Biking in Milwaukee: An International Perspective

“Be careful.” This was the first time my reserved parents had told me to be cautious. It was at Haneda Airport, when I left to study abroad in the United States when I was 19 years old. They could not give me specific advice, as they had never been to this country; telling me to be careful was the only way to show that they cared about me.

As you probably assumed at this point, I am not from Milwaukee nor the United States, and I have been extremely privileged to experience different streets and neighborhoods in various states and countries. From here, I will take you on a journey of radical imagination across the world. To borrow words from Ruha Benjamin¹, “let’s take this imagination seriously” and use this power of imagination to challenge the oppression and lack of safety you may have experienced on Milwaukee streets.

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From living in Appleton, Wisconsin, I learned that I have to be intentional with which roads and neighborhoods I bike because some streets are designed only for cars. Appleton is a smaller city, but I found it impossible to bike to Woodman’s grocery store from my university. What Google Maps suggested was a 22-minute bike ride became a 2-hour ride. The ride was very windy once I reached the end of the downtown street because there were no residences or trees along West College Avenue – only spacious driving lanes and parking lots for giant facilities like a mall, a supermarket, and a gas station. This street, which leads straight to the college downtown, was designed to prioritize experiences of motor vehicles. A bike lane led my friend and I to a big bridge where it was impossible to get to the sidewalk, and I felt the cars were too close to be comfortable. The worst part was crossing at a traffic light, where we had to wait for at least 15 minutes. After this trip, I realized that these straight, wide and perhaps too motor-vehicle-centric streets encourage drivers to race through downtown Appleton at unnecessarily high speeds, creating unwelcome noise.

My experience would have been different if I had known that I should use the calm streets and neighborhoods, and that is something I never would have thought of until I biked in the United States. When I am home in Japan, I always choose my path based on which roads take me to my destination faster and with fewer hills. However, in the U.S., I have to think about which roads have bike lanes and bike culture. That is why, as I talked about my Milwaukee summer internship to my Appleton friends, many of them told me to be careful in Milwaukee. 

Throughout the summer, the MilWALKee Walks program joined the Mobile Bike Repair team to provide traffic safety activities and resources at Milwaukee Rec Playfields. My favorite was at Franklin Square Playground, right next to North Division High School. It is not because the playfield was nicer but because the people were very welcoming and heartwarming. Children loved our activities and designing safe streets, and it was nothing like what I had heard about Milwaukee. While my Appleton friends were worried about Milwaukee, the reality of the danger is not the people living there but the system creating the marginalization, where people from one neighborhood have different access to the city and its resources, compared to people from wealthier neighborhoods. 

Just like my parents worried about me studying abroad, my friend was taught as a child that the outside was too dangerous to travel by herself. We went to Summerfest together, and I planned to bike along the Oak Leaf Trail. She was worried and told me to be careful when I said that I was going to bike. Listening to her story as a Black Milwaukeean, I think her parents’ concerns are valid. Her parents were never able to trust the city enough to let their children take a bus in Milwaukee. The generational legacy of racism, colonialism, and patriarchy has never been addressed. It ended up being the first time for her to take the Milwaukee public transit bus with me. I IMAGINE here that she was one hour late to meet up with me at Summerfest because she did not have control over her transportation. It is our privilege if we think it is totally feasible to bike to Summerfest because the definition of safe streets depends on who we are and where we live. 

“Be careful.” I now understand what my Milwaukee friend meant.

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IMAGINE the place where everyone goes to the grocery store by bike or foot, where no parent drives their children to school, where it is faster and more convenient to bike than drive, where all public schools teach 9 years olds how to walk and ride a bicycle safely, where you never have to worry about what people call “dangerous” neighborhoods and streets, and where roads are not too loud to chat with friends while walking. If you think it is a dream, that is the city where I was born and raised – Tokyo…

Hold on, that is not the Tokyo I am talking about, with millions of people crossing streets, 50-story buildings, anime, and kawaii culture. I challenge most Americans’ exoticized picture of Tokyo and instead ask you to imagine my neighborhood, Ota City. It is one of the 63 municipalities in Tokyo prefecture, and it is mostly a residential, manufacturing, and industrial zone with a large international airport and landfill sites. It takes 23 minutes by train to get to the central Tokyo station (where there are few things other than office buildings and train transfers). However, my neighborhood is still a very populated area with 198,315 people per square mile living in it (compared to 3,837 people per square mile in Milwaukee County). 

