Blanchet’s short film, “The Man Who Lived on His Bike,” is a delightful celebration of the bicycle. Perhaps it should mandatory viewing for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who are now considering legislation that would cut funding for bicycle promotion programs in favor of building more highways?

THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

by Jess Zimmerman in a Grist cross-post

Enough people thought this was a good idea that the ad made it into print. How did this ad meeting go? “We need to convince the youth to buy giant boat-cars.” “Okay, tell them bikes will cockblock them.” “Perfect, let’s call it a day.” Nice work, Don Draper.

GM has clearly been getting a lot of blowback for this ad, which presents biking as an embarrassment so profound you’ll want to hide your face from the sight of pretty girls. They’ve been falling over themselves to apologize on their Twitter feed. It’s tough for them! Reality sucks, guys.

UPDATE:  David in the comments directs us to the great response ad by Giant Bicycles:

Building bike paths alone will not get people out of their cars in the U.S. and onto bicycles. To create a thriving bike culture in America’s cities, people must begin to view bicycling as Europeans do — not just as a way of exercising, but as a serious form of urban mass transportation.

– Elisabeth Rosenthal, in a Yale360 re-post

This spring, curiosity propelled me onto a New York City subway bound for Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, where a new bike path along the edge of Brooklyn’s largest park had angry residents worked up into a lather.

For those not familiar with the territory, Park Slope is one of New York City’s most prosperous and progressive neighborhoods, home to the famed Park Slope Food Cooperative and liberal U.S. Senator Charles Schumer. And yet… the creation of a simple green bike path — the kind that edges dozens of streets in Barcelona or Paris or Copenhagen — at the expense of one lane of car traffic and a few parking spaces evinced the kind of venom normally reserved here for The Tea Party.

I expected to find a diversity of opinion about the bike path, which was created last year by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. I did not. Almost everyone I interviewed began with the following introduction: “Don’t get me wrong I love bikes, I ride all the time…” and then segued into a barrage of objections: The path was a hazard for old people and mothers with baby strollers crossing to enter the park. Riders pedaled too fast. They should just ride inside the park. The loss of a lane made parking worse and traffic slower. It made it harder to stop to drop kids at school. It was unsightly.

Wow.

I had spent much time over the last five years in Europe, where cyclists and bike lanes have become part of nearly every urban streetscape. If you are a European mayor, running a good bike-sharing program seems as much a barometer of success as having a good school system.

In Copenhagen, 37 percent of commuters now use bikes to get to school or work — a number that dips only slightly in the dead of winter. Sure, cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen have something of a bicycling tradition — certainly far more of one than in car-centric U.S. cities. But Europe’s bicycling enthusiasm extends to cities like Barcelona and Paris, with no cycling history. Even Rome has a bike-sharing program, though that city is supremely unsuited to travel on two wheels: Its roads are too narrow, its drivers mad, and its streets are paved with a kind of cobblestone that makes every meter a jarring experience.

In comparison to these cities, major United States metropolises are bicycle deserts. When we talk about “bike friendly” cities in the United States, most are mere college towns and none boast more than 6 per cent bike commuters. According to the United States Census Bureau’s 2009 community survey, 76 percent of Americans drive to work alone in their cars each day, while only 0.6 percent arrive by bicycle.

What’s going on here? One key component that has enabled Europe’s successful bike revolution, I think, is not infrastructure, but sociology: While Americans still view bicycling as a form of exercise or recreation, a tectonic shift in attitudes has taken place in many parts of Europe, where people now regard bicycling as a serious form of urban mass transportation.

Last month, The Atlantic did an interesting survey of the top bike commuting towns in the U.S. They are Eugene, Oregon (5.6 percent of people commute by bike), Fort Collins, Colorado (5.2 percent), Missoula, Montana (4.8 percent), Boulder, Colorado (4.77 percent), and Santa Barbara, California (3.74 percent). The pictures that accompanied the survey were telling: bike riders with surfboards, riders with backpacks, and even riders traversing an empty forest. Students. Students. Students. A good portion of the bikes have drop handlebars, and many of the riders are wearing racing gear.

Now look at photos of bike riders in Paris or Copenhagen or Barcelona or Marseilles. They are men and women of all ages, in suits and dresses, fur coats and heels. They are riding sensible bikes. These are not sporting  types, but a typical cross section of Europe’s working population, people going to the office on the vehicle that works well in their city.

There is more to making a city bike friendly than creating pathways, and part of that is changing attitudes: “In New York, there are lots of bike lanes, but not too many people on bicycles, so cars still think they own the road,” said Peder Jensen, head of the transport section at the European Environment Agency.

For the last several years, sociologists at Lancaster University have been studying the factors that keep people off two wheels in Britain, where biking has been relatively slow to catch on compared to other European countries, despite large government investment.  Their diagnosis is similar: “Many people barely recognize the bicycle as a legitimate mode of transport; it is either a toy for children or a vehicle fit only for the poor and/or strange,” wrote Dave Horton, lead researcher of the Understanding Walking and Cycling study.

