FBinNY 

Yes, harassment has increased in some areas, but this seems to be more of a western thing, and we seem to get less of it in the northeast and the midwest. I don't know if it's a geographic difference in driver temperament, or a phase which may have passed already in some areas.

I can tell you that in New York, drivers are nicer the counties that have always had adult cyclists, than in areas where bicycles were toys until a few decades ago.

As for recumbents, drivers might be giving them room because they look strange, or it might be as simple as sightlines. Low recumbents tend to disappear below the hood so not being able to see them, driver leave more room.

Dave Cutter

So is that really the problem? If as a nation we dump a few billion more bucks into the park systems that run the rails-to-trails.... THEN my 400 pound brother and 86 year old Mom... will take up cycling?

And.... if budget-cuts close down fully half of the paths already in use.... are YOU quitting cycling?

CB HI

I take it you have not spent any significant time riding in the Washington DC area.

FBinNY 

Not since it became "bike friendly".

Am I the only one who thinks there may be a linkage between aggressive assertive cyclists, and nasty angry motorists?

B. Carfree

Sorry about omitting the sources. As with the OP, the source is the U.S. Census American Community Survey. It's a fun, if depressing, toy.

B. Carfree

That next level of infrastructure will be difficult to get built if the traffic planners/engineers are busy overselling the garbage they have installed as perfect. It doesn't help that many so-called advocates are busily cheer leading for them.

If you're going to be flamed for this outlook, it won't be by me. I agree that we need to substantially improve what we call bike infrastructure in this country. I think you, genec and I all want the same happy ending. It looks to me like our point of divergence is that I think we will get there faster if we stop celebrating half-measures (or worse) and insist that the job be done properly when it's done.

As others have noted, this will require a shift in priorities such that the overall transportation infrastructure no longer serves cars first, foremost and nearly exclusively. That's going to take both local work and legislative changes (yes, automobile priority is legislated). We can't get that done if half, or more, of us are perceived as saying what is going in today is adequate. Some of what has gone in over the past decade has made the situation better than it was, but is still inadequate in that it doesn't reach enough "risk bins" of potential riders. Worse, much of what I have seen and ridden on has made the situation worse, and it galls me to hear "advocates" saying how wonderful it is while I watch people get intimidated/maimed/killed simply because it is so poorly done.

FanaticMN

Pffft. That's not a bicycle highway. THIS is a bicycle highway:


https://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/199/121/199121111_640.jpg

Except that one is in the U.S., and is part of a well-connected system of independent routes and trails that are interconnected with "paint and plastic" on streets as well.

Bingo. Except that, a system of well-connected, mostly independent, well-designed infrastructure enables bicycling even when, on the roads, bicycles are are treated as second class citizens (especially by drivers), a separate infrastructure is a refuge. It can also be a bridge that allows riders to (re)gain experience and confidence, enabling them to join the traffic stream, if they so desire.

We need not drive people to other forms of transportation.

Berta

According to APM's "Marketplace," meet the latest economic bubble: car loans. Sigh.

I think a growing number of people will continue to work too many hours/two jobs to have the energy or the interest in cycling for transportation, especially if even the flattest route to work feels like a fitness challenge. Also, most shopping areas around me, especially the newer ones are very uninviting to cycling. Then there's the huge factor of weather for a large part of the U.S.

CrankyOne

Some great posts, especially Genec & Terrior2. I think for me this sums it up: https://www.streets.mn/2013/10/04/do-...-bike-lanes-2/

People were slow to embrace cars until the quality of the infrastructure got to a certain level, until they could safely and reliably go somewhere useful, until they didn't have to wear special clothes, and until they didn't have to be their own mechanic beyond putting air in the tires and gas in the tank.

dynodonn 

Maybe your family members won't take up cycling, but a number of other people will.......oh, and my mom loves to walk our local rails to trail. Prioritizing roadway designs for motorized vehicles will only cull out the less than stalwart cyclists, keeping commuter cycling numbers low.

Dave Cutter

So... you feel changes affect OTHER people differently than yourself (or yours). Not a new... or rare concept. However I have never seen anyone effectively use the concept that the prevailing culture is somehow fundamentally different.... than themselves.

In real life... people are extremely similar in thought... with minor variations accounted for by cultural differences. In the tests I recall from college psychology classes we found almost universal behavior regarding environmental issues (the same as I see in real life around me today) with only a small percentage of outliers.

I'd suggest that we dedicated cyclists ARE the environmental outliers in this.... NOT the 94% that never use the bicycle paths.

