Equiticity Bikes To Improve Individuals, Their Neighborhoods And Their Cities

by Emma Slings & Suzanne Hanney

“What happens when we turn on the Power and Equity moves like electricity through our homes, streets, neighborhoods and cities?” asks Olatunji Oboi Reed, president and CEO of Equiticity, the Chicago-based racial equity group.

“When trust increases in neighborhoods, perceptions of violence decrease,” Oboi Reed said. “A reduction in the concerns around neighborhood violence move people to walk, bike, shop, and explore their communities. More active and hyperlocal explorations make our streets more vibrant. More vibrant streets attract increased retail, leading to greater job creation in our neighborhoods, and will contribute to reducing violence in our communities.”

Equiticity targets its message that “mobility is justice” to three audiences: low-to-moderate-income residents, both Black and Brown, at the neighborhood level; elected officials and philanthropists at the citywide level; and allies such as organizations and researchers who focus on human and civil rights, as well as community development at the national level.

Equiticity facilitates its work through Community Mobility Rituals, including community bicycle rides, neighborhood walking tours, public transit excursions, group scooter rolls, and open streets festivals.

The Magic of Music Ride Series, for example, runs every fourth Friday from May through October this year. On May 27, it visited Humboldt Park for Latinx music and on June 24, Mandrake Park at 3858 S. Cottage Grove for Old School. Still to come is Douglass Park, 1401 S. Sacramento, on July 22 for hip-hop; Hamilton Park in Englewood on August 26 for house music; Garfield Park on September 23 for Afro and reggae; and Jackson Park on October 28 for R&B.

The Nature of Magic Walk Series, meanwhile, visited the Burnham Park Wildlife Corridor, 876 E. Oakwood Blvd., in June and will visit Garfield Park, Washington Park and Douglass Park in successive months. The series offers time for discussion and learning about history, culture and connection to community.

The mobility events have seven elements in common, which lend themselves to being ritualistic, Oboi Reed says.

First, they have a rhythmic schedule. Second, the priority is socialization, followed by racialized healing. There are also reduced barriers to participation; natural development of shared customs; active disruption of the status quo; and hyperlocal collective ownership of "our" space.

Community Mobility Rituals at the hyperlocal, neighborhood level, Oboi Reed says, contribute to more trust within communities.

The Go Hub is an Equiticity grassroots answer to Mobility Justice. Located a quarter block away from the CTA Pink Line Pulaski station, the Go Hub provides loaner e-bikes, e-scooters, and shared electric vehicles. The two closest Divvy stations, meanwhile, are a 23-minute and a 36-minute walk, or a six-minute to seven-minute car ride, away.

Beyond providing the physical means of transportation, the Go Hub will provide information on how to get around Chicago. A physical and online space for a community to form around mobility justice and environmental justice, its programs include community bicycle and scooter rides, walking tours, public transit excursions, and more. The building itself provides a safe space to address and recover from mobility trauma, such as negative encounters with police.

In Jesus M. Barajas’s study “Biking Where Black,” for example, conceptualized by Oboi Reed and Kate Lowe of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Barajas found persistent bias in the number of bicycle citations in Black and Latino neighborhoods, compounded by inequities in cycling infrastructure. “While this is not evidence of a Biking While Black effect, it does suggest a relationship to Biking Where Black, in which neighborhood conditions, including sociodemographic characteristics, are associated with excess policing.”

Between 2008 and 2016, the top 10 neighborhoods for tickets issued were all majority Black or Latino, and twice the number of tickets were issued in majority Black neighborhoods as in majority Latino or white neighborhoods.

Ninety percent of bicycle citations are for riding on the sidewalk, but in focus groups, Black South Siders expressed frustration with receiving citations when there was no safe alternative to the sidewalk. “Cyclists generally break traffic rules for rational reasons.”

Cycling citations can generally be linked to the presence or absence of separated bicycle infrastructure, Barajas noted. However, this infrastructure is more prevalent in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods than in those with residents of lower socioeconomic status, because of decades of disinvestment.

Tickets were more likely to be issued on busier streets. On streets without bicycle infrastructure, the rate of tickets issued to cyclists was 15 times higher on arterial roads and seven times higher on collector streets compared to local streets, adjusting for street segment length and bicycle volume.

Bicycle infrastructure like separated bike lanes might be a tool to advance racial justice, Barajas wrote, because it helps protect cyclists in Black and Latino neighborhoods from police overreach and keeps them safe when they need to be seen on major streets. But this infrastructure cannot be placed without community collaboration, he wrote. Cycling has been seen as a symbol of gentrification in low-income communities of color, and advocates are wary of placing concrete infrastructure without community building and input.

Transportation inequities deny access to job opportunities and thereby perpetuate the wealth gap in Chicago, said Jacky Grimshaw, vice president for government affairs at the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). Grimshaw, who is a board member at Equiticity, spoke during a “Mobility is Justice” panel hosted by Equiticity and the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) during the pandemic.

Chicago ranks fifth nationally in terms of combined racial and economic segregation, according to the Mobility is Justice study. For those without a college degree, the majority of good-paying jobs are in the suburbs. Of the 100 longest commutes, 95 percent were by Black or Latinx people, with $31,000 median income. Those with the shortest commutes were majority white, with $75,000 median income.

Mobility is Justice survey respondents were 78 percent Black; 81 percent lacked a college degree. Three out of 4 (75 percent) said that transportation was a barrier to their job prospects.

“You’re putting in an hour and a half to get to work” was one response.

“Employers ask on applications, ‘Do you have reliable transportation?’ I have public transportation, but I guess they don’t consider that reliable,” said another jobseeker.

Solutions involve listening to the workers, the panelists said. Those working second and third shifts (3-11 p.m. and 11 p.m.-7 a.m.) are especially affected by late-night transit and bus service curtailment. Employers could subsidize transit use and should take transit schedules into consideration.

Panel moderator Audrey Wennink, MPC director of transportation, noted that despite many transportation planners trying for equity (along with sustainability and climate control) people still prefer cars.

Chelsie Coren, research assistant at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, said that cars offer these respondents a greater sense of control, a feeling of less exposure to violence and greater mobility when shopping for groceries, for example, with senior relatives.

How can we speed up change, Wennink asked.

Institutional change moves at glacial speed, at best, Grimshaw said. However, Equiticity’s vision of racial equity and mobility justice is interconnected:

• Community-building to help Black and Brown people recognize their power

• Research in cooperation with those impacted to understand the severity of the problem

• Advocacy to let people know the transportation status quo is deadly to marginalized people

• Policy work to take authentic commitment out of hands of well-meaning people who come and go from institutions