Cutting Corners

Mark Twain and the Venetian Gondolier

South Street bridge. So what is the acceptable casualty rate here?

In 1867, Mark Twain took a trip to, among other places, Venice. Here's what he has to say about gondoliers cutting corners:

"I am afraid I study the gondolier's marvelous skill more than I do the sculptured palaces we glide among. He cuts a corner so closely, now and then, or misses another gondola by such an imperceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself 'scrooching,' as the children say, just as one does when a buggy wheel grazes his elbow." (This is in chapter 23 of Innocents Abroad.)

My original thought had been that the phrase originated at the dawn of the motor age, but upon further reflection I wouldn't be surprised if the term went back at least to Roman times. It's easy enough to imagine a man in a toga scolding a careless charioteer by yelling, "Don't cut corners!"

Of course the man in the toga would have said it in Latin. I wondered what that would sound like, so I asked Emily Marston and Ashley Opalka, my mentors in all things classical, and they guided me to this: "Noli angulos praecidere!"

Cars Cutting Corners
At any rate, cars didn't invent corner cutting, but they clearly made matters worse, and, not surprisingly, official efforts to control corner cutting date back to the beginning of the motor age.

I took this picture, and then I jumped to the left.

In 1903, a wealthy New Yorker named William Phelps Eno published "Rules for Driving," a four-page document. New York City adopted the "Rules," making it the country's first official traffic code. As a counter to corner-cutting, Eno adopted something called the outside left turn. Drivers were instructed to move straight into the intersection until they reached the center and then make a virtually 90 degree turn, with the center point of the intersection always to their left. So pretty much the opposite of cutting a corner.

Not too shabby. Maybe even four feet of clearance.

Eno also suggested that New York install a post at the center of the intersection, to mark the spot. The city did this in 1904 at numerous intersections.

The center post came to be called the "silent policeman," and it spread rapidly across the country, as did Eno's "Rules."

Note fragging on the little red bathmat at the crosswalk.

Neither the posts nor the "Rules" were received with unmixed enthusiasm, and it appears that something of a guerrilla war developed against the posts, with large numbers being destroyed. Traffic regulators moved on to traffic lights; the first practical traffic lights appeared in Cleveland in 1914. (For more on all this, see Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic, 2011, chapter 2.)

I think of the silent policeman as a taciturn and rather stiff fellow standing at the center of a roundabout - the basic idea was to get cars moving in a circular direction around a main point. But this small piece of infrastructure could hardly do the job on its own, and the typical intersection remained a classic crossroads, with two streets intersecting at more or less right angles, and everyone seeking the shortest way through, as they had done before cars. Traffic lights worked to segregate traffic headed in different directions, but they did nothing to discourage the shortest way through.

A truck kissing the curb.

The South Street Bridge
Which brings us to the present day and to a particular corner in Philadelphia, where motorists turn right from 27th Street to go up onto the South Street bridge.

First the good news. The existing bike lanes on South Street and 27th Street finally got flex posts earlier this year. Back in 2017, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia made a detailed proposal concerning the bike lanes in this area. Adding flex posts was a big part of the proposal, and while the Bike Coalition plan for the lanes was, in my opinion, superior to the final result, I think any posts at all must be seen as a major step forward.

Here's the fly in the ointment. The Bike Coalition called on the City to "Install a mountable corner island at the corner of 27th and South to slow down motor vehicles turning onto the South Street Bridge."

Good idea. In addition to slowing traffic, it would discourage corner cutting, which is rampant here.

Cars do it too. Note the cracks in the sidewalk.

What did we get? Nothing. There is no marked bike lane at the corner.

I simply don't understand this. If you don't want to do an island, how about a mountable curb? Here's a mountable curb in Brooklyn, at Fulton and Bedford, where turning traffic apparently has trouble staying in its lane.

Do a curved version of this. But do something.

Fulton at Bedford, Brooklyn.

Why Care?
So why is this important? Because this intersection is a test case for the City's Vision Zero and Complete Streets programs. Are cars and trucks and buses prepared to make space for bicyclists and pedestrians?