I wasn't an early adapter to the bicycle paths in my area. I didn't start using the bicycle created infrastructure until 1985. But even for me I have to accept we've had a full generation of promotion and spending.... with no significant increased use other than that accounted for by population growth.

buzzman

#1 while I feared being flamed for being a utopian in my desire to have more satisfying infrastructure I wonder if you're being too utopian or naive in thinking that legislative change will shift the priorities away from automotive dependence. Our economy is solidly built on two major driving forces A) housing and B) the automotive industry - that's why we had the bailouts. Gas, oil, manufacturing, sales, loans, highways, parking, and literally thousands of tangential industries are built around the automobile. Unless the country is suddenly presided over by some kind of bicycle friendly totalitarian willing to risk the slings and arrows of the economic might of those forces it will be more incremental nationally than many of us would like. I feel that you must know this. But I question who will make and how that legislative change will happen.

#2 . I've said this time and time again in these threads but I have been around bikes and bike advocacy for several decades and I've watched the stand still we have come to when "bike experts" discredit infrastructure as being sub- par and therefore not worthy of our investment. The bike path I use almost every single day to go to work has been labeled sub-par and was left neglected by the bicycle advocacy community for 30 years. Finally a combination of federal and state money became available along with advocacy by a conservancy group (not bike centric) and the path has been revitalized.

Now bike advocacy groups are participating and, hopefully, some fundamental changes to intersections on the path are underway both in design and implementation. But these take time. If you want to wait until everything that gets built meets your high standard you're going to wait a long time, a very long time.

Personally, I think roads and transportation are ever evolving entities and it will never be perfect so we do the best we can in the moment and continually improve. There are A&S posters who discredited the changes being made in Boston 5 years ago and frankly, they were wrong, it's a better ride with them than it was without them. But even I would agree they are sub-par. If I could wave a magic wand and make them better I know exactly how they should be- so bravo for me

#3 Hyperbole serves no one. Saying, " I watch people get intimidated/maimed/killed simply because it is so poorly done." when most evidence shows that bike infrastructure generally has a positive impact on bike safety or at least it's a wash and the change is negligible. There are certainly cases where a design in very local circumstances may be a contributing factor in an accident but those kinds of issues exist outside the realm of bike infrastructure as well. I could list many circumstances where poor road design, that has nothing whatsoever to do with bicycle specific accommodations, has contributed to accidents and injuries. If the message coming out of Portland to the rest of the country is you're bettor off on your unaccommodated roadways than we are with all our sub par infrastructure that's a pretty pathetic message and one I have difficulty accepting.

I was just speaking with a very pro bike urban planner who is working for HUD but also working on a local level in terms of town and village redesign on Cape Cod. He uses a bike for transportation and recreation, uses bike share in DC regularly but refuses to refer to himself as a "bike rider". Without any prompting from me, in fact, expecting me to disagree with him, he said,"The biggest obstacle to making towns and cities more bike friendly is bike riders themselves. They're harder to work with, less flexible, less open minded and more convinced they are right than the staunchest of the anti bike crowd."

Until that perception changes good luck passing any legislation or getting anything done or expect to be dropped out of the loop of the changes that will inevitably happen.

FanaticMN

For CB HI, an article comparing winter cycling in Minneapolis with summer cycling in Honolulu.

Yeah, it's all anecdotal, but it's still hilarious in the context of this thread.

https://www.startribune.com/local/min...236827801.html

CB HI

Honolulu has bike lanes, bike paths and sharrows. So based on the methods used in the article to determine weather has no impact, then it is clear that bike facilities have no impact.

work4bike

I generally side with those that say that increased cycling infrastructure does not significantly increase number of cyclists, in general and in the big picture, i.e. national statistics.

Although, as in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. Here in Florida we don't have much in the way of cycling infrastructure, although I'm seeing more bike lanes built here and there. However, my family is from Maryland just outside D.C. and I've seen the cycling infrastructure built up there, including a MUP placed on the new Woodrow Wilson bridge, which is part of the interstate system.

I do see more cyclists now in that area, but many of these cyclists I believe you must be very careful in counting them as an increase; simply because many of them transit via car to a point to ride their bikes. However, you do see an increase in the number of commuters, but this is where location, location, location comes into play. Even if I were not a cyclists I could imagine myself wanting to ride a bike into D.C. (or any big city) as opposed to dealing with traffic and parking, which for many is a major problem, both in finding a spot (which many times is a good walk from your destination) and also costs, either in parking meters or parking lots; this cost can be significant.