Yes, there are peaceful parks in such a populated place as well. Below is a photo of my neighborhood park with my mint-green bicycle, my first and last bicycle since I was 12. Since I was little, I walked, took trains, and biked everywhere: to grocery stores, to medical appointments, to school, and to see my friends and grandparents. There were no dedicated facilities in my neighborhood like Milwaukee’s Oak Leaf Trail or protected bike lanes, but I grew up with bike culture. For me, biking is simply an everyday form of transportation.

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I spent my first week in Milwaukee doing bike mechanic training at the Valid bike shop at North Division High School. After training, I earned my own bike and I felt like I had obtained total freedom to bike anywhere without worrying about when the bus would come. I was excited to have a life like I did in Ota City. Unfortunately, it did not really go as I expected. 

A child from Clarke Square Park made the cutest yard sign: “Bikes are so cool.” While I was happy that he made it, I thought that I had never taken a moment in my life to think that a bike was “so cool.” I hope everyone has a lot of wonderful memories, as I did throughout the summer; however, I have biked too many Milwaukee streets with potholes shaking my brain. There are too many of them to report every single hole in the city. Why is parking a bicycle in my dorm harder than parking a car? 

IMAGINE the streets where everyone uses them for daily necessities. I greatly appreciate the excitement around biking, as I enjoyed group rides like Critical Mass and Riverwest 24, but it seems like the emphasis is on sport and activity rather than convenience. I feel like not everyone has to enjoy biking, just like not all of us play soccer but rather, it is a tool to make our life convenient.

What is fascinating is that my home street in Ota City is quiet enough to chat with my family. Talking to my friend in downtown Appleton is impossible unless I yell. Why did the culture decide it is acceptable for cars and motorbikes to make a lot of sounds on the street? These small things prevent people from walking, and the culture seems to be the key to walkable and bikeable streets. Most of my job at the Bike Fed was to create the culture, instead of actually designing and fixing the streets.

A safer culture can be created in many different ways. In Ota City, I remember car advertisements and commercials that repeatedly mentioned the number of pedestrian fatalities in the previous year, with the selling point that their cars caused fewer car crashes than other brands. Local police officers displayed the number of traffic-related injuries and deaths every day. Guest speakers brought into my school talked about traffic and street safety every year, including a stunt performance, during which we witnessed how far people can fly during a car crash, as well as how a truck’s turning radius works. 

It was both horrifying and interesting, and what is important about all of these memories is the repetition. I have many memories as a kid talking about traffic safety. However, I want to emphasize here that Tokyo is not a dream place either. The number of car crashes in my town has never been zero. Culture cannot be created in one day, but the repetitive reminder to everyone is how I think Bike Fed contributes to the community. 

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Today, I am aware that it was a privilege that my parents did not have to be concerned about “rough” streets and “dangerous” areas around my community. As a summer intern at the Bike Fed coming from such a bike-normalized environment to Milwaukee County, I first think of privilege when I think of safe streets here. If someone cannot afford a car, travel can be very time-consuming and sometimes risky because society is designed for motor vehicles. 

We all can agree that safe streets should not be a privilege, and that is why I believe MilWALKee Walks and Bike Fed are crucial in Milwaukee. If someone who has a different background asks us, “Is it safe?”, we want to take a moment to question whether the safety for them is the same as ours. The level of safety changes depending on who we are and what we have in the streets. 

More importantly, such places and people in the community are never inherently unsafe, but rather the systems make a place dangerous. My experience here as an East Asian woman, speaking English as a second language, without American citizenship, is quite unique and different from most of the people reading this blog. I am grateful to share my experience in Milwaukee with other Milwaukeeans. IMAGINE Milwaukee streets where zero pedestrians lose their lives from a car crash, where everyone has access to a bike, where all parents can trust the city to let kids walk and bike to school by themselves, and where we do not have to own a car to live comfortably. Imagination is a powerful tool for solidarity, and Bike Fed will lead all Milwaukeeans on radical imagination trips so that someday it is the reality.

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1. Benjamin, R. (2024). Imagination: A Manifesto. W.W. Norton & Company.