If We Were Them...

If the United States were the Netherlands....

There are all sorts of ways you could finish that sentence.  Here's one:  It would have four billion people.

Yes, you read that right.  The 'States would would have more than twelve times its actual population of 325.7 million folks.

That's because, on average, about 4000 Dutch people live on a square mile of their country's land.   In contrast, only about 85 Americans live on an average square mile of their nation.

What's really interesting, though, is that if you were to randomly pick 4000 Dutch citizens, it's likely that 840 of them would be living below sea level--and about 2000 would inhabit land one meter (just over three feet) or more above sea level.

When you know these facts, it's easy to understand why the Dutch are among the leading countries in the move away from fossil fuels:  Decades ago, their policy makers heeded the warning that El Cheeto Grande refuses to believe. They understood that rising sea levels--a result of climate change exacerbated, if not caused, by fossil fuel usage--would essentially wipe out much of their country.

That, in turn, also makes it easy to understand why the Dutch have invested, per capita, more than any other country on bicycle infrastructure.  Dutch policy makers realized that it not only made sense, it was a matter of survival, to get as many people out of cars, and as many cars off the road, as possible.  One way to do that is to make it relatively easy and safe to go to work, school or just about anywhere by bicycle.

It also helps that because Dutch people are packed in so tightly, so are their cities.  In the Randstad, the largest Dutch cities--Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague and Utrecht--are all but joined at the hip in a way that makes the Northeastern US Megapolis seem like a stretch of the Mojave Desert.  Thus, cycling is feasible even for people who are not athletic.

So it should come as no surprise that there are about 23 million bicycles in a nation of 17 million people--1.3 bikes for every person.  

But even in a country where, it seems, everyone cycles everywhere, more than half of automobile trips are of less than 7.5 kilometers (about 5 miles).  To be fair, many of those trips are because, well, people just don't have to go as far to get wherever they're going.  On the other hand, transportation planners agree that the best way to reduce automotive traffic is to eliminate as many of those short car trips as possible.

That is why the Dutch government has just announced plans to spend an extra 245 million Euros on bicycle infrastructure Steintje van Veldhoven, the State Infrastructure Secretary, had already pledged last year.  The money is earmarked for such things as improved bicycle parking in public areas, and more city-to-city cycleways.

Ms. van Veldhoven says she hopes to get an additional 200,000 Dutch people on bikes--and, one assumes, out of their cars, at least for those short trips.

Now, if the US were the Netherlands, she would be trying to get about 4 million Americans on bikes--and spend about 10 billion dollars, in the effort.  That's cost is less than that of a couple dozen F35 fighter jets--or Trump buildings.

Studying In Copenhagen

When I was an undergraduate, "studying abroad" usually involved foreign-language majors spending a year in the "home" or "mother" country of a language.  So French majors went to France, Spanish majors to Spain and, well, you get the idea.

Occasionally, students in other majors sojourned in other lands.  For example, art and architecture students might go to Italy or France, aspiring Shakespeare scholars trekked to England and some who were training in technical or scientific fields might spend time in Germany.  

In those days, nobody went to another country to study cycling, especially transportation or utility cycling.  Most American urban planning was auto-centric, and even though we'd lived through the '70's Bike Boom, forsaking two pedals and two wheels for one pedal and four wheels was seen as a milestone of maturity for a young person.

Well, it seems that things are changing, if little by little.  Three days from now,  seven Landscape Architecture and four Kinesiology students from Penn State University are going to Copenhagen to learn more about the Danish capital's cycling culture.

Specifically, those students will spend two weeks in a faculty-led program in which they will, according to the university, "observe bicycle infrastructure and multi-modal transportation solutions, learn from programs and policies that support biking, and learn about the role of biking in sustainable, livable communities."

Upon the completion of online course work, the students will earn three credits in their respective disciplines.  We can hope that the experience will help them to make or inform better decisions than most of the ones that have been made by planners who have made most of the policies and infrastructure we have here in New York and other American cities.

If He Doesn't Think It Should Require Bravery, Why Should You?

"Riding a bicycle or crossing a street shouldn't require bravery."

I'm told that your insurance premiums increase automatically if you try to do either on Queens Boulevard.  But the words that opened this post weren't uttered by a fellow resident of my NYC borough.

