Here’s a great video about what the city of Long Beach, California (which forms part of greater Los Angeles) is doing to make cycling a more attractive means of transportation.
What I find particularly interesting in the video is the support the measures have from local businesses, who realise that 12 customers with bikes can “park” in the same available space as one customer with a car. There is also a realisation that engineering the streets to benefit those who are travelling to the local shopping areas, rather than for the benefit of those travelling through them, is of huge benefit to the local community. I really like the focus on “to” rather than “through”.
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I find it interesting that roundabouts are considered bicycle-FRIENDLY there. I guess when you are at the stage that you have to do traffic calming first, AND if you use small, one-lane roundabouts, it could work well.
I must also admit that something as simple as sticking a “bike corral” into the odd parking space has never occured to me – I always approached this from a “we’ll have to rebuild the street” idea, but really, it can be done much quicker if you want to.
You know they have copied every one of those ideas from Portland or NY and they are still brilliant… All you need to do is do them..!
If you want creativity take a zero off the budget, if you want sustainability take two zeros off the budget, if you want it done do it now..!
Lol, and in Auckland they simply took three zeros of the cycling budget, and here we are 😉
Actually they took three zeros off the budget and then didn’t even spend what they had left…
Well, there’s some stuff moving at ACC right now – cycling improvements in Onehunga, Tamaki Drive, Wellesly Street East, Grafton Road, Grafton Road to Parnell shared path, more cycle parking racks and so on. I can however understand (looking at the past history) that people will be sceptical until it’s actually built…
They do have some good stuff in the pipeline (not nearly anything near what cycling project BCRs should initiate) but the sad history of the last decade of meager cycling budgets is compunded by those meager budgets not even being spent, it’s a waste of time and infrastructural resource…