Abstract
Sociologists differentiate between a given act, and the meaning of that act. 1 For example, a millionaire driving across town in a Rolls Royce might mean that the driver is wealthy, or that the driver is showing off. If that same millionaire, however, drove a Toyota Camry, that would have a different meaning. Perhaps he does not wish to flaunt his wealth, or perhaps he prefers to spend money on other items (or the Rolls is in the shop—one must be careful not to assume too much!)
Such analysis can be applied to societies too. The fact that the United States has built an extensive interstate highway system, while intercity rail remains underdeveloped, might mean that Americans are very individualistic and do not like to be tied down to schedules. Or it could mean something else. Similarly, the common bicycle can be loaded with meaning. One can notice someone pedaling along the street on a bicycle. That bicycle is more than metal and rubber parts, and it is not simply a means to travel from point A to point B. The meaning of that bicycle might be determined by asking a few questions. Is that individual riding for fun or to get from place to place? Because a rider wants to or because that person has no other choice? How will physical changes to the street, the neighborhood, or the city affect the rider and others? For example, in the Vista Del Mar neighborhood of Los Angeles, an automobile lane was repurposed into a bike lane in 2017. This project, which backed up traffic and angered drivers, only lasted a few weeks before the automobile lanes were restored. 2
The three books in this review all describe and historicize how the bicycle and bicyclists have affected the city. Christopher Armstrong and H. V. Nelles’s The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company examines an instance where the bicycle inadvertently became an instrument of protest against a specific societal change (the provision of streetcar service on Sundays). Evan Friss’s The Cycling City provides a history of the so-called “bicycle craze” in the late nineteenth century and its effect on urban areas in the United States, and Melody L. Hoffmann’s Bike Lanes Are White Lanes serves as a reminder that the benefits of the bicycle and the modifications to accommodate it were not applied evenly to all races and social classes in the United States. As the bicycle figuratively rolls through history, from the days of the Bicycle Craze until the present, it gains and loses various meanings.
Armstrong and Nelles describe the effort made by both the streetcar company and various citizen groups to allow streetcars the opportunity to provide Sunday service in late-nineteenth-century Toronto. Toronto was a “City of Churches,” and Protestantism played a large part in the city’s political and civic life. Strict Sabbath-keeping laws prohibiting work, or certain other activities on Sundays, abounded. When Toronto’s first streetcar company began operations in 1861, one provision in its thirty-year franchise stated, “No car shall run on Sunday.” Advocates for Sunday streetcar service, along with the streetcar company, convinced the city aldermen to put a measure authorizing Sunday service on the ballot in 1892 and 1893. These efforts failed, but in 1897, Torontonians finally voted yes to Sunday streetcars.
The final vote, however, would have failed but for substantial changes in civic leadership, voter rights, citizen behavior, and streetcar company ownership. Armstrong and Nelles detail the impact of mayors and city councilmen, the impact of geographical changes in city districts, and the impact the new owners of the streetcar company had on the possibility of Sunday streetcar service. The pro-Sabbath political elites of Toronto formed groups such as the “Lord’s Day Observation Association” and made every effort to oppose Sunday streetcars. Labor groups supported Sunday service with some hesitation, as they did not necessarily want their workers to be required to work on Sunday. Even in such an outwardly pious city as Toronto in the late 1800s, political activities were not always above board. Paid voters called “pluggers” were hired to vote a specific way and influence elections; bribery (known as “boodle”) of governmental officials, as well as accusations of the same, was rife.
Surprisingly, despite the title, there is relatively little mention of bicycles in The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company. Canada enjoyed a “Bicycle Craze” the same time as the United States; tariffs against imported bicycles and parts helped Canada to develop a strong bicycle industry of its own. 3 But this merits only a couple of pages (pp. 169-171) of discussion. The “revenge” refers to streetcar ridership after the start of Sunday service being somewhat lower than expected, due to people opting to ride bikes instead of streetcars. (A large part of the local bicycle business was owned by certain Methodists who had opposed Sunday streetcars—hence the title). After the coverage in eleven chapters, readers might expect that the “revenge” would involve the pro-Sabbath “saints” handing out free bicycles, and the streetcars running empty as the “good people of Toronto” boycotted them. But this was not the case. While bicycles shaped Toronto, and other larger Canadian cities the way they did U.S. cities, Revenge simply does not provide enough detail to the bicycle’s function. Readers might deduce that the meaning of the bicycle, at least indirectly and temporarily, was that of a protest against the Sunday streetcars. Ultimately, the effect of the bicycle on streetcar ridership was short lived. The bicycle craze ended in Canada as quickly as it did in the United States. And streetcars continued to run in Toronto—seven days a week—to the present day.
