Things can get better

It's easy to get discouraged and wonder if anything matters. But positive change is possible.

I was sitting on my porch the other day. It was a beautiful spring day.

Everyone in Cleveland is ecstatic on days like this this time of the year, me included. Sometimes I just walk around and stare in wonder at the flowering trees, etc. It doesn’t seem real. Especially just a few weeks of a winter that always feels like it would never end.

Anyway, as I was sitting there, four bicyclists passed, right at the same time, right in front of my house. I don’t think they were together. And I almost started crying.

More than 10 years ago, me and a few other cyclists would ride up and down my street. At the time, it kind of sucked. The street was sort of treated like a high-speed cut through. We spent years complaining about it, trying to get these incremental improvements.

It could be a great street to bike on, we always thought, with the mature trees. It was really a neighborhood street. Wasn’t meant to be a busy through-way. If we could just get traffic under control, more people would bike on it, it would be a lot nicer.

Everyone thought we were basically crazy people (sorta). And all these politicians sort patted us on the head, told us kinda what we wanted to hear and then did nothing. But we just never shut up. We came up with this plan, we wanted “traffic calming.” It took like 10 years and this horrible ugly political process where neighbors were basically tearing each other to shreds. But, the city (just barely) went through with it. They added all these innovative street treatments. And all the people who used it to speed through just kind of went away.

And we were right, I guess. At least when the weather is nice. If that traffic was calmed, it does seem like people enjoy biking on it. I was sitting there watching people ride by and thinking about the connection to things we did and said in the past and what they were doing, biking along on a beautiful spring day. Such a positive thing.

I have worked in the field of sustainable transportation for more than a decade and it’s a difficult fight. People lose their minds about things like traffic calming. Any kind of change is very hard fought, takes this big leap of faith.

Anyway, the street is just a tiny thing. I don’t really hang my hat on that specifically. But compared to all those years ago, it was better. A few people were actually positively impacted.

Anyway, I wonder sometimes and get discouraged about what I’m working on. Public meetings that planners do are depressing. Public affairs work can get you down in general. It’s not always the way it should be ideally. Finally, when your job is writing etc., advocacy, you don’t always get to see the product of your work very clearly. It’s not like constructing a building, or even mowing a lawn.

Also, one of the big things you're contending with is people’s disbelief. That anything could change or get any better.

I was ranting about this on Substack notes the other day. About how we should do more to protect kids from dangerous drivers. I feel like that should be sort of non controversial. But I guess it’s natural enough that a lot of people were kind of skeptical. First, that anything was any better in the past. Second, that anything could change.

Even a few years ago — before the pandemic — people used to at least have license plates almost all the time. Even if we could just get back to that, it would be an improvement!

I am guilty of being too pessimistic too sometimes. All day yesterday, I was looking forward to the Cleveland Cavaliers game. I am OBSESSED. I was literally like 3 hours till the game. Two hours till the game… Just all day. I love the playoffs.

Anyway, I sat there and I watched the whole game, up until it was almost over. It was kinda hard to watch. Donovan Mitchell, our best player, was really struggling shooting 0-7 from the three point line. Cade Cunningham was out of control. He sunk this three with 2.5 minutes left and they were up by nine. I just said, there’s no way they can win this and went back to bed.

Anyway, I woke up at 5 am and laid there feeling depressed about the Cavs. Thinking to myself… the season is probably over. They’re going to be eliminated. It was dumb to be so invested.

Then I woke up and went downstairs a couple hours later. And my husband says they won. I didn’t believe him. But it turns out as soon as I went to bed they launched this crazy improbable comeback. The whole momentum shifted. Then they went into overtime. And the Pistons started missing every shot they took.

The Cavs ended up winning by four or something. Hopefully tonight they are going to finish them off and go to the Eastern Conference Finals. I’m stoked. I think they’ve really got a shot against the Knicks.

I don’t know why I care so much about basketball. Anyway, the point is, things can turn on a dime. Things can and do change.

I was down last week in Texas. I was invited down there to speak at a statewide conference on traffic safety. I was kind of on the fence about going, for reasons I don’t want to get into. But the organizer said, Texas cities are really some really great work on traffic safety. I was excited to hear that.

When I first started writing about biking and pedestrian deaths, Texas was terrible. The State Department of Transportation (this is just my read) could have cared less how many people got run over on suburban arterial roads. It was laser focused on the “real work” of widening every highway in the state. The bigger the better! They stopped short of openly mocking people like me when we raised objections, but not by a whole lot.

So anyway, it seemed like progress to be invited down there to keynote a safety conference. When my book about pedestrian deaths was first published, 5+ years ago, it was considered kind of controversial to discuss it the way I did. To lay blame. One east coast state invited me to give a talk and then withdrew the invitation. Ha. It was too hot a topic for them. Now what I’m saying is basically accepted. it’s only been 5 years.

Austin, which is where it was, was doing some amazing work. They added bike lanes everywhere. It seemed like. I just picked up one of those rentable e-bikes by the side of the road and rode around one night for an hour or so, no idea where I was going. And almost the whole way it was on these nice paths or on these protected bike lanes that they threw up little bollards next to. I was impressed.

They’re spending $25 million a year adding sidewalks. And they have a Safe Routes to School program with 18 employees, not including their team of crossing guards. If Texas could get its act together on traffic safety, it would be a big deal. Nearly a third of pedestrian deaths in the country happen in just two states: California and Texas. Last I saw 800 or 900 people a year were killed trying to walk somewhere in Texas.

Of course, it’s still no utopia for people on foot. You can really see that once you get out of the downtown a little ways. But it really seemed like Austin changed the way it does streets and was putting the pieces together so at least some people could walk and bike. I think Houston and Dallas are farther behind. Houston has a new mayor that is reversing a lot of street safety projects, which is depressing. But having one of your major cities operationalize all that, that has got to have an impact.

Austin passed a big transit levy, to build light rail, a few years back and they’re still waiting on Trump to release the funding. The Trump USDOT has just not released any transit project funding since it has been in office, which is arguably illegal (It’s Congress that has the power to appropriate funds, and they appropriated it for transit.)

So anyway, I’m not necessarily taking a victory lap here. But still. Things can and do change. They can change for the better. Even now, when things seem bleak in certain ways, we shouldn’t lose sight of that and our own power and impact.