Lawrence Solomon: Ban the bike! How cities made a huge mistake in promoting cycling

Financial Post ^ | December 1, 2017 | Lawrence Solomon

[Lonely Bull]

--SNIP--

Today the bicycle is a mixed bag, usually with more negatives than positives. In many cities, bike lanes now consume more road space than they free up, they add to pollution as well as reducing it, they hurt neighbourhoods and business districts alike, and they have become a drain on the public purse. The bicycle today — or rather the infrastructure that now supports it — exemplifies “inappropriate technology,” a good idea gone wrong through unsustainable, willy-nilly top-down planning.

London, where former mayor Boris Johnston began a “cycling revolution,” shows where the road to ruin can lead. Although criticism of biking remains largely taboo among the city’s elite, a bike backlash is underway, with many blaming the city’s worsening congestion on the proliferation of bike lanes. While bikes have the luxury of zipping through traffic using dedicated lanes that are vastly underused most of the day — these include what Transport for London (TfL) calls “cycle superhighways” — cars have been squeezed into narrowed spaces that slow traffic to a crawl.

[sphinx]

excellent post, i work in dc but live and hour away in va. i think dc can do with more trails but they are doing great.

If you look at the biking app on google maps, you will see that DC and several of the inner ring suburbs are building good bike networks, and so are the outer ring suburbs. From a regional standpoint, it's the 1960's beltway suburbs that are woefully lacking. There are a few trails but unless you are lucky enough to live close to one, these are automobile suburbs that are difficult to navigate by bike. This becomes a regional problem because these areas create gaps in what could otherwise be a very nice regional network -- and that's what we need to really build a bike culture that helps relieve congestion on the roads.

I live on Capitol Hill. We are an outlier because we are so centrally located, but fewer than half of Hill residents take a car to work. There are many suburban job centers where this pattern could be replicated if attention were paid to pedestrian and bike access. And given the worsening congestion across the region, these suburban job centers are going to see much of the job growth in the next generation. They can build smart now, or they can tie everyone to their cars. Big choice.

I've used Tyson's before as a classic bad example. The daytime population is over 100,000, and 97 percent of them drive. This is insane, given that Tyson's is carved out of Vienna and McLean, with Annandale, Falls Church and Fairfax nearby. It's in the heart of huge swaths of high quality residential housing, but it's engineered in such a way -- moated by expressways -- that even people living just a mile or two away climb into their cars to get there. This is really, really bad planning.

The suburban edge cities that are building out now have a chance to do it better. There's no reason Rockville or Manassas or Springfield or Fairfax or Herndon couldn't replicate the Capitol Hill pattern. Create mixed use neighborhoods in which people can live within five miles of their jobs and have pleasant intermodal options for getting around. A huge percentage of trips by automobile are under five miles. If we want to reduce congestion on the interstates, that's a place to start. It's a better bet than building additional lanes on 66 or 270 to accommodate people driving in from beyond Frederick and Warrenton.

[Bethaneidh]

Militant bikers are wrong of course. It is also wrong to deny bikers designated road space just because they are not using a car. What would some do if say, gas got impossibly high? Or if more than one child needed to go in opposite directions?

[Bethaneidh]

Yes.

[Rebelbase]

That was hilarious! One of the best Karma videos ever.

[9YearLurker]

Okay, if we build any new cities we can keep that in mind.

But mostly we’ve got the old ones that have grown up over the last 400 years...

[SoCal Pubbie]

In California if you’re riding a bike you are operating a vehicle, just like a car. Riding on the sidewalk is technically illegal.

[Raymann]

the outlying suburbs wont change their zoning laws, especially springfield. Look at all the new apartments around springfield mall, none are multi model. i lived there and they just continue to focus on new shopping centers and new infrastructure rather then repairing what they have. If they do any bike infrastructure, they’ll just paint some sharrows and pat themselves on the back.

[Abby4116]

New Castle County in Delaware has taken a different approach. Paint a white line on the side of the road and call it a bike lane. Of course, that area was and still is the right hand turn lane. What can go wrong when the speed limit is 55 mph?

Or, do what Maryland did and put a bike lane on the Hatem Bridge. What could possibly go wrong there? I think within the first 48 hours they had their first bike/auto accident.

I know, I'm getting old and cranky, but not too many people are commuting via bike over here so much better and safer to build bike trails for those that want the exercise.

[FXRP]

My inner city combat vehicle is a Yamaha Zuma scooter, originally 49cc with a top speed about 40. With some modifications, it beats the cars out of the light, will go 53mph on flat ground, stops on a dime, parks in a bike rack and gets 70 miles per gallon. I can carry 5 bags of groceries and in a pinch, a passenger (although I hate to do that).

Bikes are nice, but they are for short distances only.

[Mr Rogers]

Go green! Dedicated horse lanes everywhere, with free fertilizer for all!

[b4me]

I saw bicyclist trying to ride his bike thru miles of construction area where there is cement dividers and it’s barely space for a car width. He get annoyed at me when i honked and told he it’s not legal for him to be in a construction area. the guy tells me “well it’s not posted”.

I told him he’s got a real mental problem and should not be riding a bike on the road if he needs all the rules posted because he can’t retain the info in his head and follow it properly.

