The Bicycle As a Vehicle of Time Travel

Happy 2011!  It’s still the start of a new year and something to be excited about.  A time to feel optimistic (hopefully) to move forward with refreshed visions. We hope everyone ended 2010 with a greater sense of what we want for the future of our communities and ourselves, especially here in Detroit.

Since there is nothing more futuristic than hover cars and flying ships that take us to places we have never gone before we might as well face it…this is not the future we envisioned when we were six or forty years ago, no matter what age you are.  Fender Bender Detroit has discovered one form of transportation that can and does take us places no person has gone before…the bicycle!  Our vision for the future is Mobile!  A mobile bike shop as well as being mobile by bike.

Have you ever gotten on your bike during a sunny day like the first one of spring? When the sun truly warms your face and you begin to thaw and you remember that you are a nice person smiling and saying hello.   The air is almost humid and your mind drifts from the obligations of the day and all the stress of deadlines or phone calls does not exist (cuz your smart phone is on silent in your back pocket hopefully). The independent empowerment of self-sufficient travel creates a timeless space and sense that anything is possible.  The only real moments are the ones happening right now. During these moments we come in tune with our inner selves and our instincts.  We remember how easy it is to get around without a car.  

When I am riding on days like this and other days too, even in the rain, my sense of time changes.  I invent time and create time that I did not have before.  I extend each second to minutes and minutes can become hours. Then I realize as I rush around in my car on a self-inflicted mission like a wound, that I’m in a hurry to nowhere fast. I am convinced biking can reinvent worlds. Not only can our sense of time be affected by cycling but largely how we communicate and intereact with our neighborhoods.  Even if you are shy it’s almost impossible to pass people while biking and not say a “how ya do.” You’ll have more contact with people than while in a car.  Even if you are not an observer (which I believe we all are) it is likely that you will notice more while biking.  

You may even begin to envision future plans of how space, land and buildings could be used in your neighborhood/city.  You may have hallucinations of a community garden or public park area.  Or perhaps prophetically predict a four corner stop sign to slow down speedy traffic. Or maybe a co-op market in place of the vacant liquor store.  You may even become overwhelmed with a sense of ownership and investment in the neighborhood that could result in creating a  neighborhood coalition of people looking out for one another and having monthly dinners together. Biking allows anothing to become possible!  Can you see it now?  

The next time you’re on a ride envsion your bicycle as a vehicle of time travel.  You are in the best postion to see, feel, smell, touch and sense countless possibilities that await in an abondoned building, vacant lot, old fencing, community centers, churches,  a mulberry tree and cracks in the sidewalk.  Up close and personal.  You may find yourself stopping to take a closer view or the taste the berries that otherwise may have never existed to you in your car.  You see now how a bicycle can alter one’s reality:  allowing us to become part of experiences that do not engage with us while traveling in an interior, protecting us from sometimes the very things we should be connecting to:  ourselves, each other and nature.

Information for All! Complete Streets Initiatives and Safe Routes to Schools websites and more…

Safe Routes to Schools

http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/index.cfm

Complete Streets

http://www.completestreets.org/

Look them up!  These are two concepts about rebuilding street plans to accomodate all modes of transportation in a safe and efficeint way in order to create healthy vital communities.  Sounds great.

The key is making these plans an accessible resource for everyone not only the people who have access to them.  The ideas are great, but too often neighborhood improvements and re-defining spaces to make them accessible are retro-fitted to “developing” areas with money, population and “a say in things”.   Many times the communities and neighborhoods that could benefit most from these developments are left out of the picture.  As we plunge deeper into economic, environmental and social crisis we also re-evaluate our dependency on resources and things that exasperate these circumstances.  One of the best ways of providing information to effectively evaluate these circumstances is through education.

Fender Bender believes strongly in education as a transformative tool and an essential investment in any community.  It’s as important to be sure these plans and concepts are available to low income “undeveloped” and low population areas as it is to places that are “investable”.   True investment is when people who live in the community feel that it is their community.  There is no greater investment in a building, neighborhood or city than ones that come from the people who live right in it.  Creating a sense of ownership, safety and engagement on a level that activates and fosters healthy relationships with one another are lasting and sustainable investments.   

Once upon a time much of Detroit was designed through the eyes of the automotive industry (a car reliant society) as well as the idea that Detroit would exist as the Greatest American City forever.  It was extravagant and gluttonous.  Extra wide streets were built to host a gigantic population and the export of war machines developed by Ford for WWI and II.   Motorized mobility made incentive for people to plan routes and streets for that sort of travel.   Currently, the wide streets,  lack of foresight and the city’s vast size, combined with population decline and other obstacles have contributed to serve division of neighborhoods both physically and economically.  Strong communities have been broken up numerous times at the cost of a new highway entrance or because neighborhood and street maintainance has stopped.  Though we may continue to live in unmaintained areas out of neccessity,  it makes daily activities like leaving for work on unplowed streets in six inches of snow to catch a bus at a stop maybe a mile away feel defeating.  These divides also fragment the power of people in numbers and the strength that comes from a unified group.  Unified groups create confidence and have a greater voice to participate in change.  When strong communities have been scattered and re-puzzled to opposite ends of the city multiple times how are solid bonds to form with one another?   Detroit has routinely suffered from economic gutting and displacement, weakening our ability to form alliances that would allow citizens to create a Detroit they want to be a part of.   Transportation, mobility and short-sighted street/neighborhood planning has played a major role in this deconstruction.  We can and deserve to be a part of the reconstruction.

In re-thinking the development of neighborhoods,  including housing and street layout there are many things to consider.  School placement in relation to the student body that will attend the school is one aspect.  Where will access to healthy foods be available?  Do we want to grow our own food or go to the grocery or both?  What about healthcare facilities and public spaces such as parks and greenways that provide foundations that help us connect to our bodies and lives in active ways?   What kind of healthcare is needed?  The list goes on and on. It is certain in our modern world that transportation and mobility is necessary to make any of these services available and accessible to the public.  A big part of this is learning to use what we have in place already to create what we want.  How do we turn a four lane one-way into a two lane two-way with a grassy medium of trees and cross-walks for bicycles, walkers and handicap to get around easily and safely?  We need to look at what routes we currently use and how to improve them, or make undesirable travel paths into ones we want to travel.  These are basic questions that each of us can think about and find solutions for. 

Can you think of other questions or concerns about transportation and mobility that would be important  to ask when considering how to address the way we get around in the city?  What are important improvements for you to see happen in your neighborhood?  Be it physical or asthetic…fruit trees, flowers, a stop sign, speed bumps, sidewalk repair, crossing guards, etc. 

Write back and let us know what you think!  Or respond with a question for us to think about.  We would love to begin an open forum of conversation including your opinions and ideas and how you want to be involved in planning the future of Detroit.

Sarah