That person also said he wants to see a network of cycle and walking routes "a 12-year-old would want to use".  

He explained "people do the easiest thing", so whatever is created to encourage cycling and walking must be "easy, attractive and safe--all three, in that order".  Otherwise, it will be all but impossible to entice drivers in his city--where 30 percent of all car trips are less than one kilometer in length--to trade four wheels for two wheels or feet.

Our cycling/pedestrian advocate isn't trying to turn his city into Portland.  Rather, he wants to alleviate its traffic problems, and to reduce levels of air pollution and obesity--which, he wisely points out, will save far greater amounts of money than would be initially spent on a practical, safe network of bicycle and pedestrian lanes.

That last argument could gain more traction in his country, which has a single-payer (i.e., taxpayer-funded) system of health care, than in the US or other nations with profit-driven health care systems.  

You might have guessed by now that the fellow is on the other side of the Atlantic.  Right you are:  He is British, and the city he's talking about is his home town of Manchester.

That fellow is Greater Manchester's Cycling and Walking Commissioner and a British Cycling policy advisor.  But you probably know him better for his exploits while pedaling on a world stage.

I am talking about none other than an Olympic Gold Medalist,erstwhile Hour Record holder and winner of six Tour de France stages:  Chris Boardman.  

If he doesn't think riding a bicycle or crossing a street should require bravery, why should you--or anyone else?

How A More Accurate "Bicycle Census" Could Save Lives

There are a number of reasons why too many bike infrastructure projects--including any number of bike lanes I've ridden--do little or nothing to make cycling safer or more convenient.  If anything, some of those projects--including lanes that lead cyclists straight into the path of turning vehicles or merging traffic--put cyclists in more danger than they'd experience if they rode in traffic.

One reason why so many bike infrastructure projects are ill-conceived, -planned or -executed is that, too often, planners have an inaccurate idea--or no idea at all--of how many cyclists are riding along a particular route or at a given time.  As often as not, planners have only a rough guesstimate of how many people ride per day, month or year.

One reason for that is the planners' methods and equipment for gathering data are designed to give accurate counts of motorized, but not cycling or pedestrian, traffic.  That is at least somewhat understandable:  After all, cars, trucks and buses are easier to detect, whether by humans or devices, than cyclists or pedestrians.  Also, most planners are educated and trained to collect, and pay attention to, "big data"--and their experience reinforces that bias.

"Little data", if you will, is especially relevant in regards to cycling because cyclists--whether they're riding to work, or for fitness or pleasure--take a greater variety of routes and have a wider range of destinations than most drivers.  While one can find clusters of cyclists in certain parts of a city, and along certain routes and certain times, those of us who pedal aren't clustered to the same degree as those who go where they want or must by putting a foot on the gas pedal.

Some researchers in Texas are  aware of what I am describing.  They are working on a pilot program, backed by the Texas Department of Transportation, to find more "nuanced data", in the words of Greg Griffin, about cycling and walking in Austin and Houston.   

The goal, says Griffin, is to better inform, among other things, Austin's corridor project, which will build lanes along nine roads.   That project received funding from the mobility bond Texas voters chose last year, but the City Council hasn't approved construction plans.  A draft of those plans is expected to go before the City Council next year and Griffin, a Texas A&M researcher, hopes to better inform the project and others like it.

He and other researchers are trying a number of methods to count cyclists, such as gathering data from Strava and other apps.  Of course, not all cyclists use them, so Griffin and his team are also installing pneumatic tubes similar to the ones used to count cars along roads frequently used by cyclists.  Those tubes, however, last only a few weeks, so he is trying to have permanent counters installed and recruiting cyclists and others to interview cyclists about their riding habits.

A variety of methods must be used, he says, because using only one would skew the results toward one type of cyclist over another.  For example, merely taking data from apps, he says, would result in "planning for people that are buying apps--instead of your community."

 He and others hope that better methods of taking a cycling census, if you will, will help to lay a "foundation for being able to save lives through infrastructure changes."

What If They Took Out The Traffic Lights?

Here's an experience that's in the "Don't Try This At Home" category:

Once, years ago, a NYPD officer pulled me over for riding through a red light on Broadway, just north of 23rd Street, in Manhattan.  He lectured me about how traffic lights are for everyone, and that I could endanger myself or others by not heeding them.  