That also helps explain why bicycle commuting is expanding only slowly in U.S. cities — 3.0 percent of commuters in San Francisco and 2.2 percent in Philadelphia and Washington D.C, according to United States Census Bureau 2009 data.

In New York it remains at 0.6 percent. Mayor Bloomberg has built us New Yorkers some really nice state-of-the art bike paths, but rank-and-file commuters aren’t much using them. Even at rush hour, the new bike path on Columbus Avenue near my home is a sparsely populated chute predominantly used by 20-somethings, bike messengers, and restaurant deliverymen.

Until we start thinking of bikes as essential transportation and not just a hobby, all the small changes that will allow working people to commute along those beautiful bike paths won’t happen.

Take me as an example: On paper, I should be riding to work. I live just blocks from a bike path along the Hudson River which would let me off at West 42nd Street, just blocks from my office.

But my apartment building sequesters bikes on high wall hooks in a basement storage room. That may be fine for a weekend ride in Central Park, but not readily accessible for daily use in work dress. On the bike path, many riders travel hunched over handlebars at death defying speeds. Could I ride here to the office — upright, slowly, and sweat-less? And then where would I park my “vehicle” once I got to work?  There is nowhere convenient. So instead I take the subway.

The 2010 interim report of the Understanding Walking and Cycling study noted that “Walking and cycling are often thought of as simple forms of travel which require little equipment or planning. In fact this is not the case.” In truly bike friendly cities, the needs of bicycle commuters are taken seriously: The terminal stations in Bogota’s bus rapid transit lines have plentiful indoor bicycle parking. In Copenhagen, the European Environment Agency has 150 parking spots for bikes.

Bogota’s former mayor, Enrique Penalosa, once told me that when he unveiled that city’s new Bus Rapid Transit System one of the biggest challenges was to “rebrand” bus travel so that upper middle class people would use it. When Zurich wanted to encourage more people to ride bikes to work, its ad campaign pictured a banker in a 3-piece suit with a bicycle clip affixed to his trouser leg.

But to follow this model, bike paths must be tailored to suit commuters, not hot shots. On Copenhagen’s bike highways into the city, lights are synchronized at about 12 miles per hour. On Beijing’s bike lanes the hordes of bike riders travel — fender to fender — at an even slower pace. If bicycling was rebranded and refocused as essential mass transportation, I think some of the objections I heard from the residents of Park Slope this spring would disappear as well. They wanted bicyclists to ride inside the park because they viewed them as sportsman who want to ride fast.  Middle-aged professionals on clunky bikes don’t mow down the elderly or babies in strollers.

– Elisabeth Rosenthal, in a Yale360 re-post.  Elisabeth Rosenthal has covered international environmental issues for the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Below are earlier comments from the Facebook commenting system:

Joan Savage

This is right on. Road rules and appropriate bike parking are really needed.
I’d also like something like the grab bars or foot supports that make it possible to come to a full stop at an intersection, without having to dismount each time at a stop sign or red light.
In my case, the full stop involves a wobbly re-mount and slow acceleration. As a driver I hate it immensely when a cyclist scoots through a red light in front of me as I start to proceed on green, the cyclist not ‘bothering’ with the rules of the road, particularly the full stop.

July 16 at 9:40am

John McCormick

Europeans are less lazy and less obese.

July 16 at 9:43am

Regina Bode

I am morbidly obese (I prefer fat) and European – I also lived in Amsterdam for some time and commuted 16 K roundtrip every day back then and I don’t own a car right now which means walking and cycling are still my main means of transportation. It is kind of ironic to use “lazy” stereotypes when criticising other people as lazy.

July 17 at 10:23am

Paul Magnus

Bikes should make more attractive to Americans.

July 16 at 10:16am

Paul Magnus

The should read ebikes…

July 16 at 10:16am

James Hwang

The problem? An entire cultural shift is even harder than a giant piece of legislation. It took a century after the end of slavery for racism to even start going away. At the rate of societal change, bike adoption will take decades if it happens at all in the US.

July 16 at 12:11pm

Romaine Ahlstrom

I am in Amsterdam at this moment, and the bike culture here is amazing. Bikers old and young, parents and children, little ones in carts attached to the bikes; wide lanes between the sidewalk and the tram lines…you as a walker will get run down if you don’t pay attention! Tucson, where I live, prides itself on being bike-friendly, but the bike lanes are so narrow that I as a car driver worry that I will hit one of the bikers. We in the states have a long way to go to make our streets bike friendly.

July 16 at 12:31pm

Peter S. Mizla

The USA lives in a car centered society- instead of looking for the practical vehicle, Americans look for something ti impress their neighbors or others on the Freeway or BLVD strip.

July 16 at 12:37pm

Bob Mills

just to clarify a point: “150 parking spots” in Copenhagen does not mean spots for just 150 bikes; each spot holds hundreds, even Thousands, of bikes, and I do not exaggerate.

