[OKC] From Slate.com: Bicycle Highways: Should cities build specialized roadways for cyclists?

[Miles, Karen]

Bicycle Highways: Should cities build specialized roadways for cyclists?

 
By Tom Vanderbilt Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2010, at 1:11 PM ET
 
While there have been any number of bicycle-related entries in Nimble
Cities
<http://www.slate.com/id/2256666/hv/5491c97e-f445-402b-92d3-ee4472734f0f
> , several readers have proposed an idea that can essentially be
described as "bicycle highways." "I live in Chicago and take the L to
work," wrote one, "but I'd rather ride my bike. A large problem with
bicycling in cities is fear, generated by the fragility of a 5-pound
bicycle when faced with a 2,000-pound car. To combat this fear, cities
must develop or designate roadways specifically for bikes."
 
Another argued that bicycle rental programs, while a good way to seed
networks, were lacking: "Most people don't ride bicycles to work not
because they're difficult to store/lock up but because they are at a
serious disadvantage safety-wise. No bike helmet will protect you if an
SUV driver on a cell phone accidentally broadsides you!"
 
There is hardly a major city in the world that is not trying to get more
people on bikes-ridership is up in cities ranging from Paris to New
York-and city planners the world over envision ever greater numbers of
people on bicycles in their long-term projections. The reasons are
fairly obvious: Bicycles lessen congestion while improving the health of
the citizenry. Cycling moreover has begun to seem a kind of indicator of
overall urban health. A recent and not atypical survey of the world's 25
most livable cities (by Monocle magazine) was stacked with Copenhagen,
Munich, Stockholm, and other cities that have invested heavily in
cycling; Portland, Ore., was one of two U.S. entrants. But the question
of how to move cycling forward is less clear. Among the hurdles are
overcoming the culture of fear
<http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/09/fear-of-cycling-01-essay-in-five-p
arts.html>  that can surround urban cycling (often for good reasons) and
overcoming the almost inertial political resistance to giving cycling
road space at the expense (perceived or real) of cars.
 
But the key, one could argue, is infrastructure. While the school of
so-called "vehicular cycling" argues that cycles should be treated as
cars and share the roads, this philosophy seems to be the result of
(primarily American) cyclists adapting by necessity to their harsh
surroundings rather than the sound basis of a widespread transportation
shift. In the world's top cycling cities, one finds not muscular riders
harried and buffeted by passing cars, but all manner of people-young,
old, carrying groceries, carrying kids-riding on networks that have been
designed for them. In the Netherlands, for example, where no new road is
built without a provision for cycles, cyclists ride on paths with a
minimum width of 2.5 meters (which must be 1.5 meters from the road),
get their own green lights, and find parking (if not always enough) at
train stations and even bus stops. And even within the cycling-happy
Netherlands, as David Hembrow has noted, the cities that have better
infrastructure-and not necessarily the most densely populated
<http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2010/02/effect-of-population-density-on-cyc
ling.html>  ones-have higher cycling rates. And what's the annual cost
of the world's best cycling infrastructure? By Hembrow's estimates, is
roughly 30 euros for each Dutch citizen
<http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2010/05/487-million-euros-for-cycling.html>
-well less than a tank of gasoline. 
 
There have been many protracted debates in the transportation world
about what sort of facilities are safest for cyclists (a picture that is
complicated by the recent finding, for example, that drivers seem to
drive closer to cyclists on streets with bike lanes
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6828100.ece>  than
without). One thing that seems clear, however, is that cyclist safety
tends to improve as there are more cyclists. And the best way to get
more cyclists is to make them feel safer. And the way to make them feel
safer is, many planners argue, to provide separate facilities. "I do
believe the separate facility is the best," says Jacob Larson, a
researcher at McGill University who recently completed a study of
Montreal's bicycle infrastructure. "Not only in terms of actual safety
performance but in terms of encouraging people who are less likely to
ride their bikes. These people shouldn't have to be some kind of
breakneck radicals that are really diehards-it should be a clear and
safe option, and I think separate facilities give the perception that it
is, and often do provide a truly safer alternative."
 
Article continues at: http://www.slate.com/id/2258675/pagenum/all/#p2
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20100630/6b12b2bd/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 2310 bytes
Desc: image001.gif
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20100630/6b12b2bd/attachment.gif>