Cycling Solutions
Guest commentary by Suza Francina

In a letter to the editor (Nov. 26), Matthew Sewell asserts that "The bottom line is that there is no way that the City Council can legally or morally exert enough control to reduce the number of cars on our streets. This can only be done by all of us making different choices."
On the surface this claim may appear to be true. But if we dig a little deeper we can see that this popular assumption is in fact absolutely false.
Our City Council has a legal, moral and ethical responsibility to assure that the number of cars on our streets does not infringe on the health and safety of our community.
Present travel habits were not formed in a vacuum. The number of cars now clogging our traffic arteries did not appear by accident and cannot be blamed exclusively on population growth, housing development or tourism.
Traffic is the direct results of choices and policy decisions by past and present City Councils. In every city in the world, the volume of traffic is limited, intentionally or unintentionally, by policies adopted by governments. If these policies are relaxed, there is more traffic; if they are strengthened, traffic is reduced. In other words, the volume of traffic in Ojai is not something that has to be accepted as inevitable like the weather.
Controlling the number of cars on our streets begins with the principle that all travelers have equal rights, regardless of the means by which they choose to travel. Since travelers in cars are better armed and protected than pedestrians, cyclists, or senior citizens in electric carts, they tend to take priority when policies are created.
The City Council can legally create new policies to correct this bias. From an ecological and social point of view, walking and bicycling reduce air, soil and water pollution, global warming and oil dependency. This gives a strong argument for not merely creating equal policies but preferential policies.
We have spent the last 70 years building an infrastructure that makes driving more pleasant and convenient than walking, bicycling or using public transportation. To their credit, the present City Council is trying to balance this situation with improved sidewalks, increased trolley service, and support for programs such as bicycle safety in schools. At the same time (and unfortunately with a greater sense of urgency) our city continues to welcome more cars by approving more parking lots and other policies that make the convenience of cars the highest priority.
The other day as I cycled down Matilija Street toward the corner of Signal, the SUVs were bumper to bumper and parking spaces (i.e., the space that rightfully belongs to cyclists) on both sides of the street was filled. This meant that I was wedged in between two rows of mostly oversized cars with barely 24 inches of road space in which to negotiate my bicycle. My bicycle baskets, filled with groceries, almost scraped the car doors on either side. God forbid if someone should open their door as I go by!
As a seasoned cyclist this did not faze me, but I could not imagine a young child, or a mother with a bike cart filled with toddlers, or a senior citizen safely negotiating this level of traffic.
We tend to forget that driving is a privilege, not a right. The city does not have a moral or ethical responsibility to make driving convenient by giving more than 90 percent of our public street space over to drivers. It does have a moral and ethical responsibility to assure the safety of those who are more vulnerable - pedestrians and cyclists - by giving them their rightful share of the street.
Ojai is caught in a vicious cycle. Increased traffic volume makes walking and cycling increasingly unsafe and unpleasant. Thus, even people who would prefer to walk or bicycle are getting behind the wheel.
After the most recent pedestrian fatality on Ojai Avenue, one mother I know began chauffeuring her children, who had previously enjoyed their independence by bicycling alone to the library, even though the library (and most other destinations within the city) are an easy 10-minute walk or bike ride away.
In a properly designed small town like Ojai, driving for trips under three miles could be reduced to a bare minimum and would be unnecessary for most routine chores or pleasure trips. In fact, it is within the realm of possibility to not have auto traffic at all (aside from emergency and delivery vehicles) in certain sections of Ojai. Our whole city could be redesigned so that, for example, you have car pools or vans at the edges of car-free zones. People could still drive, but our whole infrastructure would not be designed to support driving at the expense of everything else.
Experiments worldwide in making driving less convenient for the sake of the health and safety of people, have proven not only popular but immensely profitable. Studies show that merchants prosper in pedestrian zones, even if people have to park several blocks away or come to shop via public transportation. Numerous articles in the Business Section of the Los Angeles Times and other publications describe how traditional auto-centered shopping areas prosper when pedestrians and cyclists are given equal priority.
The issues I am mentioning here are just the tip of the iceberg. My Web site, Suzafrancina.com, has links to numerous resources for reducing auto dependency.

Suza Francina is a former mayor of Ojai and served on the Ojai City Council.