July 16 at 1:05pm

Maryn McKenna

One of my favorite spots in Amsterdam is the bike “parking deck” outside Central Station. Must hold 1,000. Always full.

July 16 at 1:33pm

David Hembrow

Actually, that particular park in Amsterdam has an official capacity is 2500, but there are usually far more than that ( http://hembrow.blogspot.co​m/2009/02/parking-thousand​ s-of-bicycles.html ). This is small for the Netherlands. Other cities have more cycle parking and higher rates of cycling. For instance, Groningen has space for 10000 bikes, Utrecht for 20000: http://hembrow.blogspot.co​m/search/label/groningen_n​s http://hembrow.blogspot.co​m/search/label/utrecht_ns

What amuses me is that I see referenced to “state of the art lanes” in the US which are absolutely nothing of the sort. You need a better standard of provision to make cycling more attractive: http://hembrow.blogspot.co​m/search/label/usa

July 17 at 7:57am

Lila Gold

In Budapest, woe betide the pedestrian who stands or walks in the dedicated bike lane. Don’t even think about roller-blading there. It’s not recreation, it’s transportation – and rightly so.

July 17 at 11:06am

Hans Muecke

Well… first the US has to accept that it isn’t a good idea to settle wherever one wants to settle. Since that actually creates the need for driving cars.

July 16 at 1:17pm

hapamoku

big chicken & egg problem here. many communities in america are so car-focused they don’t have consistent sidewalks or crosswalks, and in some ways that makes sense: the distances between residents & basic services are too great to walk, and probably inconvenient even to bike, daily.

the advantage of bikes is that when you begin thinking bigger picture — “we’ve made our city work for cars, now how can we make it comfortable to live here without one” — you get your costs down. bikes are more space efficient, cleaner, safer, and more social. the problem is the demand for those benefits may lag implementation of the facilities, including zoning for walkability, by many years. that’s a tough sell even with high gas prices.

July 16 at 2:19pm

Gary Moss

1. We are the exceptional nation, so we can’t possibly learn anything from other countries.

2. Europe is mired in 1945, didn’t you remember? What could we possibly learn from them?

3. Bicycles and public transportation are socialistic. We must uphold democracy!

4. We are owned by big oil. Not only does this control votes in the Congress, it controls the cultural storyline through public relations and media.

July 16 at 3:59pm

Bc Martin

They also publish textbooks for the next generation.

July 19 at 11:21pm

Rich Schermerhorn

I’m totally for the lanes, but can understand if the locals are complaining about aggressive high speed weekend warriors who think this is their training ground. European biking is more about practical clunkers traveling at speeds that allow cell phone conversation.

July 17 at 12:09am

charlesnathansiegel

This is the same Elisabeth Rosenthal who recently wrote a front page article in the NY Times saying:

Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy.
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL.
Cities in Europe are taking steps to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation;.

http://topics.nytimes.com/​topics/reference/timestopi​cs/people/r/elisabeth_rose​nthal/index.html

This article was much criticized by environmentalists for its claim that sustainable transportation makes people miserable, and I am glad to see that Rosenthal is trying to make amends.

But she is still spreading misinformation and making it harder to keep the PPWs bike lane by saying that almost everyone she interviewed was against the PPW bike lane.

In fact:
A poll found that neighborhood residents support this bike lane by a margin of 3 to 2.

http://www.streetsblog.org​/2011/04/01/jim-brennan-po​ll-finds-3-2-margin-of-sup​port-for-ppw-redesign/

Hundreds of people attended a rally to support the bike lane.

http://www.streetsblog.org​/2010/10/21/hundreds-rally​-in-support-of-prospect-pa​rk-west-bike-lane/

Opponents have had some success not because of their numbers but largely because one of their leaders is Iris Weinshall, who is Sen Schumer’s wife. There is currently a freedom-of-information request to get the emails from Weinshall’s CUNY account to learn more about her political activity on this issue.

http://www.streetsblog.org​/2011/07/11/cuny-refuses-t​o-disclose-weinshall-email​s-about-ppw-bike-lane/

Rosenthal seems to specialize in finding people who are “irked” by sustainable transportation. She obviously did not try very hard to find people who are part of the neighborhood majority who support this bike lane.

July 17 at 12:55am

Richard Brenne

If all the externalities were factored in and there was an appropriate and rising price on carbon, gas prices would soon be $8 a gallon as it is in many European nations and ultimately higher, and that would produce the needed shift to bicycles as transportation more than anything.

Busses, light and heavy rail should allow as many bikes on each as possible, ideally at least the last car of every train has hooks and is the bike car without needing to box up your bike. This is what England did during WWII when citizens had access to very little if any oil. Elderly English friends have told me that was the happiest time of their life, proving that access to oil doesn’t equal happiness, and closer to the opposite is often true.

Choosing to work out of one’s home, telecommute and live near work, school and shopping are also keys. Also more dense living is needed. The idea that everyone is a king who deserves a castle surrounded by unproductive acreage is sillier than Borat, who had such fantasies because his hotel room had a chair.

