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Separation is Key: An interview with Jonathan Maus

By: CHP | Posted on: July 9th, 2008 | 4 comments | Share:
Categories: Interviews • Policies and Laws • Public Health

Jonathan Maus is the founder and editor of BikePortland.org, a daily, online news magazine covering the bike scene in Portland. His site has been covered by such national media as USA Today, National Public Radio, and the New York Times. Portland’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance said that “the Portland bike community is stronger, and the powers of self-examination and conscience are greater, and the presence in conventional media is better, all thanks to BikePortland.org.”

In this interview with CHP’s Chris Palmedo, Jonathan talked quickly and passionately about his devotion to the Portland biking community. He says he’s not a particularly fierce advocate for bicyclers; however, a strong message still gets through: increased thinking, funding, and usage of bikes, and bikeways are all good for various aspects of society, including our health.

Jonathan, tell us about you, your website, and what you seek to accomplish.

I’m just a self-taught journalist, really. I’ve pretty much “learned by doing” on the website. It started as a typical, personal blog about what was going on with biking here in Portland.

When I first got here, I was amazed at Portland’s bike culture. In California, where I’m from, people were biking mainly for sport and recreation. I didn’t consider the broader cultural aspects until I’d moved here. In 2005, I helped the Oregonian start a rudimentary bike blog, and eventually left to launch BikePortland.org. Over time, BikePortland changed from a personal blog into a news source that is now focused on more objective and more serious journalism.

And what were you trying to do — What was your inspiration?

I knew that Portland an epicenter of a lot of great ideas about biking and I started to realize that everybody in the scene — the race people, the people in the city who were planning the bike paths, the subculture groups, the daily bike commuters — they were all operating in silos. Nobody knew what everybody else was doing. As I moved around all these different groups I found myself telling people about all these other things they weren’t aware of.

I was always saying to people “you and this other person should get together and help each other out.”  I began to ask if there could be one place that was a central point where everybody in the bike community got their information. I didn’t think of it as news yet. I just put as much information as I could from all the diverse biking groups.

Increasingly, BikePortland is not as much about advocacy. It’s a source of news. Just because I cover biking, a lot of people assume that I’m trying to pursue an agenda …

But on your “Close Calls” section, you say you’ll “draft a letter with all the comments attached and send it to the appropriate politicians and city leaders…”

That was actually written several years ago, and I’ve changed a lot since then. I probably wouldn’t write that same post now. I want to create the biggest tent possible. If you start to advocate very strongly for one position or another, a lot of people won’t even come inside. My goal is to get everyone in the tent, and then give them the news and information and let the community figure out the advocacy part. I have the luxury of not having to worry too much about advocacy because there are so many people in the bike community who are making their strong voices heard. Now there’s a richer conversation, and people don’t write it off as an extremist site. And that’s why the site has grown so much, because it’s followed and respected by a wide variety of audiences — even outside the bike community.

You sound like one of those 1960’s radicals who mellowed out over the years. But instead of taking thirty years, it took you three.

That’s because unlike some other advocates and bloggers who treat this as a part time hobby, I have devoted a ton of my personal life to doing this. I want to do it right. Also, the movement has changed in the last couple of years. Biking has gotten a lot more mainstream. We’re reaching a tipping point with gas prices. It’s a different issue now.

That’s why I’m talking to people like you about public health. This is no longer about bike lanes and commuting to work. It’s now about closing streets for cars and opening new streets to walkers and bikers. It’s about a broader cultural shift involving how we get around. That’s really happening — cities all across the world, and even across America, are starting to have car-free events on a large scale. Chicago, San Francisco, New York. That is a huge signal.

I’m not saying that I’m not an advocate at all. But I wear the hat more judiciously now. And that’s because I’ve found I can be more effective wearing a news and journalism hat.

It’s interesting to see that Critical Mass, which used to have some influence, now has none. That’s not how we advocate here. Critical Mass represents an older way of trying to get what we want: demand it, and create antagonistic relationships with cars and, inevitably, the police. Unfortunately, a lot of police officers still have that baggage in their brains, and it impacts how they deal with people on bikes, and how the media deals with it too.