Nurture preserve
Bret Bradigan, OVN publisher

Has any parent in the history of the world not blamed themselves for the poor choices made by their children? We all have horror stories about kids with all the privileges good fortune can provide taking bad turns into drug use and delinquency.
Even, or even especially, in our sheltered nook of the world.
The first place we usually assign blame is on dysfunctional families, on latch-key upbringings and benign neglect. We see public service announcements on television exhorting parents to check up on their children's whereabouts, implying that these children are secretly thirsting for more supervision.
Of course the message is true. Children do need direction. The only problem is that they are much more likely to get it from their peers than parents.
As this newspaper's special report, argued for and orchestrated so well by Misty Volaski, on drug use clearly shows, our levels of self-deception and denials have resumed their historic levels after the tragedies last year. And one of the key elements of that self-deception is that all this drug use and all forms of bad behavior could be prevented if only parents were more vigilant.
So why is it that some kids in a family turn out good and others not so good? How do we account for this difference if all the families were raised by the same parents? Judith Rich Harris had an answer in her 1998 book, "The Nurture Assumption." But it was not an answer that people, so invested in centuries of parenting advice, wanted to hear. All other things being equal, children do well or poor regardless of whether they have had day-care, whether they were raised by stay-at-home moms, whether they were raised by Ozzie Osbourne or Ward and June Cleaver or two mommies.
Harris believes, and has substantial research to back her belief, that children have split personalities - one for home and another for outside the home. Here's an excerpt from a speech she gave in 1998: "I believe that Cinderella had developed two personalities: one for inside the cottage, where she learned at an early age that it was best to act humble, look inconspicuous, and do what she was told, and a different one for outside the cottage, where she found that a pretty face and a charming smile could work magic.
"Parents do influence their children's behavior - of course they do - but the influence is context-dependent. It's specific to the home. When children go out they leave behind the behavior they acquired at home. They cast it off like that dorky sweater their mother made them wear. They acquire different behaviors - a different personality - outside the home, and it is this behavior, this personality, that they take with them to adulthood ... Boys learn not to cry, but they don't learn it at home. It's in the peer group that boys learn not to cry, because crying has serious consequences in a boys' peer group."
And here's another excerpt we adults can relate to: "You may be wondering what happened to the personality you developed at home. The answer is: It's waiting for you, right where you left it! Why do you think so many people hate to go home for the holidays? It's because when they get there, their home personality comes back to haunt them, like the Ghost of Christmas Past. They may act tough in the boardroom or the poolroom, but put them at a table with their parents and siblings and pretty soon they're whining and bickering again."
None of Harris' research should be construed as letting parents off the hook. Obviously, we can exert significant control on who our children hang out with, or on what their cultural influences are just by turning off the television and monitoring their Internet use. This control becomes harder to manage just when it becomes most critical, when those kids become teenagers. So all too often parents, caught in this nurturing trap of guilt, feel either all restrictions are off, or they must live like Amish. The mistake we often make is assuming that our teens can't wait to grow up, and would act like adults, if only properly instructed.
Teenagers don't want to be like adults, Harris says, they want to distinguish themselves from adults. "If they really wanted to be like adults, they wouldn't be spraying graffiti on overpasses or swiping nail polish from drugstores: they would be doing adult things, like sorting the laundry and figuring out their taxes."
Ojai, of course, has a marvelous social infrastructure. Our schools and organizations are first-rate by any standard, but especially when judged by other communities our size. And this infrastructure, with a little insight and bolstering, could create a safety net so tight that none fall through. We just need to look at the problem with minds unblinkered by the misconceptions of received wisdom. We need to see our youth with fresh eyes, through their own eyes.
Through these accounts of youth and parents caught in the downward spiral of drug abuse, we hope to illustrate that none of us are immune to this menace, and that if any of us suffer, we all suffer. We are all in this together.
We promise no solutions, only that solutions can't be found until those blinkers come off. We don't know what works, or what doesn't. We do believe that in the year past, many positive steps have been taken, but that the tipping point can seldom be seen except through a rear-view mirror. As Harris said, "But psychology has focused for too long on the lives children lead at home and has paid insufficient attention to the fact that they lead very different lives outside the home. It is the experiences children have outside the home that will determine the sort of people they will be when they grow up."
The children of Ojai confront the same dangers as children everywhere. But they are fortunate to live in a town where the distance between the lives inside the home and outside the home are much smaller than most places. That may prove to be our saving grace.

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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