Suppose there was a recipe for realizing our aspirations to become more pedestrian- and bicycle-centric. Wouldn’t you want your local municipality to adopt them?

Although we are not quite there yet, let’s indulge arm in some of the Netherlands, Portland and New York City’s exemplary plans, techniques and programs. The very ones that have morphed to safely cater to everyone regardless of if they want to drive, bike or walk.

The best part is,

despite the dire state of the current overall walking and cycling levels in America, those successful experiences can be replicated across the nation. Turning other American cities around is very doable on condition there is the political will to push the strategies center stage.

Rutgers professor and bicycling advocate, John Purcher condenses those strategies into 6 categories:

• better facilities for walking and cycling;
• traffic calming of residential neighborhoods;
• urban design sensitive to the needs of non-motorists;
• restrictions on motor vehicle use in cities;
• rigorous traffic education of both motorists and non-motorists; and
• strict enforcement of traffic regulations protecting pedestrians and bicyclists.

New York City’s exemplary bike friendly ground work

There were 111 miles of bike routes in 1999 New York City as compared to 6,200 miles of roadways, which makes for roughly a 1:56 ratio. Even then, if you dug in, there was really only 30 miles that really served daily riders for transportation while the rest were mostly either Class 3 (shared spaces), which are out of the way or available only on weekends.

During that same period, over in the Netherlands, they had as many miles of bike paths as NYC’s roadways and their bikeways to roadways ratio was 1:12. Despite it being Europe’s most densely populated country and with the most cars per square mile, for the city of Delft, cycling fatalities fell by 20% after the installation of its cycleway network.

We referred to NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s 2007 plaNYC sustainability drive for the city’s more livable and greater future through to 2030 in a previous entry.

By July, 2009, their streetscapes have taken on a whole new look with close to four times the length of bike mile lanes at 420 miles, and a biking community that has increased the 45%. The figure targeted for 2030 is 1,800 miles.

It has been said that previous US bike lane designs had the underpinnings of maintaining motor vehicle traffic and access versus Europe’s, which hone in on bicyclists’ safety and mobility.

Watch this Streetfilms video by Elizabeth Press to see how things have changed. How bike lanes and paths – that come in three flavors or Class 1, 2 and 3 – are facilitating bicycling, calming traffic and are inclusive of the needs of other road users.

As shown here, the first class is a single or dual-directional path that is protected with a painted buffer and a parked car lane or other obstruction. The second class is a bike lane that is protected with a painted buffer and the third class are shared lanes or sharrows where there are bicycle markings indicating it is a shared space.

Next stop is Portland for another set of innovative perspectives.

Photos courtesies of Flickr photographers – Ed Yourdon, Seth W., mlcastle and richardmasoner under the Creative Commons license.