BY ALEX PLINE (Annapolis cyclist\/advocate), Strong Towns
\nContemporary cycling in the United States is largely viewed by the public as a recreational endeavor. However, it was not always this way. For distances greater than those easily covered on foot, bicycles were the preferred mode of local transportation prior to the early 1900s when the automobile came into wider use. During the next half decade, bicycles were seen primarily as children\u2019s toys. The 1970s and 1980s brought a new boom in bicycle sales for adult recreational purposes and this was augmented by the \u201cLance effect\u201d in the early 2000s, introducing a large number of people to performance cycling.
\nAs a result, most infrastructure built in the latter half of the 20th century was geared around this recreational aspect of cycling\u2014primarily off road paths in parks, \u201crails to trails\u201d efforts and even mountain bike facilities. It is only in the last 10 years that urban areas have started to look again at bicycles as part of their transportation strategy and to construct suitable infrastructure to implement it. By most measures these efforts have been fairly successful in increasing the numbers of transportation cyclists, but still not to a level of places like the Netherlands where there is upwards of 30% bicycle mode share. The United States will likely never achieve that kind of mode share if for no other reason than our systemic land use issues, but in areas where the land use patterns do support bicycle transportation, we can get to more modest shares like that of Portland (7+%). What actions can be taken take to increase this mode share?
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\nhttps:\/\/www.strongtowns.org\/journal\/2016\/10\/14\/raising-the-interest-and-reducing-the-concern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BY ALEX PLINE (Annapolis cyclist\/advocate), Strong Towns Contemporary cycling in the United States is largely viewed by the public as a recreational endeavor. However, it was not always this way. For distances greater than those easily covered on foot, bicycles were the preferred mode of local transportation prior to the early 1900s when the automobile … <\/p>\n