Why can't people get that the more people that ride their bikes to work, or walk or skateboard or whatever, means there are less cars waiting in traffic?
"I don't think encouraging cycling is going to reduce congestion or significantly change the transportation makeup of our cities," says Randal O'Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "There really is very little evidence that any of (these efforts) are reducing the amount of driving. They're just making it more annoying to drivers."
WOW
4 comments:
Well, you can see that in a town/city that is designed for automobile traffic and not bicycle traffic this is true. The bike lanes in Bend are not overly abundant and generous.
If there was a mass increase in the number of people cycling, it would make it worse for the drivers. There's always going to be cars on the roads here, so unless something big changes (gas going up to $5 gallon or good public transportation or EVEN decent bike routes) forget about everyone else riding.
Hmmm, I actually think that riding in Bend is pretty nice. I guess though, that everywhere I want to go pretty much has bike lanes or wide shoulders. I feel very fortunate. haha - even though I've been hit twice by cars in Bend!
Yeah, I'm not one for getting hit by cars - I've been hit twice also! But in Rochester we have the Erie canal path (E-W) and a path that goes along the Genesee river (N-S) which helps a lot. It pains me that my workplace it right on the canal path, but it's about 50 miles away, and there is just no way that can work. It stinks too that more work places aren't commuter friendly offering places to put bikes during the workday. My roadie is $1500 and my hard tail is $1000, so either of those would be very big losses if my bike got ripped off.
I do think that promoting bike commuting can only be a good thing though, and those in the public eye putting it down or discouraging it are just stupid. Every car not being driven makes a difference for our world. Not to mention the health benefits of riding those extra miles.
I am not sure what his point is.. The Cato institute is a think tank, one would assume they would have done some more thinking on this subject.. :)
Seems pretty simple...
the rate of people that have moved to cycling for commute transportation is far less than the rate of people being licensed to drive cars so there is a high probability that there's going to be no visible evidence until the rate of cycle commuting increases closer or equal to that of the growth rate of drivers.
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