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Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Bicycle Summit and the Failure ofVehicular Cycling.
Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Bicycle Summit and the Failure of
Vehicular Cycling. Attended the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Bike Summit https://bikesiliconvalley.org/summit/ yesterday. The keynote was entertaining, but very strange, and had nothing to do with bicycling, but the event improved from there. The most interesting thing was to hear two different transportation planners, in separate presentations, lambast the “vehicular cycling” movement, as an impediment to increasing the number of transportational cyclists. As we now know, the vehicular cycling movement was a dismal failure in terms of increasing the bicycle mode-share, but for years transportation planners bought into the idea of treating bikes like cars, an idea which was promoted by people like John Forester. “Here’s what happened when one city rejected vehicular cycling,” http://shifter.info/heres-what-happened-when-one-city-rejected-vehicular-cycling/ The statistic that they both harped on was the 1%/7%/5%/60%/33% breakdown, from a Portland study https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/158497. 1% of people will cycle no matter what, whether or not there is good infrastructure, bad infrastructure, or no infrastructure—these people, like Jay, are referred to as “Strong and Fearless.” 7% are “Enthused and confident, and will cycle with just a minimum of infrastructure such as sharrows and “bike routes.” 33% of people will not cycle no matter what, no matter how good the infrastructure might be. 60% are “interested but concerned,” and would do transportational cycling if there was good infrastructure, with the percentage increasing as the infrastructure moved toward Class IV. As infrastructure improves, collision, injury, and fatality rates fall dramatically, partly due to the infrastructure and partly due to the increased number of cyclists. The Class IV infrastructure had a lot of appeal to the “interested but concerned” group for several reasons. They felt safer in protected bicycle lanes, not only because of the physical barrier from vehicles, but because there was no way for vehicles to block the bicycle lane for parking or loading/unloading (which is also a big pet peeve of mine!). The bottom line was that to get more “butts on bikes,” cities have to go after the 60% of “interested but concerned.” We need to follow the example of the Netherlands, where bicycle infrastructure is directly responsible for the 38% trip share for bicycles. Silicon Valley, which is flat, and has mild climate, is particularly well suited for this transformation https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord. The whole event seemed to be a lot of “preaching to the choir,” most of the people there were already transportational cyclists and planners that understood what was being talked about. I rode there with my city’s Public Works director. In my city, we have a chance to move a lot of projects forward since when I was elected I replaced a termed-out council member who was not interested at all in increasing transportational cycling. We’ve already pushed through several stalled projects. |
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