Dutch dreams lie at the heart of Delaware's Advocacy dissidence

The Guardian pens a masterpiece, with this brilliant follow-up to our original post Why bicycle mode share is (and will remain) less than 1%. Excerpts:

"Squint at Stevenage’s extensive 1960s protected cycleway network and you could be in the Netherlands – except for the lack of people on bikes. So why did the New Town’s residents choose the motor car over the bicycle?

The town, 30 miles north of London, had wide, smooth cycleways next to its main roads which were separated from cars and pedestrians. There were well-lit, airy underpasses beneath roundabouts, and schools, workplaces and shops were all linked by protected cycleways.

Eric Claxton, the lead designer of post-war Stevenage, had believed that use of cycleways would be high if they were well built – originally thinking that Britain’s hostile road environment discouraged people from cycling.

Stevenage was compact, and Claxton assumed the provision of 12 ft-wide cycleways and 7 ft-wide pavements would encourage residents to walk and cycle. He had witnessed the high usage of Dutch cycleways, and he believed the same could be achieved in the UK.

But to Claxton’s puzzlement and eventual horror, residents of Stevenage chose to drive – even for journeys of two miles or less. Stevenage’s 1949 masterplan projected that 40% of the town’s residents would cycle each day, and just 16% would drive. The opposite happened.

Stevenage’s 2010 master plan complained that just 2.9% of the Stevenage population cycled to work, which was “much lower than might be expected given the level of infrastructure provision”.

The borough council’s cycle strategy – not updated since 2002 – conveys no doubt as to why cycle usage is so low: “Stevenage has a fast, high-capacity road system, which makes it easy to make journeys by car."

There are safe cycle routes from homes to schools, but today only a tiny proportion of Stevenage’s children cycle each day. Many are ferried to school by car, a situation that Claxton abhorred.

Despite all the best efforts of a chief designer with empathy for would-be cyclists, “build it and they will come” failed for people on bikes in Stevenage but worked for people in cars."

As long as driving remains cheap and easy, bicycling as a significant mode share will forever stay in the realm of fantasy. And even then, pump prices are exponentially higher in England than the U.S., where this lovely pathway network has been all but abandoned. Our case has been, and always will be that Advocates whose sole focus is on costly separated facilities -- as opposed to pragmatism -- are driving the divide that prevents a united bicycling advocacy front in Delaware. Read the full article.

Check out the Facebook page "Pragmatic Bicycle Drivers", where pragmatism in bicycling advocacy lives.

Momentum: 5 reasons why riding a bicycle is safe

Courtesy of Momentum Magazine -- In North America, concerns about safety consistently rank as the top deterrents to bicycling. Most of us don’t like the idea of riding in traffic next to heavier vehicles that are traveling at higher speeds. Our perceptions about these routes are right – on busy streets, Dutch and Danish-style protected bike lanes are safer than riding in mixed traffic. And in places with abundant separated lanes, cycling is much more common.

Given that safety concerns affect our choice of travel mode, I often wonder about these perceptions about the relative safety of bicycling, driving, motorcycling, transit, and walking. Do our perceptions about these modes match the data?  [Full article ...]

Who Invented the Bicycle?

Cross-posted from LiveScience

You might think that an invention as simple as the bicycle would have an uncomplicated past. But as it turns out, this highly popular invention has a history fraught with controversy and misinformation. While stories about who invented the bicycle often contradict one another, there's one thing that's certain - the very first bicycles were nothing like the ones you see cruising down the street today.

The first known iterations of a wheeled, human-powered vehicle were created long before the bicycle became a practical form of transportation. In 1418, an Italian engineer, Giovanni de la Fontana, constructed a human-powered device consisting of four wheels and a loop of rope connected by gears.

In 1813, about 400 years after Fontana built his wheeled contraption, a German aristocrat and inventor named Karl Drais began work on his own version of a four-wheeled, human-powered vehicle. Then in 1817, Drais debuted a two-wheeled vehicle, known by many names throughout Europe, including Draisine, running machine and hobby horse. [Read the full article ...]

Cycling in the US from a Dutch perspective

Cross-posted from Upworthy.com

Apart from being able to deliver the nicest reprimand of all time, this Dutch cyclist's conclusion is inescapably accurate: America doesn't take bicycles seriously. If anyone out there sees a downside to more Americans riding bikes, please enlighten me. If you need me, I'll be the one lodged firmly underneath a truck tire.

 

Poster's note: So true. We still have a very long way to go in America. Our bike infrastructure remains full of design and engineering flaws, and our legal system shields dangerous drivers from any real consequences. Gas prices are a pittance, and don't come close to paying the true cost of driving. As long as these remain the case, bicycling will stay less than 1% of mode share for all trips, now and for generations to come.

Most DOT's still struggle with even the most basic concepts, i.e. bike lanes through dedicated turn and bypass lanes. Treatments like the above, in this case pointing bicyclists off the road, is worse than nothing at all.

This "bike lane" has been on the ground in Newark for many years. No one should expect bicycling to be taken seriously when the facilities they need actually relegate them to 2nd class citizens.

102-year-old cyclist sets world record!

 Submitted by Gary Moses

(AP) -- Age hasn't slowed cyclist Robert Marchand.

