When the man standing next to the bike rack at the Fred Meyer store adjusted his shirt, he flashed an object -- gunmetal-gray steel with a green grip -- tucked into the small of his back.
In Anchorage it might have been a handgun, perhaps a Beretta semiautomatic with dirty olive G10 grips. But this was Portland. When he leaned forward, the firearm turned into a bike lock.
I can list a hundred ways that Portland differs from Anchorage. Bikes and guns would be near the top of that list.
Anchorage may never have as many cyclists as Portland, but it can strive to promote bicycle commuting, ameliorate dangerous conditions, and teach its sometimes surly motorists how to drive in mixed company.
This summer and next the city plans to double its bike lanes, from 15 to 34 miles, and is painting "sharrows" on short sections of road in Midtown. "Sharrows" are pavement markings with arrows that warn motorists they are sharing the full use of the lane with bicyclists.
Bike lanes and sharrows are concepts that Anchorage motorists might as well get used to.
Bicycle commuting
Too many Anchorage motorists scoff at the idea of a bike-friendly city and appear to oppose the idea. In comments posted beneath a recent article about the city's plan to increase bike lanes their disgruntlement is palpable.
Despite the skepticism and ridicule, bikes are a legitimate mode of transportation. Portland provides a great example.
Portland has a well-earned reputation as a bike-friendly city. It's regularly named a top city for biking by many national organizations. More than 60 percent of Portland homes lie within a half-mile of a neighborhood bikeway. According to the National Household Travel Survey, 31 percent of Portland school kids walk or bike to school, compared to 13 percent nationally.
Although total ridership is devilishly difficult to obtain, an estimated 17,000 residents commute by bicycle.
Anchorage has great recreational trails, like the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail and the single-track trails in Kincaid Park. However, the city is woefully lacking in commuter bikeways.
You might think that Anchorage's long winters jab a stick in the spokes of bicycle commuting, but Minneapolis is a top-ranked city and its winters are a lot like ours. City transportation priorities and community attitudes are more important factors than geography or climate.
By some measures, Portland streets should be a mean place to bike. The city has about twice as many people packed into an area about the size of the Anchorage Bowl, Eagle River, and Chugiak combined. Portland is crisscrossed by 4,900 miles of improved roads, compared to about 1,500 miles here.
Nevertheless, over 6 percent of Portland's workforce commutes to work on bicycles, the highest rate among large U.S. cities according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The city plans for one-quarter of all trips to be by bike by 2030.
Only about one percent of Anchorage residents use bikes for commuting. One percent would be a pathetic statistic, except that it's twice as high as the national average of 0.6 percent, little changed from 1980.
Driving in a bike-friendly city
The yin and yang of bike-friendliness might be Memphis and Portland. I recently visited each city for a few days. I saw only two cyclists in Memphis.
As recently as 2010 Memphis was considered by Bicycling magazine one of the three "worst cities for cycling" in the U.S. At the time the city had nearly 650,000 residents and not a single bike lane. Only about 0.2 percent of Memphis commuters bike to work, according to the Census.
In contrast, Portland has 181 miles of bike lanes and nearly as many bike paths and neighborhood greenways. Less than five minutes after exiting the interstate in Portland I encountered my first two cyclists. And it was midnight. During the day a motorist is seldom out of sight of one or more bicycles.
Driving in a bike-friendly city takes some getting used to. Initially, it feels like running through a cloud of gnats. Only the gnats are people and you don't want to crush any of them.
Intersections are especially nerve-wracking. Like any place else, motor vehicles come at you from all four directions. Bikes add a whole new dimension of risk. In a cluttered urban landscape, bikes are much more difficult to see than motor vehicles.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation says the city has 155,995 street signs, 25,007 pavement symbols and words, and 1,070 stoplights, to name a few critical distractions. A motorist must constantly look ahead for stop signs, up for stop lights, right and left for oncoming vehicles, down for bike lanes and crosswalks, monitor all three rear-view mirrors for bikes passing from behind, and be on the alert for the unexpected maneuver.
