City Driving Sucks

Let's be real about this

Every time I start off writing one of these I’m reminded what a weird alternate universe I come from.

But regardless, people like me, urban cyclists, are always fighting with people who are hyperventilating about congestion or parking every time there is a road diet or something that’s proposed. Sometimes it’s kind of comical. People LOSE THEIR MINDS about this kind of thing.

Here’s the thing though, it sorta makes sense when you realize this one thing: Urban driving sucks — a lot. I think, we need to just acknowledge this.

I don’t even own my own car. And half the reason is because driving in Cleveland sucks so much. The traffic lights OMG. Who decided to put a traffic light at every goddamn intersection in Cleveland in 1975 and then forgot about them? It’s like they were dropped down and timed at random. It’s so inefficient. I can’t get over it.

My mother-in-law lives five miles away, and it takes me almost a half hour to drive there because I can’t drive on a highway. That means I average about 16 miles per hour. (Maybe it only takes 25 minutes but still. Maybe 17 or 18.) I can do 12 on a bike no problem.

Sometimes — rarely — I have to take a truly long journey by highway. In a half hour by highway, I could be way out in the boonies — one of the exurbs that grew around highway commuting like Richfield, which is close to 30 miles away and in a different county.

Look at this. This is a screen shot I took of some directions I got from Google Maps recently. Notice how driving almost twice the distance to go by highway takes about the same amount of time as going half the distance by city roads.

I think this is something we should talk about more. This is one sort of unexplored of aspect of transportation inequity. Too many resources are going to making it easier to drive far distances. And not enough funding and attention is going to make it easier (and safer) to drive short distances.

Here’s the thing. We have all these discussions about equity in transportation. And usually, and maybe this is self interested, those of us who are trying to promote more walking and biking, we pretend like poor people use transit and biking and walking almost exclusively. And it’s true that lower income people are more likely to use those modes. But the average poor person in the U.S. still drives. Even poor people who don’t have cars in the US still rely on other people with cars to drive them to work a big percentage of the time.

So here is the way I think about this. Rather than dividing people in to two groups: Drivers and non drivers, the way we sort of do in these discussions, I think this is more accurate:

(I made a chart!!) This is a generalization but I still think it’s largely accurate.

This group of folks who drive but drive used cars, maybe older cars and mostly don’t use highways on a daily basis. That’s a large group of people and many, many, many of them are poor or have moderate incomes. AND they are being shortchanged. Because city streets, especially in lower-income cities like Cleveland, have not been optimized for safety and efficiency the way highways have.

Not only does prioritizing highway facilities over local roads benefit higher income (who can afford new/very reliable cars) people disproportionately, it also is sexist, because men make longer car journeys than women, who are making more caregiving, shopping trips that rely more on local roadways.

Getting back to my original point a little bit. Too much time is spent fighting (imaginary) non-drivers/cyclists vs. drivers. But I think that is unnecessarily zero sum.

The assumption that drivers don’t have valid complaints -- I don’t know about in Manhattan but in Cleveland, they do. The roads are in bad condition, the traffic signals are inefficient and neglected, road striping is haphazard and sometimes dangerous — even for drivers. And in Cleveland, many of those drivers are vulnerable economically (to a car crash) or physically (in the event of an injury crash). And they are being exposed to unnecessary risk and delay. They are frustrated and pissed off — rightfully so. And it makes them madder when they are gaslighted by cyclists.

I think when we propose street safety improvements, we should also be looking for opportunities to make driving less of a hassle, where possible. Now, granted there are really some scenarios where there is sort of a zero-sum aspect, for example a classic bike lane vs. parking lane scenario.

That being said, I don’t think it makes sense to frame safety improvements for bicyclists or pedestrians as a loss for drivers. I think these safety projects should also be looking for opportunities, for example, to reduce unnecessary delay for drivers.

Maybe adding a turn lane will help things? Maybe slower speed limits would be more tolerable to drivers IF we could coordinate traffic signals at the same time, give them a “green wave” so that their actual journey time is shorter.

I think safety improvements for cyclists and pedestrians were just be more palatable if we can also say “here is how we’re going to try to make your life easier, better, even if because of your job, or where you live, or your physical limitations, you’re just going to continue driving. That’s okay, this isn’t about making things worse for you and we want you to be safe and have great mobility also — you deserve that.”

This is especially important for lower and moderate income drivers, who are disproportionately burdened by the hassles of urban driving. And let’s be honest even those of us that are pretty hard core cyclists still do some driving or are driven by other people and need to get places and want to be safe. Safe streets can benefit everyone.

Let’s go.