July 17 at 3:23am

hapamoku

success of things like http://twitter.com/search?​q=flightvsbike suggests people are ready for this change IF IT IS FUN.

can it be big fun unless big money gets involved?
which might mean fossil-fuel money (such as the marketing $ from jet blue that the race piggybacked)?
which might mean fun only fossil interests like?
which might mean no change?

July 17 at 4:24am

Philip Peter Watson

Articles like this are realy stoking my interest in urban/environmental planning.

July 18 at 2:27pm

Lauren Cardoni

If only..

July 20 at 3:08pm

Crystal Haswell ·

This article makes VERY valid points. Bike commuter needs should be taken seriously!

July 22 at 1:35pm

Andrew Rector

It’s weird to see the difference between the States and the UK, even if the UK isn’t as bike friendly as the rest of the continent. Lots more bicyclists and bike lanes here, and people seem to treat them with respect.

July 22 at 4:59pm

[E]conomic benefits include tourism and recreation-related spending (which is a boon to businesses and increases local tax revenues), and a rise in real estate values. Other benefits include higher quality of life, environmental benefits such as buffer zones to protect water sources from pollution run-off, and mitigation of flood damage. A 2008 user survey of a multi-use trail in Pennsylvania showed that over 80 percent of users purchased “hard goods” such as bikes and cycling equipment in relation to their use of the trail, and some also pur- chase “soft goods” such as drinks and snacks at nearby establishments.

The trend is similar to what we see at farmer’s markets, where people have many times the number of interactions than they do at the grocery store (all while supporting local businesses). When cyclists move through properly-designed infrastructure for bikes, they’re more likely to interact with their surroundings and spend more money. Here’s an example from North Carolina:

Data were gathered through user surveys and bicycle traffic counts to estimate the amount of money that tourists spent during a visit, the total number of tourists, and the proportion of tourists for whom bicycling was an important reason for the visit. The researchers found that, annually, approximately 68,000 tourists visited the area at least partly to cycle. This led to an estimate that $60 million in tourism spending and multiplier effects came to the area in relation to the bikeways, and supported approximately 1,400 jobs.

When confronted with a decision of whether or not to include pedestrian and/or bicycle facilities in transportation infrastructure projects, planning officials should do so, not only because of the environmental, safety, and health benefits but also because these projects can create local jobs.”

Cycling infrastructure is a win-win-win for communities: They can raise local health standards, increase local economic activity and reduce emissions that impact the global environment. This report offers yet more evidence of the immense benefits for communities that support bicycles.

(Below: a summary of project types reviewed and their average economic impact.)

— Tyce Herrman and Stephen Lacey

Joe Romm:  And since oil prices are headed up in the medium- and long-term, biking will just become more and popular:

• Jeremy Grantham must-read, “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever”
• Science: “Peak oil production may already be here”
• Least surprising headline of the day: “Exxon Struggles To Find New Oil”
• World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”
• German military study warns of peak oil crisis
• Peak oil production coming sooner than expected

Below are the earlier comments from the Facebook commenting system:

Leif Erik Knutsen

A while back I read a report that having established bike lanes significantly reduced associated moving traffic violations in the area. Anyone have a link to that information?

June 28 at 10:33am

Jonathan W Smith

Strongly favors more and better cycling opportunities.

June 28 at 10:35am

Tony Abbott

FLow-on effects, reduced crime in the area.

June 28 at 11:25am

Eric Perramond

Yes. And I’d argue, and we need firm stats somewhere, that pedestrian-only streets would be even BETTER for most businesses.

June 28 at 11:29am

Timothy Hughbanks

Now if only construction project workers would stop pushing fine gravel, nails, staples, and glass into the bike lanes I commute in, I’d stop slipping on the gravel and stop getting so many flat tires.

June 28 at 12:59pm

Larry Chamblin

I will be purchasing my first bicycle in 40 years to prepare for Moving Planet on Sept. 24. Check it out at 350.org and join us.

June 28 at 1:14pm

Elisheva Chamblin

buy more than one so when we will be there we can go bicking …. this is what we do here on LBI

June 29 at 8:18am

Helen Emerson Slack

Be sure to get a helmet too ;)

June 29 at 6:51pm

Richard Brenne

It’s hard to express how much bike paths have meant to me since 1977 when I bicycled from Canada to Mexico, and since then most of my commutes to work, shopping, errands and recreation have included some of the world’s prettiest bike paths here in Portland and in Boulder, Colorado and Los Angeles.

In each case the bike paths are along magnificent and unique waterfronts that can occasionally flood without damage to any other traffic or infrastructure. They’re also at the heart of much of those cities’ finest culture.

When I grew up in Portland there was a freeway on the downtown side of the Willamette River, but by the time I started riding my bike everywhere (I didn’t bother getting my license until I was 17 and didn’t own a car until I was almost 26) they’d torn out the freeway (better to have never built it there in the first place) and replaced it with Tom McCall Waterfront Park and a wide multi-use path overlooking the river where the Rose Festival carnival and many others like it take place, and where Obama spoke to his largest audience (75,000) up to that point in his campaign and where similar numbers will gather this weekend every day for the Blues Festival that is also a festival of pedestrians, cyclists, kayakers, canoeists and sailors.