He waved at me with one finger and told me merry f-— Christmas.

[Jim W N]

There are plenty of ways to redesign and rebuild a city downtown. It is not uncommon. San Francisco did it and they now have a gorgeous waterfront whereas before the waterfront was ramshackle. They DID widen the sidewalks and it helped revive that part of town immensely.

[gogeo]

Forward societies evolve AWAY from using horses and bicycles to get to work.

...and don't get me started on that 19th century technology, trains.

[Jim W N]

Nice take on this subject.

There was an international consultant I read about in the 90’s who was well known for his advice that wide sidewalks were a key to revitalizing a downtown city. Can’t find his name now. San Francisco did it in the South Bay district and what was once a ramshackle part of the city is now one of the most attractive, with wonderful wide sidewalks along to waterfront. I love to walk there. It’s beautiful.

[sphinx]

I'm not a great traveler, but in my limited experience the two most glorious waterfronts I've seen are the Promenade in Kowloon facing Hong Kong Island and the Battery in Charleston. I'm sure there are other wonderful examples.

In many cities, the challenge/opportunity is repurposing waterfronts that were once ports and intensively developed logistical and industrial districts. As those industries have evolved and relocated, many cities are left with derelict waterfronts. And then the car lobby came along to "improve" the situation by driving expressways along the waterfront, severing the city from a major resource. If the port is still viable and active, great. But if not, an accessible waterfront in a major city today should be golden. The question is whether there is the vision and the political will to effect the transformation.

I don't know the South Bay district in San Francisco, but here in DC, the Anacostia riverfront was historically an industrial corridor. The Washington Arsenal used to sit on Buzzard Point. The Navy Yard was the site of industrial activity through WWII. Upriver, Bladensburg was an early port until the river silted up. The river has an honorable blue collar, get-your-hands-dirty-at-work lineage. But as all that activity disappeared, the area became derelict, and LBJ type liberals decided to use it for housing projects scattered around the eyesores, which somehow did not produce the urban renaissance that they intended. That is all being swept away. The Anacostia is becoming DC's accessible riverfront, and it is going to be spectacular. The views won't rival Kowloon or the Battery or San Francisco Bay because the Anacostia and Potomac are much smaller bodies of water, but the inherent attraction of a walkable waterfront is hard to deny.

[N. Theknow]

I am an avid cyclist but urban biking would scare me silly.

I prefer the rails to trails variety of biking.

Amen to that! Central Florida has many great bike trails. I have logged over 3,000 miles this year on my favorite trail through the Green Swamp.

I see bike lanes on roads and highways and wonder who in their right mind would do road biking when the trails are so much more wonderful an experience.

I also "carry" for protection from snakes and gators...and anybody who thinks this bicyclist is an easy mark.

[Jim W N]

Thank you for that lovely discussion.

"improve" the situation by driving expressways along the waterfront, severing the city from a major resource

Interestingly, that is exactly what happened to San Francisco's South Beach. The double-decker Embarcadero Freeway ran above the waterfront and its piers. Once upon a time, the piers were used for a thriving shipping business, but that mainly moved across the bay to Alameda. So what SF was left with was a dilapidated waterfront under a freeway. (You get the feel of it in the '60's Steve McQueen movie Bullitt which was partially filmed around that freeway.)

And then, a miracle - disguised as a tragedy. The massive 1989 earthquake destroyed enough of the freeway that they had to tear it down. But amazingly and miraculously, the city fathers actually decided against rebuilding the freeway. Bye, bye dilapidated waterfront - Hello, spacious, beautiful, lovely waterfront.

[PittsburghAfterDark]

I can not blame you for carrying with that kind of wildlife near the trails.

I often thought about cc on my bike runs in the middle of nowhere.

[sphinx]

A lot of people dont realize that a secondary point of protected bike lanes IS to slow traffic down and improve safety. and they have no idea what induced demand is.

Bingo.

Sorry to drop the discussion for a couple of days, but this bears repeating. Yes, many of our commuters, and far too many of our planners, are still blind to induced demand. It doesn't occur to them that if you build attractive, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, people will walk and bike. The automobile addicts really need to get out of their cars long enough to explore some of the turnaround neighborhoods where this is already happening, but since these neighborhoods don't feature expansive parking lots around every building, they feel out of place and won't go.

The same is true in reverse. I generally like Gov. Hogan, but his proposal to add lanes to I-270 is a case in point. Go up to Frederick or Urbana and drive back along 355/Wisconsin Avenue, and you will see that the developers are already building the housing, retail and office sprawl that will clog the new lanes the moment they are opened. Unless cities, states, and counties are willing to impose really restrictive land use policies and stop sprawl, the roadbuilders will always lag the developers by 20 years. Once cities reach critical mass -- and here, we have almost 10 million people in the metro area -- every road will go to capacity. Adding lanes to 270, 66, or 95/395 is just building wider parking lots.

[Raymann]

I don’t have a problem with sprawl per say, just how its done. Zoning and poor street/road design make it as bad as it is. Minimum lot size and sfh requirements push sprawl more then what it would naturally be and putting homes and businesses on what should be a limited access road destroys traffic speed, smoothness, and safety.