Helmet Head

I never claimed that.

I said that despite the installation of gazillions of dollars worth of infrastructure in Davis, enough to make it the only platinum rated bike friendly city in the U.S., cycling per capita in Davis has been reduced as compared to the 1960s when there was no cycling specific infrastructure.

If it wasn't for the free busses, maybe there would have been a slight increase from all that infrastructure. But the fact remains that at best, the undisputed best bike infrastructure in the U.S. had little if any impact on increasing bike usage.

Another factor is that back in the 60s few people had air conditioning in Davis, so everyone was much better acclimated to the summer heat back then. In the summers, Davis gets hot.

natelutkjohn

What about the fact that the car culture is soooo much more then it was in the 60s? Like many more cars per capita? And cars get you chicks man!

Do you ever look at the current social structure, or are you stuck in 1950s Disney-esque time that never existed? Ahhh, I loved that time - men beat their children, wives took speed and no one talked about VC

randya

Hey, but if you're in Portland, bikes get you chicks, but what do I know?

donnamb 

What do the chicks get?

Tom Stormcrowe

Guy's with bikes?

chipcom 

that's the upside...the downside is that they probably gotta support em too.

LittleBigMan

If "the common, acceptable thing to do in the US" is the standard, then driving a car must be the very best option.

sbhikes

Since nobody can do any better than 1.1% (seems to me the threshold should be greater than 2% since 2% is pretty common) let's see if maybe someone can capture pictures of cyclists riding VC. Let's see how well it's caught on.

Let's see people eschewing perfectly good bike lanes for the travel lane. People riding outside the door zone on roads without bike lanes. People riding high-speed arterials in the travel lane when traffic is heavy and fast.

And pictures of yourself don't count.

noisebeam

Keep in mind 1.1% is cycling commuting miles traveled, not 1.1% of trips.
Some cities within Maricopa County have 3.5% non-student commute trips by bicycle, with 10% of students commuting by bicycle. But this 161k population 40sq.mi. city has a total combined 165mi of bike lanes, paths, MUP and Bicycle Routes.

As to the pictures you asked for... I see these often - outside DZ, outside BL (very common if you consider ridng on the stripe outside the BL) - and of course folks ride on arterials. But I also see folks ride in the DZ, in BLs and on quiet residential streets. In otherwords, everyone doesn't do the same all the time.

I am still waiting for Randya to tell me which major metropolitian area in the US doesn't have any bicycle specific infrastructure.

Al

genec

I doubt there is such a city. For inspite of the rants and raves of VC advocates... apparently cyclists prefer infrastructure. Not to mention that infrastructure "touches" more cyclists daily than any book or training will ever reach.

While I am not a strict paint and path advocate, it seems to me that rather than deny infrastructure, perhaps advocates should work to improve something that seems quite destined to stay... and has such a wide "audiance."

noisebeam

Which is why Randya's 'challenge' is disingenuous. The answer can only be there is none, not because of a lack of cyclists, but instead a lack of such a major metro area.

Al

genec

Perhaps a better question is why in the face of vehicular cycling and a book written to promote the same, have facilities taken off to such an extent? Of course, the answer we are most likely to hear is "cyclist inferiority" or more accurately "motorist superiority" (as it effects more than just cyclists). But one also has to ask why infrastructure took off in Europe too... where supposedly such "motorist superiority" does not exist?

sbhikes

Let's modify his challenge then and say the city has to have no more cyclist-specific infastructure than say, Houston.

noisebeam

I rode all over Houston in college cycling club (not team). We pretty much used vehicular techniques, although I wasn't actively aware of it at the time.
Al

rando

good point!

