Amenity or Infrastructure?

 

            A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a council training where the presenter referred the lovely bicycle and pedestrian amenities that Bend had installed in the last ten years. “Interesting choice of words,” I mused, and then went back to considering the topic at hand, which was “stay in your policy lane, city council.” But the phrase rankled. Why?

            An amenity is “something that is intended to make life more pleasant or convenient for people.” I think of hotels  with a fluffy bathrobe to wear strolling down the hall to the soaking pool or fancy soaps in the shower when I hear the word amenity. Or, perhaps, a greenway along the river with an overpass to a row of dining establishments which serve craft beers and local organic salads. Amenities are nice things that we do not have or use every day. There are special, a treat. So, when you install bike/ped amenities you are implying, at least, that bike lanes and sidewalks, curb cuts that do not collect water at the base, and stop lights to make crossing busy streets easier are not things we use every day, all day, but something for casual weekend activity by people with money. On weekdays or when it is raining out, you are using the city infrastructure—roads—to drive your car from work to school to the gym to home.

            I prefer the idea of bike/ped infrastructure: “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.” Just the word—structure—sounds more substantive, more permanent, more significant. Infrastructure is maintained because we cannot live without it. Sewage treatment plants and pipes are infrastructure, as are roads and bridges, the electrical grids, and municipal buildings. And when one of them fails, breaks down because of poor decisions or freak accidents, people want to know why and demand rapid repairs.  Lives depend upon functioning infrastructure. Everyone, rich and poor, uses it every day and pays for it. Infrastructure is a great unifier.

 Our lives, our health and the health of our planet, depend upon improving functional bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, although we don’t always admit it. We have to reduce our dependency on cars. Therefore, we need buffered bike lanes on busy streets—and signs sending us down the road less traveled as well. We need green painted turning lanes; we need bulb-outs to reduce the distance crossing the street; we need something a whole lot better than the flashing yellow lights that are cropping up everywhere in the middle of long, long blocks to make crossing the highway safe for all. And we need this infrastructure throughout our cities and towns, not just in wealthy areas and inward facing neighborhoods. Not all of this infrastructure needs to be concrete—much of it can be lighter weight, sometimes mobile—but it does need to move us closer to safe, shared streets for all users, in all weathers, not cars on weekdays and the occasional bike ride to brunch on a sunny Saturday morning.