It cost 24 million to complete the 2.2 mile Esplanade that circles the Willamette at downtown, crossing the Steel and Hawthorne Bridges, passing the Saturday and Sunday Markets, the carnival and festival areas and linking within a few hundred yards to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the amazing River Place Marina and area of restaurants and shops, our favorite place to take out of town guests including recently Al Bartlett and expert CP commenter Leif Knutsen. On sunny days we push my 92-year-old mother around the entire circuit in a wheelchair, probably her biggest remaining thrill. I don’t have the figures in front of me but over the course of a year I know various parts of the Esplanade get millions of visits by commuters, shoppers, sight-seers and tourists, and with Portland’s finest hotels on one side of the river and the convention center on the other, I often see conventioneers with their badges walking the Esplanade and soaking in the sights.

On a smaller scale the Boulder Creek bike path is just as magnificent and links spectacular and precipitous Boulder Canyon with a series of Boulder’s prettiest creek side parks, City Hall, Boulder High, the University of Colorado and the Boulder Public Library is built over the creek and bike path and on either side. There are also many festivals, fairs, performances, shops, restaurants and stands within just hundreds of yards of the creek. (As a somewhat humorous aside, my wife told me about a Canadian who heard a clickety sound just behind him before a mountain lion leapt and ripped him off his mountain bike, surviving when his companion knocked the lion off him with his own bike. I commuted from a scientist’s house 10 miles up in the mountains without ever seeing anyone as late as 11 pm down the dirt bike path through the heart of mountain lion country imagining that clickety sound – the mountain lion’s claws – though I don’t blame the bike path as much as my wife for telling me that story.)

There are more great climate scientists with access to that bike path than any other in the world, with the National Snow and Ice Data Center and Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research within hundreds of yards of the path on the East Campus of the University, CIRES on the main campus and Roger Pielke Jr’s office overlooking the creek and path, and NOAA’s Earth Science Research Laboratory and the NCAR campus on spurs of the bike path and up against the most spectacular cliffs and mountains so close to any city in America and possibly the world.

The bike path running from under Santa Monica Pier to Marina Del Rey (my commute route to work off and on for six years) is equally amazing – it was like commuting through a three-ring circus on weekends, with buskers juggling chainsaws, roller skaters grooving to music and others slaloming cones, something I took and applied to ski racing as a coach more than anyone I know years later.

These bike paths were also key to my daughter’s development, including as a speed skater. When she was six she and I would in-line skate mostly downhill along Boulder Creek for 10 miles to the East Boulder Rec Center to swim and then take the bus home. I wore a dog leash from my backpack she could hold onto but soon our roles were reversed and five years later even on my bike I couldn’t keep up with her and two other in-line speed skaters (both Olympians) as they sped along the bike path so fast it looked like the car chase scene from the French Connection and we had to move their training out east of town where it was much less crowded (fortunately they never hit anyone, but at least one dog did find itself suddenly surrounded and then it’s assailants were gone so fast the dog’s probably still puzzled).

Lastly I can’t help imagining what could have been and could still be in many places if they’d embrace bike paths. With Gail from Wit’s End and Richard Pauli we visited a third all-time great expert Climate Progress commenter Mike Roddy who was living on Vashon Island southeast of Seattle. The way the island developed most of the coastline is privately owned with increasingly large homes overlooking the water and views of the Olympics or Mount Rainier but with hundreds of “No Trespassing” signs. Not very friendly or appealing, and the public can’t see the water from the vast majority of all roads, sidewalks and towns. Now imagine if instead all the beaches and a hundred feet inland were publicly owned and a bike path ringed the entire island, including small local cafes, bistros, pubs, restaurants and shops nestled around coves and marinas in occasional villages. Every home overlooking the bike path would still have their views, but the tourism and real estate dollars would all be much, much higher than they are. This is the power of bike paths and what every community should be considering and working toward.

June 28 at 3:40pm

A Cole Meyers

This is cool, and I haven’t seen Matti von Kessing post it yet, so…here it is!

June 28 at 5:06pm

Sean Todd Mahoney

Yay for bikes, buses, and all forms of alternative transportation.

June 28 at 6:09pm

Glenn Jaecks

and better neighborhoods, too.

June 29 at 9:53am

Christopher Burati

UMass! Great result of a study done about the economic, environmental, and health benefits of a sound cycling infrastructure. I can only dream that one day our cities will be models of European efficiency (policies geared towards bikes and pedestrians over cars).

June 29 at 1:30pm

Giorgio DiNatale

hmm food for thought.

