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Failure of imagination. You may scoff but imagination has a huge part of it. If you commute by bike then it doesn't take that long before you wish there was s

Failure of imagination. You may scoff but imagination has a huge part of it. If you commute by bike then it doesn't take that long before you wish there was some magic pathway that just carried you over those congested, road-blocked areas. In my dreams of such magic pathways I usually imagine something a little wider than this orange route with a more definite median and more substantial fences at the side to keep the wind at bay, plus a surface that reduces rolling resistance. The thing is that I keep these thoughts to myself as I struggle along making it alive over and around really oppressive multi-lane highways. I feel as if I am the lone crazy idiot on some of these commutes. And I am. 99% of my fellow road users are in cars, genuinely too scared to ride a bike - and I don't blame them. From that stuck-in-a-box, sitting-in-traffic viewpoint the dreams are different (more lanes, setting off earlier, less traffic) and there just isn't that imagination going on to have a super bike highway when getting on a bike is unimaginable.

YawningAngel 8y ago
You don't share space with road traffic in Copenhagen anyway, as the bike lanes are completely separate.
- Theodores 8y ago
  The article asks why other cities can't have bike bridges. My point is that if people can't imagine getting out of their tin box and onto a bike then they are not going to imagine having amazing bike highways as per the article. In London a few years ago a footbridge across the Thames opened that had resonance problems that made it unsuitable for the task intended. The simple solution would have been to make it bicycles only and spend money on a new footbridge. Instead they spent a fortune upgrading a perfectly good bridge (for bikes) to make it a pedestrian bridge. The imagination was not there to just give it over to the cyclists and make it part of the cycle highway network that Ken Livingstone started (for Boris Johnston to take credit for). In Copenhagen they do have the critical mass of cyclists for imaginative cycle highways to happen, other cities where people are stuck in tin boxes lack that because people can't even imagine cycling.
  - YawningAngel 8y ago
    London has more than enough cyclists to support a cycle bridge, but unfortunately you'd have to cycle along the South Bank to get to the millennium bridge, which is a non starter in any case.

YawningAngel 8y ago

You don't share space with road traffic in Copenhagen anyway, as the bike lanes are completely separate.

Theodores 8y ago
The article asks why other cities can't have bike bridges. My point is that if people can't imagine getting out of their tin box and onto a bike then they are not going to imagine having amazing bike highways as per the article. In London a few years ago a footbridge across the Thames opened that had resonance problems that made it unsuitable for the task intended. The simple solution would have been to make it bicycles only and spend money on a new footbridge. Instead they spent a fortune upgrading a perfectly good bridge (for bikes) to make it a pedestrian bridge. The imagination was not there to just give it over to the cyclists and make it part of the cycle highway network that Ken Livingstone started (for Boris Johnston to take credit for). In Copenhagen they do have the critical mass of cyclists for imaginative cycle highways to happen, other cities where people are stuck in tin boxes lack that because people can't even imagine cycling.
- YawningAngel 8y ago
  London has more than enough cyclists to support a cycle bridge, but unfortunately you'd have to cycle along the South Bank to get to the millennium bridge, which is a non starter in any case.