What I’m trying to say is “we’re your grandmas, your dentists, and your daughters, and we’re moving around.” It’s not about telling motorists to get a life. We’re just trying to be able to ride safely. It’s about social justice, equality — and public health.

What are some of the biggest bike policy successes in Portland?

Several of our bridge crossings are great. The approach and crossing of the Hawthorne Bridge is just fantastic. Unfortunately, though, it’s not big enough anymore because of the high traffic of bikes and pedestrians. One thing that’s great there are the markings they put up to try to separate bikes from peds, which is also what they’re doing in Europe. We’ll be doing more of that in the future too. Eventually, we’ll even separate different speeds of bike traffic.

The best paths are totally separated from cars — places like the Springwater Corridor and Eastbank Esplanade. When there are no cars, there’s almost no danger.

Conventional wisdom has assumed that the Springwater Trail is a recreation path. Legislators and policymakers tend to think like that. But the new way is not to focus on recreational paths, or bike lanes. Rather, it should be looked at as an interconnected system of transportation. That’s what’s really important. The Parks Department actually conducted research on these paths and learned that a lot of “recreational paths” have super high usage percentages during peak commuting times. So now they’re trying to demonstrate that these issues need to be taken into consideration more seriously for transportation funding and policy.

The other really good bikeways are ones where you have low traffic streets that have been designed and engineered to discourage cars, and encourage bikes. These are through streets that go for miles without dead ends and usually parallel major arterials. They’re called “bike boulevards,” and good examples are Clinton Street in Southeast Portland and Tillamook in Northeast.

So bikers tend to know about them and gravitate to them?

Yes. There’s a high awareness, but despite what exists, there’s still not enough engineering and facilitation. They need to turn stop signs for the bikes. They need to put signs on the crossings that indicate that this is a bike street. Other cities, like Vancouver, BC, do this. In Portland, there is some education from the city, and you’re beginning to see some signage indicating bike use, because they have enough bike traffic where they need to make it safer.

High usage is important to making things safer for bikers. This “safety in numbers” phenomenon has been proven by numerous studies, by the way. The more people on the street biking, the safer biking becomes.

Now the bad — where in Portland is more work needed to help bring usage up, and make bikers feel safer?

Southwest Portland is lacking in pathways that are connected and safe. That has a lot to do with the topography there. To make a really good bikeway, it helps to have a grid, and to have streets that connect, and Southwest doesn’t have that. It also takes a tremendous amount of money to retro-fit places where there isn’t enough shoulder, where you don’t have enough facility to accommodate more space than two cars. There is an effort underway in Southwest to create a network of bike trails and bike boulevards, but it will take a while.
And everything outside of the inner part of the city is hurting. Outer East Portland is hurting. There are no facilities there, nor the Southern part of the City. Basically, all you have are bike lanes on busy arterial streets. It’s nice to have some paint, but they don’t provide any level of comfort. So as a result, nobody’s riding out there. We have to start identifying bike boulevard streets further out. And a lot of that is a funding issue.

What are some examples of other cities that do it right.

Vancouver, BC has put a lot more money and thought into their bike boulevards. Bike boulevards — streets that are prioritized for bike traffic — are the future of bikeways, at least in North America. So when you come to major cross street, and there’s a huge sign up on the traffic signal that’s got a picture of a bike, it’s clearly a bike street. When you hit the button, the light for the bike changes right away. They are well marked throughout the city, and there are lots of diverters, which means bikes can cut though passages where cars can’t go. There’s a lot of great engineering in Vancouver.

They even have names for their bike boulevards. The Mosaic Bikeway comes to mind. At many of the roundabouts, there are beautiful mosaics, public art pieces that tell you where the Mosaic Bikeway goes. And that’s how people give directions up there: “take the Mosaic to the Adanac Bikeway, and get to Union Street, and you’re there.”

