Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Bob Mionske on cycling demographics and legislating bike-friendliness

I gotta say - I've been reading Bob Mionske's commentary on legal matters as they relate to us cyclists for several years. I've enjoyed it all along. But I think the guy's getting better and better at what he does.

Read this piece about Portland's struggles with cycling infrastructure and decide which of the groups Mionske mentions that YOU fit into.... It's from bicycling.com, but you knew that.

1 comment:

Khal said...

What is missed in Bob's article is that the great bicycling cities in Europe have not only bicycling-specific infrastructure, but compact urban designs, anti-motoring designs, and high gasoline taxes.

Adding bike paths to U.S. cities may encourage some additional folks to ride, but without the complimentary European political will to literally force people out of their cars in cities, I think these plans are grossly over-optimistic. Its still too easy to jump into Old Belchfire in the U.S. and our past fifty years of urban and suburban planning and zoning has been built on the car-as-transportation paradigm. That’s just an inconvenient fact.

My graduate advisor wrote this about Muenster after spending a sabbatical there:
http://www.geo.sunysb.edu/bicycle-muenster/index.html

Good luck out there.