Bikes and peds aren't asking for the whole space, just part of it. And perhaps we can all agree that it would be better if buses did not drive on the sidewalk.

This intersection is a tight space, and the tradeoffs are hard. I think all of the solutions will wind up with motor vehicles going slower.

I think adding a curved mountable curb at the corner would do a lot of good. Currently there is no indication for motorists, telling them that the space next to the curb is a bike lane, and suggesting that they take a line around the corner that stays out of the bike lane. Call me an optimist, but I think that many of the people turning this corner will be willing to follow directions if they are offered.

Large motor vehicles, like buses and trucks, do have trouble here, and some of them will still mount the curb, and that will continue to be an unsafe condition. However, I do think the mountable curb would greatly increase safety here.

There are other things that could be done, such as removing the eastbound turn lane, or moving the stop bar for the eastbound traffic further back from the intersection. Both of these would provide more room for maneuver on the westbound side.

I can already hear people complaining about increased congestion for motor vehicles, and more backups on the bridge and on Lombard. But here's the thing. The way to cut congestion for motor vehicles is to dramatically increase the number of people walking, biking, and taking the bus.

For a century, we've been giving more and more space to cars, and we have never solved the basic problems of congestion and crashes. More space for cars will not ever solve these problems.

But will more people actually walk and bike and take the bus if we give them decent infrastructure? Yes. Let's just take the bicyclists.  When it comes to cycling, numerous surveys have put the population into four categories. My favorite is No Way, No How, usually about a third of the population. What we have biking on the South Street bridge today are the Strong and Fearless, and the Enthused and Confident, perhaps ten percent of the total. Half the population are Interested but Concerned.

What are the people in this last category concerned about? Getting hit by a car and suffering a life-altering injury. Give them a complete network of protected bike lanes, and we could quintuple the number of people bicycling in Philadelphia.

And that's how you solve congestion in the main traffic lanes.

We're not all strong and fearless.

See also Intermittently Terrifying, Put Traffic Lights on the Schuylkill Expressway, No Turn on Red, Running of the Bulls on Lombard Street, Is It a Curve or Is It a Turn?

Learning to Dance Together

21st and Pemberton

Bicyclists, motorists, pedestrians all have one thing in common - the human body. It has abilities, and it has limitations. As Clint Eastwood said, A man's got to know his limitations.

We can't look back very well. If you drive a car, you know this. All that driver's ed about blind spots etc. Bicyclists can actually see better to the rear, because they don't have the structure of a car in the way, but still.

This limitation is a basic issue as we think about how to get cars and bikes to work better together on the street. And it's a strong argument for a network of protected bike lanes.

But in parts of Philadelphia - for instance, South Philly - there are many streets that are unlikely to see protected bike lanes any time soon. The parking lanes aren't likely to go away, and the remaining space is simply too narrow for a separate bike lane. Cars and bikes are going to have to learn to share.

Vehicular Cycling
So what would this look like? Enter John Forester, the apostle of Vehicular Cycling. I have a number reservations about Mr. Forester's work. But he has, over many decades, studied how cars and bikes can work together on the street. And I think some of his ideas may make life easier for everyone on the narrow streets of South Philadelphia.

The basic precept of Vehicular Cycling is Take the Lane. Don't cower at the curb. It's hard for many bicyclists to accept that riding in the middle of the street is actually safer, and there is a strong ethos in this country that bicycles should stay to the right so cars, which are faster, can pass more easily.

Let's see how this plays out in a town like Philly. First, a look at the real estate. As Forester notes in his 800-page magnum opus, Effective Cycling (7th ed., MIT Press, 2012), "Twelve feet is the width of the standard interstate lane and of many other main highways." (P. 392.) Needless to say, many lanes on the streets of Philadelphia are less than twelve feet wide. On Lombard Street, in front of my house, one traffic lane is ten feet wide, the other is eight feet, eight inches. (The parking lane is seven feet wide.)

