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Entries tagged: Bicycle Infrastructure

In addition to the big Transportation Research Board meeting last week, there was another engaging gathering on bicycle and pedestrian issues — the Transforming Transportation conference hosted by EMBARQ. I attended the panel on ‘Bicycling: How to Achieve Greater Mode Share?’ which featured an international panel from the Netherlands, Cape Town, and China. While the three projects were vastly different in location, the underlying theme was the same: People want to use cycling as a mode of transport and want it to be made easy for them to do so. 

Bram van Ooijen, a presenter from China, referenced a recent poll of residents in his province. When asked why they didn’t ride a bicycle anymore, an overwhelming number responded that it just wasn’t safe. China’s car infrastructure has grown exponentially over past decades, taking a nation that relied mostly on the bicycle for transportation to a nation that relies on single car use instead. Some roads in China are as wide as 80 meters and bike lanes are few and far between. But when they made bike lanes part of the new bus infrastructure, and found the money to build greenways around the city, people used them — and people loved them.

In South Africa, it’s a similar story. In Cape Town, panelist Brett Herron explained, the challenge is to integrate not just cycling and cars, but people as well. In a city and a country that has been deeply divided along racial and socioeconomic lines, it’s key to build a cycling infrastructure that can help to bridge that divide.

Luckily, in Cape Town, and South Africa in general, there’s is a law that cycling provisions must be included in new development plans. Because of this, Cape Town has included bike parking and storage facilities at many bus and train stations, and has added elaborate storage facilities (including showers) to all municipal buildings, as well. Herron’s work within the city government has really paid off—Cape Town now boasts almost 2 percent bicycle mode share.

The panelists agreed: If the infrastructure is there, if it’s easy for people to use, then they will cycle. Van Ooijen’s project in China made sure to incorporate the public bike share system with the existing public transportation system. Bike stations are located at BRT stations and can be paid for using the same card as BRT. It’s easy to use the public bikes within a multi-modal commute, and landscaped paths and greenways make it enjoyable to bike that last leg of the journey.

Community participation and ownership of the system is essential to making it work and keeping it working for years to come, as well. Working with the city government has helped to grow the projects in China immensely, especially now that the projects are being completed. City officials are bringing their peers to their town to show off their new greenways and bike paths.

For example, Tom Goderfrooij of Dutch Cycling Embassy, reported that, in the Netherlands, 27 percent of all trips taken are taken by bike. To get to that enviable mode share they slowly upscaled projects and made biking appealing and easy for all levels of society. They created a cycling culture that was not counter to using cars, but supported the mix of both. Goderfrooji’s key point: The best solution is to create an intuitive mix of cars, biking, and walking so that it’s easy and safe for everyone to get around.

Overall, the panel expressed that the key for moving cycling forward is to involve people, showcase the benefits of the system, and find champions in government. Learn from the examples of cities that are doing it well, and adapt their strategies to your own needs.

Earlier this year, the Alliance recognized the work of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition with one of our national Advocacy Awards. The LACBC took home the Best Practices plaque, in part, because of the advocates’ work to elevate the voices and call attention to the needs of low-income cyclists in underserved communities. This week, the organization took another innovative step by creating new maps that highlight bicycle crash hotspots.

Using data extrapolated from the TIMS database, LACBC intern Jimmy Nghe created a series of downloadable maps that show how crash fatalities are unevenly distributed in areas of higher density and lower income neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles. The visuals drive home a critical point: Transportation planners and policy-makers have generally failed to address many of the problems of dangerous streets where the highest need lies.

“We see large discrepancies in where higher rates of crashes and bicyclist injuries/fatalities lie: in marginalized, low-income areas of Central and South LA,” Allison Mannos, LACBC’s Urban Strategy Director, explains. “We created these maps to start a nationwide conversation with other advocates, planners, and members of the public. These maps are the first time that, as a movement, we have put our heads together to pinpoint environmental injustices as they relate to bicycling on a neighborhood level.”

The advocates emphasize that these maps show only a rough relationship between population density, income, and rates of collisions involving people who bicycle or walk. More data needs to be collected to show causation. But the maps are a clear indication that the City of LA needs to heed the example of LACBC and invest more resources in underserved neighborhoods.

“This presents a major environmental and social injustice,” LACBC suggests. “Through the installation of more facilities in these neighborhoods, the City of Los Angeles will not only reduce deaths and injuries to low-income people who bicycle, but reduce the overall number of bicycle-related fatalities and injuries citywide.”

Click here to read more and see all three maps.