Originally Posted by
genec
John, why were the substantial changes made to La Jolla Blvd in the Bird Rock area near San Diego... do you really think "significant urban changes with large economic forces" were the driving factor?
Why are buffered bike lanes now being installed all over San Diego on high speed roads... again what forces do you believe are driving those changes?
What about the 56 bike path? Again what drove the substantial investment to create that path?
These are all changes that happened in your local area... to serve those "puny cyclists." And those are just a few examples of changes that can be observed just minutes from your home.
I had just described the changes in urban form produced by the changes from walking to streetcar to automotive cities, to which I added: " What I also say is that the puny efforts of bicycle activists are entirely too small to accomplish anything as significant as done by these other changes in transportation mode."
Apparently Genec claims that his three examples demonstrate such significant urban change as, for example, the change from streetcar to automotive cities.
1: The work along La Jolla Blvd was a general traffic improvement project, changing from orthogonal intersections to roundabouts. That did not change the urban form to any extent, because it was done within the existing street pattern and size, and this kind of change is desired by both motorists and some cyclists (some cyclists are opposed to roundabouts).
2: Buffered bike lanes: Buffered bike lanes are just an attempt to correct some errors in the bike-lane concept. Certainly, they are advocated by bicycle advocates, but they involve little cost (the most being, sometimes, loss of a motor vehicle lane) and make no change in the urban pattern.
3: The bike path alongside Freeway Cal 56: This bike path keeps cyclists off the new 56 freeway, and everybody knows that both motorists and government want to keep cyclists off freeways. The cost was minimal, being inside the freeway right-of-way in undeveloped territory.
None of these examples demonstrates even an tendency to amplify bicycle transportation in the way that the streetcar and automobile amplified personal transportation and thereby changed urban form.