Physically speaking, it is just barely possible for a car and a bicycle to ride along side-by-side in a twelve-foot lane. The typical American car is between six and seven feet wide. A bike's handlebars are typically around 24 inches, or two feet, wide. Seven plus two is nine, which leaves three feet for buffer space. The motorist will want some of this to the left of the vehicle - at least a foot. The other two feet can be buffer space for the bicyclist. This doesn't leave very much room for error.

A complicating factor is the law in Pennsylvania, which requires that a motorist passing a bicyclist must provide four feet of clearance. (Here is a link to the law, courtesy of the Bicycle Coalition's website.)

A seven-foot car, a two-foot bike, and four feet of clearance add up to thirteen feet, and the motorist will want clearance to his left as well.

It seems reasonable to conclude that side-by-side sharing of a twelve-foot lane is illegal in Pennsylvania. And this would go in spades for lanes less than twelve feet wide.

What's a cyclist to do? Well, first, don't wait for the motorist to figure it out. In dancing terms, take the lead. In  biking terms, take the lane. You don't necessarily need to ride in the middle of the lane, but you need to be far enough away from the curb to convince even the most fanciful driver that he's not going to be able to squeeze by you in the same lane.

If the street has two lanes, like Lombard Street, the motorist will need to swing into the next lane to pass. If the street has one traffic lane, the motorist will need to stay behind you. When you get to a stop sign, you may want to pull over and let the cars behind you go ahead. They are faster vehicles, after all. It's a courtesy.

Down to Pemberton
At the beginning of this story there is a photo of a sign at 21st and Pemberton. There is one traffic lane on 21st, heading south, and it is twelve feet wide. There are two seven-foot parking lanes, one on each side.

Dear Bicyclist, 
The Streets Department doesn't love you. And here even they are telling you to freaking take the lane. Listen to them.

You don't want a car trying to squeeze by you on this street. You can't escape. The parked cars have you caged in.

Vehicular cycling is not without its dangers. A following motorist may simply decide to ram you. This is unlikely, but in Philadelphia it is certainly possible.

You are also likely to have conversations with uncomprehending motorists. Forester recommends that you engage in education rather than invective. Be an ambassador for bicycling. Remind the motorists that, as the sign says, bicyclists may use the full lane. You could even tell them about the four-foot passing law. It's highly unlikely that they will have heard of it before. Finally, as Forester puts it, "Often the best action is a friendly wave and a happy smile - motorists don't expect that." (P. 518.)

Two Hazards
All this conversation may leave you a trifle hoarse, but keep in mind that taking the lane does have its benefits. It may head off two serious hazards, both of which have happened to me: the passing motorist who cuts you off, and the driver who tries to squeeze past you when there isn't enough space.

Both of these maneuvers are particularly dangerous because they engage the motorist's physical limitations. The driver who swings out to pass and then cuts back too soon may well have misjudged your speed and then lost sight of you in his blind spot. In addition, both this motorist and the one who tries to squeeze by in the lane probably have only a vague idea of where the right side of their car is. Particularly the right rear.

If there are two traffic lanes available, as on Lombard Street, even if you've taken the lane, you may well encounter a motorist who swings out to pass and then cuts back too soon. However, you can brake, and you also have room to maneuver to the right. If you start by riding at the curb, you have no escape space.

If you have a lane of parked cars to your right, instead of the curb, taking the lane will also put you out of range of being "doored" - that is, hit by a car door being opened by an occupant who didn't see you. That pesky looking-back thing again.

Vehicular cycling is not a Vision Zero program. It is not as good as a protected bike lane, but it's much better than cowering at the curb.

And we don't need City Council to pass an ordinance. We can just do this. We can do it now.

Why Are European and American Bicycling So Different?

The breakthrough moment for bicycles came at the beginning of the 1890s, when the "safety" bicycle finally offered a viable alternative to walking and horseback riding for personal transportation. Both Europe and the United States experienced a remarkable cycling boom in the 1890s, often called the "Golden Age" on both sides of the Atlantic. Then, after 1900, their paths diverged.

