{"id":352,"date":"2010-07-01T15:50:37","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T23:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/?p=352"},"modified":"2010-07-01T15:50:37","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T23:50:37","slug":"one-step-in-a-long-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/?p=352","title":{"rendered":"One step in a long journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

We opened a new separated bike lane on a downtown street. It’s a start.<\/p>\n

\"Cars<\/a>

Cars and Pedestrians, but no bikes. <\/p><\/div>\n

I realize it looks totally unused to motorists but it’s a necessary first step: we won’t attract cyclists until we have infrastructure because of safety perception.<\/p>\n

I suspect this is not how car usage grew. Motorists don’t feel unsafe around other road users so they will try using a route as soon as they see it’s avaailabe and then they’ll complain because\u00c2\u00a0 it’s slow and congested.<\/p>\n

The difference is that potential cyclists *won’t* try a route if they think it’s the slightest bit unsafe but instead complain that it’s not safe.<\/p>\n

We have to be willing to build (some) infrastructure and then exhort\/market to citizenry to use this capacity.<\/p>\n

Of course, this leaves us open to criticism from right-wing car addicts\/lobby that we’re spending money on infrastructure for nobody (or for latte-sipping urban lefties, or whomever). I’m optimistic this time that our civic politicians have the ability to withstand this criticism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We opened a new separated bike lane on a downtown street. It’s a start. I realize it looks totally unused to motorists but it’s a necessary first step: we won’t attract cyclists until we have infrastructure because of safety perception. I suspect this is not how car usage grew. Motorists don’t feel unsafe around other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bikes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}