Here’s the unedited version of last week’s Business in Vancouver column:
Sometime in the last year – while the smart money people in North America were preoccupied with credit default swaps – bike-sharing turned into a billion-dollar industry.
I may be exaggerating when I say “industry.” But not “billion.”
“Banks and private equity firms are eyeing a growth market for the bike industry,” reported Bike Europe. “The money involved in such systems is huge. In return for the Paris Vélib system with its 20,600 bikes, JCDecaux obtained the rights to exploit 1,628 billboards in Paris. The company expects to realize € 600 million in advertisement turnover over the course of the 10-year contract.”
Cities all over the world are now looking seriously at public bike systems, and so are the large corporate entities that had previously dismissed the bicycle as not much more than a well-intentioned toy. Now they realize that JCDecaux could control a market of unknown but potentially staggering size, and they want a piece.
This summer, a social policy analyst with the Netherlands, Loek Hesemans, came to Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, B.C. to see what the Dutch might learn from us. (Yes, from us!) And what he discovered was the irony of our political culture: “Cycling in North America is clearly a leftist thing,” he reported, “although it ties in with conservative North American values like independence, freedom and the ability to manage for oneself.”
This ideological paradox has had an unfortunate consequence: common-sense activities like cycling are given a left/right slant and used to fight another battle in the culture wars. For many leaders in business and government, the sustainability agenda was just too anti-growth to be acceptable. Warnings about climate change and peak oil were dismissed as exaggerated if not outright fear mongering by those sceptical of capitalism and human ingenuity.
Consequently, in North America calls for change to our high-energy, big-box way of life were dismissed. The tone was set by Dick Cheney at the beginning of the Bush presidency: “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue,” he said, “but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” Real men don’t ride bikes.
How annoying, then, if the sissies and hippies were on to something. The average person, assuming that leaders and the powerful know more than they do, concluded that if a problem were really serious, serious people would do something about it. Since they were not, the problem couldn’t be serious. And if the public was not concerned, why should the politicians take any risk? Why should the media pay attention? It was a formula for inaction.
Skilful leaders, however, are now in the process of repositioning. Actual and undeniable change in nature, not scientists’ warnings, has moved the agenda along. Cities, states and corporations rush to declare themselves carbon neutral. Greenhouse-gas goals are set, carbon taxes discussed. Strategic plans struggle to reconcile sustainability and aspiration.
For instance: Gordon Campbell’s repositioning of the government’s transportation message. His announcement a few weeks ago may have looked to be a $14-billion transit plan. But it was really a new vision for our urban region.
Up to last week, transportation in the Lower Mainland was all about Gateway, a road-and-bridge package ostensibly about the movement of goods. The message, however, was that future development south of the Fraser would be conventional low-density, single-use sprawl, with cars and trucks as the only realistic modes of transportation.
The Province’s transit plan sends a different message: we can and must plan, design and live in an urban environment that is not car dependent. Gordon Campbell explicitly connected the dots between urban form and climate change: “… new comprehensive neighbourhoods around transit stations … compact housing and working communities … lower energy use, decreased greenhouse gas emissions and a lighter environmental footprint.”
Sounds like EcoDensity – another looming battle where mutually supporting goals will be diced and split for political purposes – unless the issue positioned as a win-win. Yes, more people on the same land, but a more livable, affordable and sustainable community as a result – all slicked-up by the marketing department to appeal to status-conscious aspirants.
Cycling, to the dismay of the bikesheviks, will become more commercial, status-driven and impure as it becomes more mainstream.
But as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been repeatedly saying: “Being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do….”
