Vandals vent anger on bikes in share program
Not everyone likes the expanded Bay Area bike-share program.
The bikes are designed for short trips within a city. Users can unlock a bike from one docking station and return it to another — a single trip of up to 30 minutes costs $3 and a oneday pass is $15. Or, they can pay $149 for a year’s worth of rides.
“What we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to provide an affordable transportation to people that runs 24 hours a day, that’s reliable and safe,” said Dani Simons, a spokeswoman for Motivate, the company operating the Bay Area bike share.
But, at a time when the communities are rapidly changing, some people see the bike docks as a symbol of what’s stripping the cultural fabric of neighborhoods: gentrification. They resent the shiny new urban cruisers known as Ford Go Bikes — branded after the primary sponsor, Ford Motor Co. — as something meant for the new residents.
Since the bikes were introduced two months ago, vandals have made their mark.
In Oakland, a Ford Go Bike was tossed into Lake Merritt. In another incident, the tires of bikes docked at Telegraph Avenue and 58th Street were slashed.
At Dolores Park in San Francisco, tires were gashed. Elsewhere in the Mission, a bike was hung in a tree, a symbolic lynching.
Slitting tires and disfiguring bikes won’t accomplish anything. For starters, Ford Go Bikes are replaced almost as fast as NASCAR pit crews change tires. Destroying more property won’t stop anyone from pedaling away with the Bay Area’s future.
If you want to change the course of what’s happening, go to the voting booth and pick new leaders.
Most of the vandalism has occurred in San Francisco, according to Simons.
Get this: The vandalism was anticipated.
“Bike share becomes something that people can point at,” Simons told me. “You can’t point at a rent check that’s rising.”
What is happening in the Bay Area happened when New York and Portland, Ore., rolled out their bike share programs. In both cities, the frequent vandalism eventually stopped.
“For the first couple of weeks, we definitely saw a lot of people doing mischievous things with the bikes and the stations,” Simons said.
But this is the Bay Area, where gentrification is vehemently opposed. Because here the movement of middle-class people into low-income neighborhoods has displaced longtime residents, leaving many with nowhere to move to but the sidewalks and streets.
Just know, more bikes are coming.
There are currently 175 total Ford GoBike stations in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville and San Jose, and there are about 2,000 bikes in circulation.
There are more than 700 bikes available at 64 stations in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville. By the fall, the numbers will rise to 1,500 bikes at 128 stations.
For Joel Espino, the environmental equity legal counsel of Greenlining Institute, a social justice organization that fights discriminatory redlining practices and advocates equal opportunity, the issue to debate isn’t whether bike-share programs should be introduced to communities.
What should be questioned is who are the winners and losers when investments roll through our cities.
If history is an indicator, the low-income residents in the Bay Area aren’t going to be on the winning side on this one.
“A lot of times when we see these flash points between community and public and private sector actions, there are greater legacy problems at play,” Espino told me. “Often what’s at the core of community dissent is a desire for justice and accountability for those long histories of structural racism and segregation.”
Some people have pointed out that there are no bike pods in deep East Oakland, an economically depressed part of the city that’s in need of attention.
Katie Styer, a cyclist who hosts “Oakland Bikes!,” a radio program about topics relevant to the Bay Area cycling community on KGPC (96.9 FM), said that area cyclists don’t see bike share as accounting for everyone.
“It meets a need, and it’s really fantastic, but there are so many other people who can’t even access that,” she said.