If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that some of my pet peeves include New York's, and other US cities', follies in creating "bicycle infrastructure." Often, it seems that those who conceive, plan, design and build bike lanes and other facilities haven't been on a bicycle since they got their driver's licenses, or at all.
Evidence that I am not engaging in conspiracy theories or am simply a chronic complainer can be seen in the routing of bike lanes. Too often, they put cyclists in more danger than they'd face while riding in traffic. They force cyclists to cross intersections where drivers--sometimes of buses and trucks--are making right turns in front of them. Or they are simply poorly marked and maintained.
One of the hazards, which seems like a mere inconvenience to anybody who doesn't cycle, is the way some lanes begin or end seemingly out of the blue: what I call the bike lanes from nowhere to nowhere. When such a lane begins or ends abruptly--in some cases, in mid-block--motorists and cyclists alike are caught unawares, which probably does more than anything else to increase chances of a tragic encounter.
Those lanes from "nowhere to nowhere" also help to foster the attitude among non-cyclists that we're a bunch of entitled whiners engaging in a frivolous recreational activity. While I do ride for recreation (or, more precisely, physical and mental health), I also ride for transportation. So do many other riders in this city, and others: They go to work or school, visit friends and family members as well as museums and other venues, or the store, on their bikes. Some might go a few blocks, but others--like me--venture beyond our neighborhoods and even our cities.
It must be said that I have been cycling for most of my life and in this city for about four decades. I rode to school and work when none of my peers did; I pedaled through neighborhoods and towns when I was the only adult cyclist most residents had seen. So, for me, the absence or presence of cycling "infrastructure" won't affect my decisions to ride or not.
But, for a prospective, new or less-experienced cyclist, it might. They might decide to pedal to their classrooms, workplaces or any other place they want or need to frequent if they felt there was a coherent system of bike lanes or other routes that could take them safely for all or much of their trip. Not only would such a system allow them to ride with fewer worries about traffic, it would make navigating a route easier.
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| The Schuylkill River Trail |
The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia seems to understand as much. That is why they have been working with the city's Circuit Trails network to fill in the "gaps" between some of the lanes within the City of Brotherly Love--and the communities surrounding it. The stated goals of the program are 500 miles of trails by 2025 that will be--and this, to me, is the more important goal--that will be part of an integrated system.
Such a network, I believe, might entice some people who live in nearby suburbs--including a few, like Cherry Hill, across the Delaware river in New Jersey--to commute or take pleasure trips into the city by bicycle.
