Originally Posted by
spare_wheel
One of the things I find infuriating about cycling advocacy is the tendency to exaggerate cycling risk for political goals. We don't need to lie about the dangers of cycling to argue for separated infrastructure.
No. Half the population has been pretty much ignored.
Read:
How to Get More Bicyclists on the Road - Scientific American
in short
“If you want to know if an urban environment supports cycling, you can forget about all the detailed ‘bikeability indexes’—just measure the proportion of cyclists who are female,” says Jan Garrard, a senior lecturer at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and author of several studies on biking and gender differences.
Women are considered an “indicator species” for bike-friendly cities for several reasons. First, studies across disciplines as disparate as criminology and child *rearing have shown that women are more averse to risk than men. In the cycling arena, that risk aversion translates into increased demand for safe bike infrastructure as a prerequisite for riding. Women also do most of the child care and household shopping, which means these bike routes need to be organized around practical urban destinations to make a difference."
Increased Comfort = More Women Biking | League of American Bicyclists
in short
"As Rutger's researcher John Pucher puts it,
making cycling "irrestible" is one of main reasons women take 55% of bike trips in the Netherlands, but only 24% in the United States. It's why we see some of the highest rates of women's ridership in our top Bicycle Friendly Communities, like Portland, San Francisco and Philadelphia, where strategic investments are making bicycling more appealing.
In fact, 2/3 of American women say their "community would be a better place to live if bicycling were safer and more comfortable."
So what does that mean at the street level?
According to our report:
- More than half of American women say more bike lanes and bike paths would encourage them to start or increase their riding
- Better facilities get more women on wheels: 94% of women in Portland said separated bike lanes made their ride safer
- Studies in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New Orleans all show dramatic increases in female ridership after the installation of bike lanes
- Women will travel an additional 5 minutes more than men to access a bicycle facility
- Feeling comfortable is one of the most important factors in encouraging women to ride — and it's not just bike lanes..."
Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.? | Streetsblog USA
in short
“Without inclusion of cycle tracks in the commonly adopted AASHTO guide, without US-based cycle track research, and without public health and transportation policies in support of cycle tracks, it will continue to be difficult to create cycle track networks,” Lusk and her fellow researchers write. “
As a result of these and many other historical reasons, the default bicycle facility in the United States remains a bike lane painted on a road, in which many bicyclists do not feel comfortable or safe.”