Greater Greater Washington gave me the chance to contribute an article on this topic! Here's the link. (The images below appear in the article.) When approaching from the West, the sight of this mural on the side of Osman & Joe's Steak 'n' Egg restaurant is a sign of victory. From a dead stop (if you respect the four-way stop sign at the start of the block), you have climbed yet another hill in DC. [Photo attribution: Lorie Shaull. Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.] I'm not a cycling purist, so I have no problem walking my bike up a particularly ferocious hill. But if my trip takes me over several moderate hills, which frequently happens in DC, I'd rather keep pedaling. Especially if walking to the nearest bikeshare takes me on a detour, I'll be disappointed if I have to walk for significant stretches of what’s theoretically the biking portion of the trip. That’s why I invented the Osman & Joe's Steak 'n Egg Bikeshare Challenge. Reaching the Steak ‘n’ Egg Restaurant from the West requires climbing Chesapeake's moderate hill, which features a four-way stop sign one block from the destination. The triathlete riding the single-speed spin bike in the Sadie Dingfelder’s article apparently managed to pedal throughout the uphill race, but my “dad bod,” as they say, almost certainly couldn't handle that. Might the gearing of any of the other bikeshare cycles be better suited to my fitness level? To find out, I personally tested bikes from Capital Bikeshare (CaBi), JUMP, Mobike, Lime Bike, ofo, and the new three-speed Spin. With their electric-assist power, JUMP bikes can handle much more intimidating hills. I recommend making a reasonable gear selection when starting uphill from a dead stop, but even this wasn't an issue during the Steak 'n Egg Challenge. Maybe I should have made this portion of the Challenge more interesting by eating Steak 'n Egg takeout meal while I pedaled. (My spouse pointed out that anything I call a Steak 'n Egg Challenge ought to involve enjoying the delicious food this landmark restaurant provides.) Mobike, Lime Bike, and ofo failed the Challenge, as far as I'm concerned. The grinding feeling of battling gravity and laboring to bring the cranks around made me realize I'd rather walk even this moderate hill. I held out some hope for Spin. I noticed Spin recently switched their single-speed bikes for three-speeds. Maybe they created custom gearing with DC's hills in mind? Alas, Spin fared no better than the other non-electric bikes. Spin confirmed in a tweet that its upgrade to three-speeds was for all its bikes and not a special accommodation for DC's hills. CaBi was the biggest surprise. Earlier in my CaBi ride, I gritted my way up a hill that was slightly steeper than the Chesapeake approach to Steak ‘n’ Egg. It wasn't pleasant. On a subsequent downhill I realized, though, that I had tackled the hill in CaBi’s middle gear. Would the bottom gear let me achieve a decent cadence during the Challenge? Spurring my CaBi steed into action from the stop sign at the bottom of the hill, I noticed a significant difference. I'm not sure if CaBi uses a custom gear hub or simply a smaller chainring, but CaBi’s bottom gear felt much more like a granny gear than that of any of the competing cycles. With a steady spin rather than a painful grind, I reached the top and felt like I could keep on going--perhaps even to DC's highest point at nearby Fort Reno. Personally, I'd like to feel that the new dockless ventures--which are trying to make good impressions in DC during their trial period--are investing at least some effort in customizing their offerings to DC’s specific needs, including its physical terrain. Consistent with what may be an emerging pattern, JUMP stands out from the other dockless ventures. Instead of sprawling across the entire United States (or, in some cases, the globe), JUMP focuses on only two cities, both of which happen to be hilly: San Francisco and D.C. Regarding hills, JUMP clearly meets our needs. JUMP also experimented with an eight-speed transmission. Given JUMP’s electric boost, I don’t miss the extra gears, and I actually appreciate the simplicity. But I would love to see the other dockless companies take a page out of JUMP’s book. A Mobike cycle with a rear light (still lacking, I believe?), a seat for taller riders (improved, I think, by still not great), and eight speeds? Or even just a smaller chainring? I would try that in a heartbeat. I heard about another bikeshare service, Zagster, from the comments section of this Washington Post article and learned more by reading this piece in Greater Greater Washington. The latter describes Zagster as a “hybrid dockless” system because, although you need to end your ride at a designated Zagster dock, you can lock the bike if you take a break or make a brief stop on your route.