So in these cases I definitely see how increased cycling infrastructure can attract more cyclists. However, beyond that I really don't think much of the projects justify the costs, but this must be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

I'm not against increased cycling infrastructe; I'm only saying you can't assume that if you build it they will come.

CrankyOne

buzz, good points.

We also have to be careful on the other side though. Allowing money, resources, and political capital to be spent on poor infrastructure, like bike lanes squeezed between traffic lanes and parked cars, could hurt far more than help. Like the article I linked to above, such bike lanes will only attract a very few more people who are on the fence, they aren't the kind of facilities that will serve the larger population. Pushing for a cycletrack instead though, will give us infrastructure that is more appealing (and safer) for the entire population. In many cases just swapping the car parking and bike lane will be a huge improvement. But traffic engineers have been told that bicycles are vehicles and so the lane should be next to all of the other vehicles.

Excellent point. Though I also somewhat disagree. Part of the problem is that traffic engineers in the U.S. are stuck in 1950's thinking. They still view their top and nearly singular priority is to get as many cars through a corridor as fast as possible. Safety, expense, pedestrians, bicycles, and aesthetics are all a long way down their list. Traffic engineers view people who don't ride bikes as reasonable because they're in agreement.

A bigger issue though may be that the bicycling community is so fragmented with in-fighting and very entrenched positions. Traffic engineers, planners, and politicians have heard from vehicular cyclists (like I use to be) for years that bikes and cars mix and we just need to teach people how to ride with traffic and teach drivers how to behave around bicycles. This is still the loudest, most prominent, and most organized group out there in many states. Just about every competitive and recreational bicycle club out there is part of this.

On the other side are those (like me today) who want Dutch style segregated infrastructure. This group is just now becoming organized but is still somewhat fragmented itself (See this and his previous post: https://www.streets.mn/2013/11/15/dim...le-facilities/) and is very underfunded. This also goes hard against the grain of the vast majority of traffic engineers who much prefer the vehicular cyclists who's wishes are much easier to meet and have a more consistent message. The segregated folk then are battling the bulk of the U.S. car-centric population, antiquated traffic engineers, clubs of vehicular cyclists, and politicians who've heard a lot more from these three groups than from those who prefer segregated facilities.

There's also a large group in the middle for whom any pablum of lanes and sharrows will do and these folks, while relatively disorganized, do show up at meetings and make their voices heard.

dynodonn 

.....and this is the problem when it comes to designing cycling infrastructure in the US, with many of it's autocentric compromises incorporated by persons who mainly drive motor vehicles, and making a portion of US cycling infrastructure undesired by both motorists and cyclists alike.

dynodonn 

Such was the case in my locale a few years back, when our local bicycle advocacy struck an 11th hour deal with city officials and DOT engineers to get a new section of bicycle infrastructure installed. Our only bicycle commuting city council person was in favor of a more practical design, but was out voted by the remaining council members who commute by motor vehicle, giving local cyclists yet another DZBL, with fast moving adjacent traffic, to contend with.

spare_wheel

First of all, a defense of PDX. Its not perfect, but for the most part our bike lanes are relatively well connected -- with the exception of downtown (and I will get back to that). Moreover, our bike lanes are not the pathetic DZBL common in many USAnian cities. The standard width has been 6 feet for many years (with 7-9 feet with and without buffers increasingly common). And while the city has installed an increasing amount of separated infrastructure it is these wide bike lanes that get the heaviest use. The Williams-Interstate bike couplet has daily bike traffic counts of 4-5K, for example. In my experience, cyclists in PDX would prefer additional space and more traffic calming over another few miles of 8/80 segregation. To date, segregated facilities in PDX are often unpopular because they are built with obstructions, blind corners, meandering s-curves, and right-hook prone intersections/mixing areas. Moody is the lone success story only because it's a route to a major university/health center. Amusingly, even on moody many cyclists avoid the segregated cycling facility and instead use the wide unobstructed pedestrian area.

And let's get back to downtown. Downtown PDX has one, much-maligned, cycle track that gets relatively little use, a buffered bike lane that also gets little use, and crappy conventional bike lanes. Nevertheless, downtown PDX is a huge cycling success story. Why? Because ~8 years ago the city enforced a downtown wide ~15 mph speed limit via signal timing. Yes...15 mph. This type of traffic calming is very dutch, BTW.