June 29 at 10:00pm

Mike Vandeman

Bike lanes make no sense. ALL lanes are bike lanes. The problem is not the absence of bike lanes, but the presence or motor vehicles. The focus should be on removing/restricting motor vehicles. Bike PATHS destroy wildlife habitat and make even less sense. We have already lost FAR too much habitat, and mountain biking is destroying a lot more. Bikes should be restricted to existing pavement.

July 1 at 11:42pm

Shane Overton

So mike, how’s it going wearing your pinstriped suit? http://peterfrickwright.co​m/trial/

July 4 at 1:46am

(cc photo by NicestAlan)

Today I got to go on a bicycle tour of Copenhagen guided by two representatives from the Dansk Cyklist Forbund (Danish Bicycle Federation). It was a great way to learn about Copenhagen’s bike infrastructure by actually riding around and experience it, stopping periodically to have things explained. I’d been to European cities with impressive bicycle infrastructure before—Berlin and Stockholm very recently—but those places seemed like a difference in degree compared to the United States. Copenhagen was a difference in kind. There’s just not—at all—a sense of danger or even competition with the automobile. On streets that are heavily trafficked, there are bike lanes, and the lanes are usually physically separated from the road. On streets where there aren’t bike lanes, there isn’t much traffic. And most of all there are tons of people on bikes wherever you go. Thirty-seven percent of Copenhagen commuters use bikes. And given that presumably some people are walking to work, some people are using the bus, some people are using the Metro, and some people are using the S-Tog the resulting situation is one in which cyclists and drivers are really equals.

It’s actually impressive to a degree that’s somewhat unsettling. Regular bicycle commuting in the United States is, among other things, a somewhat meaningful identity category. Initially it’s thrilling to see so many of “your people” everywhere. But looking closer you start to see exactly what was explained to me—the whole reason you have so many people biking around is that cycling is totally mainstream in Copenhagen and doesn’t constitute an identity at all.

From a policy perspective, what you’re basically seeing in Denmark is path-dependency on steroids. Back in the 1970s there were a substantial number of cyclists in what I guess you would call the “pre car” mode where people ride bikes because the country is too poor for everyone to afford a car. Then came the oil crisis and driving got even more expensive. And alternative policies started to be explored where for the first time the country started consciously trying to encourage bicycling. And the policy was never really dropped. So you have lots of cyclists which creates a constituency for more infrastructure which leads to more cycling which creates a constituency for more infrastructure. Denmark is the country with the highest share of GDP going to taxes, and part of that is very high taxes on cars and on gasoline so even though Denmark is a very rich country today lots of families still have a strong financial incentive to limit car ownership and car use.

I think you can already see embryonic versions of this positive reenforcement cycle in some American cities—New York and Washington to name two—but it still looks very different and I think something dramatic would have to happen to really change the path dependence dynamic. Then again I think that if you look at where oil prices were before the financial crisis hit it’s not all that unlikely that something dramatic will happen, comparable to the oil crisis of the seventies. At any rate, the current center-right government in Denmark hadn’t actually been very interested in bike-promotion over the past eight years (the Copenhagen city government is another matter) but no they’ve changed their tune and are appropriating about $200 million in competitive grants to municipalities for bike projects.

Then I sort of thought the better of it since I didn’t have any data and it’s usually best not to just rely on crude stereotypes. Fortunately, Scientific American came to the rescue with a better-supported investigation of this question:

“If you want to know if an urban environment supports cycling, you can forget about all the detailed ‘bikeability indexes’–just measure the proportion of cyclists who are female,” says Jan Garrard, a senior lecturer at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and author of several studies on biking and gender differences.

There we go! That’s via Courtney at Feministing who comments:

Women, generally-speaking, are less likely to utilize bike lanes set in high-traffic areas, but in parks, low-traffic roadways, and the like, they are nearly 50% of riders. The enduring gender role differences also play a role here. Women who need to strap on some kids, groceries, or other precious cargo, need urban infrastructure that makes that easier (who wants to be carting a toddler around in the middle of honking, dangerous traffic?). European cities, many of which are more consciously planned around safe, cargo-laden biking, have much higher raters of women riders.

Of course, I also know some NYC-based badass women bicyclists (Christy Thornton!), who are neither risk-averse, nor lugging babes, so I wonder how they would feel about assumptions like these. Your thoughts?

Obviously many women don’t have babies. But it’s equally clear that there are a lot of babies in the world and the responsibility for caring for them does, in practice, primarily fall on women. And differential risk-assessment (whatever its origin) is probably the element of gendered psychology that’s most clearly supported by real research. So the causal hypothesis makes sense,.

Not that I mind or anything, but this kind of seems like a solution in search of a problem.

Saturday after having spent all week being jealous of the German bike lanes and the large number of German urban cyclists, I finally got the chance to rent a bike and ride around Berlin. You can really experience the safety in numbers phenomenon first hand:

The crux of the matter is that on any busy street there are always cyclists. In many circumstances, this is dealt with through the provision of good bicycle lanes, often physically separated from auto traffic. But where that’s not the case the bikes are in the street and the cars are well-aware that there are bikes in the street and conduct themselves accordingly.

