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I've actually done a tiny bit in the advocacy space and would like to do more, but I'm trying to move the casual cyclist, the once a month crowd, rather than th
by spokey 17y ago
I've actually done a tiny bit in the advocacy space and would like to do more, but I'm trying to move the casual cyclist, the once a month crowd, rather than the existing advocates.
Bike lanes themselves are a bit of mixed blessing: Studies suggest street-side, dedicated bike lanes may be less safe than simply treating bikes as traffic, e.g. http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/helsinki.htm http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/helsinki.htm. (Whether that's good or bad for actually promoting cycling is a different question.)
If you're interested, I've aggregated some bike advocacy folks on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeLoveBikes/bike-advocacy http://twitter.com/WeLoveBikes/bike-advocacy.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoThing is, if you wan to beef up the number of casual cyclists, you need to give them a bike network. I used to be opposed to bike lanes (and I ride daily in mixed traffic) for the reasons you cite; but bike lanes are net far safer because the main effect of dramatically increasing the number of cyclists is that you dramatically decrease the number (not just the rate but the actual count) of casualties. Just having more cyclists on the road makes it much safer. This seems to scale - Copenhagen is up to 50% trips by bike and their casualty rate is still falling.