart pounded, and what had been a pleasant afternoon with my son turned into me stewing all the way home, no longer able to enjoy the sun warming my skin, or my son’s queries from behind me.
***
How did it come to this, an us-versus-them battle of who has the right to use our streets? It’s worse than people simply not understanding the traffic laws — although that certainly contributes to the problem. Drivers and cyclists/pedestrians actively loathe each other, enough to where some even think it’s acceptable to confront, to yell, to insult.
If we’re going to make progress on this issue, we’ve got to move from confrontation to open discussion, and even further — to compassion. Another small example: Before I started riding my bike, I used to wonder with irritation why I’d see cyclists riding out in the traffic lane when there was a perfectly good bike lane right next to them. When I finally hopped on my own bicycle, I found that often the bike lanes were filled with road debris, making them unsafe to ride in; suddenly, the cyclists’ actions made sense. Simple things like this — considering the other person’s perspective instead of jumping to conclusions — can melt our anger and nudge us toward understanding.
It may not seem like it, but we’re all on the same side of this battle. My friend David Fox, the cyclist who posted the homemade traffic signs downtown in attempt to educate hostile drivers, talks about this frequently. Drivers don’t want cyclists blocking them on the roads and slowing them down. Cyclists, believe it or not, generally don’t want that, either. They’d rather not be out in the roadway with fast traffic; they want to ride wherever it’s safest. Cyclists and pedestrians wouldn’t need to conflict so often with drivers if Salem had a better infrastructure to support them — more bike lanes, more sidewalks, better-marked crosswalks, bike boulevards (bicycle-first roadways in low-traffic neighborhoods). And fewer people would feel the need to drive everywhere if riding a bike or walking was safer.
These improvements are not just luxuries for cyclists and pedestrians. They help drivers, too.
***
A few weeks ago, I headed out of my favorite coffee shop downtown and walked back toward my parked car. I waited at a corner for the walking man to illuminate and show me it was my turn to cross the street.
When it appeared, I entered the crosswalk for a few steps before seeing a driver, oblivious to me at first, start to turn from a cross street. I stopped, and so did she. We stared at each other. My anger bubbled again, and I continued walking, staring hard at the corner ahead of me.
When I was back on the sidewalk, I heard her car slow behind me, and I turned to see her window rolled down. I tensed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sincerely, a look of regret coloring her face. A simple courtesy acknowledging her mistake. I softened my frown and gave her a wave before she drove on.
More of us need to be like her.
Salem Is editor Sarah Evans has been walking, running and biking in and near downtown for 10 years and, despite some of the dangers, she still cites her neighborhood’s walk- and ride-ability as one of its best features.
As an avid walker and biker, I have made the same mistakes as you when I drive. There are many times I don’t yield when I should have. But there is a reason for that. Roads, neighborhoods, and commercial corridors in Salem are overwhelmingly engineered to move the highest volume of cars at the highest speed possible. Its natural and intuitive in Salem to drive at or over the speed limit everywhere you go. Its very hard to recognize a lone pedestrian trying to cross the street when you are zooming past them at 30-40 mph. When you are zooming past them at 40 mph in a pack of cars on a 3 lane one way street in a pack of a dozen other cars doing the same thing, it is an act of futility.
I have also experienced many random acts of kindness from Salem drivers. But that does not change the sense of being perpetually under siege as a pedestrian in Salem.
Compare that to 3rd St. McMinnville, 2nd St. Corvallis, NW 23rd, N. Mississippi, NE Alberta, SE Division Portland. As a driver, you know when you arrive in those places that you are entering an area with pedestrian activity and its natural and intuitive to drive slow with caution and awareness of pedestrians.
But we don’t have a single place in Salem that resembles any of those places. Not one. Calling it a “war” implies that there are two sides with the means to compete with one another. In Salem I don’t see any competition at all. Cars have conquered the built environment in Salem.
Good points, Curt! Obviously it’s not a simple solution, and these are definitely important things to consider in the discussion.
Beautifully written piece, Sarah. A highly provocative and wise personal description of bicycling around Salem.
Having just gotten a folding bike, so I can easily transport it into town from our home in rural south Salem, I’m both looking forward to exploring the sometimes-mean streets of Salem, and somewhat wary of doing this.
I recently looked up what sharrows designate. Like you said, the angled thingies are where bicyclists should ride — directly over the thingies, which is a bit to the right of the middle of the lane. I suspect most people in Salem don’t know this, maybe even most cyclists.
