America forgot about bikes. Now it needs them more than ever.
Bikes aren't really public transportation. Is there a bicycle forum, or should I leave this here?
America forgot about bikes. Now it needs them more than ever.
By Matt McFarland May 15 at 7:01 am
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Cycling to and from work remains a rarity among Americans despite the positive impact it could have on two of the country’s pressing problems — global warming and obesity. Forget the celebration of a recent uptick in cycling. U.S. Census Bureau data overwhelming finds commuters travel via cars, trucks and vans. Biking ranks dead last behind even “other means.”
The truth is, America is anything but bike-friendly. Our infrastructure generally discourages cycling in favor of other alternatives. Bike lanes and cycletracks are the exception, not the rule. Roads that are shared by motorists and cyclists come with a fear factor for cyclists. A typical car weighs about 4,000 pounds, while your typical road bike is maybe 25 pounds. In the event of the collision, this is a dangerous mismatch. A car will need minor body work, but a cyclist could be dead. Given every human’s natural aversion to risks, it’s obvious that cycling will remain a niche activity as long as “Intersections of Doom” remain.
While the gains are small in the grand scheme of things, there’s been an uptick in American cycling. Washington D.C., for example, has seen the number of commuters biking to work double in a decade. Every American city trails Portland, where 6.1 percent of commuters bike to work.
But that pales in comparison to arguably the world’s most bike-friendly city, Amsterdam, a place that knows how to incentivize biking. In the heart of Amsterdam 43 percent of trips are made on bike, and 29 percent of all trips in the city are made on a bike. Watch a few seconds of this video and you get a sense of how different the biking culture is:
‘Intersection of Doom’ Safety Improvements Coming
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Last edited Thu May 15, 2014, 10:28 PM - Edit history (2)
Talk to people who came of age in the 1920s and 1930s, they WALKED everywhere. This includes people who lived in cities and out in the sticks. County seats east of Colorado, New Mexico, The Dakotas, and Western Texas, were designed so you could WALK to the county seat from anywhere in the county AND back home in a day. This is true of the Counties of Western Washington, Western Oregon and the Counties around San Francisco and Sacramento California.
Please note, even most Dakota Counties tend to be within a days walk, just larger then the Counties in States Further east. States with Counties much to far to make such a day trip are in New Mexico, Arizona, Extreme Northern California, Southern California, Nevada, Utah, Southern Idaho, Southern Oregon, Central and Western Wyoming and the Western Panhandle of Texas. The rest of the Western States tended to have larger counties then in the East, but not the super large counties of the States Mentioned in the previous sentence.
Maine and Southern Florida appear to be an exception to the above rule, but both have large counties only in areas not really settled till the late 1800s.
I bring this up, for until after WWII, most people WALKED to work, WALKED to where they went to School, Walked to Church, Walked to where they went shopping etc. This was as true of people in Rural Areas as in Urban areas. My own Grandfather thought nothing of walking in his 80s, from his daughter's home in the middle of Butler County PA, through Allegheny County (and the City of Pittsburgh) to my father's home in the middle Washington county. He had done similar walks from the 1890s till he died in the 1960s. No one used a bicycle, that was for the upper middle class, the working classes all walked. Bicycles were replaced as the Toy of the Upper Middle Class by the Automobile, but mostly after WWI.
Most Americans did not own a car till after WWII. By 1954 most car sales were to people replacing an older model for a newer model, as oppose to most cars being sold to first time auto buyers (prior to 1954, more car sales were to new owners of automobiles as oppose to replacing an automobile). This is the result of Sub-urbanization, something that had been going on since the 1920s.
Side note: Opposition to Automobiles were the highest in Rural America prior to WWI, the noise of the Cars frighten the animals. After WWI, the rural market became the prime market for automobiles as more and more farmers embraced them as a way to get to town (and as trucks replaced horse drawn wagons as the main means to get crops to markets). In urban areas between the war, walking and taking the Streetcars was supreme, the automobile only being embraced by the upper middle class in urban areas. Trucks did replace horse drawn wagons between the wars, but some horse drawn wagons survived till WWII.
Now the Suburbs embraced the Automobile big time between the wars, but mostly as the Upper Middle Class moved out to the Suburbs. Thus the suburbs had more automobiles per capita then urban and rural areas, through given the small size of suburbs in the inner war period, a very small market for cars compared to the Urban and Rural Markets.
Thus even as late as the late 1940s most people WALKED to work, school, church and to go shopping. Bicycles were just not used, foot power was the preferred means of transportation.