The first thing you learn in a bike-friendly environment is to expect the unexpected. Several years ago I was following a Portland cyclist on a shared road. Approaching a side street, he gave the classic signal for a right turn -- left arm raised to shoulder level with forearm pointing up -- then turned left.
Motorists often complain that cyclists ignore road signs. But motorists are nearly as bad. According to a field study by the city of Portland, while bicyclists came to a complete stop at stop signs only seven percent of the time, motorists stopped completely only 22 percent of the time.
Bike safety depends on both cyclists and motorists
From 1994 to 2006 Anchorage recorded 1,827 bicycle-vehicle collisions, about 141 a year, with eight fatalities. Portland documented 2,105 bike-vehicle collisions from 1995 to 2006, about 175 per year, with 25 fatalities.
Only an estimated 10-20 percent of bike-vehicle collisions are reported. http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=191337
Judging from their posts, some motorists don't realize that cyclists are granted all rights applicable to motor vehicles, unless specifically prohibited. Cyclists are permitted to use a street even when there is an adjacent path – bike paths may be in worse repair and are more dangerous, especially at intersections and driveways.
On the other hand, cyclists aren't required to take a driving test and don't always know the rules of the road. Some assume they can be seen by motorists when they can't. Sometimes drivers aren't paying attention or are distracted by larger and faster-moving vehicles.
It's worth mentioning that most bicycling injuries do not involve crashing into a motor vehicle.
However, cyclists are much more likely to be injured or killed in a collision than the passengers of a motor vehicle.
Minneapolis analyzed 2,973 bicycle-vehicle crashes and came to three primary conclusions. Most crashes occur at intersections along major arterials. Motorists are not seeing or yielding to bicyclists. Bicyclists are not riding in a predictable manner. It appeared that bicyclists and motorists were equally at fault. Other cities have come to the same conclusions.
In Anchorage, more than 33 percent of bicycle-vehicle collisions involve a driver turning right at a red stoplight. This makes sense in that the highest risk to the merging motorist is from vehicles coming from the left. Drivers look left and step on the accelerator without noticing the cyclist approaching from behind or the right.
The problem is exacerbated when a bike path is separated from the road. Unlike on-street bike lanes, separated paths allow cyclists to ride against the normal flow of vehicles, to be less visible, less predictable. Bike lanes are an obvious solution.
Other dangerous situations occur when motorists turn left without seeing an oncoming cyclist who has the right-of-way, cars are parked in bike lanes, and cyclists hug the right side of the lane where they may be clipped by an opening car door. All of these threats can be neutralized if everyone follows the rules of the road, pays more attention, and drives defensively.
Several bike-friendly cities have discovered an unexpected benefit. Data indicate that large numbers of cyclists on the roads reduce the rate of severe collisions and fatalities for cyclists, pedestrians and even motorists. The working hypothesis is that motorists are paying more attention, perhaps even driving a little slower in areas with lots of activity.
Get used to it
Those cyclists appearing in your right side mirror are closer than they appear.
Minneapolis, a winter city if there ever was one, has more than doubled its bikeways and bicycle commuters since 1999. Even poor Memphis has come to its senses, having created 120 miles of bike paths and shared lanes by 2013, with plans to double that by 2016.
Portland, Minneapolis and Memphis have all experienced declines in bike-vehicle collisions when more cyclists took to the streets.
In 2008, Portland estimated it would cost $60 million to replace the city's biking infrastructure. For those who complain about the cost, that's approximately what it costs to build one mile of urban freeway. Even bike trolls can get behind spending less public funds.
No one's going to take away our guns. Or force us to ride bikes to work. Giving more people the option of riding bikes, increasing the proportion of commuters who bike to work while making the roads safer, is a good deal for all of us.
Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. Contact him at rickjsinnott@gmail.com
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.