Building the Cycling City

by Melissa Bruntlett

  How Tactical Urbanism Helps Bostonians “Demand More”

  “As an architecture student, when you first get into school they tell you you’ll never be able to see the city the same way again,” explains Boston-based architect Jonathan Fertig. “But for me, I started to look at streets that way, more so than buildings. Streets and public spaces became the things where I asked, ‘Why is the city like this? And why hasn’t anything changed?’”

  Through advocacy and activism, Fertig has spent the better part of a decade directing his passion towards demanding better public spaces in his hometown. After 10 years fully immersed in academia, the thought of simply putting in his 40 hours and then going home was just not enough, and it was the act of attending his first Critical Mass protest ride that inspired him to channel his “free time” into lobbying for safer streets.

  “It was incredibly empowering,” recalls Fertig. “I just remember feeling so energized riding while people yelled, ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’ Taking over a 15-meter- [49-foot-] wide street, curb to curb, in the middle of downtown and thinking, ‘Wow, this is the first time the city feels like mine.’” The confrontational element of Critical Mass appealed to Fertig—known on social media for being outspoken with his opinions—and the event helped to identify a possibility for the streets he hadn’t recognized before. While Critical Mass no longer exists in Boston, he uses online tools like Twitter to share ideas and photos from every city he visits with the hopes of inspiring change.

  Like many professionals and activists in urban-planning and transportation circles, Fertig has found social media to be a powerful tool in promoting the good happening around the world, and it has given him a much greater understanding of what could be done for Boston. It has also been the ideal forum for challenging those content with the status quo, allowing him to be a consistent—and persistent—voice for advocacy groups that simply don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to the online platforms. As @rightlegpegged, Fertig has found that access to a global audience with which to share images and concepts can be invaluable: he can tap resources previously unavailable to him and build a reputation for wanting more from his hometown.

  Most unexpectedly, while he has developed a considerable online following within the urban planning and active transportation community, Fertig has also been able to use social media to gain access to politicians, with most of the Boston City Council following and actively engaging with him. “I’ve developed a relatively close relationship with the Boston Council president Michelle Wu, and I attribute that to my Twitter activism, which of course is a growth of my ‘on the street’ stuff,” Fertig declares proudly.

  The ‘on the street’ stuff is what Fertig is best known for, having made a name for himself through tactical-urbanism interventions in Boston. Like projects in Rotterdam and New York, his projects in Boston can be whimsical in their attempt to shed a positive light on what is possible, but their inception often comes from a much darker place.

  On Friday, August 7, 2015, Anita Kurmann was riding her bicycle along a notoriously bad stretch of Massachusetts Avenue feared by many Boston cyclists—despite the paint-buffered bike lane—when she was struck and killed by a truck driver turning right onto Beacon Street. The City responded by promising to move quickly to improve safety for bicycles. In Fertig’s opinion, they did not move swiftly enough. Spending $50 of his own money on traffic cones and flowers, he set them up along the painted bike lane, proving that with very little cost, an improvement could and should be made. Shortly after his installation—the pictures of which went viral on social media—the City stepped up and installed physical barriers, and thus began Fertig’s adventure into the world of tactical urbanism.

  Since that initial project, he has set up a crowdfunding webpage to raise money to temporarily upgrade other painted bike lanes in the Boston area, and he has solicited suggestions from others who would like to see such installations. His Provos-like “happenings” have included “People-Protected Bike Lanes”: one-off events where activists gather in a row to form a “human shield” along a painted bike lane in order to draw attention to a substandard and exposed cycling facility.

  The support he has received has far outweighed his expectations, helping to enable a lighthearted collaboration between himself and local artist Becca Wright, lovingly known as “Bikeyface” online. Wright is also famous for her tongue-in-cheek comics depicting North American bicycle culture, often challenging common misconceptions about the types of people who ride bikes—they aren’t all “the fit and the brave” in her depictions. Over the course of nine months, she developed a selection of graphics in her signature style, which Fertig then printed at life-size and placed along various routes to serve as bold and highly visible reminders that drivers should, for example, “look for bikes before opening your door.” While the City of Boston quickly removed them within 24-hours, they were so effective that the nearby City of Cambridge commissioned a re-creation of the series in more-permanent Dibond, an aluminum composite material, to be placed along some of their own cycling routes.

  “I don’t feel like any of this would have happened without social media,” Fertig marvels, attributing the funds he has raised to simply being consistently visible online. And while his prominence has certainly played a role, he is also quite clever in how he uses social media, notably in the inception of the now widely used hashtag #DemandMore: “I used ‘demand more’ when I upgraded the first intervention at Mass Avenue and Beacon Street. I was at the office and somehow ‘#DemandMore’ just sort of came into my mind, and I remember thinking that I should really stencil this. I plotted it out on our large-format printer, cut it out, grabbed a bottle of spray paint from the office, and just spray painted it on the ground on my way home.”

  Much to Fertig’s surprise, not long afterwards groups in New York City and San Francisco started using the hashtag as well, and his simple message—that we should demand more from our cities and from our elected officials—started getting noticed and used online more generally. “It’s nuts whenever I see it now, and it makes me so happy,” he exults, and in fact Fertig has begun to use that hashtag for all of his interventions as a way to “tag” his work.

