Margins for Error

For much of the last year, my partner's car has been showing various interrelated malfunctions that have kept it in and out of the dealership. For much of that time we've had a loaner car from them, but not all of it -- and not for the last month or so. Instead, and at various points throughout the year, my Aventon Abound has been serving as our "second car," with my partner taking mine (her commute is much longer and harder to bike). 

The trusty steed.

This has given me an appreciation both for my ability to do this and for the limitations that our urban design here in the Quad Cities (and more generally) imposes on someone who is not bike commuting by pure choice (as I have done before while in possession of a working car) but by necessity (as I am now).

And it's doable. We've been doing it. But in doing it, I've become (more) aware of the constraints that operate to let us do it, and the small margin for error that would flip it from possible to untenable.

1. Timing 

The single biggest issue I encounter with biking around the city is how long it takes to get places, and thus the timing of closely ordered events. That is to say: if I get off work at time X, where can I get in time X+5 minutes? X+15?

Biking adds buffer time to all those decisions. It shaves some off too (ask me about not getting in the car line for kindergarten dropoff!). But by and large, the more that things have to be bam-bam-bam tightly scheduled one after another in different locations, the harder biking here gets. Pick up the kids after school? Sure. Do that, then a grocery run? Yeah. Do that, a grocery run, AND get the kid to theatre practice? Maybe we're pushing it, or we need to figure out how to rearrange things to build in more time.

2. Roads

The impetus for this post was the way that the road closures for repairs around my house have us hemmed in. This pushes my bike from safer streets with more space and/or less car traffic to the few roads everyone is going down on their car. This makes things take longer (more traffic), feel less safe (more cars) and often makes for a bumpier ride (the streets they haven't fixed aren't in good repair and now I can't avoid them).

Please fix the dang roads, yes, but also please don't fix them all at once so I have to go with cars.

Also please do fix them; can't say how often a road gets closed but the bike-relevant issues with it don't actually get fixed.

3. Vagaries of Employment 

I am blessed in a job that is close to my house (we bought the house first, so I phrase it that way; one could also say I am blessed to be able to live near work). I am also blessed with a flexible job where I can often do work from home, or on my own schedule, outside of certain ironclad times. 

If either of those things weren't true, yeesh.

Even my partner's job (which can be fairly flexible) is too far and too many evenings to make this doable. Any combination of going further, staying longer, or going back and forth would make this less possible.

And don't get me started on jobs that assume you can move locations midday but don't actually provide transportation for it.

I guess there isn't a lot of conclusion here other than this: I am pretty blessed in my ability to use the bike here the way I do, but it's fragile. In my ideal city design we'd want to make it the opposite: almost everyone would be able to do this, and it would be robust and flexible. For now, I'll count my blessings, but I encourage you to think about how you can or cannot do this in your life--and how your city could change to make it easier.