Who gets to cycle in Portland?

Dec 14, 2023

Affluent, athletic cyclists have long dominated Portland’s cycling movement. They’re easy to spot, sporting lycra sportswear, custom road bikes, and an air of confidence as they ride in the middle of the road.

As the cycling movement opens up to people of all incomes, class tensions have bubbled up online, with affluent cyclists blaming homeless Portlanders for bike theft and a decline in cycling.

Nissy Cobb, community engagement manager at the Community Cycling Center, said this tension is not a new phenomenon.

“Cycling is, and has been since its birth, a very white, wealthy-dominated sport,” Cobb said. “It is seen as a sport and not so much as a need.”

The voices of affluent sport cyclists continue to dominate Portland’s online cycling discourse, and forums can be extremely hostile towards homeless encampments and informal bike shops. While running a bicycle repair workshop at a local shelter, Cobb said a driver harassed them, assuming all bicycles owned by homeless people were stolen.

However, Portland Mercury transportation reporter and cyclist Taylor Griggs said the loudest voices online don’t speak for the whole cycling community.

“In my experience, the people who are extremely vitriolic towards homeless people are also not the people in cycling advocacy groups who are actually doing work,” Griggs, who previously wrote for the blog BikePortland, said. “They may be active in the comment sections and on Reddit, and they may call themselves avid cyclists … but they're not the people who really care about everybody being able to ride a bike.”

Though the effects of the ‘daytime camping ban’ remain to be seen, one of its clauses makes it illegal for “involuntarily homeless people” to “assemble, disassemble, sell, offer to sell, distribute, offer to distribute, or store three or more bicycles,” to own “a bicycle frame with the gear cables or brake cables cut” or to own five or more bicycle parts.

Informal bike repair work for homeless Portlanders was stigmatized long before City Council formally banned it, according to Andrew Shaw-Kitch, executive director of low-cost bike shop Bikes for Humanity.

“It's very tricky to celebrate these informal community-based repair systems because there's so much stigma around stolen bikes,” Shaw-Kitch said. “And folks refer to them as chop shops when it's really just people using the resources around them to support each other.”

Shaw-Kitch sees a shared ethos between formal used bicycle shops like his and the informal bike economy.

“There is a piece that is kind of intentional materials management, and the broader piece is getting safe, affordable transportation to folks,” Shaw-Kitch said. “I think that's happening on the streets as well, through the informal kind of systems that people have.”

Though bike theft likely makes up a portion of the informal bike economy, parts are often sourced from dumpsters, according to Shaw-Kitch. Many perfectly good bike parts, like used inner tubes, cannot be sold in shops but find a second life in the informal bike economy when shops throw them out, give them away or sell them on salvage days.

That informal bike economy includes James Murray, who has been working on bikes for nearly 30 years and now acts as a street bicycle repairman for other homeless Portlanders. He buys parts from bike shops, online or salvages them from abandoned bikes.

Far from being a lucrative operation, the informal repair shop he runs with a friend is done as a community service.

“We're barely getting by, but we're still out there for the people,” Murray said. “It’s for the underdog.”

Murray charges less than half the cost of parts at a traditional bike shop and provides repairs for free. He also accepts bartering, ideally with bike parts. The most common repairs he helps with are flat tires, brake pad replacements and gear trouble.

Those who frequent the shop are devoted to their bikes and prefer to receive a lesson rather than have Murray repair it.

“The bike is like your baby,” Murray said. “It's like your Corvette, you really don't want people touching it.”

Many homeless cyclists face persistent bike insecurity. Without access to free or low-cost repairs, their bikes may break down often. Without a secure place to lock a bike, some are in a cycle of having bikes stolen in their sleep.

In a landscape where few have access to the bikes they need, Murray’s parts and repair services are a survival resource.

“It helps them go get food,” he said. “It helps them go and make their interviews or their meetings that they have with state offices or their court meetings. This is our transportation. It's our livelihood.”

For low-income and homeless cyclists, bikes provide low-cost, almost free transportation. Bike riders have no need for a driver’s license or transit fares. Bikes provide a mode of transportation that isn’t tied to transit maps and schedules while also making public transportation more accessible. What might have been a prohibitive walk to a MAX station or a dangerous wait at a bus stop becomes possible with a bike.

For some, a bike is a job — Shaw-Kitch said low-income cyclists who have received bikes from Bikes For Humanity have since begun working for delivery services like DoorDash. Those who collect bottles and cans or sell wares often use cargo bikes as work vehicles.

