What an adopted Portlander learned in the biking revolution

By Mia Birk, with Joe “Cowboy” Kurmaskie
Cadence Press, 2010, 224 pages. $19.95

While Portland, Oregon’s rise to the top of North America’s bicycle-friendly rankings happened relatively quickly, it surely didn’t happen easily. Or so explains Mia Birk, author of Joyride — Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet.

Birk, a native of Dallas, Texas, arrived in Portland in 1993 by way of Washington, DC. Hired as the City’s bicycle programs manager, a title that few people around the nation shared at the time, Birk quickly discovered that a few disconnected bike lanes and numerous entrenched auto-centric policies do not a bicycle-friendly city make. Not to be deterred, she quickly set out to transform her newly adopted city.

As a personal narrative, Joyride chronicles the many challenges Birk faced in convincing colleagues, politicians, a skeptical public, and even her own family about the merits of investing in bicycle transportation. In this way, Joyride differentiates itself from other recent books on the subject, including J. Harry Wray’s Pedal Power (2008) and Jeff Mapes’ Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing America’s Cities (2009, reviewed in the June 2009 New Urban News, available here), which survey the country’s growing bicycle advocacy movement.

Within a few short chapters, Birk’s tenacity is evident. She was the right person for a tough job. And as Birk explains, her efforts fortunately dovetailed with progress on both the local and the national levels.

To start, the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) required Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to include bicycle and pedestrian facilities in their comprehensive plans. This landmark legislation influenced cities all over the country to slowly begin funding bicycle initiatives. With its burgeoning commitment to other progressive planning initiatives, Portland’s MPO — called Metro — provided regional support. Additionally, strong political and moral backing from Earl Blumenauer, a Portland City Councilor at the time, propelled a conservative, yet bike-curious transportation planning staff to slowly overcome numerous challenges alongside Birk and the city’s highly vocal bicycle advocates.

Throughout the book, Birk capably balances her personal anecdotes with sharpened sustainable-transportation policy arguments. There is enough of each to keep the average reader and the policy wonk engaged. Of particular note is Birk’s involvement with improving bicycle access along Portland’s many bridges, successfully convincing the city’s bicycle advocates to drop a lawsuit against the city for not doing enough bike lane striping, and building a floating bike path along the Willamette River.

Seasoned New Urbanists will take particular interest in how Birk documents her numerous efforts to overcome Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) standards — both continue failing to provide guidance on effective, proven bicycle facilities.

Birk was personally involved as bike programs manager, and now as a consultant, with the country’s first application of numerous innovative bikeway treatments. These include colored bike lane pavement markings, bicycle boulevards, shared-use lane marking (sharrows), and bike boxes. Such treatments are increasingly popular in progressive cities whose planners and engineers find their application within their right to exercise professional engineering judgment. Thus, Joyride should help many avoid the potential pitfalls associated with working creatively “within the box.”

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t delve very deeply into the details of Portland’s other progressive land use and transportation policies — to the best of my knowledge, Portland is the only major American city to cut VMT from 1990 levels. There is some discussion on these issues, and, to be fair, these are clearly not the book’s focus, but I was hoping for some more explicit discussion of the correlation between bikeway infrastructure and sustainable urbanism. Additionally, I question the power of my own memory to recall particular outfits worn at public meetings years ago, yet Birk’s repeated descriptions of clothing choice rightfully asserts that fashion-forward people need not be deterred by cycling’s spandex clad sub-culture. This is a truth we can all get behind.

Nonetheless, there is plenty of impressive information regarding Portland’s investment in not just bikeways, but also bike parking and many other education and encouragement programs. Fun fact: over the 15-year life of Portland’s 1996 bicycle master plan, the city created a 300-mile network, developed thousands of bicycle parking spaces, and achieved a bicycle-commuting rate that is 8 times the national average. Had that money been spent on roadways, it would have bought a single mile of urban freeway.

Most importantly, Mia effectively communicates the successes (there are many) and mistakes (few) while celebrating the many people involved with making not just Portland, but many other American cities, more amenable to bicycle transportation. The lessons should serve anyone interested in transforming his or her own city streets and, by extension, an entire culture dangerously addicted to its automobile-based transportation system.

The book’s final pages leave the reader with a front yard BBQ, where the author and friends are celebrating one of Portland’s many Sunday Parkways open-streets initiative (one of 46 such efforts in North America in which streets are closed to automobiles so that people may walk, bike, and celebrate community). But while the warm and fuzzy scene fittingly bringsJoyride to a close, it surely isn’t the end of the story. Indeed, Portland recently finished an update to its breakthrough 1996 bicycle master plan.  It outlines more than $500 million in additional bicycle improvements through 2030, calling for a bicycle mode share of 25 percent. Thus, in a country that is increasingly receptive to cycling, and in which Portland is most frequently a source of inspiration, Mia Birk’s joyride has probably just begun.

Mike Lydon is the founding Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative.