B. Carfree

That is one of the most BS-laden posts I have ever seen you put up. Let's take these one at a time.

What happened in the '80s and continued until the early part of the naughties (early twenty-first century) to real oil/gasoline prices? I'll give you a clue: they went down, by a lot. The result of that was the size of the typical motor vehicle increased tremendously. Needless to say, we didn't increase the width of the lanes on our roadways to match. (Not coincidentally, the width of the average American also increased by a substantial amount.) Do you really think that had nothing to do with the end of the '60s/'70s bike boomlet? Sure, there was a decrease in cycling and a corresponding increase in motoring as the fuel costs decreased and vehicle size increased.

Wait, there's more. Have you never heard of the baby boom? Well, the last of those folks just happened to leave their college years behind as the '80s got going. Not surprisingly, the baby boom was followed by the baby bust. There weren't many young people coming along behind the boomers, and those who did found huge vehicles hogging every inch of our towns. None of this had anything to do with your VC bogeyman. (By the way, I was not referring to strictly VC, merely advocating against poorly, even dangerously, designed segregation.) You might as well blame the paucity of cyclists in America on the fall of the Berlin wall, for all the connection VC principles have to it.

Now where oh where did I get the notion that not having a bunch of segregated infrastructure could occur simultaneously with huge bike modal shares? How about the former "Bike Capital of the World"? In Davis in the '70s and '80s, we had almost no segregated infrastructure. There was exactly one bike path, the most injury-laden road in the city, and two other bike-only bridges over freeways. That was it for segregation in a city with a modal share that, while not measured at the time, was well over 50% and likely closer to 80%. We rode on the street just like other road users. We had a small collection of bike paths, but those didn't have much impact (and they certainly aren't segregation; they're closer to the VC you seem to despise).

Now, back to you. Go look at the real price of gasoline and compare the cycling rates in the ACS to that price. Show me all those places where the cycling rates went up independent of that. Nationwide, many cities saw a spike in ridership in 2009 due to a sudden increase in gasoline prices. Those cities that invested heavily in segregation, like Portland, OR and, (this past twenty years) Davis, CA, saw a flattening or DECREASES in ridership.

Segregation has been tried and it doesn't work. And no surprise that it doesn't. The risk to urban cyclists is not overtaking traffic, particularly when two-meter bike lanes are put in. (Munich has been removing its cycletracks and replacing them with two-meter bike lanes for the past decade, which has resulted in a rise from 5% to nearly 20% modal share.) The risk lies in intersection issues, particularly right-hooks and left-crosses. Segregation amplifies the risk by putting cyclists to the right of right-turning motorists and keeping them out of the normal sight lines of conflicting left-turning motorists. That's just silly.

What's even worse is the leaders of the segregation movement also support placing bike lanes in the door zone. That creates a most hazardous condition. Chicago, a rare city that kept track, found that 22% of the injuries to cyclists that they could document were the result of doorings. Nothing like inviting new cyclists into a dangerous area and making them think it is safe to improve cycling's appeal, eh?

It's time to push back against the designs of inexperienced cyclists. Who would you have design the runways and gates at the airport: Passengers or pilots? The segregationists are passengers. Experienced cyclists are the pilots.