At that time, I, as a cyclist, was even more of a minority than I am now.  Moreover, I was a messenger on duty that day, which made me even more of an outcast.  So I was not expecting that officer to understand what it was like to ride on city streets, let alone have any sympathy for me.

But I pointed out that I went through the red light ahead of two trucks that turned right when the light turned green.  Had I waited for the light, I could very well have ended up underneath one of those vehicles.

He put his pen down and looked at me.  I had the feeling he didn't trust me; after all, he'd probably heard all sorts of things from people who were trying to talk their way out of traffic summonses.  After what seemed like an endless silence, he said, "OK.  Just be careful."

"Good day, officer."

Now urban planners are starting, however slowly, something that cyclists have long known:  Following traffic signals doesn't always ensure a cyclist's, or a pedestrian's safety. If anything, at times--such as the situation I described--it can actually endanger us.  

Part of the reason for that is that, according to at least one study, signals can actually make drivers less attentive to their surroundings.  According to proponents of this idea, having fewer demarcations such as traffic lights, kerbs/curbs, traffic signs, road surface markings and regulations actually encourages cyclists, pedestrians and motorists to negotiate their movements with each other, usually through eye contact or hand signals.

The late Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman was one of the chief proponents of this urban planning concept, commonly known as "shared space".  His studies found that traffic safety and efficiency increased for all when public spaces were redesigned so that cyclists, motorists and pedestrians had to negotiate their movements with each other.  He went so far to say that the safest roads are those with the fewest marking, signs and traffic lights.

Meredith Glaser probably had his work in mind.  She's a researcher at the University of Amsterdam's Urban Cycling Institute (Can you imagine such a thing in the US?), which did a study of cycling in Alexanderplein, a busy intersection near the center of Amsterdam.  According to the study, about 40,000 cyclists ride through it every day--6000 an hour during peak times.  In addition, many pedestrians, automobiles and streetcars tranverse the crossroads every day.  

Institute researchers then asked 200 cyclists what they thought of the intersection.  "Chaotic" and "messy" were the most common responses.  Most said more traffic lights were necessary.

However, the researchers knew the city had a different plan:  The lights were shut off in May of last year.

While the lights were off,the researchers returned and asked another 150 cyclists for their thoughts.  About 60 percent said the intersection worked better without the signals.    The city's technical study found similar positive results, and no increase in the number of accidents.  In September, the city decided to remove the lights altogether, citing the fact that trams were not delayed and motor delays were cut in half.  In addition, bicycle traffic jams, usually caused by signals, were all but eliminated.

In the intervening year, the city has done similar things in other spots, with success.  Glaser thinks this could be a model for other cities in the world.  So does Dongho Chang, the Chief Traffic Engineer for the City of Seattle. "In an urban environment, you don't want a driver to be zoning out," he explains.  "You need them paying attention and looking for the unexpected."  He points out that only 8 percent of his city's intersections have traffic lights, but they account for 51 percent of accidents over the past 13 years.

Now, one obvious explanation is that the signalled intersections are the most heavily-trafficked and tend to have the most complex or complicated configurations.   Chang concedes as much, but also says that in such intersections, signals lead to dangerous behaviors such as speeding through a yellow light or accelerating quickly from a green.

Chang's, Glaser's and Monderman's points are well-taken.  However, they (perhaps surprisingly, in the case of Chang) fail to take into consideration something I, and other cyclists, know from experience:  Few American drivers have the level of awareness of cyclists most Dutch--or, for that matter, European--drivers have.  Seattle's drivers might be among the exceptions (I don't know:  I've never cycled there) but it's hard to imagine that even they have that level of awareness I found even in Montreal, less than an hour from the US, let alone cities in France, Belgium or the Netherlands.

Still, the work of the researchers and planners I've mentioned helps to indicate a greater truth:  Most cycling infrastructure, as it's currently planned, constructed and maintain doesn't make cycling--or walking or driving--safer.

This Price Is Right

$88 billion isn't chump change, even for Warren Buffett.

It's greater than the GDPs of about 50 countries, including Moldova, Kosovo and Rwanda.  Moreover, it's the value of a not-insignificant industry.

