The author and her son, strolling happily -- just not onto the bus. (Photo by Alyse Nelson.)

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily.

I recall vividly how embarrassed I felt the first time I climbed on the bus with my baby boy. We’d waited expectantly — he bundled up in his stroller and me imagining the bus driver welcoming us aboard, lowering the wheelchair lift so we could roll on in style. In the stores and sidewalks of my neighborhood, people made way for us, slowing so we could pass on a congested sidewalk or holding doors open while we rolled into a shop.

But when the bus arrived, instead of lowering the lift, the driver told me to fold Orion’s stroller. My cheeks burned red as I hastily unpacked — diaper bag, toys, blanket, and groceries — while holding onto my squirming bundle of joy. Then, with one hand, I attempted to fold the stroller and carry the load aboard, knowing that everyone was watching me, passengers cursing under their breaths and the driver reviewing his timetable.

For most parents, an experience like that would have eliminated any thoughts of ever again taking their wheels on the bus. But I had no real choice. My husband and I had committed to staying in our apartment overlooking the main street running through Seattle’s University District. Some parents trade up to a minivan or SUV, but we had sold our two-door Civic. We gained a child and shed a car.

And, in most ways, I loved our car-free life. We explored our neighborhood together. People stopped to greet Orion on the sidewalk. I could point out interesting buildings or window displays. Outside our grocery store, the man selling the Real Change newspaper would always belt out, “Have a great day, little dude!” We soaked in the diversity of the city: new smells, sounds, and people.

But King County Metro was the sore spot of my car-free life. Agency rules required me to fold Orion’s stroller. Holding all of the stroller’s contents and Orion, I then had to find a seat before the bus lurched forward. Then I had to squish into a seat with all of our stuff and attempt to keep Orion from grabbing the stroller’s dirty wheels for the duration of the ride. Once we arrived at our stop, I had to reverse the whole ordeal.

My bus-riding fiascos led to an obsession with strollers: I was known to buy and sell them on Craigslist several times a month. My goal was to find that perfect stroller that I could really fold with one hand. I had a closet full of strollers, some undergoing testing and others, having failed, pending Craigslist pickup. It took seven strollers, but I found one that worked—the Britax Preview.

Strollers are welcome on Copenhagen trains. (Photo by Harald Walker.)

It wasn’t until my young family spent six months in Copenhagen, however, that I thought much about King County Metro’s stroller-folding rules. Copenhageners cart babies in enormous strollers, rolling cribs that dwarf our umbrella stroller and do not fold at all. And guess what? They are welcome aboard Copenhagen’s public transit, unfolded and unemptied. Caregivers with strollers use priority seating at the front of the bus. While buses only fit two strollers at once, busy routes’ service is so frequent that the wait is never long. Copenhagen’s trains also have open areas that hold caregivers with strollers, riders in wheelchairs, and bicyclists. Car-free parenting in Copenhagen was a breeze.

Back stateside, I decided to see how other transit systems compared. Portland’s TriMet buses are not much further along than Seattle’s. Open strollers can be brought on board but then must be immediately folded. The only advantage to this policy is that it’s hard to forget the diaper bag at the bus stop. Light rail in both Portland and Seattle allow open strollers aboard low-floor cars, however. And like Copenhagen, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) welcomes strollers aboard public transit. The CTA broadcasts its stroller-friendly policies with notice boards on buses and a YouTube video.

How can transit systems make life easier for moms, dads, and others who care for young children? An open-stroller policy is a crucial first step. After that, opportunities abound. Once strollers are legalized aboard transit, agencies can announce the improvement, like the CTA has done, with notices and videos. As buses and trains need replacement, agencies have the chance to purchase low-floor vehicles, and elevators and raised bus and train stops can make it easier for caregivers with strollers even for high-floor vehicles.

Another family-friendly tip from abroad: Copenhagen’s bus stops had electronic transit-trackers that were linked to GPS on buses. You didn’t have to own a smart phone to know when the next bus would arrive, and instead of peppering you with the frequent, “When is the bus coming?” your child can watch the bus stop tracker count down the minutes.

Allowing strollers on buses may seem trivial. But all families need affordable alternatives to driving, our economy needs weaning from fossil fuels, and our whole society needs to move beyond carbon, quick. With more strollers on the bus, fewer cars would clog the roads. Transit ridership would grow as caregivers transport tots to the doctor, play dates, and the grocery store. And perhaps most importantly, welcoming stroller wheels onto buses and trains has a long-lasting benefit: Kids will grow up seeing public transit as a normal part of the daily routine. The alternative is that we’ll raise another generation that sees driving as the norm.

Sunnyside Piazza.Photo: Daniel Etra

What if all it took to build better neighborhoods was a little paint?

Walking in southeast Portland, I once stumbled on a horizontal rendition of a sunflower, painted curb to curb on the intersection of Southeast 33rd and Yamhill. Sunnyside Piazza, it is called, which may seem a bit much for a splash of color on asphalt, but in person, it seemed fitting. This whimsical design, interrupting the functional but monotonous gray of Portland’s street grid, felt like a somewhere. It seemed like a place deserving a name. It even felt like a “piazza.”