The Zagster app identified the closest Zagster dock as a spot in Bethesda. I headed over to check it out. The app provided a button that allowed me to send the map location to my default maps app, permitting me to get turn-by-turn audio directions and liberating me from the walking-phone-zombie state in which I sometimes find myself when trying to find a Lime Bike. More than once, while hunting for a Lime Bike in an alley or on a college campus where I wasn’t able to type a traditional street address into Google Maps, I have wished for a feature similar to Zagster’s. Using the map feature of the Lime Bike app and trying to determine whether I’m getting closer to the green dot gets frustrating. The apps of the other dockless companies don’t seem much better, although Mobike gets kudos for its feature that makes a nearby bike chirp. Alas, even with Zagster’s nifty feature outsourcing the map directions, I never succeeded in finding the dock. I switched back to Zagster’s map app--no luck. Zagster’s map indicated that the dock had two bikes and that its location was called “Bainbridge.” I inquired at the front desk of the Bainbridge apartment building, and the desk staffer kindly and competently gave me directions to the Capital Bikeshare (CaBi) station a block away. Zagster? She had never heard of it. At that point, I was having a hard time thinking why anyone would want to use a Zagster bike when a CaBi station was so close. In College Park, I believe, Zagster provides coverage where CaBi does not. Other than JUMP’s introduction of the electric pedal-assist feature, which flattens hills and gives me greater confidence when riding in moderate traffic, reaching neighborhoods that CaBI doesn’t serve seems to be the main appeal of the dockless initiatives. Having said that, I am willing to keep an open mind and would like to ride a Zagster bike. Hopefully, I’ll be able to write more about Zagster at that point. The arrival of dockless bikeshare in Greater Washington (especially in the District) has reignited my passion for biking--and talking about biking. The one thing holding me back? How to square this passion with a commitment to dismantling racism and working to promote justice.
Common ground certainly exists, like reducing reliance on fossil fuels, working towards improved air quality, providing affordable alternative transit options, and reducing pedestrian injuries. But anyone paying attention to racial politics in Washington, DC knows that "bike lanes" is a loaded term. In his last mayoral campaign, Mayor Adrian Fenty ignored the racial and class-based implications of these discussions and, as Derek Musgrove and Chris Myers Asch explain, lost as a result. In Sadie Dingfelder's mainly-humorous article about triathletes racing bikeshare cycles across DC, one cyclist literally got blindsided by a car. At the same time, I got blindsided by a comment in the discussion section of the article, which reads, in part: --- Blacks who live in the projects in Southwest (roughly south of M St and between the ballpark and 4th St) hammer the locks to destroy them, and then steal the bikes. I have seen them do this to Mobikes and other brands. I have seen them ride the stolen bikes along 4th St, near Safeway, and up to 600 Maryland Av SW. I have also seen damaged Spin bikes along P St SW. I emailed Spin to inform it of the bad neighborhood and received a reply that the company was glad to receive the information. I would recommend that the dockless bike companies routinely send their employees around this area to reclaim their respective bicycles. --- If I had any remaining illusions that I could talk about biking in DC without talking about race, the comment above certainly clears things up. So I'm going to continue with my plans to blog about biking in DC, but that also means I will necessarily need to blog about race. And class, and sex, and gender, and more. Of these, I have a feeling race will end up being the biggest elephant in the room. As a white male, I have many blind spots, so I'd better call them out from the start and then get to work trying to achieve better vision by educating myself, learning from peers and experts, and engaging in conversations that can focus attention on bias and injustice. Regarding the article comment, I would like to point out the danger of using anecdotal observations to make a broad statement about "blacks," "the projects," a "bad neighborhood," withdrawing services, and a company being "glad to receive the information." Robin DiAngelo calls this type of discourse "danger talk" because it feeds misinformation and leads to harmful policies that cause real injury to communities of color. We notice what we are conditioned to notice and filter out things that do not fit our preconceptions. A white person misusing a bike will not feed into a narrative of dangerous white people abusing property, but a black person commuting via bike (or riding for fitness, pleasure, or any other purpose) can all too easily be misperceived as a criminal riding a stolen bike. Even if the author of the comment personally observed a black person breaking a bike lock, is it really responsible to share the offender's race when describing the incident? Or to describe the incident in a public forum at all in a situation where readers can easily infer racial implications from the references to the neighborhood? Making public comments like these is irresponsible because it feeds stereotypes and leads to further misunderstandings. These things translate into policy decisions like withdrawing services from PoC neighborhoods while over-policing them. All of this feeds into a vicious cycle. And people of color get hurt. And sometimes killed. It is our responsibility to think critically about and resist these narratives so that we can generate real interracial understanding in Greater Washington. And, if we can help promote alternative transit and the expansion of bikeshare services while we're at it, even better. |
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