Originally Posted by
spare_wheel
and you completely ignored my point. its terribly inconvenient that mode share in holland started increasing prior to most of that infrastructure. mebbe...just mebbe...its not only infrastructure but also societal attitudes towards motoring.
screw "build it and they will come".
my mantra is: "if you ***** slap the motor vehicle off its pedestal, they will come".
considering that i have been happily living car free/light for more than a decade i don't feel cheated in the least.
in fact, one of my primary criticisms of separated infrastructure is that it seeks co-existance with motorists. i vehemently believe we need to take back the streets from the failed paradigm of the single occupancy vehicle.
You're wrong. The Dutch cycled in hordes (like most Europeans, as well as the Brits) untill the arrival of The Car - or rather, untill the cars more or less took over the cities. As cycling became ever more dangerous because of the cars, cycling decreased. This trend was stopped in the Netherlands (and in Copenhagen) in the early 70's when huge demonstrations of cyclists/environmentalists showed that people had been fed up with the carnage and the destruction of their cities in the name of The-Car-is-Progress. With better bike infrastructure, cycling resurged. That's how it happened. It didn't have anything to do with societal attitudes - or only as far as that the majority supported the bike infrastructure, believing (rightly) that it would save many, many lives. People didn't all of a sudden start cycling again, disregarding the very real dangers.