Evan Friss’s The Cycling City provides a history of the bicycle craze in the United States. He provides a special focus on how bicycles changed, how people predicted they would change, and how bicycles affected the form and function of urban areas. Although bicycles in some form or another, including the fanciful but dangerous “high-wheeler” type, had existed from the early 1800s, the development of the easier-to-ride “safety bicycle” around 1876 enhanced the popularity of the instrument in the 1880s and 1890s. 4 Before the bicycle craze, most people travelled by foot; those who could afford it rode in horse-drawn carriages. In cities, streetcars or “omnibuses,” pulled by animals, were also available. But the bicycle was unique in that it enabled people to travel longer distances under their own power.
Bicycles were initially expensive, about $125, or at least $3,000 in 2017 dollars. Consequently, bicycling was the province of the richer members of society. Some people cycled for recreation. Cycling clubs, made up mostly of more affluent individuals, held promenades and races in New York and other major cities. Some of these clubs were quite exclusive, others were more egalitarian. Nearly all were racially and ethnically segregated; minorities and ethnic groups created their own clubs. For an individual in a cycling club, especially one of the ones catering to the higher social classes, the bicycle meant more than just transportation or recreation. It was a marker of high social status.
As more bicyclists took to the street, questions arose as to how this new vehicle should interact with the current street users—pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, and rail transit vehicles. Bicyclists, especially the “scorchers” travelling at a high rate of speed, scared horses and menaced pedestrians. After a series of confrontations between bike riders and police, cities developed laws and rules for bicyclists. Cyclists, generally from the more affluent classes, formed groups such as the League of American Wheelmen (LAW), which advocated more favorable access for bicycles on the city streets.
The bicycle craze was also a force for improving the road network, both inside and outside of urban areas. Most roads at the time were unpaved or minimally paved, suitable for draft animals but dusty or muddy for pedestrians and bicycles. In some places, roads were paved with wood or stone blocks, providing an uneven surface hazardous to bicyclists. At first, the LAW and other cycling clubs produced maps and rated the suitability of roads for bicycling. Beginning in 1896, the LAW promoted a “Good Roads” campaign, which brought the cyclists into the political arena as they lobbied for better-quality road surfaces. Although this improved the roads for bicyclists, it marked the beginning of the repurposing of the city street. Thereafter, the city street was less of a gathering place and more of thoroughfare for vehicular travel. This function of the road intensified as the United States entered the automobile age, although in more recent times, urban planners and civic advocates have begun to question that philosophy.
Some cyclists advocated for improved public streets, but others favored the development of separate paths for cyclists. Cities such as New York, Seattle, and Minneapolis built extensive networks of bicycle paths in the late 1890s. There were also the big dreams of cyclists and investors, such as Horace Dobbins’s elevated California Cycleway, which was to extend between Pasadena and central Los Angeles along the bank of the Arroyo Seco. The first segment between Pasadena and South Pasadena opened in 1900. However, lack of funding prevented any further extension, and the small portion that was built was demolished within a few years. Similar elevated bikeways were proposed in New York and Chicago but never constructed. Other cyclists, however, rejected separate bicycle paths. The LAW and other advocacy groups, which had fought hard for improved public roads and the rights of bicyclists to use them, felt threatened by the development of bicycle paths. If more paths were built, they opined, laws might be passed that restricted bicyclists to the paths and banned them from the street.
This generated a division within the bicycling community that still exists to the present—bicycles as vehicles, with a right to the public street, versus bicycles as recreational devices, to be used on separate paths. More precisely, the debate regarding “vehicular cycling”—for example, riding a bicycle following the same rules as an automobile, taking up lanes as needed, rather than being encouraged or forced to use separated bicycle lanes and paths—continues to this day. 5
As the bicycle craze peaked around 1895, however, mass-production of bicycles, along with a growing second-hand market, made them more affordable to more people. The working classes, however, used a bicycle as a way to access their jobs and were less interested in bicycling as a recreational activity. The use of the bicycle for practical commuting increased. Messengers and doctors on house calls employed the bicycle on their duties. For these riders, a bicycle was of little significance other than a means of transportation. Riding a bike held little, if any, meaning such as a social status.
Friss also demonstrates that the bicycle, which, along with the electric streetcar, enabled people to live farther than walking distance from their jobs. This was the start of suburbanization. Cities could, and did, change by spreading out. Unlike the streetcar, however, bicyclists were not constrained to a fixed route (track) or a set schedule. Neither did they have to pay any fares. Some commuters rode bikes to their nearest rail station, then took the train into town. In a few cities, trains and streetcars even offered facilities for carrying bicycles.
