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{"id":798,"date":"2013-10-06T16:43:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T16:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/inner-city-transit-and-a-disappointing-discovery.html"},"modified":"2013-10-06T16:43:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T16:43:00","slug":"inner-city-transit-and-a-disappointing-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/inner-city-transit-and-a-disappointing-discovery.html","title":{"rendered":"Inner city transit, and a disappointing discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So the other day I read a mention of a Chicago charity called \u201cWorking Bikes\u201d and I thought \u2014 this is it! Someone\u2019s actually trying to get carless poor Chicagoans to use bikes for transit. Unfortunately, having looked at their website<\/a> just now, I\u2019ve made the unfortunate discovery that this group collects bikes at suburban bike drives, repairs them, sells some in a shop to raise funds, and ships the others off to the Third World. Kind of feels a bit backwards, when these bikes (except the top-end ones) are being manufactured in the Third World in the first place, to spend all that money on the shipping costs \u2014 to ship something abroad in a container costs about $20,000, if I\u2019m not mistaken, so it seems likely that using the bikes effectively in this country and making cash donations to purchase bikes locally would be a fare better use of money. <\/p>\n

Now, their website does say that they \u201cpartner with homeless transition, refugee resettlement, and youth empowerment programs here in Chicago to donate bicycles and put them to good use on the streets of our own community\u201d \u2014 but these are exceptionally narrow categories of people, far from sufficient to create a \u201cbike culture.\u201d <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s also where I wish I were a bit less nerdy and introverted. Ha! I\u2019d start my own bikes program (it would also help to know more about bike repair, and have connections with people in the City). But instead I\u2019ll just gripe about it. . . <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"