“... Traffic is a result of not investing in things like public transit. It’s a result of urban sprawl, and a result of incentivizing economic development where there were no people or no infrastructure...”
BICYCLIST: Liz Cornish (Executive Director of Bikemore, a baltimore based nonprofit that works to increase and improve bicycle infrastructure, policies, and awareness)
I grew up in Tulsa Oklahoma, and Tulsa Oklahoma is a very segregated city. It’s a place where in 1921 the largest race riot in history before the L.A. riots had occurred. White residents attacked black residents and businesses along Greenwood Avenue, which at the time was dubbed "Black Wall Street" for the concentration of black wealth. Living in a city where there’s lots of racialized tension is something that I grew up with. As a kid I went to a predominantly black elementary school and I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. My god parents are black and so [I was] raised going to their home and spending time with their family. My parents lived in this perfectly nice subdivision where you ride bikes to friends houses, go inside and discover all the houses are the same. I didn't realize it at the time but that window into black family life is a really important part of my story. I really do believe that was really critical to giving me a heart for social justice and also building connections and building relationships with people that are different than I am. Coming in and out of segregated situations I’ve always tried to do my best to try to seek out opportunities to build bridges and to work on behalf of people that may not be having the same access to power or to change that I might have.
-- What’s the purpose of bicycle advocacy for you?
In Baltimore I see it as a tool. We need lots of tools, and biking is not the silver bullet or panacea to this because it’s hugely complex and not everybody can ride a bike, and it doesn’t even make sense for everybody to ride a bike, but biking is one of the tools that people can use to build up communities; and our communities in Baltimore need a lot of building up. I think there was a time when bike advocacy was very niche -- kinda wacky. You’d have guys showing up to Capitol Hill in bike shorts and their little rear view mirrors off of their bicycle helmets. Now it’s really different. I have so much more in common with people that are working on food justice, and people that are working on housing issues than I ever have before, and it makes my work very exciting.
-- Do you think that bicycle infrastructure means “gentrification?”
There's this harmful narrative in cities that becoming more friendly to bikes is essential to attracting the "creative class" which essentially ignores the fact that there are already people who live here, who rely on bikes as transportation--or would like to--that need safe routes. That line of thinking did a lot of damage, and is why bike lanes are often linked to gentrification. I don’t believe that wanting a neighborhood that comes alive with people walking and biking, where traffic is calmer, that having better access to places to recreate outside whether it’s biking trails, walking trails, public green spaces -- I do not believe that that’s only stuff that young, wealthy white people want in their neighborhood. In fact, I hear from people of all colors and all ages from across the City, and that’s what’s beautiful about it. When you look at it that way I think everybody wants that for their neighborhood. What becomes challenging is that historically you had a lot of mostly white men that were mostly recreational cyclists that decided to bike to work that really pushed this sort of vehicular cycling movement. They defined equity amongst modes on the roads -- and so any policy or advocacy that they were fighting for whether it was on the local or federal level had to do with that. I think what we’ve learned and how the bike movement has evolved pretty recently is that all of that work didn’t really get a whole lot more people to bike. But you know what did? Putting up a couple of flex posts and a segregated lane creating protected space for cyclists, and then creating a movement that showed everyday cyclists wearing everyday clothing running errands. Maybe they’re using it for transportation. Maybe they’re using it on Saturday mornings to get to places. That’s really what changed. I think any neighborhood is going to have a different feeling about biking, or any family you ask about biking is going to have a different feeling about it or a different barrier to it. That’s what makes it so hard. There’s no one size fits all approach.
--What are some of the barriers?
So if I was working with you and I was trying to get you excited about biking I’d have to get to know you, and then you’d tell me about your day and how far away your job is. Then you’d tell me that maybe you have to dress up at work, and maybe you don’t have a shower there or maybe where you grew up only poor people rode bicycles so it’s really important to you to be able to express your identity through owning a car because ownership to other things like houses has been restricted from you. It’s really complex. What’s really great now and what I’ve learned from others is that we can't just talk about bikes. We have to talk about housing. We have to talk about economic development. We have to talk about other forms of transportation, and how they are accessible or inaccessible. You have to talk about public health, and you have to talk about all of those things to figure out why someone is or isn’t biking, and then you have to come up with solutions that address those barriers, and if you’re only addressing some of those barriers then that might be why biking is only for a certain small segment of people.
--What do you think the challenges are to getting diverse groups excited about bicycling?
I had an amazing phone call with Oboi Reed. He runs “Slow Roll Chicago.” He’s been nationally recognized for his work getting communities of color excited about biking in Chicago. He just said things in a concise way. It’s that you cannot lead with transportation, and I even thought about this as well -- that a lot of people bike as kids and then around 14 or 15 they kind of drop off. I think we all got back into biking as adults first recreationally. Some friend had an extra bike and said, “Let's go ride bikes to the movies,” or to a restaurant, and then you’re like, “I don’t have a bike. Well, I have one you can use.” Then you do it and it’s so fun, and you don’t have to look for parking, and you don’t have to pay for parking, and you get to see your city in a different way. All of a sudden you’re kind of hooked and you’re like, “well how many more days a week can I do this?” So I think that lots of people, not everyone, come to transportation bicycling from a place of recreation for awhile, and then they make the transition. Oboi was discussing that what they do is that there are weekly rides that engage with a lot of different community partners. They pick their neighborhoods way out in advance. They partner with a different organization that’s not a biking organization. Maybe it’s a housing authority. Maybe it’s a community organization. Maybe it’s a school. Maybe it’s a church, and they plan a route. They usually try to pick something that’s challenging in that neighborhood and something that’s beautiful in that neighborhood. What they’re trying to do is build community. They’re trying to say that there are no bad neighborhoods. Every neighborhood has some value and something to offer. Every neighborhood has some challenges and we are going to see those by bike because they’re easier to see than when you’re speeding by in a car. And we’re going to hang out and be social and be safe. We’ve really started to see people like Oboi that have started to do that type of work start to tip the scales about normalizing biking for diverse people. My goal for biking always is that it shouldn’t feel risky and it shouldn’t feel like a Herculean feat. I get a lot of like, “Oh you’re so brave.” I want to wake up one day and have it be so normalized and so easy and safe-feeling that people don’t feel like that.