At the same time, German cyclists seem to me to go slower. In part, it’s a matter if the bikes. People typically seem to have hybrid or mountain tires rather than road tires (necessary for going over cobblestones or streetcar tracks) and often their bikes are configured in a European-style upright posture, both of which lead to slower speeds.

And here’s some nice red striping that extends through the intersection and improves visibility:

And here we have a lane separated out from the sidewalk:

For whatever reason in Northern Europe bicycles seems to be the predominant alternative to cars whereas in Southern Europe you see more scooters and mopeds and such. I’d sort of like to come up with a theory as to why that it (it’s flatter in the north?) but no obvious one is coming to mind. I note that relative to the United States, you see cyclists in Germany (like in the Netherlands) from more walks of life—more older people, more people with carseat attachments for kids and such.

A couple of days ago, Cato’s Tad DeHaven took aim at a new bicycle storage facility being built at Union Station in Washington, DC. I remarked ” I look forward to the day when the Cato Institute does a blog post denouncing each and every publicly financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America.” To which DeHaven responded yesterday:

I denounce each and every federally financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America on non-federal property. I’m one of those quaint individuals who recognizes that the Constitution grants the federal government specific enumerated powers. Using federal tax dollars to finance local parking garages, lots, bike centers and racks is not one of the powers granted to the federal government. So let me rephrase my statement from yesterday: Look, I harbor no animosity against [car drivers], but under what authority — legal or moral — does the federal government tax me in order to build [parking garages or lots] for parochial, special interests?

To be honest, rather than addressing my concern I think this response highlights the hypocrisy I was pointing out. I have no doubt that on some abstract level DeHaven is opposed to all kinds of federal funding of local transportation projects (though I note that a facility relating to a train station in the national capital seems like a plausible area of federal concern) but in practice he denounces a specific bicycle parking project as an example of unconstitutional waste while not in practice complaining about car facilities.

But I fired up the old Google and found plenty of specific examples of federally-funded parking garage projects. This one in Fairfax County cost $28.8 million. Here’s a story about “an application for $130 million in federal grant funds to help pay for a parking garage complex in downtown Bartow.” Here’s an account of a $9 million parking garage in Vermont “Partially funded with federal transportation money.”

And, look, I’m not kidding about this: I really do look forward to the day when the Cato Institute starts specifically denouncing all of this stuff and really going after it. As a supporter of bicycle initiatives, I think it’s nice to see the federal government kick some bucks into a bicycle facility. But as you can see that money is dwarfed by what’s spent on public (and, yes, federal) subsidies for automobile parking facilities. I would gladly equalize federal funding for car parking and bike parking at $0 per year. But I get annoyed when friends of limited government pick on the crumbs handed to cyclists while completely ignoring the loafs going to cars.

CalTrain station, Menlo Park, CA (cc photo by Richard Masoner)

Elana Schor reports on failed efforts to strip funding for bicycle and pedestrian safety in the Senate:

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jim Webb (D-VA) voted with Coburn to allow states to opt out of a current mandate to spend 10 percent of federal transportation aid on bike and pedestrian paths, bike-ped safety education, and other programs.

Coburn’s amendment fell short by a vote of 39-59, with three other Democrats, Sens. Russ Feingold (WI), Evan Bayh (IN), and Claire McCaskill (MO), also aligning with the majority of Republicans in favor of the opt-out.

Shame on everyone. Small amounts of money to promote walking and cycling are good for the environment and for public health.

On a related note, I look forward to the day when the Cato Institute does a blog post denouncing each and every publicly financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America. Somehow I think that if we equalized public funding for car park and bike parking at $0 that would on net work to the advantage of non-drivers.

1) Upright posture. You sit with your back perpendicular to the ground instead of hunched forward over the handlebars. It’s a far more comfortable and relaxed position. Because your head is up high, it’s easier to see over car roofs in traffic. It’s also easier for the cars to see you.

2) Fenders. These semicircular arcs hover just above the tops of the bike’s tires. They prevent any up-splash when you ride through puddles and also lend the bike a rather dignified appearance.

3) Fully covered chains. Greasy metal links are hidden far out of sight, behind a chain case, meaning you can ride to work in a suit without schmutzing your trouser cuffs.

Jamis Commuter 3.0

He then goes on to discuss several different brands of actual Dutch bicycles. But they’re all very expensive. I paid much less money than that for a “Dutch-style” American bike, the Jamis Commuter 3.0. I’ve never actually owned any other bike, but I like it quite a lot and it definitely delivers on the main virtues of European-style cycling—less speed, more comfort and convenience—something to use to get around town faster than you could on foot, but not actually race with.

As the number of riders in NYC goes up, the aggregate quantity of accidents is going down. So the rate of accidents is plummeting. Obviously, bicycling as a mode of transportation isn’t going to work for all locations—its viability has a lot to do with terrain. But there are a lot of places in America, including Washington DC, where it can be a very useful addition to the mix. And I know that one reason some folks in Washington don’t want to take it up is that it feels unsafe. But what we’re seeing here is that incremental improvements in safety can, if they get more people out on the bike paths, lead to a positive feedback loop of more pedaling and more safety.

