Chicago bicycle plan

"Paul Turner" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

There was a story in today's Chicago Tribune about the city's plans for
encouraging cycling. Most of it has to do with physical infrastructure,
but there is an educational component too. I think Chicago has a
comparitively good record of following through on this kind of thing, so I
expect some of this to happen.

Chicago is a leader in many areas of forward-looking urban planning, and it
comes from visionary leadership. I know many Chicagoans who are too close to
see just how far ahead the city is when compared with places like, say,
Philadelphia, where the cycling infrastructure is mostly some poorly located
lines on the streets and where the plumbers union won't allow waterless
toilets in new high-rise buildings.

Chicago is *already* one of the great cycling cities in North America -- and
not coincidentally, a world leader in "green" urban planning. I hope the
Chicago cycling community is generous with its praise and support of the
leadership that's made it that way.

RichC

Rich Clark said:

Chicago is *already* one of the great cycling cities in North America -- and
not coincidentally, a world leader in "green" urban planning. I hope the
Chicago cycling community is generous with its praise and support of the
leadership that's made it that way.

Yep. I lived there for several years as of four years ago, and it was
perfect for cycling. Smartest thing they ever did was put in those bike
racks. It legitimizes bikes so that they're not an afterthought, and
make securing your ride much more confidence inspired than locking to a
meter.

[snip]

Quoted message said:

CHICAGO'S MASTER PLAN
DON'T DRIVE. JUST BIKE.

[snip]

Quoted message said:

From Geneva, Switzerland, they got the idea of raised bike lanes, a

layer of

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pavement above street level and below the curb that would help

dissuade

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motorists from veering into cycling territory. By 2010, the city

hopes to

Quoted message said:

experiment with raised lanes in a few locations.

[snip]

Here in Britain those are known as "cycle tracks", and are the
classic bike facility from about 1930 onwards

We have a number of them here in London, although many vanished,
unmourned, with the road widening that began in the 1960s. They
were, and still are, the classic facility in the Netherlands and
Denmark, although those countries did begin to import new thinking
from the USA and Britain in the late 1970s. It's nearly sixty years
since I saw my first ones, in Copenhagen in 1948.

They used to be classic in the USA, too. Robert Moses - see Caro's
book "The Power Broker" for more about him - built many miles in New
York City in the 1930s. Read the old New York Times issues on
microfilm for details. You can still see much of their remains.

In Britain, at least, they quickly developed a bad reputation. Cars
hit bikes where their paths cross, and that is at intersections. At
intersections cycle tracks make cycling more dangerous, not less,
yes, even in the Denmark and the Netherlands.

By 1958 Britain's Professor Sir Colin Buchannan was writing in his
book "Mixed Blessing, The Motor in Britain"
"The meagre efforts to separate cyclists from motor traffic have
failed, tracks are inadequate, the problem of treating them at
junctions and intersections is completely unsolved, and the attitude
of cyclists themselves to these admittedly unsatisfactory tracks has
not been as helpful as it might have been."

Jeremy Parker