Now, when I say that something is "not insignificant" on this blog, you know it has something to do with cycling.  In this case, that $88 billion is the "economic impact" bicycles have on the United States.  

The fellow who pointed that out ought to know:  His state is one that benefits more than most from all of those bikes, parts, helmets and related items cyclists buy--and from related services.

He is David Price, who represents North Carolina's Fourth District in the US Congress.  That district includes much of "The Triangle," home to several leading universities and research laboratories--where one finds, not surprisingly, lots of cyclists.  

Also, right in the heart of that district is the headquarters of Performance Bicycle, one of the world's largest cycling retailers.  Their "command center" employs 200 people, while another 2000 work in its online store or retail shops.

It also just happens that some 35 bicycle equipment manufacturers are located in the Tar Heel State, as well as 229 brick-and-mortar retailers and 44,103 PeopleForBikes members.

I don't know how many people are employed by those manufacturers or retailers, but I'm sure that it's more than a few.  And that's just in North Carolina:  There are surely thousands, if not millions, more in the rest of the country.

So why is Congressman Price pointing out the economic impact of the bicycle in the US? 

David Price

He is part of the PeopleForBikes Summer Campaign, which includes a tour of bicycle industry companies and retailers.  The campaign, says Price, "highlights the impact that Federal infrastructure investment programs have in providing alternative modes of transportation that can enhance the quality of life in a community."  

He knows what he's talking about:  he is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Congressional subcommittee responsible for federal infrastructure investment.   Moreover, he is a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus who vows to "continue fighting for programs that enhance the cycling experience."

Of course:  If you "enhance the cycling experience", you just might entice people to leave their cars home for errands, shopping trips or even their daily commutes--and for day and weekend trips, or even vacations.  That will keep more than a few people working, I'm sure!

Davis: Still Trying To Set People On The Path Of Cycling

"It was Portland before Portland was Portland."

That is how someone described Davis, California for me. 

 Today, when you ask people to name a "bicycle-friendly", they are likely to think of the City of Roses.  I will not quibble with its reputation:  Few American cities have done more to promote bicycling as a viable means of transportation (though, as in most places, some of those efforts have been misguided).  Portlanders adopted their first bike plan in 1973; after meeting its goals, which included 190 miles of bike paths, new bike plans followed in 1996 and 2010.

It should be pointed out, however, that Davis was developing a reputation as a bicycle haven as early as the 1950's, at a time when few American adults cycled--and Portland was still a lumber-and-mining town.  (When Bill Walton arrived to play with the Trailblazers, the local NBA team, he was dismayed to find a "redneck" burg.)  The local agricultural college had just become the University of California-Davis (UC's seventh campus); the city's flat terrain and warm climate as well as enthusiasm over a new educational project attracted a diverse group of people who were willing, well, to try something new.  

According to local lore, the real driving (pun intended!) force behind the city's pro-bike efforts were a family who returned from a year in the Netherlands in the early 1960s.  They found sympathetic ears in a newly-elected city council that, no doubt, saw bicycling as a way to promote their city as well as the new UC campus. In 1967, Davis striped what were claimed to be the first bicycle-specific lanes in the US.  

Other efforts and experiments soon followed, which included facilities  and ways of accommodating bicycles at traffic signals.   The university invented the bicycle roundabout, now used on many other schools, to handle the large number of bicycles on campus.  Today, the city of ten  square miles boasts 50 miles of on-street bike lanes the same amount of off-street bike paths.

Even after other cities have ramped up their efforts to make themselves more appealing to cyclists, Davis is still seen as a cyclist's paradise--at least, in comparison to other American locales.  A far higher percentage of its citizens cycle to work or school every day than in almost any other city of its population (67,666, according to a 2015 estimate).  Still, Susan L. Handy muses, "Perhaps even more interesting than the fact that so many people in Davis cycle is the fact that so many more don't."

Professor Handy is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC-Davis.  She is also Director of the Sustainable Transportation Center, part of the Federal University Transportation Centers Program.  She is probably  in as good a position as anyone can be to understand patterns of bicycle usage--and, more important, what might be behind those patterns.

