Chris Rall and his two eldest children on a family bike.
Our family is a biking family. For us, that means being healthy, active, and having a lot of freedom and mobility. Biking is how our family chooses to get around, but building a family-friendly city means having streets that can help people get around in any number of ways—walking, biking, transit, scooting, or driving.
My wife Becky, our twins, and I moved to Portland, OR in 2009 to live closer to extended family, but the city’s reputation as a biking city was another draw. We are a family that mostly bikes to get around. Our twins were on balance bikes not long after learning to walk, and we strapped them into a bike trailer as soon as they could hold their own heads up.
All ages and abilities (AAA) bicycle infrastructure. Graphic via the City of Vancouver Transportation Design Guidelines [pdf]. A diverter can be seen on the “local street bikeway.”
Portland’s bike network is mostly built around neighborhood greenways, also known as bike boulevards. These are neighborhood streets that have diverters and speed bumps to discourage and slow down car traffic, while allowing people on bikes to get where they need to go throughout most of the city.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) developed a policy several years ago to make sure neighborhood greenways stay bike-friendly. As a result, they add additional diverters and traffic calming to existing neighborhood greenways when they determine that cut-through traffic volumes have increased too much. Diverters are a relatively inexpensive way to prevent cars from passing through an intersection but allow bikes, creating a safe, low-stress environment for biking. Each new diverter is a like a breath of fresh air—you can breathe a little easier because you feel safer.
The youngest Rall learning to bike.
Investing in the kind of infrastructure to make biking safe and convenient and land-use policies that allow housing, jobs, and services to be built within bikeable distances are important elements of a community supportive of family biking. However, a family-friendly city prioritizes a range of options rather than forcing everyone to drive. My older son bikes to middle school, but his twin sister chooses to walk. My wife has been taking the bus more often lately to meet up with friends. I’ve used by-the-minute car rentals to meet my carpool ride up to the mountain for skiing. Having lots of transportation options gives us the freedom to get around in the way that works best for us. And that makes for a happy family!
Chris Rall is the Outreach Director for Transportation for America, a program of Smart Growth America, and is based in Portland, OR.