Sharing the road with 14 million people

The year was 2011 and I had just arrived in Chengdu, China for Peace Corps training.

My host family had assigned their 13-year-old son to lead me by bike through the hazardous Chengdu streets to Sichuan University, where I would attend daily trainings and classes. The boy, Raji, looked irritated as I went through my ABC’s of bicycle safety. I checked air pressure, brakes and chain, and strapped on my helmet–a rare thing to see in China.

When I was ready, Raji took off down the street and I tried my best to keep up. We wound our way through fast-moving traffic, just inches away from other cyclists, mopeds and motorcycles. The thick smog that permeates most of China’s large cities obscured the skyline and burned my lungs and eyes. Horns blared as cars flew by, abruptly turning without signaling, darting around us, until we arrived, white knuckled at the gates of the university.

The other Peace Corps volunteers couldn’t believe that I had braved the treacherous downtown traffic, and I found, in time, that the daily ride was a far better stimulant than any coffee or tea.

Over the subsequent months, I grew more and more confident until one day I went over the hood of a car and wrecked my bike in the process. It was a jarring realization of the dangers of traffic congestion. I walked away from the accident with only a little road rash but after that, I decided to take a hiatus from the city traffic.

Chengdu is a city of 14 million people with an ever increasing number of motorized vehicles. While bicycles were once the primary means of transportation, single occupancy vehicles now rule the roadways. In this chaos, it is everyone for themselves, and the stakes are high. I am not the only person I know to have been in a traffic accident and with the sheer number of people on the roads, I certainly won’t be the last.

After two years in the Peace Corps, I returned to the Pacific Northwest and was happy to once again be riding, free from the gridlock and turmoil of Chinese traffic. But it was not long before I discovered that Seattle has its own traffic issues, and that many of the problems that exist in China persist here as well.

Seattle drivers often turn blindly, cutting off bicycle lanes while helmetless bikers blow through stoplights. Pedestrians with their eyes locked on their phones step off curbs and into heavy traffic without lifting their heads. The Mercer Mess in particular, with its crush of cars, buses and trucks, reminds me of the streets I saw in Chengdu. Too many of us are preoccupied with our own destinations and we forget that golden rule, “share the road.”

My time abroad forced me to look at traffic through a different lens. As Seattle takes the top spot as the fastest growing city in the country, all of us, regardless of our mode of transportation, need to practice more empathy and patience while using our shared roads. Only by doing so will we save ourselves from the congestion nightmare that so many face every day. Seattle may not be as big as Chengdu (yet), but as we grow, we must make sure that everyone is included in our city’s vision for the future.