Consider this blog post my once-monthly quota on all things bike-related. People who don’t like noise or violence should stay away from the comment section.
That said, I continue to find stories that make me think about the incredible worldwide push on to make bicycles a significant part of urban transportation systems. Is this part of a revolution as significant as 1950s freeway building? Or is it just a fashionable trend that will plateau in a few years, as attention turns elsewhere.
Two stories recently were striking:
This one today, about Los Angeles putting a bike lane through its downtown. Okay, the downtown is kind of a dead zone and the real traffic craziness is on the freeways, but still. I could actually see this expanding rapidly. One thing we noticed the last time we were in LA is that quite often the non-freeway arterials that run across the city are quite pleasant and not that crowded. Plus the city is relatively flat. Plus those streets are quite wide, so could easily accommodate bikes.
And then Frank Bruni’s column in the New York Times on the weekend, as he cycles around the city with much reviled Janette Sadik-Kahn (who visited here a couple of years ago), who has driven New York’s aggressive push for bike lanes and pedestrian zones in the middle of streets.
One thing I’d like to know in all this bike stuff is how many cars are really removed from the road when someone converts to cycling. It’s always been my suspicion that most people cycling are converting from transit, not cars.
However, those of you who follow my tweets know that I, in an excess of virtue, cycled to work twice out of four days last week, PLUS cycled to the farmers’ market for my load of organic vegetables that will quietly liquefy in my refrigerator this week. That was definitely one gas-hogging minivan removed from the road for those trips. Maybe there are more of those kinds of converts out there than I think.
By the way, one thing that I was pleasantly struck by last week on my commutes — the silence. Many people I know in Vancouver mourn the passing of the city of the 1970s mostly because of how tranquil it was compared to what it’s like now, with 24/7 streams of noise-spewing traffic.
But when you’re on a bike on the city’s great bike routes on the residential streets, you get to go back to that old, tranquil city. It’s incredibly quiet. You spend your time admiring instead, as you whoosh along, the lovely gardens, parents walking their kids to school, older couples strolling around hand in hand, owners out with their dogs.
If only our late summer could last forever, says this fair-weather cyclist.