Shaw-Kitch said many low-barrier jobs are in Northeast Portland, where bus service is less frequent. Warehouses in the area have few employment requirements and offer night shifts for moving wares and doing inventory, but are difficult, if not impossible, to reach without a bike or a car.

Cargo bikes can also offer some protection from sweeps, Cobb said, as they allow for the quick relocation of a person’s belongings.

As of 2022, the Portland Bureau of Transportation found cycling counts were down nearly 35% from 2016-2019 levels.

Local social media forums and comment sections blame the issue on the presence of encampments along bike paths, particularly on the encampments along Interstate 205 and the Springwater Corridor and have called for sweeps of these areas.

In its 2022 Bicycle Counts report, PBOT attributed the change to “the pandemic and dramatic changes in travel patterns.” Commuter data supports this explanation, with the number of home-based workers in the Portland area having increased from 8% in 2018 to 27.5% in 2021.

As a cyclist herself, Griggs continues to use trails like the Springwater Corridor where people live.

“I prefer to be on a path where there may be some barriers from time to time with tents or whatever, then on like a dangerous street with a lot of cars,” Griggs said. “That is way more realistically a threat to me.”

Although many fear harassment on the bike paths, Griggs said her experience is the inverse.

“I bike all the time,” Griggs said. “It has never happened to me. More often, I'm harassed by people in cars. And if I'm not harassed, I feel just threatened because they could easily hit and kill me. I've had many almost-crashes.”

For those living on the street, bike paths offer a place secluded from law enforcement or housed neighbors, as well as a transportation option for those who cycle. As some of the most vulnerable road users, they may avoid living near major arterial roads to lower their risks of being struck by a car.

Though Murray takes pride in ensuring his own property doesn’t stray into the road, he can understand why some encampments border on bike lanes.

“The human species, we get scared,” Murray said. “We don't want to be like in a real dark area; danger happens in those areas.”

While online cycling discourse fans territorial flames over bike paths sharing space with encampments, the city’s infrastructure remains largely car-centric. According to the Parking Reform Network, 19% of the total area of Portland is dedicated to off-street parking alone, with 2.6 off-street parking spaces per person.

“Our roads are not designed for vulnerable bodies,” Cobb said. “And it’s like every city is really just catering to the car.”

Vulnerable road users of all class backgrounds need to feel safe on Portland’s streets, and this has been a uniting cause for housing and cycling advocates. Griggs has witnessed “an effort to expand access to people of lower incomes” among Portland cycling advocates over the past few years.

Equipped with high-quality bikes and safety equipment, wealthy sport cyclists tend to focus on bike lanes as the main factor in road safety.

“Although bike safety is for everyone, experienced, athletic cyclists are less likely to be deterred by a lack of cycling infrastructure,” Shaw-Kitch said.

To Shaw-Kitch, when bicycle advocates focus on these cyclists alone, they ignore the broader reality of cycling.

“They're not looking at people that ride on the sidewalks without lights on bikes that only have one brake,” Shaw-Kitch said. “But, that is a serious chunk of what cycling is, just kind of going slowly on the sidewalks.”

Cobb, who was once handcuffed for not having bike lights, said laws and law enforcement target the most marginalized cyclists. Cyclists assumed to be homeless are more likely to be pulled over, and laws that regulate brakes, lights and where it is legal to ride have the greatest impact on those without access to safe equipment and infrastructure. Cobb suggested legal changes will be necessary to make homeless cyclists comfortable riding, in addition to a widespread road safety awareness campaign.

Although much work remains to be done, the cycling community has been working to expand access to bikes and repairs. The Street Trust has been instrumental in registering new users for Biketown for All, which offers free, unlimited hour-long rides. Several community bike shops, like Bikes for Humanity, offer sliding scale prices on bikes and parts, while others, like the Community Cycling Center, offer salvage days, selling used parts at a low cost.

“It seems too often that riding a bike is like a punishment for being poor,” Shaw-Kitch said. “It's the only option that you have, and a bicycle is a really amazing thing that can empower you, as opposed to being something that you're stuck with. By giving these really cool machines to more people, you're going to broaden the movement itself and what bike culture looks like.”

As of the past few years, Griggs said she sees a change taking place.

“The bike advocacy community is more diverse, more thoughtful about marginalized people of all kinds,” Griggs said. “And that is really the only way that I think cycling can become a more prominent part of the city.”

Editor’s note: Taylor Griggs freelanced for Street Roots from October 2021 through March 2022. Griggs no longer works with Street Roots or receives financial compensation of any kind from Street Roots.

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