CrankyOne

Is there anyplace in the U.S., or world, that bicycle driving has succeeded? What city without protected infrastructure or without any infrastructure has achieved the highest modal share of bicycling? The highest safety record?

B. Carfree

Davis, CA from ~1970-1988. While there were a couple of bike lanes and one bike path (expanded in that time frame to two), the bulk of the riding was simple VC. Even the road with the side-path had a huge percentage of the riding on the roadway itself. Modal share, while never formally determined (after-the-fact estimates are all over the map) was clearly well over 50%.

It did have the most essential piece of "infrastructure" for high modal share of cycling. The two police departments had zero-tolerance policies for moving violations, even for cyclists, much to our consternation. As a result, cars stopped at stop signs and prior to making right turns on red. People didn't speed or weave all over the road. In a word, the streets were simply safe (except for the routine minor collisions of bikes, but those were pretty minor and the one place a road crossed the side path (carnage there))

Trevtassie

Japan

catgita

I believe they mainly did bike boulevards, where neghborhoods diverted cars to major streets while bikes could go straight across the grid on side streets. Yes, that is vehicular, but it does offer protection as well.

genec

Low speed limits also helped, as did a school campus that did not allow student parking.

Dave Cutter

So what policy change at the University of California caused cycling popularity with the students to falter?

Oops! Maybe the answer was in this post. Looks like the campus built a parking lot (1988?). So what do we learn from Davis, Ca? As long as no other means of transportation is available.... people will choose bicycles. A pretty negative statement about cycling.

genec

Well, given the choice between exercise or the ubiquitous rolling couch... in a country designed around the rolling couch...

Dave Cutter

I don't know what that means! Are there "other countries" where people "think/behave" differently than the species behaves while living in Davis, Ca?

genec

Not really, but there are other countries that are not designed around the rolling couch. And other countries where fuel for rolling couches is not as subsidized as it is in the US. And other countries where those that chose not to use rolling couches have alternate safer infrastructure to use. Oh and in some other countries, the use of rolling couches is not so ingrained in their society.

The US however IS the land of the rolling couch, and thus doing anything else, can be "difficult."

The US is the land of the drive thru restaurant, the drive thru funeral home, the drive thru market and liquor store and the drive in. Is it any wonder driving is considered a key ritual for young people? Bikes are just toys.

Dave Cutter

OK. Maybe I was wrong! I thought the OP was actually looking for cycling information. Instead he gets these half-facts, and outright dishonest untruths. I guess there isn't anything wrong with hating America (even with all the great things we've done). And it is certainly equally as "trendy" to hate automobiles and petro-fuels.

But the blatant dishonesty makes it appear that no one here believes the bicycle has a genuine value in society. It's a shame.

genec

Half truths??? So you are denying that American cities have been largely modified from their original horse and buggy and walking model for the automobile? That highways have not divided cities? That urban designers have not changed whole areas of cities to accommodate the automobile? And that such remodeling continues even today? (need I remind you of Boston's Big Dig, and the current tunneling going on in Seattle?)

You deny that there are huge tax incentives given to oil companies, and that even our military responds to protect sources of oil in foreign countries?

And you finally deny that America has more cars than any other nation?

Just which one of these do you consider a half truth?

FrenchFit 

When we are talking about Davis, we are talking about a) in the middle of nowhere, b) no place to go, c) flat, d) warm, January being that coldest moth, average highs close to 60 degrees, e) pretty much no car traffic unrelated to the University,

If cycling didn't succeed at Davis it wouldn't succeed anywhere.

bakes1

Bicycle riding is succeeding and has been succeeding where I live in North Jersey for the past 40 years. And where I live is in a densely populated area.
Not sure exactly what your point is...
What exactly do you define as succeeding and what would you be comparing your safety record to?
As safe as walking? Driving a car? rollerskating?
Or would you be using something completely irrelevant like making comparisons with another country?

kickstart

So far...... It has "succeeded" everywhere I've cycled that didn't have any other options, but that doesn't define what's best or more desirable.

CrankyOne

Where in north Jersey?

By success I think maybe a commute modal share of perhaps 3% or greater. Maybe 10% or more students riding bicycles to school. These would be low compared to elsewhere but fairly successful for the U.S.

Why would comparisons to other countries be irrelevant?

Dave Cutter

I apologize. I see you're actually a true believer. It would serve no purpose to present you with truth. You have a belief system. Right, wrong, correct, false.... to some extent it's perspective. I doubt you can decipher real truth, from true belief.

Daniel4

I'll weigh in and say Toronto is a success. Although it is far from ideal, we have been building more bicycle infrastructure even during our bicycle-hating past mayor, Rob Ford. Now that he's gone (as mayor), so is the rhetoric within city hall.

In Toronto's case, success is in the progress.

ModeratedUser

Wat!?!?!?!? How do you drive a bicycle? Any videos you could share? I have yet to see someone driving a bicycle, so can't help here.

kickstart

"driving a bicycle" AKA Vehicular Cycling or VC, the concept of riding a bicycle in traffic, as traffic, the same as one would do driving a car.
It's a valid real world technique that is often warped into an idealized, or villified belief system on the internet

bikemig 

Criticizing the US isn't hating it.

ModeratedUser

Not sure what the definition is in WA, but here in Cali it's been determined that a bicycle is not a vehicle. See Is the bicycle a vehicle in California?

genec

Adding cycling infrastructure is not "bicycle driving."

bakes1

I am not sure what school you attended that was surrounded for miles by a climate controlled bubble but here in NJ we don't have one.
So we choose not to send our children off to school on a bicycle when it is below freezing outside which it quite often is for a few months each year.
Not to mention snow and sleet.
So again i ask what temperate climate other countries were you referring to and why would you think they have any relevance to the US?
I realize now though that factoring in something as trivial as weather would most likely be a stretch for you and your utopian bicycling theories

genec

Interesting... would you say the winters in NJ are any worse than those in Copenhagen or Denmark, both further north than NJ? How about Oulu Finland, just south of the arctic circle... I suspect they have harsher winters than NJ, and yet somehow they manage to ride bikes to school in winter.

Guess the kids in NJ are just wimps, eh?



Copenhagenize.com - Bicycle Culture by Design: Cycling in Winter in Copenhagen

mozad655

No place has succeded as much with promoting cycling as Holland and Denmark. Now I know they have extensive cycling lanes, but what's wrong with that? Why are you only asking for places that have no cycling infastructure? Its like asking where is the best place for cycling except the best place.

EDIT: After reading the other commnts I realize what you mean now with "driving" a bicycle as a vehicle and the whole no infastructure thing. My answer would be a definite no. I don't think that there is any place without cycle lanes that has ever succeded in promoting cycling for the masses. But it also depnds on your definition of "succes". My reference will always be Holland and Denmark.

Unless cycling has become as mainstream as in those places, I don't think you can call any place a succes for cycling. Most people simply won't use a bicycle if it means riding close to high mass/high speed vehicles for longer periods of time. Its as simple as that. Hardcore cyclists won't care, but hardcore cyclists don't represent the population as a whole.

I also don't think that it would be physically possible. Traffic would stop completely during rush hours if as many people "took the lane" in a place without cycling infastructure, as there are cyclists in Holland and Denmark. It just woudn't work.