The bicycle also meant an improvement in one’s physical and mental well-being, as well as that of the urban area. Bicyclists began taking trips outside the urban area, both short day trips and picnics. Longer multiday journeys across the countryside were possible and popular. Riders welcomed this escape from the noisy and dirty cities of the 1890s. The exercise that riding a bicycle provided, whether inside or outside the city, was also extolled by doctors and other health experts. Cycling, they reported, ensured the health of future generations. Urban reformers also imagined bicycles replacing draft animals and their manure, or steam engines and their noise and exhaust. The smooth paved roads the bicyclists demanded were easier to keep clean, further improving the urban environment. Cities started to set aside land for parks, attracting cyclists while further beautifying the urban landscape. Cyclists, with proper lighting, could even ride at night, a period usually associated with crime and vice.
No history of the bicycle craze would be complete without mention of the influence the bicycle had on women. Friss carefully addresses this topic. The advent of the safety bicycle brought new freedom to women, particularly after misplaced concerns about the effect of bicycling on the female reproductive system were debunked. 6 Existing social norms such as appropriate clothing and behavior around unfamiliar men had to be adjusted. Traditional dresses were not amenable to biking, but more comfortable clothes such as “bloomers” were considered too extreme. So-called “New Women” challenged etiquette guidelines, presumably paving the way for the “women’s liberation” movements decades later. For these women, the bicycle meant a new freedom of movement, as well as a symbol of opposition to the social strictures that had formerly restricted their activities. A number of well-known women’s rights activists, among them Frances Willard, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, became staunch bicycle advocates as well, citing the independence and freedom the bicycle provided to women.
By 1900, however, the bicycle business had dropped almost to its pre-craze level. Membership in the LAW and other cycle clubs declined. Was the newly developing automobile to blame? While the very first autos hit city streets in the late 1890s, and sales began climbing around 1901, people were not switching to cars yet in large numbers. Only with the mass production of Ford’s Model T in the early 1910s would automobile ownership and use increase significantly. Yet Friss recognizes that the auto was already capturing the imagination of those who once said that bicycles would improve the urban way of life. Bike manufacturers became auto manufacturers. The American Automobile Association (AAA), based roughly on the “Good Roads” efforts of the LAW, was founded in 1902. Less recognized but equally significant was that when nearly everyone could own a bicycle, elites who ran the LAW and other advocacy groups slowly lost interest. The bicycle was no longer a marker of high social standing; neither was it the device that would form the city of the future. Instead, the bicycle was left to the domain of children, athletes, and those who were unable to drive an automobile. A brief revitalization of interest in bicycling occurred during the Great Depression in the 1930s (not mentioned were the “Victory Bicycles of WWII”) and also in the early 1970s. Friss concludes with the revitalization of cycling in the 1990s and beyond, as today’s environmental and traffic concerns are causing commuters and urban planners to consider the bicycle’s role on our busy streets.
If Revenge is a faded treasure map requiring intense study to appreciate its contents, and The Cycling City is a comprehensive history of the bicycle craze, then Bike Lanes Are White Lanes is a neon sign warning of the inequalities present in American bicycle culture and bicycle advocacy. Melody L. Hoffmann, a self-described bicycle advocate, makes it clear that both bicycle advocacy and bicycle scholarship have not adequately covered the experience of those of lower economic classes, ethnic minorities and immigrants. She uses the term rolling meaning to signify the change in the bicycle’s meaning from context to context.
Much of what has been written about the history of bicycling has not adequately covered the experiences of African Americans and other minorities. While Cycling City acknowledges that cycle clubs were segregated, the discussion is limited. For example, the LAW did not admit African Americans as members, and its bylaws still contained language prohibiting them from joining until 1999—four years after the organization renamed itself the more gender-inclusive “League of American Bicyclists.” 7 The debate about whether bicycling was an appropriate activity for a woman almost exclusively focused on white women—black femininity was an alien concept during that time period.