She also uses what is, arguably, some of the best bicycle infrastructure in the United States. Still, she says it is not enough.  "[W]hile good infrastructure is necessary to get many people bicycling, it is not enough to get most people bicycling".  The experience of Davis would seem to bear this out:  Although a higher percentage of Davis workers ride their bikes to their jobs than their colleagues even in nearby Berkeley (home to another UC campus)  or Palo Alto (Stanford University), or in other campus towns like Ithaca, New York (Cornell University)  and Boulder, Colorado, the number for Professor Handy's hometown is still only 15 percent.  

Still more telling, a similar percentage of children cycle to their soccer games, even though most don't have to go very far.  

According to Professor Handy's research, whether or not children cycle to their soccer games is influenced by whether or not their parents also ride.  Ditto for whether or not they--or their older siblings who attend high school--ride their bikes to classes.  Of course, as in most places, whether or not kids ride to their high schools is also a function of whether or not they have drivers' licenses or access to automobiles.

Interestingly, according to the research, friends' and peers' attitudes about cycling have little or no effect on whether kids or teenagers ride to school or their soccer games.  Based on my own admittedly informal observations, I would say the same for whether or not adults ride their bikes to work.

Another factors that  helps to depress the numbers of cyclists who ride to school or work is the perception of safety:  People often express fear of traffic, crime or other factors.  (I often hear such anxieties expressed here in New York.) Perhaps not surprisingly, women express these fears more than men do.  And then there are those who simply don't like to ride bikes.

Nobody seems to know how to influence that last category. (I failed with a spouse and a couple of romantic partners!) They, like those who come from families who don't ride or worry about their safety, are not pedaling to work because of their attitudes about cycling.  And, as Professor Handy says, attitudes are even more important than infrastructure in getting people to forsake the steering wheel and grab a handlebar.

If there is anything discouraging about Professor Handy's conclusions, it is this:  She came to them in one of the few places in the United States with two generations' worth of "cycling memory", if you will.  In most other places in this country, most drivers have little or no idea of how to act around cyclists because they haven't ridden a bike  on a street, for transportation or other utilitarian purposes, since they were children--if indeed they even rode then.  In much of Europe, by contrast, far greater numbers of drivers are still cyclists, or have ridden recently in their lives.  And they are more likely to have come from families with at least one member who regularly cycled.  

I offer myself as an example:  I am the first--and, to date, only-- member of my family to regularly ride a bike beyond the age at which I could hold a drivers' license.  (I am also the first to do a number of other things, such as earn a high school diploma and college degree, and to do things that are the subject of my other blog!)   But I am an anomaly:    I simply found that I enjoyed riding and never lost that love.  I rode, even with a complete lack of infrastructure , very little cycling culture and few peers who rode. And I continue to ride. On the other hand, I have never been successful at enticing anyone to ride who wasn't already inclined to do so. The complaints and excuses were the same then as the ones I hear now.  

As Professor Handy points out, the real challenge is to change those attitudes--if they can indeed be changed.  She seems to think it possible.

Seeing Dutch

They like to eat breakfast early!

That was one of the first things Alexis de Tocqueville noticed about Americans.  

In 1831, the 25-year-old lawyer came to this country with his fellow barrister, Gustave de Beaumont, to study prisons in the US.  They returned to their native France after a year and published their report, which seems to have been written mainly by de Beaumont.  

But the lasting legacy of their sojourn came in 1835, when de Tocqueville published Democracy In America.  In it, he offered what, to this day, are some of the most trenchant observations made by a foreigner looking at American society.   He expressed both admiration and criticism of the New World's ideals, customs, institutions (or, in some cases, relative lack thereof) and economy.  

What if he were alive today?  And what if he were a cyclist?  What would he think of the ways in which Americans ride--and of the environment for cycling?  

Those questions came to my mind when I came across this video in which a Dutchman offers his observations of cycling in the USA:

Where The Bicycle Commuters Are

You don't ride in this weather, do you?

I can't begin to count how many times I've heard that question, or some version of it, between Thanksgiving and Easter.  

Granted, I don't ride as much during the months of short days and long cold spells as I do when flowers bloom and leaves begin to fall.  But I still ride to work most days during the winter.  I don't mind cold: I don't mind wet, but a combination of the two might drive me to the N train.  In fact, so far this year, I've used the MTA only once, when wind drove snow and sleet during the time I would have been riding to work.

