On 6/29/2018 3:19 PM, Joerg wrote:

I suggest you visit Berlin, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Hannover or Dortmund
in Germany. All cities I spent lots of time in and they are by no means
small or resemble any of their characteristics from their medieval
times. With some cities that is because they were thoroughly flattened
in WW-II, others just razed the old city core and only left historically
valuable structure standing. Or what they thought was valuable back then.

Some people look at the entirety of the United States and proclaim that
we can never be like Amsterdam. They are absolutely correct. You're not
going to make the entire U.S. into Amsterdam, but you can increase the
bike percentage in a limited number of urban areas, which is sufficient.

The key is bicycle infrastructure. Yesterday I attended a forum on
trails along waterways. We have a great many of these in my county
because trails along creeks and rivers are easier to do because the
right-of-way is more easily available and there are often already
vehicle bridges over the creeks and rivers so a path without road
crossings is more practical. At some times of day, you might think you
WERE in Amsterdam with all the bicycle traffic.

Yesterday I was sitting next to a woman from our transit agency (VTA), a
hopelessly awful organization when it comes to running buses and trains,
but they also build some of the bicycle infrastructure. I pulled out my
phone and brought up Google Maps and showed her where we badly needed a
bicycle freeway over-crossing. She instantly recognized the location and
told me "it's in the bike plan." The problem of only major multi-lane
arterials crossing freeways and railroad tracks has resulted in isolated
areas that have poor bicycle connections.

In San Francisco, increases in bicycle infrastructure have resulted in a
large increase in bicycle commuting, and this was despite the fact that
several projects were delayed by a lawsuit so only unaffected projects
were constructed for four years!

I only half-jokingly suggested that it would be far more cost-effective,
in terms of number of single-occupancy vehicle reduction, to not build
any more light rail ($40 million/mile) or heavy rail ($1+ billion/mile)
and just buy a few hundred thousand electric bicycles to distribute with
certain caveats. Remember, those dollar figures are just the
construction costs for the track, and don't include equipment or
operations and maintenance.