Originally Posted by
John Forester
You advocate some utopian bikeway system that supersedes road use. Where is such? Not even the Dutch have managed that.
That's a funny statement for you to make. What I'd advocate, unless you or someone can change my mind, is exactly what the Dutch have. The Dutch approach of segregated bicycling, warts and all, has proven far more successful than vehicular cycling. Vehicular cycling results in modal shares of about 1%. The more segregated facilities a city has the higher their modal share of bicycling. The Dutch have the highest modal share of OECD countries and the lowest rate of bicycle fatalities.
Originally Posted by
John Forester
And America is a particularly unlikely place for such to develop.
Why?
Originally Posted by
John Forester
We have to live with what we have and what improvements we can make to it.
Yes. In the 1970's some Dutch said that and now look at the improvements they've made. We can do the same.
Originally Posted by
John Forester
American policy for bicycle transportation has been against it for seventy years.
Both American and Dutch policy were against bicycling until the 1970's. Since the 1970's; American policy has been against bicycling largely
because of the promotion of vehicular cycling that told traffic engineers they need not do anything special for cycling but that cyclists and motorists should simply learn to get along. That sure has worked well.
Dutch policy became pro-bicycle with the idea that bicyclists and motorists should be segregated as much as possible. The Dutch have continued to refine their segregated infrastructure over these past 40 years with it becoming more and more segregated every decade. And indeed, it has worked quite well.