On Wednesday, December 11, 2013 8:30:57 AM UTC-5, SMS wrote:
On 12/10/2013 6:15 PM, Jay Beattie wrote:

P.S., sad to see the trend toward e-Bikes in Holland. My riding buddy goes to China a lot a tells some great stories about sharing bicycle facilities with scooter drivers -- who are displacing bicyclists in China.

I've been to China many times and the drop in the number of cyclists is
amazingly large. But a large part of the drop has been due to new subway
lines.

It will be interesting to watch Northern European and Chinese trends for the next several years. I've read some rumblings about user dissatisfaction with bike infrastructure, safety complaints, and some official frustration that the glorious dream of ever-increasing cycling seems to be failing.

The interesting part will be whether it dawns on people like Peter Furth, John Pucher, Mia Birk and others that high cycling volumes depend on dozens of economic and societal factors, NOT just on the presence of cycle tracks.

After decades of demanding bike lanes, these people now realize that bike lanes won't change Podunk into Copenhagen. But they still don't admit that Europe's greater bicycle use is due to immense differences in city density, history, terrain, climate, auto taxes, fuel prices, licensing difficulty, parking scarcity, living spaces, public transportation, liability laws, suburban growth and other aspects of culture. Instead, that crew is now attributing (almost?) all the cycling popularity to one "new" factor: cycle tracks. "Guess what? _Cycle tracks_ will change Podunk into Copenhagen!"

Of course, it's very hard to get a person to admit they're wrong, when their job depends on convincing people they are right.

- Frank Krygowski