Societal change (and sustainable transportation)

I have been wanting to write a long analysis of the health care "reform" process and why it is flawed, because for the most part it is a top-down phenomenon driven by lawyers, interest groups, and the politicians, and it is pretty much disconnected from real life.

Most analyses by people who know stuff find the "reform bill" to be pretty limited. I agree, and aver it's because it's about health insurance rather than health care, delivery systems, wellness programs, and public health generally. And health insurance was created to begin with to regularize income for hospitals, it was never about wellness.

But instead, because Washcycle writes a blog entry about all the hullaballoo in Philadelphia, in response to the justifiable outrage that two pedestrians were killed by bicyclists riding on the sidewalk, so I can write about that. See his entry, "Philadelphia Crack Down," which has links to a lot of the coverage on the issue. There are all kinds of anti-cyclist responses including ill-thought out legislative responses.

Washcycle points out that while the cyclists behavior cannot be excused, far more pedestrians die each year having been hit by automobiles (the rate is at least 1000 times higher than the rate of pedestrian-bicycle crash deaths) and yet, as we see with the lack of substantive penalties for cyclist deaths caused by automobile drivers, there is little outrage or governmental response. (More about that later in an entry I have been composing in my head called "Rights vs. Privilege, Safety, Negligence vs. Accidents, and Consequences.")

While I can't claim to be the foremost expert on social change, it is something that I have paid close attention to for at least 20 years, having spent some time working with one of the people who founded the field of "organizational development," having come across Everett Rogers work on "diffusion of innovations" at a young age, and then coming to Washington and off the bat working for a Nader-influenced consumer group that addresses health policy (nutrition, alcohol policy, agriculture-safe food).

Having witnessed some of the campaigns the organization undertook, both successfully and unsuccessfully, and sitting back and analyzing what happened, along with a number of other cases, plus my current experience working for a county government on strengthening the environment for walking and biking in a place that is dominated by car culture and automobility, I have some perspective to offer.

1. Change takes a long long time. Look at the campaign to reduce smoking. From the Surgeon General's report stating there was a link between tobacco, smoking and cancer in 1964(!), to the various public health policies that have been enacted since starting with limits on advertising and extending to the always contentious each time an attempt is made to ban smoking in public places (and yes restaurants and bars haven't gone out of business as a result of the ban) and massive increases in excise taxes on tobacco sales, we must recognize that it has taken the 45 years since the report to get to the point where we are today--that except for youth and low income demographics and baseball players and cowboys--the use of tobacco products is dropping significantly.

Sure I joke that one of the reasons that people walk or go outside is not because of quality of place and desires for exercise but because they can't smoke inside, but the reality is that the incidence of smoking is dropping drastically.

But many additional steps were required:

1. Original report. - 1964
2. Ban on television ads (although print advertising was still allowed.) - 1971
3. Warning labels (1966) and an "escalation" of the directness of the message over time.
4. Initial (1972) and subsequent reports on the impact of secondhand smoke.
5. And the resulting start of campaigns for restrictions on smoking in public places (which is ongoing and must be done at the state level and/or at the level of the individual jurisdiction--plus the industry fights these proposals, Virginia's ban just took effect a couple weeks ago).
6. Including the federal ban on smoking on airplanes. - 1989
7. Individual lawsuits.
8. Class action settlement with states including further restrictions on promotion.
9. Continual increases in tobacco excise taxes at all levels of government.

Another example is environmentalism. While there has been ostensible interest in the environment since the first Earth Day in 1970, for the most part, it was talk, even though environmental concern and regulation changed considerable. But in the last 5 years especially, environmental concerns and sustainability are moving to the forefront of business activity and public policy in ways that were not present before.

2. The process of change, both individually and societally and organizationally is messy, sometimes ugly, and ridden with conflict.

This is what we are seeing today with bicycling, as more people are cycling, and automobile drivers who have been accustomed to dominating the roads are chafing at having to cede some of their perceived control.

Plus there is the issue of mixing traffic, the vast difference in speed, weight of the vehicle, and the opportunity for damage between cars and cyclists, the difficulties of retrofitting cycling infrastructure, the fact that cycling infrastructure appears to be underutilized compared to roads for cars (because you can fit 4-6 bicycles in the same space as a car, the perception is that cycling infrastructure is underutilized when really it is a matter of more productive use of space).

I have written about "the other" issue quite a bit. Because except in a few cities, automobility dominates, cyclists are seen as a danger and threat, because they are doing something different from prevailing behavior.

(In my job, to get around the issue of "the other," I am working to place walking and bicycling within the context of placemaking, livability, quality of life, and civic identity, rather than "adding choice and balance" to transportation, or even sustainable transportation. Most people don't want to grapple right now with the reality that how they travel is unsustainable.)

3. What automobility advocates see as "normal," the provision of a street network for use primarily by cars, and that each vehicle takes up/is entitled to a minimum of 162 square feet (that is the dimension of a typical parking space), and free parking, is actually "abnormal" or at the very least, a misuse of resources.

Unjam 2025, Street Capacity Demonstration, Thomas Jefferson Planning District, Charlottesville, VA.

With cyclists and pedestrians (and transit users) demanding a network of quality service and infrastructure, automobilists are and feel threatened by the change.

4. With regard to the long period required for change to take root in society (again, see the work by Rogers), people often look at best practices examples and cases without taking into account the long time it took those places to get where they are today.

For example, Copenhagen is one of the world's best case studies of the prevalence of bicyclists, with 57% of daily trips made by bicycle and 37% of trips to work by bicycle.

BUT 40 YEARS AGO, COPENHAGEN WAS DOMINATED BY AUTOMOBILITY, AND NOT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM U.S. CITIES OF TODAY (except for the maintenance of a good transit network, including railroad service, which U.S. cities had already junked in the 1950s, with some exceptions).

5. There were many changes made, to laws, to the physical environment, and other polices, in order to foster this change. This included enacting high gasoline excise taxes, to fully cover the cost of driving, something that hasn't happened in the U.S.

Getting to the point where bicycling is a primary mode of transportation in the U.S. will be a long difficult process. In many places it won't happen. On the other hand, there are many places where topography, jobs-housing balance, density, proximity to amenities, and other factors favor bicycling as transportation.

And that's what we should focus on.

Recognizing that the process of getting there will be difficult, contentious, and not easy.

It's about a long, multi-decade "campaign."

But the success with public health campaigns such as reducing tobacco use and making drunk driving pariah behavior demonstrates that it is not a walk in the park, and that the actions of many people and organizations and polities at all levels of society will be participating in this process, as the demand for change continues and escalates.