Around the world, the places that have the high level of bike traffic that Portland is trying to get to are the places that have done more to separate bike traffic from car traffic. Unfortunately, in the U.S., we’ve been hindered from moving forward because there are still a lot of advocates who are pushing for greater integration. It’s a long and complicated issue, but in a nutshell, some people emphasize retraining car drivers and bike riders in an effort to share the road better. There are merits in this way of thinking, but it’s not the way to move forward. It’s not the way European countries have done it. It’s mostly an outmoded model that some people still cling to, which doesn’t do enough to make biking mainstream for people from 8 to 80 years old.

What they’re seeing in other countries with high ridership is that separation is key. A lot of countries have cycle tracks where bicycles are separated from the roadway, often with a cement curb. We’re really not going to increase the modeshare in a significant way unless we find more ways to separate traffic.

Of course, everything is changing quickly now because of gas prices. If you have a huge shift in culture about transportation, brought on by the expense of driving, all the engineering is out the window. It doesn’t matter what the city does, people are just going to start riding bikes. If you start doing Sunday Parkways every week, it would hasten a cultural shift, where it wouldn’t matter what paint is on the ground, it wouldn’t matter how much money the city spent on biking. People would just choose to bike, and eventually the money would catch up.

But it would be nice if government could plan for that, instead of react to it.

That’s true, but the conversation is changing very quickly right now. The advocates, the policymakers, the planners — they all have to adapt quickly because things were beginning to change even before the latest wave of gas price increases. Portland was already ahead of the curve, but now every major city in the world is talking about how to encourage more biking.

Let’s talk about health. How much do find yourself thinking about the community health aspects of biking — how the health of an entire population is affected when biking is encouraged, not just about the health of an individual who bikes?

I think it comes though in the way I report on the things a lot of people do in the biking community that exude health. The bike community is full of healthy people who are full of life. They are people who are creating things, and doing great things that are good for their own health, but also are encouraging of good health in the community.

Although I don’t focus much on how biking is healthy, I would say the message gets through.

What are the kinds of things people and governments can do to help make the change to get more people biking, and improve the overall health of the population?

What you’re talking about is barriers. It’s all about reducing barriers for people to ride more, or even take up riding. The biggest barrier is safety. If you’re a novice cyclist thinking about getting on the bike, and if you have to pass through even one dangerous intersection, that might be the one thing that prevents you from riding. And that’s even for people who are relatively fit. Think about people who aren’t even fit — they may be risk adverse. We’re never going to get people from 8 to 80 out there riding if it’s perceived as dangerous.

That’s why we have to advocate for more connected bikeways, and the car-free events are a great start, because they’d be a training ground for people to get out of their houses and try it out. Most people can bike, and have a bike, but they don’t feel safe or comfortable, so what better place to test the water than a community that’s shut off to cars, even temporarily.

People then get a taste of it, and they start moving. It takes hold, and you want to do it more. The endorphins take over. I’ve seen that with countless people. They try it out. Then they buy a good bike. Then they’re biking to work every day. Then they show up in a bike race…There’s something about the endorphins you feel when you ride a lot that really becomes transformational.

When I visited my family in California over Christmas, I was off my bike for a couple of weeks. We were mostly driving around in a car, and it really hit me how important my 25 minute bike ride to and from the office every day. I didn’t even grasp how transformational it is to have 25 minutes of aerobic exercise, that’s built into your day!

Barriers to entry also encompass knowledge of the route, and general “how do I do it?” questions. That’s why buddy programs are awesome. Any programs like commute challenges, where they give clinics, and tell people what they might need, what they encounter during commutes are helpful. It doesn’t take much in the way of barriers, like a question in one’s mind of why they shouldn’t do something before they just don’t do it. That’s just how we are as a culture.

Now if gas is ten bucks a gallon, all bets are off. More people will just wing it, and get on their bike — it won’t matter what the barriers are!

Also important is continuing to put out positive messages about biking. Public health messages, messages that the city respects biking. The bike box campaign was a good message that “the city actually cares about me” as a biker.

Community Health Priorities is an Oregon-wide effort. While your website concentrates on Portland, is there a place for bike advocacy, or the type of bike community that you have nurtured so well, outside of Portland?