Hoffmann argues that most current bicycle advocacy in the United States originated with the environmental movement of the late 1980s. It focused on promoting the environmental, civic, and health benefits of bicycling, while criticizing and opposing the automobile, development of roads and freeways, and American “car culture” in general (or as Orwell might say it, “Two wheels good, four wheels bad!”). Most of the recent bicycle advocacy efforts envision bike lanes and paths filled with white urban professionals, leaving their cars at home and riding expensive late-model bicycles to and from work. Occasionally, one of these riders might even leave the path and share a lane with automobiles, if they feel it necessary. Since riders are on environmentally friendly bicycles, rather than a polluting car, they can rationalize and justify the risk of being harassed or even run over by an angry driver. Upon arriving at work, a shower and a room where bicyclists can change into business attire may await. To this rider, the bicycle and the act of cycling to work is a symbol of pride and virtue: by riding a bike, the cyclist is looking after the environment as well as his or her own health.
However, the “invisible” cyclist, which bicycle advocates largely ignore, is an African American or Latino rider, cycling in the early morning darkness. They ride a second- or even third-hand bike, on roads with nary a shoulder, let alone a bike path. Many cannot afford a car, or perhaps legal reasons (driving under the influence [DUI] conviction, immigration status) prevent them from obtaining a license. Transit may not be operating at the time they travel, or the fare is prohibitive. Such riders risk not only collisions with cars but also confrontations with police or immigration officials. 8 For these riders, bicycling to work is nothing but a marker of poverty, something to be escaped (most likely by eventually getting a car and a license) as soon as possible.
White Lanes describes three situations where cycling advocacy has run up against racial and social class issues. Riverwest 24 is a bike festival involving people riding a bike around the Mllwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood for twenty-four hours. This neighborhood, located across the Milwaukee River from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is a diverse neighborhood in a historically segregated city. Although Riverwest is ethnically diverse, the bike festival is not. The event attracts mostly white participants, including “punkers,” hippies, and other “countercultural” types. Strategies to diversify involvement in the festival by incorporating African American businesses, such as a barbershop, along the route have been unsuccessful. Many African American residents do not feel that they are a part of the “bike culture” of Riverwest.
Portland, Oregon, the darling of progressives and urban planners with its bike paths, light rail, streetcars, urban growth boundary, and liberal politics, has a nasty racial history that, in many ways, remains unexplored. Most African Americans in Portland were forced to settle in Albina, a neighborhood in the city’s less desirable northern section. The neighborhood was bisected by U.S. Interstate 5 and the large hospital complex of Legacy Emmanuel. Both were built with little, if any, input from the residents. Albina was largely neglected by the City of Portland until the 1990s when whites seeking lower cost housing began moving into the neighborhood and gentrifying it.
The debate over a proposed bike path on Williams Avenue, a north-south street in Albina, reflected the racial divide. The new residents wanted facilities such as bike lanes; original residents considered these lanes a symbol of disparate treatment, systemic racism, and a reminder of the neglect and disinvestment that Albina faced over the past decades. The incumbent African American residents did not consider bicycling a priority; improving public transit was more important to them, as bus service is scanty in some places. The city has proposed a few historical monuments here and there, reminding the new residents of the historical significance of places in Albina, but it will take much more than that to mollify the longtime residents.
Minneapolis, another city often considered progressive and forward-looking, expanded its network of bike paths in an effort to attract what urban theorist Richard Florida calls “the creative class.” 9 These are young, highly educated, and highly skilled professionals—not workers in manual labor or service jobs. Florida and others argue that having a large creative class in a city attracts businesses (and their tax revenues). Consequently, many cities attempt to attract these young workers by providing or encouraging certain urban amenities, including bicycle paths. The presence of bicycle commuters signifies a vibrant urban setting, attractive to the creative class. In Minneapolis, city officials are developing “The Greenway,” a region-wide system of bicycle trails. Again, as in Portland, some of these trails traverse economically disadvantaged portions of the city, and there have been questions as to who will benefit.
Minneapolis has also implemented a bike share network called “Nice Ride.” Riders hire a bike at one station in the city, ride to another station, and leave the bike there. Initially, the bike stations were placed in the downtown areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul. No stations were placed in the economically disadvantaged and heavy minority section of North Minneapolis, inviting criticism from social activists. The costs of renting a bike, plus the requirement to use a credit card, were additional barriers to the Nice Ride system.
Hoffmann concludes by offering a few solutions. Bicycle advocates can start working with people in neighborhoods and communities in an attempt to get them to “buy into” a given project. Bike-sharing programs can reduce their rental fees and allow riders without credit cards to access bikes. More importantly, bicycle advocates should encourage these communities to develop their own bicycle advocacy and culture. But this will not be an easy process, as the rifts between ethnic communities and mainstream culture can be deep. Bicycle advocates also need to be aware of other societal factors, such as gentrification and police harassment, affecting access to, and desire to use, bicycles by disadvantaged and minority communities.