SLATE MAGAZINE
Written By Tom Vanderbilt
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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 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 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—well less than a tank of gasoline.
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View full article (Slate.com): Bicycle Highways
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Tags: Bicycle Infrastructure, Bicycling, Bike Paths, Cycling, Monocle Magazine, Slate, Slate Magazine, Tom Vanderbilt
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