Originally Posted by
CliffordK
Consider the albedo of miles of black surface.
How much tar or concrete goes into making a bike lane? How much energy?
It doesn't really matter because without bike lanes and paths, society is on a dead-head path to environmental destruction and resource depletion. Automotivism can't just eliminate bike lanes to become sustainable and not having the bike lanes makes it that much harder for people to choose to bike.
Around here, the best off street paths get a fair amount of bike traffic, but even at best, perhaps a density of 1 person per quarter mile at any one time. The low traffic paths might get 1 person per couple of miles. It is hard to compare that to the number of vehicles on the road.
Of those who don't deny automotivism is a problem, only a few see it as their responsibility to utilize alternatives for the sake of growing the popularity of cycling. Culturally, there was more wherewithal a few years ago to take initiative individually for creating social change than there is now. I have read research that people orient more strongly toward socially responsible behavior during or in the wake of recession. After economic growth has been re-stimulated for a while, social responsibility gets eclipsed by social pressure not to complain because more people are doing better financially, never mind the environmental costs of the economic growth.
Anyway, in general, I like the paths. But, it does seem a bit selfish to have a long path just to myself. And from an environmental view, they may only be a benefit for their publicity value, and not when one considers the resources that go into building them.
You're doing the right thing by riding it, then, because most people don't want to be the first and/or only person utilizing a bike path. First, it takes the really independent people deciding on their own to go out there and take advantage of it. Then come the avantgarde who view it as a minoritarian trend and see it as a daring social risk to follow suit. Once a significant critical mass of people build up, then comes the masses flocking in droves because they don't want to miss out on the hype, though they can get discouraged if industries lobby against a trend as being a threat to jobs or otherwise negative in some way, as cycling was a few years ago when its popularity was really snowballing.