Is a bicycle-mad Portland merely faddish? Is the “green” way overlooking practicality and common decency?
The car may not be ideal, but is what the modern city was designed around. For Portland—a city wearing a “progressive” name-tag with pride—to deny this, is but a regressive tact.
People come and go from the city by car. To oppose such reality may be to reject one of the “Blessings of Liberty,” of which our Constitution stated to protect.
History shows that Portlanders have rejected the bicycle culture before. Leading-up to the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland was bicycle-crazy. Then something happened…
Fred T. Merrill—bicycle merchant and city councilman—sold 8,500 bicycles in 1898 alone, the most west of the Mississippi. Merrill’s 1903 council campaign slogan declared “Keep Portland Wide Open.”
Bikes kept riding and Merrill re-elected. For bicycles remained more practical than the horse-and-buggy or the expensive motor car.
Curiously, bicycle ridership nosedived that election year as unwanteds took to bike-riding and outlandish costumes. Louder, even, were their bells ringing ad nauseam.
Thus, Establishment women—the bike-buying class—chose to reject riding in large measure, since, said Merrill, “the favouring women of the North End took to the wheel.” High society-types found recreation elsewhere.
Will today’s hard-core urban cyclists stop when, say, a BMX on Broadway cuts them off? Unclear. Behaviors will change, however, when the public realizes that freedoms and liberties are impinged upon by a select few.
Consider: bicycles are a minor annoyance. New legislation, however, has marginalized the car—and, thus car-drivers—in deference to the urban peloton.
“Green” or not, cars still allow citizens more freedom and remain bulwarks of our economic engine.
Are bicyclists and their enthusiasts missing the forest for the trees? Perhaps…and perhaps they should be wary of a coming class of one-speeds.
