A few years ago, a bicycle freeway opened in Beijing. Similar elevated bike lanes have been built, or have been proposed or planned, for other cities in Europe and Asia.
Turns out, bicycle highways and freeways aren't a new idea. Nor is one of the motivations for them. And they weren't exclusive to bike-friendly countries like the Netherlands and Denmark.
In fact, a bike highway once linked a sleepy town with the city that, some would argue, is the birthplace of car culture. (Is "car culture" an oxymoron?)
All right...At the time the lane was built, that city--Los Angeles--hadn't become synonymous with "freeway." And the town the lane linked to it--Pasadena--hadn't even begun to host the Rose Bowl.
In fact, automobiles were still a novelty item and the Model T was more than two decades in the future. For that matter, asphalt wasn't in use as a paving material.
In that environment, a fellow named Horace Dobbins (who would become Pasadena's mayor) saw the need to get to downtown L.A. quickly. Interestingly, getting to and from various destinations in China's capital was a design feature of the bike freeway built in that city a few years ago.
Dobbins envisioned an elevated bicycle highway stretching nine miles (about 14 kilometers) between his home town and the bustling metropolis. His proposal was embraced and the first section of the bike highway--complete with a tollboth!--opened in 1900. A mile long, stood twenty feet (seven meters) in the air, had wooden railings on its sides and linked Pasadena's Green Hotel with the base of Raymond Hill, near the city's Glenarm Street.
The view north on the Dobbins Veloway
That year is often seen as a "tipping point," not only because it was the turn of the century. Many then-current and developing events, ideas and inventions would shape the rest of the century and this one. One of those inventions was, of course, the automobile.
And cars are, not surprisingly, why the Dobbins Veloway, as it was called, was never completed. Within a few years, the lane--the two miles of it that had been built--was torn down. Ironically, the land rights that had been secured to construct it were used to build the Arroyo Seco/Pasadena Freeway, commonly recognized as the oldest freeway in the United States.