In the United States, interest in bicycling declined dramatically after 1900, and the 1908 introduction of the affordable Model T Ford led to a craze for automobiles that, in some ways, persists to this day. By 1930 the country was well started on a project to reconstruct its built environment to support an essentially monomodal transportation system based on the car.

Meanwhile, in Europe, things went differently. As Pryor Dodge puts it in his book The Bicycle (1996), "In Europe, where a vast web of local railroads continued to meet the needs of public and commercial transportation, bicycles still served utilitarian ends, and cycling thrived as an organized spectator and club sport long after the Golden Age." (P. 182.)

American bicycling experienced a minor uptick during the Depression years of the 1930s. David V. Herlihy, in Bicycle: The History (2004), reports that "The number of bicycles circulating in the United States climbed to about two or three million by the mid-1930s, but that figure paled in comparison to the European fleets. Germany, which had half the American population, counted fifteen million bicycles. Great Britain and France each had about seven million cycles, followed by Italy with four million. Even the tiny Netherlands had three million: one for almost every other citizen. Every working day, some 400,000 cyclists commuted in and out of Amsterdam alone." (P. 328.)

Herlihy also notes that a 1930 study of traffic in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, found that bicycling was the most widely used means of transportation - "bicycles carried fully a third of the populace; 29 percent of the people used street railways, 21 percent walked, and the rest rode in automobiles or some other vehicle." (P. 328.)

A bit after World War II, things began to change. Dodge again: "By the late 1950s, improved economic conditions in Europe allowed consumers to follow the American fascination with the automobile, and the bicycling industry experienced a distinct decline. Yet although the bicycle began to be displaced by an increasingly dense automobile population, bicycle culture remained more deeply embedded in Western Europe, especially in the northern countries, where governments became actively involved in planning for what one author called the 'vehicle for a small planet.'" (P. 182.)

The Dutch and the Danes
Of all the countries of Europe, it was the Netherlands where bicycling was most deeply embedded in the culture. How embedded? Let's ask Inspector Van der Valk, protagonist in a series of detective novels by Nicolas Freeling. Here is the inspector in Double Barrel, from 1964: "Driving the Volkswagen down the falsely genial shopping street, Van der Valk felt like a Mexican on his donkey. Housewives riding bikes, pushing bikes, lugging tiny children off the back of bikes - all in the middle of the road and paying not the least attention either to him in his tiny black-beetle auto or to Albert Heijn's truck, which is ten feet tall and thirty feet long. The housewives are busy with the shopping. ... It looked identical to everywhere else in Holland, and could just as easily have been the Jan Galenstraat in Amsterdam West." (Pp. 48-49.)

As Evan Friss points out in The Cycling City (2015), this picture did not happen by accident. "Indeed, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, municipal governments in cities across the Netherlands grappled with how to promote cycling and, in 1935, officials in Amsterdam designed a comprehensive plan for the city to ensure that it remained commutable for cyclists. The goal was to design a 'bicycle city.' In the Netherlands, and in certain other European centers, the state continued to play an important role in fostering urban cycling throughout the twentieth century." (P. 200.)

(Friss cites a 1999 report from the Dutch ministry of transport, which turns out to be a nice history of Dutch bicycling. An English version is available online. As for the present, take a look at this video on cycling in the Dutch city of Groningen.)

Van der Valk's experience on the shopping street takes place less than ten years before the oil crisis of the early 1970s, which had a profound effect in Europe. As Dodge puts it (pp. 182, 185), "After the world oil crisis of 1973-4, bicycling experienced a notable revival, both as a sport and as an alternative to the automobile. But it was only with the financial assistance and cooperation of national governments that bicycles came to rival automobiles with any degree of credibility. In the late 1960s, the Dutch government began to create a vast network of cycle lanes on a landscape practically designed for the mass use of bicycles; by the late 1980s, over eighty thousand miles of bicycle paths criss-crossed the country. ... By the mid-1980s, bicycle use as a percentage of transport preference averaged between twenty and fifty percent in the cities and towns of the Netherlands: here, cycling had become a practical alternative to the automobile. Denmark also embarked on an ambitious program to build bicycle lanes. By the late 1980s, cycle paths ran alongside seventy-five percent of main roads, and bicycles made up twenty percent of the traffic in urban areas."

