Build it and they won't come

On 9/21/2017 3:35 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I don't know what went wrong in Stevenage. In any other town, such
dedicated bicycle paths would be infested with joggers, baby
carriages, radio controlled racers, skateboarders, push carts,
electric powered assault transports etc, which suggests that nobody is
using the paths using any means of transport. That's too strange to
not have an obvious cause. The paths might be going from nowhere to
nowhere, the weather is chronically uncooperative, there are
undesirables lurking along the paths, or something else that might
discourage its use.

It's incorrect to say that in every other town, the paths would be
heavily used. Stevenage is not the only "new town" that was built in
Britain with designed-in bike facilities. Milton Keynes is similar, with
similar failure of bike mode share. There are others as well.

Also, don't judge the quality of an idea by its first attempt.

Again, this wasn't the only attempt in Britain or elsewhere. And on a
smaller scale, one can look at lesser networks of bike lanes or bike
paths in many other towns and see very little use. One town I visit at
least weekly has bike lanes on at least three of the four main highways
approaching the town. (They are two-lane highways.) I've driven there
regularly for probably 8 years. In all those years, I've seen a total of
perhaps 15 cyclists on those bike lanes.

I think that in those U.S. cities where cycling mode share is a bit more
than 2%, the main factor is simply fashion. The city itself, for
whatever reason, attracts a population tuned to trendiness, and
bicycling somehow becomes a fashionable trend. (Remember that San
Francisco had a big surge in bike mode share during a time when a
lawsuit prevented installation of ANY bike facilities.)

In other places (like Amsterdam and Copenhagen) bike mode share is
helped by a cluster of other influences: flat terrain, mild climate,
short travel distances, etc. coupled with a history of utility biking.
And to further boost bike share (as well as transit share) the
government takes a critical step: they dissuade motoring.

If you don't dissuade motoring, people will buy cars, and people who buy
cars will drive them.


--
- Frank Krygowski