Political Cartoon: Bankruptcy Lane

Barry's and my November political cartoon (now with more of Becky's thoughts about transportation below!):

This comic was inspired by current events. Some background: 82nd Ave is a 4-lane road that cuts through East Portland. It's flanked on both sides by shopping centers and grocery stores, car dealerships and auto repairs. It services the busiest bus line in Oregon, which is often delayed by traffic. It's also one of the most dangerous streets in the city for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians. The city is thinking about turning the outer lanes of 82nd into bus lanes that double as right turn lanes for accessing the businesses. This has several perks, in my opinion. If you want to hear me testify about it, you can watch the public meeting on YouTube. (The link goes right to my 2-minute talk. I value your time as well as your money.)

Some business owners on 82nd are up in arms, threatening to sue, convinced that bus lanes will drive their customers away and destroy their businesses. I'd be more sympathetic, but we just went through this about a mile away. In 2019, SE Foster Rd was transformed from a 4-lane street into a 2-lane street with bike lanes. Local business leaders made their objections known.

I hope I did it justice in the comic.

Barry and I saw this store regularly. It was quite the neighborhood fixture. After the bike lanes went in, the posters slowly came down. Here's a more recent photo of the store, apparently thriving:

You'll notice I drew a lot more people on the sidewalk in panel 4, as well as bicyclists in the bike lane. Study after study shows that bike lanes and walkable streets are good for businesses. When there's a buffer between the sidewalk and the cars and trucks zooming by, sidewalks feel safer and more pleasant to walk on. Anyone can get hit by a car, but old people, young people, and disabled people are especially vulnerable to traffic violence. I made sure to include them on the sidewalk. Similarly, the bike lane will attract those "lycra guys" that people love to hate, but it will also allow a safety-conscious woman to do her grocery shopping by bike.

Barry's stage directions for panel 4 were "Same dude and same store, obviously. Maybe the season has changed, though?"  I went back and forth on what kind of weather to draw in panel 4. Will critics claim that bike lanes are only for summertime, or that Becky the cartoonist thinks bike lanes magically make the weather nicer? Maybe. In the end, I wanted panel 4 to look much more vibrant than panels 1-3, so I went with it.

I decided to draw the bike lane supporter walking into the store, having biked there. Readers needed to recognize them from panels 1-3, despite being fairly small and facing away from the reader. That's why I gave them red hair. I also decided they needed a really bold design on the back of their jacket. This is what inspired the general look of the jacket. I loved those lapels. The jacket seemed like something you'd find in a thrift store, so I thought about what organization the jacket might have come from. A bowling team! I'm so happy with the result.

Since Barry posted this cartoon, I've attended a second meeting about the 82nd Ave bus lanes and a Zoom meeting about a bicycle-pedestrian loop around central Portland. The more public meetings I attend, the more I notice a pattern: People who support bike lanes, buses, and pedestrian safety often show up with studies, statistics, and relevant personal experiences. Opponents are more often generically worried about "local businesses" and traffic (and getting knocked down by a lycra guy on an e-bike).

I'm struck by the assumption that businesses are kept afloat by people who drive there and park directly in front. This is probably true for a suburban BestBuy, but not for a city storefront with one or two street parking spaces outside. If we want to have better air quality and less traffic in dense areas, we need to have fewer people driving over and circling the block for the closest parking space.

There are plenty of parking garages in downtown Portland, but drivers seem to think it's unfair to expect them to park there and walk a few blocks. After working customer service in a theater for over a decade, I understand the impulse to give customers what they want, and the fear that customers will disappear if they don't get it!

It's sad, though. If you, as a business owner, assume that

• everyone needs to drive to your business

• there's too much traffic and not enough parking as it is

then you're assuming you will never have more customers than you have now, only fewer. That sounds like a stressful and unhappy mindset to be in! No wonder you don't want any changes.

I get frustrated, though, that people keep showing up to express concern about what might happen if bike lanes/bus lanes are installed, as if this hasn't been done over and over around the country. There are probably some people at every meeting who sincerely haven't thought about this issue and don't know about the years of study and planning behind a public project. Other people just don't want change, or they hate bicyclists, or whatever. So they show up to meeting after meeting, raising the exact same questions about this strange new phenomenon called a bus lane and refusing to hear the answers provided. Other times they find liberal-coded excuses to maintain the status quo. For example, one woman was concerned that building a bike path with a tree-lined median would involve cutting down trees in an adjacent park. She may not have been operating in good faith.

It would feel so good to be snarky on a microphone in front of dozens of people. But I try to reserve the snark for cartoons and blog posts. I give the project team a Becky's Eye View of the streets--which I've been biking on for 13 years!--and try to give skeptics one or two big-picture ideas to chew on. I really think that we need to transform how most people get around the city, and that it will be better once we do.