Originally Posted by attercoppe
That's a really interesting take, Chris. Some intruiging points there. If I may, as a sort of thought experiment, I've partially rewritten your post. Here's the set-up: it's back in "horse-and-buggy days," the car has only recently begun to come into use here and there and is not very popular yet. Of course those who have discovered the convenience of a car - the faster speed, the shelter from the weather, no need to care for it as one would a horse - are prone to encourage others to give up their horses and drive as well, for environmental as well as other reasons. (You may know that, especially in major cities, the excrement from all the horses in use daily was a significant pollution problem.)
The thing about it is, many of those things you pointed out in the revised post became reality pretty quickly (although it may be a function of the way that piece was worded). Yet for all the "benefits" of driving, I don't notice very many smiles among all the drivers that I pass in the daily gridlock. I also see people writing letters to newspapers from time to time asking governments to do something about the number of cars on "their" roads (as long as it doesn't affect them, of course). In fact, it would appear as though many of the benefits of having one of these new-fangled cars were lost as soon as they became popular.
Have you ever heard the saying "popularity corrupts"?
Originally Posted by attercoppe
If enough people eschew autos for bikes to necessitate a major infrastructural change, the change (I hope) will have to be accommodating to this new large group. Just my opinion, though. Hope you liked my changes to the infrastructure of your post.
This was actually a big part of my concern, and it was echoed by Roody above. Getting more people on bikes is fine if we educate them in how to use them effectively. The trouble with the current way in which advocates go around trying to promote cycling is that it generally misses out on this element. In the past I've even had local "advocates" e-mailing me asking me to use bikepaths that simply don't serve my needs in any way simply so that we can convince the council to build more of them.
Now just imagine if a heap of uneducated and unskilled cyclists took up this attitude (at least in greater numbers than now). Here in Queensland we've already had so-called "cycling groups" supporting the ban of cyclists from a particular road. Over in Advocacy and Safety a little while ago someone reported being abused by another cyclist for riding on the road. When it comes to people like this, I tend to take the view of let them sit in the traffic, let them go into debt for a never ending sequence of car repayments, and let them suffer from the "obesity epidemic".
Personally, I'd rather hold on to what I have.
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