  Figure 5-4: Jonathan Fertig’s humorous collaboration with local artist “Bikeyface,” which reminded Boston drivers to watch for cyclists. (Credit: Jonathan Fertig)

  Since his first intervention in 2015, Fertig has pushed the City of Boston to take street safety seriously, with many of his illegal acts quickly followed by the official installation of physical barriers or other remedies. While he does view them as a positive step forward, Fertig worries there is potential to lose the plot, especially as advocacy groups and government agencies focus so much on the “Vision Zero” movement that aims for a road system with zero traffic fatalities or serious injuries. “I think the shift in bike advocacy over the last two years to use Vision Zero to advance things we were otherwise advocating for on the ‘good urbanism’ rationale is an interesting twist,” Fertig explains. “I’m a little conflicted about it—it’s obviously good when it comes to preventing deaths, but it’s sort of taking up all of the air in the room. So in some sense there hasn’t been as much room for discussion about why cycling for transportation is a good thing in and of itself.” He points out no one is going to be against preserving and protecting lives, but the argument for better street design and reducing the number of cars in our cities, which would do far more to extend and enrich lives than building a few protected bike lanes, can get lost when the focus is on one particular outcome.

  Fertig asserts that until attitudes around motor vehicle collisions change in North America, it will be impossible to achieve the Vision Zero goal across the continent. He notes at the time of the Stop de Kindermoord movement, around 450 Dutch children annually were dying as a result of car crashes, whereas in the United States of America, that rate is currently hovering at almost three times that number: a shocking 1,200 children. While the US p
opulation today is admittedly much higher than that of the Netherlands in the 1970s, if Vision Zero is to truly take hold, it can no longer be acceptable to sit back in complacency while over a thousand kids suffer horrific deaths each year with little or no consequence for the drivers at fault, all for the sake of convenience for the automobile.

  In the meantime, Fertig continues to direct his passion for better streets into new tactical-urbanism activations. And he is seeing change, although not as fast as he would hope. “I think, in the long run, Boston can start to resemble Dutch cities. I don’t see a lot changing in the next 5 to 10 years, but I think in the next 40 to 50 years it will happen,” he reflects hopefully. He has watched the group of advocates and politicians in his corner grow over the last decade, which he attributes to the organizing power of social media. “Public meetings that people used to ignore are now in their faces, and you start getting the turnout,” he says. “The ratio of people coming out to speak in favor of improvements is great, and we tend to overwhelm the dissenting voices now. I think we’re all benefitting from, and trying to leverage, the power that this medium has, while attempting to make shit happen faster.”

  While change may be slow in Boston, compared with what advocates like Fertig would like to see, it is inevitable. The number of people moving into urban centers grows each year, and many cities are realizing they can’t build their way out of congestion. Something has to give in order to accommodate the influx of residents wanting to use their streets more efficiently and more comfortably.

  Cities like Amsterdam, which experienced very similar battles nearly 50 years ago, provide the proof that citizens can be the voice of reason and can demand action from their elected officials. Platforms such as Twitter and Instagram are offering a new way to share information beyond our immediate circles, delivering powerful before-and-after images of a city once clogged with cars that now puts people first. This helps even the most auto-centric cities realize that “If they can do it, so can we.”

  Fertig sees the combination of social media and tactical urbanism as part of an increased demand from citizens for better mobility options. This is especially true when it comes to creating safe space for cycling—a natural progression towards building human-scale cities that are better places to live, work, and shop. “At some point we are just going to have to understand the math: the most efficient way to move people through the city is to put them on bikes,” claims Fertig. “I don’t think it’ll happen as soon as a lot of us would like, but I think it will in the next 50 years.”

  06 THINK OUTSIDE THE VAN

  Bicycles offer a number of advantages in express delivery operations: they can bypass traffic congestion and make up to two times as many stops per hour than a delivery vehicle. The total cost of ownership over their lifetime is less than half that of a van. And crucially, they generate zero emissions, which reinforces our own ongoing program to minimize our environmental footprint and support city governments’ efforts to promote sustainable city living.

  — JOHN PEARSON

  CEO, DHL Express Europe

  With the distinct impression that cycling is simply part of the DNA of Dutch cities and people, it’s easy to overlook the fact that one particular pedal-powered machine has not enjoyed the same enduring ubiquity as the omafiets and opafiets. For outsiders, it would appear that the traditional bakfiets (“box bike”) has long been a staple of family life in the Netherlands, but in fact, the popularity of these impressive hauling machines is a relatively new rediscovery of an almost lost and forgotten design.

  The bakfiets, or “cargo bike” as it is more commonly known in English-speaking countries, is a bicycle (or sometimes tricycle) with a large wooden box attached to the front, originally designed for hauling goods from A to B. Much like the original safety bicycle, which would later become the visual embodiment of Dutch cycle culture, the origins of the bakfiets lie across the North Sea in industrial England.

