by Dave Atkins
To encourage more people to bike, ask women what they want. And make it safe for kids to ride their bikes to school. These approaches would dramatically increase the utilization of cycling as a mainstream activity.
According to an article in the October Scientific American, women are an "indicator species" for bike-friendly cities. Those of us who bike frequently are familiar with the lycra-clad warrior mindset and the urban bike messenger culture, but we are also familiar with comments like "I'm surprised your wife 'lets' you ride to work." We have learned to temper our tales of close calls and have adopted an extremely defensive approach to bike commuting--out of a necessity for survival.
The Scientific American story reviews some of the first bike infrastructure studies done in the US and concludes that when women's concerns about safety and utility are addressed, cycling adoption increases. On-street bike lanes do not adequately address safety concerns because they do not separate bike from automobile traffic. Cyclists must still negotiate tricky intersections to get anywhere useful. And most bike paths are constructed in useless park areas--supporting the idea of cycling as a limited recreational activity, but not helping anyone get a bag of groceries home.
The studies will raise some gender bias eyebrows, but in the aggregate, we should acknowledge that gender roles do still exist and if we want to see more bikes on the road, we should ask what women want.
Kids don't need much encouragement to ride bikes, but their parents need to know they will be safe. The Safe Routes to Schools program has been very successful not only at encouraging kids and parents to walk to school, but has also increased the comfort level of parents around allowing their kids to ride their bikes to school. Among other activities, SRTS and MassBike conduct bike safety workshops at schools (and also bike commuter workshops for adults) and promote inprovements to bike infrastructure around schools.
We are a long way from what has become routine in the Netherlands where nearly every child bikes to school, but if you notice in the photos of kids and parents, you will not find them competing with cars, but traveling their own separate bikeways. I have posted this video before, but I just love it:
http://www.hopedance.org/community-media/videos/317
Finally, for those who question, why bother? Here is a clip from a Safe Routes to Schools presentation here in Westwood that illustrates how the rates of obesity have grown over the past 24 years.
Integrating bike transportation into our daily lives would help raise our overall level of activity and help us adopt healthier lifestyles. But to work, it needs to be practical and safe--something people choose to do not as a separate chore like going to the gym to work out and lose some weight, but as a preference to driving. We the lycra-clad road warriors are on the margins...advocates and planners should look to the mainstream needs of women and children for clues to achieve truly radical change.
