Shiny Green Button

I attended a meeting of cycling advocates last night and learned more about an issue facing bikers in Vancouver, Washington: lack of representation. Just across the Columbia River, Portland has the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, which serves the Portland metro area well, but doesn’t reach over the state line. Seattle has the Cascade Bicycle Club and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, but the bulk of funds and efforts tend to stay north of Vancouver.

It seems Vancouver is in a kind of rain shadow between the two large metro areas. A writer for the Oregonian portrayed Vancouver’s lack of progress in bike commuting relative to Portland in terms of a rivalry. While the article is an interesting read and actually made the front page, I think highlighting the contrast and pitting the two cities’ efforts against each other is unproductive. Better to explore the underlying reasons for the cities’ different commuting habits so that advocacy groups like the one highlighted in the article can be more successful in removing the barriers to bike commuting.

It appears a lack of organization is the problem. Why can’t one of the above-mentioned groups invest a portion of their hard-won resources on poor Vancouver? If you’ve seen the cars streaming—er crawling—south across the I-5 bridge to Portland, you’d think it wouldn’t take much to get ’Couvites on their bikes and out of their cars.

But no. In fact, an attendee who seemed to be speaking on behalf of the Bicycle Alliance of Washington was all but shouted down by another attendee who told of his interaction with the BAW board. The man who’d approached the BAW board at a meeting was told that “Vancouver is not a priority.”

This kind of rivalry and contention just tells me that the goal of encouraging more use of alternative transportation would be better served if advocates paid less attention to political boundaries and focused more on the broader cause. Fortunately, the City of Vancouver is making some traction on its own, having published a new bike map and guide.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Communications, Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.