Eric Cantor (R-VA)

CNN reports on House Republicans’ efforts to get serious about cutting the budget:

The House Republican leadership upped the ante Thursday in the ongoing debate over the size and scope of the federal budget, unveiling a proposal to cut spending by $375 billion over the next five years. [...] President Barack Obama “challenged us to come up with budget savings, and today House Republicans encourage him to not only look over our proposed … common-sense taxpayer savings, but to join our effort,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, said in a statement.

It turns out, however, that there’s no real proposal here. Instead, “The bulk of the GOP’s proposed savings would come from capping non-defense discretionary spending at the level of inflation.”

A blanket cap in spending is not a good idea. For one thing, it’s incredibly indiscriminate. For another thing, it’s oddly un-inclusive. If we’re just going to reduce outlays in an arbitrary, across-the-board way, why should defense and Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid be left off the table? Well, presumably they don’t want to cut the defense budget because they think it’s important. But isn’t the FBI important? Prisons? If Medicare’s important, isn’t the CDC important? What would be helped by slashing Pell Grants? When the Obama administration proposed $17 billion in federal spending cuts, the announcement was generally met with mild derision at what a small share of the overall pie that is. But the point is that they found $17 billion dollars worth of cuts that there are actual reasons to believe are worth making. It’s easy to generate a high headline number by being arbitrary. But it’s also easy to do devastating damage to the country.

A much better AP story gets that there are only about $5 billion a year in actual cuts here. And just to piss me off personally, one of the the specific items they want to cut is federal support for bicycle routes. I’ll be the first to admit that not that many people use a bicycle as their primary means of conveyance, but there are about fourty times more of us than George Will realizes, and we’re using a commuting method that’s good for the environment and helps reduce traffic congestion for everyone else. Conservatives seem to have decided that bicycles are funny and un-American, like Puerto Rican food and volcano monitoring, but I don’t really see what their reasoning is.

This seems like a promising development:

According to New Scientist, the pair have developed a prototype door that uses a range of sensors to detect any oncoming dangers, and work in concert with an accelerometer in the door to prevent it from being opened. What’s more, the sensors are apparently also able to detect the proximity of the object and adjust the resistance of the door accordingly — for instance, slowing the door down if you’re about to slam it into a lamp post.

My hope, of course, would be that this will prevent careless drivers from opening a car door right in the path of an oncoming bicyclist. But if you drive regularly and don’t yet own this fabulous technology, please do take a second before opening the door in your parked car to check for this scenario. Bad things can happen otherwise.

You can offer comments on the proposal here and read more about it here.

The weather’s pretty soggy in Barcelona this week, but it still looks to be a pretty solid bicycling town. One feature that I wish more American cities has is bike lanes that are actually separated from the flow of traffic so that they can be used for bicycling rather than as double-parking lanes:

They also have a bike sharing service called “Bicing” that appears to use identical infrastructure to our smaller SmartBike DC program in Washington:

It occurs to me every time I see a bike share service in another city that it would do a lot to extend the utility of these things if there were some kind of reciprocity agreement in place between different bike sharing cities. I’m a SmartBikeDC member, but I rarely use it because like most people inclined to get around town on a bike I own a bike and usually ride that. It’s when I’m not in DC that I really want to use a bike share.

Allan wants to know about “bike commuting in winter.”

This is my first winter as a bike commuter. I’d heard bad things about it but I haven’t found it to be a huge problem. The key breakthrough was when I figured out how to make my helmet big enough to wear my hat under it. That and remembering to wear gloves. Normally, I don’t wear gloves outside unless it really gets quite cold — it’s convenient enough to stick ‘em in your coat pockets if they get a little chilly, and keeping the gloves off leaves your hand free to fiddle with your iPod or whatever. But you can’t put your hands in your pocket on a bike, and you don’t need to manipulate any small objects with your fingers — what you need are some gloves to shield your fingers from the wind.

Beyond that, in all things related to bike commuting we need to look to our friends in Europe. The top bike commuting city is Copenhagen, not San Diego. If people can bike to work in Denmark’s winter (I even saw plenty of people biking around Helsinki in December) then it can be done wherever you might be in the USA as well. Unfortunately, American mindspace about bicyling tends to be dominated by the insidious recreational bikers, who’ve gotten it into people’s heads that even on a lovely day for a bike ride the act of pedaling requires intricate performance gear including funny biking outfits. But bike commuting is a whole different ballgame — you’re just trying to get to work, so you should wear what you would wear. If it’s cold, wear a sweater and a scarf under your coat. If you need to give a presentation, bike in a suit and fancy shoes. You’re not going to set world records in a bundled-up-for-winter outfit, but the point is just to get to work. See, e.g., the Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog.

But it all starts with a hat and gloves even in weather that you wouldn’t ordinarily consider nippy enough for ‘em.