I'll also grant you that I don't do as many rides of 20km or more as I do in, say, June.  But I think that has more to do with the number of daylight hours than with the temperature. I don't avoid riding in the dark altogether, but I prefer to follow dawn and lead dusk.  Also, I feel more motivated to take a ride after work when there's still some daylight left.

I mention my riding habits because of something I came across that seemed, at first, counter-intuitive (at least to most non-cyclists): The US state in which the highest percentage of the population walks or cycles to work is Alaska, which has the nation's coldest weather.

In fact, America's Land of the Midnight Sun is one of five states in which more than five percent of the population commutes by bike or on foot.  If you guessed that California is one of them, you'd be wrong.  Move one state up the coast: Oregon.  That's not surprising when one considers Portland's reputation as one of the world's most bike-friendly cities.  The City of Roses is the only major area in any of the five states in question that has what most people would describe as a mild winter.

As for the other three states, only one probably wouldn't surprise you:  New York.  The Empire State's high percentage of people who get to work on two wheels or two feet is concentrated in my hometown, the Big Apple.  Even so, upstate cities such as Syracuse, Rochester and Albany have surprisingly high numbers of people who use their own power to get to the office or wherever they work.  That, even though upstate New York winters aren't the sort many people would call "mild". 

OK: Alaska, Oregon and New York.  So which are the other two?, you ask.  No, not Arizona or New Mexico.  Texas?  Actually, the Lone Star State has one of the lowest rates of cycling and walking to work.  Florida does a bit better, but not much.


 


The other two states in which more than five percent of the population cycles or walks to work are---wait---Vermont and Montana.  

I've never been to Montana, but I have an e-mail pal (What's a better term for the modern version of the pen-pal?) who has told me about waking up to -15C weather before Columbus Day.  Having ridden in the Green Mountain state in all parts of the year, I can tell you that there's a good reason why old-time  Vermonters joke that their state has two seasons:  winter and the season between Fourth of July and Labor Day.  

But, having spent a fair amount of time riding in Vermont, I'm not surprised to find it on the list:  Wherever I rode, I encountered other cyclists.  It's one of those rare places that both breeds and attracts independent spirits.  

More to the point, Vermonters' habits, and those of the cylo-commuters in New York, Oregon, Montana and Alaska underscore a point I've made in other posts, and which others with greater expertise than mine have confirmed:  How much--or, for that matter, whether--people pedal has very little to do with the weather or climate.

Just look at Europe:  the cities and countries with the most bike commuters are in the north:  think Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Malmo. That all but mirrors the pattern in the US.

Why is such the case?  Well, I think--as I have said in earlier posts--cycling thrives in areas where there's an infrastructure, if you will, of cycling.  I'm not talking about bike paths:  Rather, I think advocacy organizations for cyclists (as well as pedestrians and mass transportation) and other formal and informal networks do more to encourage people to get out of their cars.  

Even more important, I believe, is a consciousness of, and respect for, cyclists among those who are behind the while rather than on two.  That is what I found in France, Switzerland, Belgium and other parts of Europe in which I've ridden:  The drivers always seem to understand how much space you need, how quickly you can stop and start on a bike and carious other intricacies of cycling.  One reason is, I believe, that a driver is more likely to have a "double life", if you will, as a cyclist than someone who's plying American roads in an SUV.

I know, from experience, that to the extent that such consciousness can be found in the US, it present in New York and Vermont.  From what I've read and heard, it also exists in Oregon, Alaska and Montana.  And it's nowhere near as prevalent in other parts of the US in which I've ridden.

Effective Cycling, Revised

The latest edition of John Forester's Effective Cycling has been published.  I plan to obtain a copy, in part because I am curious to see what has changed.  Also, given Forester's age, it might be his last revision to his book.


I have one of the early editions of the book, from 1985.  It may have been the first publication--at least in this country--to advocate and explicate the concept of Vehicular Cycling.  This means that cyclists should ride as if their bikes are vehicles--which, in fact, is what they are for many of us.  That means, among other things, taking and using lanes in similar ways. In turn, he says, motorists and policy-makers should treat bicycles as if they are vehicles.  


At the time the first edition of the book came out, Vehicular Cycling seemed like a radical idea.  Even more radical was his notion that there shouldn't be separate infrastructure for cyclists because if cyclists acted more like vehicle operators, there wouldn't be any need for separate bike paths and such.


