Peace and Planning

I’ve recently enjoyed the privileges of living in a democracy, where members of the public can sign up to speak at district department performance oversight hearings. Councilmembers listen to testimonies of folks from all walks of life, and my fellow citizens wait for hours to share three minutes of their gripes, gratitude, and grist. I recently testified live at two performance oversight hearings (missed the sign-up for another but sent in written remarks for the public record) – one for the District Department of Transportation and one for DC Health. Since I probably collectively spent about six hours prepping for six minutes of testimony, I figured that qualified as bloggable content…for those inclined, you can find it here. TL;DR: we are failing on so many fronts, and I’m grumpy about it.

You might pick up on a thread connecting them. As a cyclist and pedestrian (on my 7th month of 10k+ steps/day, no less) who lives in arguably one of the most transit-connected neighborhoods in DC, I have been getting more involved in advocacy efforts to increase bike/ped safety and convenient alternative modes of transportation, especially as traffic violence has skyrocketed during the pandemic. (DC hit 40 traffic violence fatalities last year, a high not seen since 2007 and clearly going in the opposite direction from Vision Zero. What’s more, this traffic violence disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities.) This impulse was strengthened after a local Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner said that bike lanes were “ageist” and “sexist” (perhaps she forgot that cars were ageist since people below 16 can’t drive them and that many women would like to ride a bike – particularly for the shorter trips they are more likely to make as opposed to their male counterparts – but don’t because they don’t feel safe riding a foot away from speeding one-ton hunks of metal).

What I’ve noticed in these debates is that 1) they aren’t debates (the public hearings are a great example of people getting up on a soapbox, saying their passionate – and probably polarizing – piece, climbing back down again, and not having an opportunity for true dialogue and inquiry) and 2) they tend to forget the climate change crisis we face and need to actively combat. I live in one of the most “progressive” cities in the country and I would guess that a vast majority of my neighbors would agree that climate change is real, it’s bad, it’s caused by human activity, and one of the primary human-activity drivers of climate change is greenhouse gases emitted by single-occupancy vehicles (SOV). If you care about the future of our ecosystems (not to mention public health), you would recognize that we need to make alternatives to SOV that are convenient, safe, affordable, and accessible – which includes supporting bike safety infrastructure on *public* roads. Yet, that line of inquiry is often missed in the debates about SOV alternatives…so I’m on a mini-mission to plug that into public discourse wherever I can.