Kurt, I agree with what you said in your comment: we shouldn’t create a false equivalency here. Most of the car/bicycle problems are caused by drivers, not cyclists. And the consequences of those problems are hugely more serious when someone is driving a car, than riding a bicycle.
So you’re right. This isn’t a “war.” Vehicles need to surrender to cyclists whenever they see them on or near a road. No hesitation. Just do it.
Is getting to where you’re going 10 seconds faster worth causing injury, or even death? Sure, maybe the cyclist is bending or breaking a rule, but so what? Acting like a jerk in a car is far more dangerous than acting like a jerk on a bicycle.
Thanks for reading and sharing the piece!
To echo Curt, not only is it “natural and intuitive in Salem to drive at or over the speed limit everywhere you go,” our roadway engineering and design encourages this speeding! Under current engineering “best practices,” so-called “design speed” for a road is routinely 10 or more mph over the official posted speed limit. By the width of the road and travel lanes, by the way parking, sidewalks, curve radius on turns – all these things combine to give drivers visual and experiential cues to speed.
(For example, on a section of South Commercial posted for 30mph, city traffic data recently showed 15% of drivers go more than 40mph – that’s well over 4000 drivers per day who should get speeding tickets! But they’re just following the cues in the road design. At 40mph, a person driving a car is almost certain to kill a person on foot in a crash; at 30mph it’s a 50/50 coin-flip, but at 20mph, a person on foot is almost certain to survive.)
We say “be nice” and “share the road” but we design roads principally for unimpeded speed and power! There’s a deep mismatch, even contradiction, between words and as-experienced roadway conditions.
In the context of this system, love and good intentions may not be not enough.
(It cannot be stressed enough that our current road engineering and design “best practices” make us more likely to be jerks than we really want to be!)
We need to bring intended speed, intended level of caution, and roadway design back into balance again. Sidewalks or crosswalks or bike lanes alone don’t address this. When design and intent align, then as Curt says there are abundant visual cues that effectively trigger and elicit that natural caution and consideration for others.
These are good points as well. I also enjoyed your blog post on this subject. I definitely realize that compassion isn’t enough, but it sure bugs me that we don’t even have that to begin with.
As a daily cycle commuter for almost 20 years I have spent an enormous amount of time thinking about this issue.
The design and flow of our roads are a big part of the problem. But Salem is one big huge sprawl – there is no density to be found anywhere – so it has to be a part of our goals to move cars quickly. I’ll bet that 99.5%, or more, of commuters in Salem drive a car.
I rarely drive. But my experience when I am on the other side of the equation is a lot of angst towards the largely inconsiderate cyclists.
Example: There is a woman that regularly rides up and down High Street/Bush Park during morning rush hour, with an empty bike trailer in tow, going 6 mph. Yes 6 mph. Huge line of cars backed up behind her. People are trying to get to school, to work, home and you have an incredibly inconsiderate cyclist out for a Sunday ride. It creates dangerous situations where cars try to pass. There are alternatives routes.
Example: One of my friends and neighbor rides to school with his young son. They tool along in the middle of the road going very slow and erratically without any consideration of cars. It is scary to be around them. If you have a car, obviously you can kill a cyclist pretty easily. As a cyclist you have some right to the road but that should be within certain limits of reasonableness. They seem to flaunt the right to the ride in the road. It is very inconsiderate and dangerous.
Example: Just Friday, I stopped at a stop sign downtown and as I started to turn right a bike blasted by me on the right, blew the stop sign. College girl with headphones on. I was 1/2 second from plowing over her. It scared the hell out of me. I wanted to chase her down and yell at her. Very inconsiderate and dangerous.
Example: Cyclists by nature (me included) don’t stop at stop signs unless absolutely necessary. That tends to irritate drivers who follow the rules.
Example: Country road: 55 mph speed limit. You have a peloton of 25 road bikers clogging the road going 24 mph. You can’t pass them. You drive behind them for 10 minutes and they ignore you talking and laughing. Wouldn’t the nice thing be to pull over single file and let the cars pass? “No, we have a right to the road!”. Ok.
I could go on and on. But my point it is that cyclists have a lot of responsibility for being disrespectful and creating the negative environment. Many don’t care if they piss off car drivers but still want them to respect them?
I have had one too many heated exchanges with drivers who have almost ran me off the road, honked at me, screamed at me. Now rather than put myself in any of those situations I simply yield at every opportunity. If I can’t get my speed up close to 20mph, I just move over and let them pass. I take alternate routes. My good friend David Fox says that my behavior sends the wrong message, but I think that if I am prepared to ask the driver to delay their trip for a few moments when I ride in traffic, I should be ok taking a little longer to get to where I am going as well. (for example, instead of riding east on State Street, I ride up Chemeketa…which is slower).