Almost everything urban planners have done to promote cycling and make their cities more "bike friendly" runs counter to what Forester says.  One reason for that is that most planners are not cyclists; even the ones that are labor under the same misconceptions the non-cycling public has.  Also, it seems that cities can get money for building bike lanes, but not for Effective Cycling courses (or any cycling courses, for that matter).


I don't entirely agree with Forester's idea that there should be no infrastructure for cyclists.  If Vehicular Cycling became the norm, there wouldn't be as much need for paths and such.  There are a few areas, I think, in which such lanes make sense.  However, I would rather not have any lane at all than lanes that are poorly conceived- and -constructed and therefore even more dangerous than the streets from which the lanes are supposed to protect cyclists.  


Still, I think the fact that such questions are being discussed at all is perhaps Forester's greatest contribution.  

Detroit: The Next Portland--Or Amsterdam?

Henry Ford with his bicycle in the early 1890's. 

David Byrne has said that one of the most memorable bike rides he ever took was in Detroit.  He described the backdrop to his Motor City randonnee as a "postapocalyptic landscape at its finest" and rates that trip with his spin along the Bosprous and Sea of Mamara in Istanbul.

Somehow I'm not surprised that he was so taken with the devastation of Detroit.  He is, after all, David Byrne.  But, if you've been following this blog, you know that some of my favorite rides here in New York take me through industrial areas of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Long Island City, which are so free of traffic on weekends that they're weirdly bucolic.  I feel the same way about the Wall Street area; the only problem with it is that there isn't nearly as much of it as there are of those old industrial areas.

The thing about Detroit is that he's not the only one who thinks it's an excellent cycling city.  Many riders, who live within the city limits as well as in the suburbs, appreciate the fact that the city is flat, save for the area around Dorais Park. They also like the extensive networks of paths and greenways that line the Detroit River, which separates the city from Windsor, Ontario in Canada. ("Detroit" means "strait" in French.)  In fact, some people cross the border to ride in the home of the Big Three.  

Interestingly (and, I'm sure for the people involved, exasperatingly), there is no way to cycle between Detroit and Windsor.  In fact, the buses from Windsor will allow bicycles only if they're disassembled and in a box or bag.    Even then, the driver has the authority to deny access if he or she feels the bus is too crowded.  On the other hand, there is work on developing a water taxi between the two cities, and it's believed that bicycles will be allowed on them.

Another interesting aspect to Motor City Cycling is that it has a velodrome--in Dorais Park.  If you know about the city's history, it may not be such a surprise:  After all, it was a center for bicycle manufacturing and riding before the auto industry developed.  (In fact, Henry Ford and others associated with the auto industry began as bicycle makers and mechanics.) Even after Chevys and Fords started rolling off the assembly lines, Detroit kept the flame of bicycle racing alive during the Dark Ages (at least for American racing) that followed World War II.

But, in another layer of irony, the Dorais Park Velodrome doesn't go that far back.  In fact, construction on it began during the riots of 1967, and it opened on the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969.  It lay unused and all but abandoned until it was discovered by suburban cyclists who were using the hill for training.

I am not an urban planner or an expert on Detroit.  But I, like almost everyone else in the USA, have some ideas about what Detroit's future could be like.  Denizens of Pittsburgh realized that the steel industry would never be as significant as it was until the 1970's.  So, they took advantage of the fact that the city had some first-class academic institutions like the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon, and turned the erstwhile Steel City into a center for biomedical research and technology, much as Boston did earlier.  

Detroit doesn't have the sort of academic institutions that Boston and Pittsburgh have.  But what a lot of people don't realize is that not very far from Detroit are vast stretches of farms.  Michigan has always been a leading agricultural state; perhaps Detroit could become a center of agronomy and other "green"technology.

But even more important (for the purposes of this blog, anyway), the city might be able to take advantage of the shrinkage even its Mayor, David Bing, has advocated.  A more compact Detroit could be ideal for the development of a cycling infrastructure.  Perhaps, in a smaller city, the residential and business areas would be closer together, which would make bicycle commuting--and cycling in general--more feasible and enjoyable for more people.  

Who knows?  Perhaps Detroit could be the next Portland--or Amsterdam.