I’ve covered state issues and legislation. I’ve traveled to Salem a few times to testify. For example the Vulnerable Roadways Bill created a new offense for anyone who inflicts serious injury or death upon a “vulnerable user” of a public way.

There’s a lot going on in Eugene for example. People in Eugene visit my site, and they take a lot of information to their bike meetings. Other people in other places around the state have started bike advisory committee meetings, and even around the country, because of what they have read on BikePortland.org.

Community Health Priorities all about moving health policy upstream. Why do you think it’s so hard for us as a society to get to a place where we’re proactively working toward good health instead of spending so much money and effort treating illness and disease as we do now?

I just wrote about a similar issue. The culture around policy and legislation in general is so reactive. Bike boxes in Portland happened after four deaths and near deaths in a very short time. The pressure was so intense from the community that the city finally did something.

But it costs less to prevent than it does to correct.

But the economic impact of prevention is still difficult to quantify. You don’t have the same industry as you do behind medical equipment, and drugs and hospitals. We just don’t have that kind of financial power. We’re still struggling to find money to put up signs that say “this is a bike lane,” much less fund major research studies that can demonstrate the health and economic impact of what we’re doing.

But yet, Vancouver BC does seem to get it. They put money into their infrastructure.

That’s because they’re further down the road of the cultural shift that needs to happen. For whatever reason, the American culture doesn’t value being proactive.

I mean, who’s here fighting the fight for these issues? It’s the nonprofits, the foundations. It’s not huge corporations with huge ad budgets, and it’s not government, at least not enough.

Imagine if we devoted even a percentage of the budget Tri-Met spends on busses, bridges, and the Max on improved bike policy! Every time you want to talk about a bike funding issue, it turns into a political situation.

And the media draws out the “eccentric” elements of the bike population.

Of course they do.

Now I have a better sense of what you were saying earlier about trying to take away the hysteria, and just say “we’re average people, we’re grandparents, and we would like an environment that encourages biking.”

That’s right. Biking has been adversely impacted by the media coverage. For example, I try to avoid terms like “bicyclist” and “motorist.” For me, I think of it as a person on a bike or a person in a car. But the media loves antagonism, with headlines like “Bicyclist does this,” or “bicyclist complains about X, Y, and Z.” The media encourages a mentality that it’s a battle of bikes against cars and to me that’s a short cut. To my model of thinking, people are moving around, and some are in bikes and some are in cars.

You have a popular website. Do you have advice to Community Health Priorities, which seeks to get Oregon to place health more prominently into our conversations, and move health funding upstream?

I’ve seen is that people really identify with biking, which has helped my site. In the future, maybe fewer people will identify this way, they way they do in Europe, where some cities have 40% bike commute rates. But for now, people identify with it, and are willing to make their voice heard. So if you can round up the people who identify with encouraging healthy living, public health,  and health in general, you will have a powerful constituency.

Partnering is important. For example, in some instances you can partner with the biking community to forward a message of health.

Ultimately, you should focus on the positive — the fun, the great opportunities, the x-factor that a lot of advocates miss. So much of my site is about fun, enjoyment, and entertainment. People need to be entertained. Some nonprofits ask me how to get more people to visit their site, and I say, it won’t happen as long as you’re complaining about the state of the world, and why you don’t have enough money, and why you need more money. There has to be something enticing and fun in every effort, and you need to emphasize that. No matter what you’re talking about, most people want to be entertained.

Some of my most popular stories are about the ZooBombers and the naked rides. But what happens after thousands of people read a story about a naked ride is that many get interested in funding discussions at the mayor’s office for the bike master plan, for example.  If all I talked about what how we need more money, and this bike lane is too dangerous, and we urgently need a new bike lane in that neighborhood, my site wouldn’t be nearly as popular.

There’s a group called Shift, that’s a real fun part of the bike culture, that’s responsible for Breakfasts on the Bridges, and other fantastic social events. They’re popular because they focus on the fun.

In fact, my word mark used to say “to inform, entertain, and inspire.” But it was too long, so I took out “entertain.”

But it will always be an important part of my website.

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