The 102-year-old Frenchman broke his own world record in the over-100s category Friday, riding 26.927 kilometers (16.7 miles) in one hour, more than 2.5 kilometers better than his previous best time in the race against the clock two years ago.

By way of comparison, the current overall world record for one hour is 49.700 kilometers (30.882 miles) set by Czech Ondrej Sosenka in 2005.

Marchand, a retired firefighter and logger, also holds the record for someone over the age of 100 riding 100 kilometers (62 miles). He did it in four hours, 17 minutes and 27 seconds in 2012.  [Full article ...]

If only we could be like Hamburg

From The Guardian -- The German city is planning a green network that will cover 40% of the city area, contributing to resilience and allowing biking, swimming and nature watching in the city.

Boris Johnson, don't read this: there's a European commercial hub that promotes bicycling as the main mode of transportation. It is, in fact, embarking on a plan to build a network around bikes and pedestrians, linking car-free roads to parks and playgrounds, from the city centre to the suburbs.

Welcome to Hamburg, an environmental pioneer in the mould of its regional neighbour Copenhagen. Its planned green network will cover 40% of the city's area. "It will connect parks, recreational areas, playgrounds, gardens and cemeteries through green paths", Angelika Fritsch, a spokeswoman for the city's department of urban planning and the environment, tells Guardian Sustainable Business. "Other cities, including London, have green rings, but the green network will be unique in covering an area from the outskirts to the city centre. In 15 to 20 years you'll be able to explore the city exclusively on bike and foot." The green network will even connect animal habitats, enabling critters to crisscross the city without risk of being run over. Perhaps more importantly, the network will absorb CO2 emissions and help prevent floods when inevitable superstorms strike.  [Keep reading ...]

Poster's note:
Excerpt from today's Delaware On-line:
[Governor] Markell proposed spending $1.1 billion on roads over the next five years, $500 million more than currently planned.

What percentage of these funds - if any - will be spent on active and sustainable transportation modes, including real networks that actually connect to common destinations? While DelDOT and DNREC does fund some non-motorized infrastructure through Complete Streets and the Trails and Pathways program, it usually comes in the form of isolated trails and disconnected bike lanes. Hence, the need for Funding Pools and other dedicated sources of steady funding to make real network connections - both on and off the road.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of funds mentioned above will be spent on this kind infrastructure, and promoting more car-dependency. And it's not entirely Jack's doing, either; If any Governor was to spend the kind of money needed to truly green Delaware (or a city in Delaware) with non-motorized infrastructure, odds are he or she would be swiftly voted out of office for "wasteful spending".

Denmark, Netherlands, move over

Top 6 cycling cities in 2014 – head east!  (Europe, that is)

Submitted by Angela Connolly

From the Friday Flats -- We have all heard about the supersized bike-share systems in Western Europe, cycling superhighways in Scandinavia, and awesome bicycle friendly cities in the Netherlands and Denmark. But how is the situation in Eastern Europe? Once looked down on as “poor man’s transport”, bicycling is gaining popularity and becoming the trendy new choice for the millennials - generation Y - of Eastern Europe. We give you a small eye-opener to some of the greatest upcoming bicycle cities in Eastern Europe.  [Full article ..]

1 Budapest, Hungary
2. Gdańsk, Poland
3. Lviv, Ukraine
4. Ljubljana, Slovenia
5. Bucharest, Romania
6. Tartu, Estonia

Poster's note: Timely submission given all the excitement surrounding Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and other well known bicycle-friendly cities that dominate the headlines.

In almost every European country, bikes are outselling new cars

From National Public Radio -- We know that Europeans love their bicycles - think Amsterdam or Paris. Denmark even has highways specifically for cyclists.

Indeed, earlier this month, NPR's Lauren Frayer noted that Spain, which has long had a love affair with cars, is embracing the bicycle: For the first time on record, Lauren noted, bicycles outsold cars in the country.

But it's becoming a Continent-wide phenomenon. More bikes were sold in Italy than cars - for the first time since World War II.

This prompted us to look at the figures across the 27 member states of the European Union for both cars and bicycles. New-car registrations for Cyprus and Malta weren't available, so we took them out of the comparison.  [full article ...]

Sea of Bikes Swamps Dutch Capital

From the New York Times

No wonder our cities and streets are clogged with traffic. Imagine if most here drove a car instead.

AMSTERDAM - About 6:30 weekday mornings, throngs of bicycles, with a smattering of motor scooters and pedestrians, pour off the ferries that carry bikers and other passengers free of charge across the IJ (pronounced “eye”) harbor, clogging the streets and causing traffic jams down behind Amsterdam’s main train station.

“In the afternoon it’s even more,” moaned Erwin Schoof, a metalworker in his 20s who lives in the canal-laced center of town and battles the chaos daily to cross to his job.

Willem van Heijningen, a railway official responsible for bikes around the station, said, “It’s not a war zone, but it’s the next thing to it.”

This clogged stream of cyclists is just one of many in a city as renowned for bikes as Los Angeles is for automobiles or Venice for gondolas. Cyclists young and old pedal through narrow lanes and along canals. Mothers and fathers balance toddlers in spacious wooden boxes affixed to their bikes, ferrying them to school or day care. Carpenters carry tools and supplies in similar contraptions and electricians their cables. Few wear helmets. Increasingly, some are saying what was simply unthinkable just a few years ago: There are too many bikes. [full article ...]