John Forester

Motorist superiority does exist in Europe. In 1937, British motorists attempted to get a mandatory side-path law enacted, and the Cyclists' Touring Club fought that off. In Germany, from the time of Hitler on, cyclists were being pushed aside to clear the way for motorists, to produce some of the world's worst bikeways. Complaints manifest over the decades, and revolt by cyclists. In France, only in recent years have there been some strange experiments, more to do with city planning than anything else. In Spain and Italy, so far as I know, not much in the way of bikeways. In Sweden, while there has been concern about traffic safety and cyclist safety, there has been much investment in motoring facilities and one hears almost nothing about cyclists and cycling facilities. I would say that the typical Swedish attitude is one of motorist superiority. Denmark is an agricultural nation where motoring has been slow to increase, and has a very egalitarian society, whose royal family was known to cycle around town. It probably has the most equal view of motorists and cyclists of any of the European nations, and it is reasonable to conclude that its bikeways are intended to protect cyclists. However, the bikeways that they copy from other nations are based on the cyclist-inferiority view, with distinctly cyclist-inferiority results. Holland is the nation whose bikeway system is widely praised by bicycle activists. Yet Holland is a land of motorist superiority, cyclist inferiority. Holland before WW 2 was a poor nation with a very large amount of bicycle transportation. Maybe twenty years after WW 2, Holland became relatively wealthy and motoring expanded greatly. The Dutch decided that this relatively new form of popular transportation needed to be accommodated on its own facilities, which meant shoving the bicycle traffic aside. The first Dutch bikeway system was a rural system, to move agricultural people, considered those least likely to have the money for motoring, in and out of towns. But these agricultural people had the greatest need for motoring, so they started early. The rural bikeway system is now largely a tourist system. Because of their old, cramped cities, the Dutch squeezed bikeways in wherever they could, making a mix of side paths and bike lanes. They prohibited cyclists from using many roads, where there was no special direction they gave the right-of-way to motorists over cyclists. The three-phase traffic signals that bicycle activists so praise are made necessary because of the complications produced by trying to have three classes of road user, and they delay all traffic. The delays are made necessary to make the bikeways safe.

Therefore, I think that the claim that motorist superiority does not exist in Europe, leading to the conclusion that European bikeways were built purely for the benefit of cyclists, are both false.

Brian Ratliff

It shouldn't surprise anyone that number of cyclists per capita drops as cities grow. City grows. City gets suburbs, which are autocentric. Number of cyclists/capita drops. Pretty straight forward.

What should be measured is cyclists per capita of residents which work within 5 miles of their home. Such numbers probably haven't been collected, but it would be an infinitely better measure of bicycling than plain number of cyclists per capita.

John Forester

Yes, it is considerations such as this that determine the competitive balance between cycling and motoring. However, there are many such considerations, for example the proportion of linked trips being made, linked trips being much less likely to be best made by bicycle.

Brian Ratliff

Yes, you are right. And as a city grows, distances between desired locations also increases. The daily trip to the corner store might be less an option by bike if the store is now 5 miles away vs. one half or one mile away.

Actually, some automobile manufactures are starting to recognize that many people use their car as a 2 ton grocery cart, i.e., it's not for the effortless travel or the speed, but merely for cargo carrying capabilities. I read about one housing development somewhere (I forgot where) incorportated a shopping center of some sort in the development and gave (or tacked onto the selling price of the home) each home buyer a smartcar so they could get to the grocery store and back without burning any gasoline.

Helmet Head

Your point is valid in general, but is not relevant to the situation in this specific context: Davis.

Davis is 10 square miles, and pretty much flat as a pancake.

All destinations within the city are just as bike-reachable today as they were in the 1960s.

wheel

Wow 450,000 miles I bet 2/3 is done on a sidewalk or a MUP err canal.

Also is a bicycle friendly employer considered a bicycle facility. Because in Maricopa they have an alternative trip reduction program. This is mandatory if you have over 50 employees.

Note you only have to worry about the heat index reaching 107 after that your going to start to boil (blood) 30 mins. on 15 mins. off.

randya

MUPs

alternative trip reduction programs

Bzzzt...disqualified!

noisebeam

What major metro area is not disqualified? That will help narrow the search.
Al

rando

what was the question? I forgot!

noisebeam

"tell us where more than one percent of daily vehicle trips are made by cyclists in a major US metropolitan area, and where no bicycle-specific infrastructure is provided."

bike rack... bzzzzt.
MUP thru city park... bzzzzt