  In 1877, John Kemp Starley invented the Coventry Rotary, one of the first chain-drive tricycles, opening up the possibilities for carrying cargo a decade before the safety bicycle hit the streets. Deemed less cumbersome than a horse-and-carriage, these freight trikes were perfect for tradesmen transporting bread, milk, and mail—pretty much anything that needed to be delivered from a business to the customer. As with the standard bicycle, these new machines eventually made their way onto Dutch streets, and while they enjoyed notable success in bigger cities, early generations of bakfietsen were more common in rural areas, largely due to fewer constraints around space for parking and storage. In the early days of the automobile, economic factors also played a role, as wealthier city dwellers were quicker to adopt the new motorized forms of transport than were their rural counterparts.

  Despite a rise in car ownership in the early twentieth century, the bakfiets maintained its role in urban delivery, and it soon proved useful for transporting children as well—that is, until the arrival of motorized trucks, vans, and buses, and a corresponding increase in the size of goods being transported. Where once the largest needs for hauling were daily groceries and small postal deliveries, there was now the need to deliver large appliances, which the bikes of the time simply could not accommodate. Similarly, in the late sixties, as families became smaller and car ownership spiked, the need for a specialized cargo bike—and the price tag that went with it—dwindled. In the following decades, the humble bakfiets all but went extinct, becoming a nostalgic storefront decoration recalling a bygone age, or ending up in a nearby junkyard.

  Lost But Not Forgotten

  Fast-forward to the late nineties, when after seemingly disappearing from existence for 20 years, the bakfiets began a quiet resurgence. But once again, the credit doesn’t necessarily go to the Dutch. In nearby Denmark, industrial designers adapted the traditional tricycle to a sleeker, faster design, with a narrower front box and the two front wheels replaced with a smaller, single wheel connected to the front fork to improve maneuverability and responsiveness. Thus, the two-wheeled “long-john” style was born—the most recognizable brand being the popular Bullitt bike.

  Around that time, Jos Sluijsmans—a lawyer who lived and worked in Nijmegen—was riding his recumbent bike to work every day and found himself wondering why so many of his colleagues were commuting by car when they had such great cycle infrastructure at their fingertips. That daily puzzlement eventually inspired a career change, with Sluijsmans dedicating his energy and passion towards cargo bikes. “At a certain point, I started to make a living by cycling, and one of the first things I did was start a bike messenger company,” he recalls. “But I wasn’t the type to ride a fixie [i.e., a fixed-gear bicycle, popular with messengers] with a bag across my chest, and I felt cargo bikes could be used to do the transport instead.”

  Serendipitously, the local SPAR—a grocery chain—had brought in a cargo bike for deliveries as a part of a pilot for the Province of Gelderland, but unfortunately, due to changes to the store’s physical space, the grocer was no longer able to get it into the store. Sluijsmans saw an immediate opportunity and negotiated a deal whereby he would perform deliveries for the grocer as needed and, in exchange, would have free use of the bike for his own needs as a bike messenger and for his own personal errands.

  Inspired by its Danish counterparts, the bakfiets has enjoyed a bit of a resurrection throughout the Netherlands. Sluijsmans recalls hearing stories of gatherings at Amsterdam’s Vondelpark as early as 1996, where families would meet up with their cargo bikes and show off their ability to transport children. But their potential as freight vehicles was not really being discussed. Having used his own borrowed bakfiets for such a purpose, Sluijsmans felt a responsibility to demonstrate what was possible. “Internationally, you could see in other countries that people were using bikes more for fun than practicality, as we were in the Netherlands—usually by artists, the fringe, more creative people,” he recalls. “I thought, in order to get people invested in cycling you have to make it more fun, mor
e attractive, and of course showcase the designers that are using different materials to make bicycles.”

  Figure 6-1: A bakfiets rental scheme in Groningen, which—at €12 per half day (about $15 USD)—is a big hit with the student population, especially on moving day. (Credit: Modacity)

  In 2012, after organizing a number of bike festivals over the years, Sluijsmans launched the very first “International Cargo Bike Festival” in Nijmegen. With just a few weeks to organize it, he invited a few of the people he knew with cargo bikes of their own, as well as a handful of companies that specialized in bakfiets design. He hoped that, if nothing else, it would be a fun gathering of like-minded people. “Some private companies came from around the country as well as twenty-five people with their own cargo bikes,” Sluijsman remembers. “But what was remarkable is that not all of them were from Nijmegen.” An additional but nice surprise was that, with no major promotion, he had also managed to attract three representatives from a Chinese electric-motor-design company. Not bad for what started out as a small event in the east of the country, far away from bustling streets of Amsterdam.

  “I thought it was fun, so we tried to do it again the following year with a little more preparation and more people involved,” Sluijsmans notes proudly. The International Cargo Bike Festival has since continued as an annual event, growing each year to include more vendors from around the world and attracting a global audience. It has also increased in size and importance through a strategic partnership with the European Cycle Logistics Federation, which was first founded at the ICBF in 2014. But as Sluijsmans points outs, despite its growth not only in popularity but also in the caliber of attendees—most notably shipping giants such as DHL—the welcoming spirit is never overlooked: “If you don’t have anything fun happening, who is going to come to a cargo-bike festival other than people who already have cargo bikes?”