--What are you most proud of so far?
I was really proud of our “I Bike, I Vote kick-off party.” The ability to get that many candidates to show up for something and they don’t get to speak… that they just had to listen, and meet and greet just felt like a very big win. We still have a lot of work to do til active transportation actually comes into the forefront of this election or even in psyche of the candidates that are running. That was such a giant leap forward in terms of getting our conversation and agenda out there. The other thing that I’m really proud of is that the downtown bike network went to bid. Basically, what that means is that for the last three to four years we’ve had six miles of protected bike infrastructure funded, and mostly engineered, but it hasn’t started construction. That project is so critical to increasing visibility of bike ridership in this city that our work really begins when that gets built. Does that make sense? Bikemore has done a lot, but what we’re going to be able to do will increase exponentially when there’s actually a network of safe places for people to ride. What we’re doing now is inviting people into a space that’s not always safe for people to ride.
--What does it feel like to ride in Baltimore for you?
As a city rider learning to take the lane and just feel confident around cars it’s incredibly empowering, especially as a woman. There’s just so many points throughout every day that you’re inculturated to not take up space. You feel that you're told not to take up space, and so when you start taking the lane and you start to get pushy with traffic... It’s great exercise for the mind to remind yourself that you can do that in other areas of your life too. You’re allowed to take up space wherever you need to take up space. As women, we’re taught that petite and demure is more desirable. So like don’t be broad shouldered and don’t be tall, but also emotionally, like don’t be assertive. Don’t be loud. Don’t be demanding, and so we’re taught and inculturated to not take up space and to shrink into ourselves so we don’t offend anyone. You watch that, especially when you teach adult women to ride again. Not all, but a lot of women are very polite, and so to teach them how to be assertive and defensive in a road space it might take them awhile to develop the confidence and skills in order to do that. I have a thousand stories about bikes changing women’s lives, and I know they do that for men too, but I’m just privy to all these stories from women. I think that’s the best part about my job.
--What do you think your role is?
I’m not out there teaching people how to ride bikes. I’m not out there giving bikes to people, but the work I do will lead a lot more people to biking. A lot of things in our everyday culture work against things that make us healthier, that make us more emotionally stable, that make us have more joy. There’s a lot of things in our everyday society that try to take those things away every day, and the bike brings that all back. To me that’s an amazing thing to get to be a part of. There’s very few people that bike to work that hate their commute. Yeah you have some complaints, but you still do it everyday because there’s some days on Guilford with the cherry blossoms hanging overhead, and you get that wee moment, you know like weeeee! And you don’t get that sitting in traffic, and you don’t get that sitting on a bus. If you think about Baltimore there’s so much work to be done, and there’s so much trauma to counter that people experience everyday. Stress is toxic. If you live in a city with high crime, and high proclivity of drug use, and exposure to violence, and exposure to lead. These are all factors that lead to toxic stress. I cannot fix all of those things, and Bikemore cannot fix all of those things, but we can counter some of those things by bringing more people to biking.
--Do you think it’s important to work, specifically, with women?
I think that when you create women-only spaces, magical things happen. Are there women that feel comfortable in spaces that always include men? Absolutely. So women only spaces aren’t necessarily for those women, but there are enough women out there in the world that because of what we’ve been taught it’s hard to try new things, or mess up, or fail. The stakes seem to be higher for women. Even when you watch kids play on a playground. Maybe there’s a low retaining wall, and there’s a little boy that climbs up there and he’s walking along the edge. Everybody’s natural bias is to be like, “Boys will be boys,” and the second a little girl gets up there it’s like, “Be careful! You’re going to get hurt.” How many times has a girl been told, “Be careful. You’re going to get hurt.”? Then turn that person into a twenty-five-year-old and ask them to ride a bike in traffic, and then you can imagine the psychological stuff that they’re going to have to overcome before that experience feels accessible to them. So women’s only spaces creates a sense of safety where other women understand that, and the pressure just seems to come off.
--Where do you think your passion comes from?
I’ve always been fascinated with root causes, like, “The why? How did this start? Where did this begin?” So when I think about root causes you also have to think about disruptive solutions; the bicycle does that. You talk about biking and all of a sudden you’re talking about public safety. You’re talking about street harassment. You’re talking about government spending. You’re talking about environmentalism and our reaction to climate change. You’re talking about equity--like, how long does it take for people to get to work? You get to talk about all those things that encompass life, and more people have to start having those conversations, and voting about them before we start to see some change. Baltimore is certainly a place where I see potential for that type of awareness. You already see it, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
--What do you think the ultimate urban impact of bicycling is?
We can’t build our way out of road congestion. We can’t keep building more lanes. Traffic is a result of not investing in things like public transit. It’s a result of urban sprawl, and a result of incentivizing economic development where there were no people or no infrastructure. When I show people the math of not owning and owning a car, especially in Baltimore City where car insurance is criminally high. It just makes sense. Our cities can be these amazing vibrant places where lots of different types of people from lots of different types of incomes can lead safe, productive lives. It’s not always going to be perfect and it’s not going to be Utopia...but I’m very optimistic, because I’ve yet to meet anybody in Baltimore that I work directly with that isn’t also working hard on these issues, that doesn’t also get it.