I also think it's very important to note that ACS commuting numbers are not cycling mode share numbers. For example PDX has 6 universities/colleges with tens of thousands of student and not a single one of these student commuters is counted in mode share stats. Moreover, a person who does not commute the majority of the time by bike or who has a mixed bike commute is not counted. European mode share numbers typicall measure "cyclists" on a per trip basis so that anyone who uses a bike for any purpose is counted. And in PDX there are an awful lot of people who commute by car/bus/street car/train but also ride their bike for social/utilitarian reasons (to the pub, bar, park, cafe, restaurant, grocery store, or entertainment venue). My better half is a perfect example of this. We typically ride 6-7 days a week but she commutes to work in her hybrid car.


_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I see the usual suspects pining away for copenhamsterdam-style world-class infrastructure but not responding to b_carfree's question. Can any of you who advocate for separation provide a single example where a large building program has led to a spike in cycling mode share. I am asking for just one example!

And, IMO, statements that cycling advocacy is dominated by VCers are pure fantasy. I've not met a single VCer in PDX. Not one. On the other hand people who are pro-infrastructure are often labelled as "VCers" by cheerleaders of segregation.

buzzman

Funny that you draw that conclusion from the article when it says:

And in previous posts you seemed to defend the sidewalk riding of half the cyclists in the most recent Honolulu bicycle count because of on road traffic congestion and a lack of room for cyclists on the road, unless they want to sit in traffic.


I agree with much of what you say in your post.

I, too, had been a pretty strict road rider with little use or affinity for bicycle infrastructure. But my tune has changed.

While I support separated infrastructure in concept it depends on implementation much like your comments on bike lanes and sharrows. The difference here is that separated facilities require more time, money, space, investment and commitment so the same cautions you make about poor implementation and design are greater for me around separated structures. Paint is relatively easy, cheap and easy to remove or modify.

I am certainly not saying, nor do I think most of us posting in favor of facilities are under the delusion that simply building facilities will lead to more ridership. I recall visiting in laws in Florida in an area where the road riding was horrible, narrow roads and aggressive drivers with not another cyclist in sight. The next year I got a call from my relatives saying "Bring your bike. They've built a bike path right near the house." When I got there I hopped on the path only to discover that it ran parallel to a side road that was fine for riding, went about two miles running between two city parks and ended. It didn't take you into town or to the beach or anywhere. It attracted some joggers, elderly walkers and mothers with baby strollers who seemed annoyed at the presence of a cyclist.

But building facilities or painting sharrows or lanes, adding bike share programs, bicycle parking, racks on city buses and on commuter trains not only has a strong correlation to increased ridership but for many new cyclists is the direct cause of why they start riding. Denying this link seems to be the indicator of the entrenched, locked down "bike experts" that are near to impossible for anyone, even many fellow cyclists or more enlightened traffic engineers to work with effectively.

CB HI

It is only an article that is just as biased and wrong as so many post here.

You are confusing an "explanation" with "defend". They are not the same. I said nothing of lack of room on the road, I only noted that due to the congestion, sidewalk riding on that road is 10 times faster.

And this statement of yours attempts to falsely convert the claim of 50% sidewalk riding to city wide, vice on a single street and a park. Why would you do that?

Brennan

I think the problem with the correlation/causation debate on bike infrastructure is there is still no truly extensive bike network in the US to use as a basis for comparison. Even in the best biking cities, most bike lanes/paths are limited and discontinuous, and that will always be a discouraging factor for some potential riders. If, however, you were to drop a network of bike lanes into a city that was as extensive and continuous as its system of sidewalks, I think a large increase in ridership would follow. Since that is not a realistic possibility, we are left with a piecemeal approach that probably leads to more incremental increases in ridership, with perhaps a long term goal of a network extensive enough to enable travel to most places in the city. Somewhere along the way to that goal is probably a tipping point where the network becomes extensive enough to trigger significant increases in ridership.

Brennan

BTW, I just read an article about city planning and how it does influence how people choose to travel. The article is not bicycle specific, but it does illustrate how infrastructure can influence behavior. The article is actually an excerpt from a book that might prove to be an interesting read.

spare_wheel

Davis had a continuous and connected bike network and somehow mode share still plummeted (and is only now recovering).

If cycling is to have mass appeal we need to focus on more than just the appearance of safety. Cycling needs to be cheaper and faster. Germany and Holland have very different approaches to cycling infrastructure but they both actively discourage motoring via taxes, fees, and road development policy. Cycling advocacy that does not focus on discouraging motoring is doomed to fail, IMO.

Brennan

The Davis wikipedia page says "from 1990 to 2000, the US Census Bureau reported a decline in the fraction of commuters traveling by bicycle, from 22 percent to 15 percent." Even with a decline in ridership, the low end of 15% bicyclists is still far higher than other American cities.