Atlanta’s bicycling population has been rising fast for several years now. It’s the e-transport revolution in action.
You can see it at an event like Sunday’s Atlanta Streets Alive . Despite the morning thunderstorms, and despite its location far from the madding crowd, there were people. Lots of people.
Most of the people, I regret to say, were white people. The route goes through neighborhoods that have been majority black for over a half century now, like West End and Mechanicsville. It’s true that the gentry has moved into these areas (especially Summerhill, which benefits from being next to Grant Park) but that doesn’t explain the event’s demographics.
The sad fact is that the e-transport revolution in Atlanta is mostly an upper middle-class phenomenon. People who can afford e-bikes find them glorious, but the key bit in this sentence is “who can afford.” Any poor person who can scrape up the cash for a cheap e-bike has to worry about security in ways I don’t, since my house has room for the bike.
But there is hope, represented by the picture accompanying this note.
Electric cargo bikes, like this one, driven by women with kids, often with the kids, are changing the game. You may think nothing of running over this old man and his Edison. If you read about one of these things getting rolled, with mom and her offspring splattered all over the highway, you’re not going to “whatabout” it.
Cargo bike use is spreading across the middle of town. From Decatur to West End, wherever there are safe routes available, families are saving money and creating quality time on these things. They are how change happens.