That was in 2002. I later learned that the Sunnyside Piazza was the second painted public square in Portland, facilitated by the nonprofit City Repair Project. Now, dozens of painted plazas, dubbed Intersection Repairs, pepper the map not just of Portland but also of Los Angeles, New York, St. Paul, and Seattle.

Share-It-Square.Photo: donkeycart It all started in the mid-1990s with Share-It-Square, in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood, where architect and City Repair co-founder Mark Lakeman lives. After visiting villages in Central America where residents gather around common spaces, Lakeman decided to bring similar spaces to Portland. “Putting the public space back where it’s supposed to be may not sound like a huge change,” Lakeman says, “but it has a profound effect on the social culture … We know that Americans are more lonely and isolated than ever before, but we don’t realize that the absence of cohesion in American communities is totally related to the absence of places where people can actually build that.”

Looking at his own neighborhood, Lakeman decided to transform the intersection of Sherret and 9th from a car-dominant space to a public place (documented in this video). He thought this change fitting, as cultures throughout history have come together at crossroads. Of course, there was still the question of how to take an intersection — an endlessly repeated but utterly non-convivial fixture of the city’s street grid — and turn it into a place. Lakeman and his neighbors’ brilliance was in the simplicity of their brainstorm: paint a picture.

The Portland Department of Transportation (PDOT) was taken aback by the idea, however. One city official told Lakeman, “That’s public space. Nobody can use it.” The residents went guerrilla: They painted without permission.

PDOT was furious. Officials threatened to sandblast the design off the roadway. But the neighborhood gained political support from Councilmember Charlie Hales and Mayor Vera Katz. When the city surveyed the neighbors living near Share-It-Square, they found residents had positive perceptions of less crime, slower traffic, and increased neighborhood involvement. Seeing that the painted intersection hadn’t cost the government a dime, the politicians quickly moved to pass a city ordinance that allowed painted intersections throughout Portland.

The Wallingford ladybug.Photo: bmarymanIntersection repairs are popping up in other cities, too. In Seattle, a City Repair chapter formed and facilitated several intersection painting projects, including a ladybug in the Wallingford neighborhood. Residents meet annually to repaint the mural and hold a block party. “Our goal is to cut down traffic and bring the community together and create a sense of neighborhood,” Eric Higbee, who led the ladybug painting, told the Seattle Times.

“It’s not about the paint,” says professor Jan Semenza, a professor of public health at Portland State University who lives near the Sunnyside Piazza and has researched intersection repairs. “It’s about neighbors creating something bigger than themselves.” As an everyday intersection becomes someplace special, residents begin to experience the value of community. Neighbors paint themselves out of a corner — of the intersection, of their individual homes — and into the middle of the street. By turning an intersection from a dividing line between neighbors into a gathering place, residents begin to solve the problems that plague neighborhoods and cities. Where isolation existed, they find community. Where cars dominated, they create a people place. With a little paint, neighbors are solving big problems.

The Fremont Turtle.Photo: justsmartdesignWhile her parents initially thought of painting the street at 41st and Interlake Avenue North in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, 8-year-old Ella Sauer hatched the idea of making a turtle. The family then approached neighbor Bill Lindberg with the plan, and Lindberg helped bring residents together and work through the permitting process. The turtle cost a little more than $1,000, including Seattle Department of Transportation permits; the residents received a Neighborhood Matching Fund grant for half of the cost. Painting their street brought neighbors together in a way not typically possible during the daily routine.

“This is the only way I’m able to meet my neighbors on a personal level,” said Kate Gengo, a four-year resident of the neighborhood.

The process of creating a public square empowers the residents and builds relationships, but it also leaves evidence on the ground that something is different in the neighborhood. “It sounds whimsical, but then you go walk around [the Intersection Repair] on a Saturday afternoon and you get it,” says supporter and former Portland city councilor Charlie Hales. Neighbors are talking, cars drive slower, and you can tell you are in a place. When people drive or walk through an Intersection Repair project, they are inspired to reshape their own neighborhoods. City Repair now has facilitated hundreds of community-building projects throughout Portland.

Sunnyside Piazza.Photo: donkeycartSemeza decided to turn his neighborhood into a laboratory. He had students canvass the Sunnyside neighborhood and also survey a similar neighborhood without an Intersection Repair. While there are not enough data to pinpoint the exact reasons, it appears that the Sunnyside Piazza neighbors considered themselves healthier (86 percent in excellent/very good general health compared to 70 percent), happier (57 percent felt “hardly ever depressed” versus 40 percent), and content with their neighborhood (65 percent said their neighborhood was “an excellent place to live” versus 35 percent). Also, police calls from the Sunnyside Piazza neighborhood decreased after the painting project.

Near Share-It-Square, Mark Lakeman sees residents staying rooted in the community. “Americans move every four to seven years,” Lakeman says, “and that period of time is visibly lengthening right around that intersection because people want to live there. Families are clustering around it, having kids or bringing their kids, so there are more children and more shared childcare, and more adults interacting with kids on that street.”

Flying over cities, whether in an airplane or through Google Maps, streets and homes extend for miles, with little to distinguish them. But then you see some color: a painted intersection in a sea of roofs and concrete. These are villages within the city — where locals have come together and said this is a place. A painted intersection might seem trivial. It doesn’t cost much or last very long. But the important work is done behind the scenes. Residents join together. They fashion gathering spaces. And it all starts with some paint.