I think that any discussion asking for drivers to be more respectful and accommodating should start with a discussion of cyclists being more respectful and accommodating.
Ultimately, as much as I would love to see Salem become more of a cycle friendly town the deck is stacked against that. 99.9% of people live too far from where they work to reasonably cycle commute, so the reality is that most are going to drive. I’d still love to see it encouraged. Cycling improves health, saves money, reduces pollution, sends less money out of the community, improves quality of life and property values among many benefits.
My opinion is that the goal should be mutual respect.
I agree that mutual respect is definitely needed. I also agree that, as a driver, it’s extremely frustrating when you encounter cyclists or pedestrians who don’t follow the rules or act erratically. This frustrates me doubly, however, because it also gives other riders/walkers a bad name and reinforces to drivers that riders/walkers are the “enemy,” a designation that is often undeserved.
I live off High St. and use it to take my kids to school by multiple modes. The woman you are talking about is either homeless, living in extreme poverty, mentally ill, or some combination of those things. I don’t see her everyday. I only see her on garbage collection days collecting empty cans. I suspect its the only income she has. Definitely not out for a Sunday ride.
A large share of the rush hour traffic on High St. is cut through traffic. That is by far the largest source of excess traffic volume on High St. They turn up High St. because they are not patient enough to go over to Commercial to go south. There is a sign telling them not to do this, but they don’t respect it. The single largest obstacle impeding drivers is other drivers, not cyclist or pedestrians.
When I am delayed by a slower moving vehicle (or yielding to pedestrian), it amounts to a matter of seconds. Usually it means I arrive at an intersection a few seconds later and does not affect my overall travel time at all.
I was hit on Liberty St. when a driver ran a red light when I was trying to cross. She wasn’t being disrespectful. She was doing what was natural for her to do in that environment. No amount of respect or goodwill toward drivers is going to prevent those incidents. No amount of goodwill or respect drivers show to other drivers will prevent drivers from harming other drivers (or get them to an intersection 5 seconds faster).
Michael brings up Salem’s lack of density. I argue that Salem’s lack of density is a symptom of our car dependency. Responding to that problem with more speed and capacity for cars will only make that situation worse, not better.
Lively, walkable urban environments may not be for everyone. But they are for a lot of people and it seems that Salem should have a place for them too. McMinnville, Bend, Corvallis are not any more dense than Salem and they have managed to pull it off. I don’t think their cyclists or pedestrians are any more respectful than Salem’s. Why isn’t Salem worthy of these places too?
Curt you are welcome to put a negative spin on the matter if you chose. I don’t see the path of complaining and creating an “us vs them” as doing anything but creating more angst between the co inhabitants of the road.
Nasty comments about city staff are not productive, and are quite frankly, mean.
What are realistic and positive solutions?
Here are mine: take alternate routes when possible, even if it takes longer, yield when you can’t go a reasonable speed, practice over the top courtesy to drivers/cyclists, and work on educating both cyclists and drivers in a positive way.
Look at the comments on any Portland based news article about cyclists. The poor behavior of the cycling community has created a LOT of negativity. Same to a lesser degree here in Salem.
Some will say “it’s the law!” But I think that proactive positive solutions will get a lot more progress than trying to trying to force someone to do something.
One more thought. If you want density, Salem is most likely not going to be that place.
Density is something I’ve advocated for forever. It brings prosperity and culture (see SE Portland, NW Portland, Seattle/SF neighborhoods..on and on …etc). There are massive economic and cultural benefits of density.
However Salem is not that. When 99.9% of your citizens/stakeholders drive, it’s not realistic for our leaders to focus too many resources on slowing them down to cater to the, what maybe 300-400(?) regular cyclists.
More reasonable approach would be to be accommodating to everyone in balance. Realistically, investing in bike infrastructure might encourage more cyclists, but due to our geographically sprawled nature, it’s very limited. Is love to see a car-less city but I’m trying to be realistic about the limitations.
Sadly, the problem is that the Salem area isn’t pedestrian or bike friendly enough to feel very safe when you’re trying to get around without a car. Most everywhere in the US was designed with cars in mind and pedestrians or cyclists as an after thought. I too, like to jog in the Grant neighborhood / downtown and have frequently felt invisible to drivers.