"If you want to change the way our country is structured, you need to change the way that people are choosing to get from one place to another"

Last week I caught up with Joshua Willis, one of this season's six Bicycle Ambassadors, in front of the Sweat Gym on the Walnut St. Bridge. With afternoon traffic whizzing by us, he told me about his experiences as a Bicycle Ambassador and how he's come to see bicycling as important for how our cities -and our country- is structured.

Max: What have you learned about biking in Philadelphia?
Joshua: Way too much.

M: Alright, well anything change from what you knew beforehand?
J: What I learned about biking changed mostly in the way I viewed biking on the whole. Now I mostly think about biking as a means to get from point A to point B, that is an option for anyone in the city to utilize. It’s just one piece of the mode-share, as we call it. Like, one option of transit out of however many options- cars, public transit. It’s a piece of the puzzle, and it’s a minority group as far as commuting choices go.

That’s probably the biggest thing I’ve learned, seeing the bicycle as a legitimate form of transportation. That it has a legal right to the road, and responsibilities of the road. It’s like this piece of the puzzle, on streets that were designed for cars, and not necessarily bikes.

I also learned that the cycling community is really disorganized, on the whole. Because there’s a million types of bikers and people bike for a lot of different reasons: there’s a lot of people who know the rules and obey them, and there’s a lot of people who know the rules and obey most of them, there’s a lot of people who know the rules and don’t care, and there’s a lot of people who don’t know the rules. And then there are people who just bike for recreation, there are people who do BMX biking, there are people who commute, there are people who are messengers.

M: What have been some of the best/worst experiences you’ve had as an Ambassador?
J: I get really cool stories, I meet a lot of interesting people. Knowing that I’m contributing to the overall health of the city, and at least trying to, is really rewarding. What it comes down to is organizing a giant community, or attempting to do that, by educating them on the benefits of bicycling so that we’re not all governed by giant streets of traffic, so that we’re not all governed by drivers.

I don’t really have too many negatives…The worst thing is not being mentally prepared. Not being on my toes, and filled with ammunition about why biking is wonderful. Because all day I talk to strangers who might not care. Remembering that the work is important is a necessary thing. When I don’t remember that it makes the work feel like we’re taming a whale. It’s like “What’s the point, this is clearly impossible”.

M: What do you see as some of the problems facing bicycling in Philly?
J: In a nutshell, car culture. The fact that it’s so normal. The fact that, because of how busy everyone is with their lives, and how used they are to driving, and how for the last 90 years we have been dependent on the car and streets designed for the car, car culture has become such a norm. That makes it really challenging to educate people on the fact that it doesn’t have to be the norm, and fact that the norm is possibly detrimental to our community.

Being able to educate people, and have conversations with people, is really important. Like we’re trying to do with the Ambassador program, but we only do it for minutes at a time. So getting bicycle education to be a larger part of motorists education, as well as just within public school systems or the university settings. Getting that information in there would be great and would be a huge challenge.

M: Any last words?
J: Right now drivers are one of the largest constituencies in the country. If you want to change the way our country is structured, you need to change the way that people are choosing to get from one place to another. That’s the reason to do bicycle education, for me.


Joshua will be at the annual conference organized by and for Not-For-Profit bike projects, Bike, Bike, next week.