Google Maps ‘Bike There’

The SFU City blog (Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, Vancouver, Canada) lets us know that John Pucher, The Bicycle Scholar, and his student/colleague, Ralph Buehler, have just been published in the latest edition of Transport Reviews, a 6-times yearly academic journal that uses the tagline, “A Transnational Transdisciplinary Journal.”

Sounds like an interesting journal!

[Is Ralph the infamous graduate student of Pucher's who failed his German driving test multiple times because he didn't properly account for the possibility that bicyclists could do something erratic and unpredictable? "Buehler? Buehler?" Yes, they're spelled differently. ]

The paper appears to be the formal study that supported his much-talked-about presentation at SFU a few weeks ago, a presentation which I tried to transcribe, with some success, here. I’m very happy to be able to see the study, because I missed a few city names that I’d like to do more reading-up on.

The title of the paper is “Making Cycling Irresistible: Lessons from The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.”

You can download and study the paper here (PDF). [Thanks, SFU!]

Going back to #14 on the Big Initiatives list, I want to say (and this is just my opinion, of course) that this is awesome! That is, we should be thankful that John is one of us. He and Ralph (hey, Ralph is one of us, now) have done the research—now we just need to check it out, analyze it, see if it holds up to tough scrutiny, and then if it does, put it into practice (presumably, it’s already been subjected to some rigorous scrutiny, but there’s nothing like thousands of eyes to find any potential weaknesses). We can send the Thank You emails and all that, but at the end of the day, in my opinion, the best way we can thank John and Ralph is to educate ourselves, educate others, and then get this bicycling party cranked up by making good use of this research.

I know I plan on studying this report in detail. The in-person presentation was so overwhelming that it was tough for me to come away with much more than a feeling of, “Wow, we have a lot of work to do.” 

That’s part of the reason I wanted to do the transcript, but having the formal paper is even better. The structure of it will allow us to better analyze and make judgments about the data and findings, so we can act appropriately.

Even the abstract feels enlightening to me all over again (the bold emphasis is mine):

This article shows how the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have made bicycling a safe, convenient and practical way to get around their cities. The analysis relies on national aggregate data as well as case studies of large and small cities in each country. The key to achieving high levels of cycling appears to be the provision of separate cycling facilities along heavily travelled roads and at intersections, combined with traffic calming of most residential neighbourhoods. Extensive cycling rights of way in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are complemented by ample bike parking, full integration with public transport, comprehensive traffic education and training of both cyclists and motorists, and a wide range of promotional events intended to generate enthusiasm and wide public support for cycling. In addition to their many pro-bike policies and programmes, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany make driving expensive as well as inconvenient in central cities through a host of taxes and restrictions on car ownership, use and parking. Moreover, strict land-use policies foster compact, mixed-use developments that generate shorter and thus more bikeable trips. It is the coordinated implementation of this multi-faceted, mutually reinforcing set of policies that best explains the success of these three countries in promoting cycling. For comparison, the article portrays the marginal status of cycling in the UK and the USA, where only about 1% of trips are by bike.

It’s pretty clear that what John and Ralph are saying, “Here in the U.S., we can do anything and everything we want to promote bicycling, but if we do not take care of these two provisions, we fail. It’s that simple. If we don’t make these two things happen, we will not have a bicycling culture, period.”

Those two things are:

1. Separate cycling facilities along heavily travelled roads and at intersections.

2. Traffic calming of most residential neighborhoods.

There you have it. From his presentation, I remember John saying that we really need to do all of the things he talked about in order to support a comprehensive, integrated approach, but this abstract makes it clear that those two objectives must be completed to some minimal level before we’ll achieve our overall goals.

I would like to see this paper reworked into a very high quality digital presentation, maybe in Flash, and shortened to about 10 to 15 minutes, tops, so we can put it in front of lots of people—in particular, all city councilpersons, mayors, other officials, and even regular citizens.