AB&W Releases 2010 Benchmarking Report
I just picked this up from the BikeTexas site. Looks like it will be interesting information, once I get a moment to sit down and read it. Click here to download the report from the Alliance for Biking & Walking.
I will make a point to read it more thoroughly later, but it appears to fail to address the reason why bike mode share is so low in the US – namely that most places were developed after the auto became ubiquitous and free parking is everywhere. As long as those two ingredients dominate the landscape, all the bike facilities in the world will get little more than some recreational use.
That “walkability” website, if I recall, came up with its ratings without even considering what pedestrian or bike facilities are around. Most places you could check in DFW rate as “car dependent.” Except for a few fanatics (neither of us will mention names, for fear of looking in a mirror afterwards), most places would not really have a bike walk/bike unless the streets were completely closed to any form of motor traffic whatsoever, which I think is unlikely, considering the fraction of voters that own motor vehicles.
Steve A
March 4, 2010 at 8:52 pm