Bike lanes aren’t magical. They need to be practically everywhere, not just a few roads. They need repair stations on the lane. They need to actually be safe and separate from the car traffic, preferably you shouldn’t be interacting with cars at all in a bike lane. They also need to be relatively shady with trees. They also need to be maintained throughout the year.
I live in a cycling capital of the world and we have repair stations, they're nice but they're a gimmick
We don't care about shading either, and we'll happily bike in the snow
There's 3 things that matter; safety, what mode of transport is the fastest to get me to my destination (where I live, that's mostly cycling), and cost (of owning & using the mode of transport)
You just focus on making as many cycle lanes as you can first, and make sure they're good so that they're used. Cycling should always have the more direct itinerary available. Separate them from cars with bollards and pay attention to how the dutch handle intersections and you'll get 95% of the way there without planting trees for shade or building repair stations
It is very difficult to fit into existing urban areas. If you narrow streets but the alternative does not work, then you worsen pollution by increasing congestion.
Effort matters too - cycling is more viable somewhere flat.
I live off a main road into a town with a wide cycle path separated from cars. The town has slow moving traffic and seems a reasonable place to cycle. The cycle lane is still lightly used.
I usually walk into town. I only use the car for shopping or longer journeys (I do less than 3k miles/year). For me cycling has a very narrow potential use case - if its too far to walk, and close enough to cycle, and I do not need the luggage space of a car.
Adding more lanes didn't decrease congestion so, for once, giving people an alternative to driving sure isn't going to increase it. It's just one lane. Not even a lane if the lane size is currently oversized with respect to the speed limit (which it is on most roads in the united states)
>I live off a main road into a town with a wide cycle path separated from cars. The town has slow moving traffic and seems a reasonable place to cycle. The cycle lane is still lightly used.
I'd have to see a streetview of it but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a lone bikelane with no real network around it to support its use
It's not enough to have just one lane that's safe, people won't bike unless they can find a whole itinerary where they don't risk getting flattened by an F-150
>Effort matters too - cycling is more viable somewhere flat.
And somewhere sunny, and somewhere dry, the fact is, people cycle in Finland yet they don't in Canada because it's not safe
We have electric bikes now so slopes are even less of an issue than they were previously
>For me cycling has a very narrow potential use case - if its too far to walk, and close enough to cycle, and I do not need the luggage space of a car.
Tell that to all those people in Amsterdam who don't even bother to get a driving license
Nothing except for safety and distance matters actually. Every other factor is minor. You just need to make cycling appear safe to the average person living in a city.
The solution to that is obvious once you realize cars are the source of the unsafety.
London: mostly projections that it will increase. If you look at the graph on page 14 the actual growth and the absolute numbers are small. Tiny compared to the tube:
A little over 5m person kilometres travelled compared to 84m. The proportion of total travel (with car, bus, tram etc.) will be a lot lower. Huge expense (esp taking land use into account, and side effects such as making cars more polluting by increasing congestion) it does not look like a success to me.
> Nothing except for safety and distance matters actually. Every other factor is minor. You just need to make cycling appear safe to the average person living in a city.
Tell that to an unfit or elderly person trying to cycle uphill, or people with kids.
>Tell that to an unfit or elderly person trying to cycle uphill, or people with kids.
Why tell them anything? Having more options is not going to stop them from driving.
They have elderly people and kids in the netherlands.
When you oppose alternative modes of transportation, what do you tell:
* The elderly
* Kids (that half of the sentence when you mentioned "people with kids")
* People with disabilities like spatial awareness, mental disabilities etc
* People with other disabilities who would LOVE a cycle lane for their motorized wheelchairs
* People who just aren't good at the wheel and who (thankfully) can't pass the driving test
For them it's not a small drop in convenience, it's their whole life.
"tell that to..." really doesn't go in the direction you think it goes.
Driving is not an "accessible" form of transportation, and it's most likely one of the first things that could get taken away from you by a life event.
It's not the right approach to start worrying about a slight decrease in convenience for those who somehow got a life event that'll allow them to drive, but not walk, use a wheelchair or bike.
Most places only do a few of these.