Quote:
Originally Posted by Bunk
It's perfectly reasonable that we could double or even triple the amount of cyclists who regularly cycle - not just for work, but for other trips as well. Of course, it'll never be 20% mode share, but if we could move from 2% to say 4 or 5%, that's good in the North American context. The pathway system is great, but it doesn't penetrate the places where people actually work or do things other than recreation. This is the gap the on-street infrastructure fills.
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I'm not seeing changing 2-3% of people's mode of transport as a "lot of latent demand". And, if the addition of bike lanes impacts people's drive times by more than 2-3% on average, then you are actually making traffic problems worse. Not that this is necessarily what is happening, but sometimes small changes cause big problems, and in places like 11th Street West where the bike lane has radically altered the way the lanes are laid out and traffic flows, not all these changes are small.
And, again, if the habits of the current population of ne'e'er-do-wells and desperadoes are not properly curbed, new riders will emulate their habits and turn downtown into a carnival of two-wheeled mockery. I don't think I can over-emphasize how the vast majority of cyclists in the core have no respect for traffic laws and pedestrians, and only a grudging respect for vehicles based entirely on unequal curb weight. I could probably solve the city's budgetary woes just by handing out tickets for failure to stop, and have enough to build all kinds of fancy interchanges for parasite suburbia by ticketing cyclists on the sidewalks.