Muenster
I've noticed that, when discussing European cycling, people tend to focus on the Dutch and the Danes. I tend to do this myself.  As an antidote, let's have a look at the German city of Muenster. In 1997, John Pucher published an article on bicycling in Germany and particularly in Muenster, which is pretty much the poster city for German cycling.  (John Pucher, "Bicycling Boom in Germany: A Revival Engineered by Public Policy," Transportation Quarterly 51:4, Fall 1997, pp. 31-46.)  The article was based on, among other things, three extended research fellowships in Germany, in 1984-1986, 1992, and 1996.

Muenster is a pleasant college town in northwestern Germany founded, according to the available records, in 793 A.D. It currently has a population of a little over 300,000, and for some time it has had a simply spectacular network of bike paths.

The backbone of the bike path network is a ring-road that follows the footprint of the medieval city wall. Unlike the situation in many other European cities, this ring-road is devoted to bicycles, not cars. (Imagine the D.C. Beltway or the Vienna Ringstrasse, only smaller, and with bicycles.)  This "bicycle expressway" connects with 16 major outbound bike routes leading to suburbs and the countryside, and also 26 bike routes heading in toward the town center.

In Muenster, in 1994, 32 percent of all trips were by bicycle; 22 percent by walking; 10 percent by public transport; and 37 percent by auto. Other German cities had lower, but still quite respectable, bicycling numbers. Munich, the third largest city in Germany, with about the same population as Philadelphia, had a bike share of 15 percent in 1995.

Germany, Europe, the U.S.
Pucher takes a look at western Germany (before reunification in 1990 this would have been West Germany) and finds an overall biking rate for all trips of 12 percent. This is well below the 30 percent rate in the Netherlands or the 20 percent rate for Denmark, but it is well above the 8 percent rate for England and Wales, or the 5 percent rate for France, and it is 12 times the 1 percent rate of the United States.

It's interesting to follow England, France, and West Germany from the seventies to the nineties. In Germany, urban bicycling rose from 8 percent in 1972 to 12 percent in 1995. Munich's  bike share rose from 6 percent in 1976 to 15 percent in 1992. Meanwhile, cycling in England fell from 12 percent in 1975 to 8 percent in 1991; in France it fell from 8 percent in 1978 to a low point of 4 percent in 1990.

Pucher attributes these arrows headed in different directions to public policy. The Germans worked hard to promote bicycling, and the English and the French didn't.

It's also worth noting that European countries weak on bicycling may be simply fabulous on walking. Sweden does 10 percent on biking, but 39 percent on walking in Pucher's data. And France, a European bicycling laggard at 5 percent, does 30 percent on walking. Meanwhile the U.S. does 1 percent on biking and 9 percent on walking - the lowest walking number among the countries Pucher studied.

At the same time, the U.S. did 84 percent of its trips by car, while most European countries were in the 40's and 30's.

As I look at these numbers, several thoughts occur to me. First, cars aren't going away. Even in biking heaven - the Netherlands - where 30 percent of trips are by bike and 18 percent by walking, 45 percent are by auto.

Is there an irreducible minimum for trips by car? In the world we live in, I think so. I don't know what the number is, but I think it's greater than zero and less than 40. In that range you can have a balanced transportation system.

Meanwhile, in America, with an 84 percent car share, you have The Amoeba That Ate Cleveland. There's very little room for anything else.

The Essential Difference
Why is the American transportation system so different from the systems we see in Europe? Answers to such questions are normally complex, but in this case the answer is starkly simple: Government policy. In the mid-1920s, Herbert Hoover, as U.S. secretary of commerce, effectively ceded control of national transportation policy to the car manufacturers and their allies, a situation that continued unabated until the late 1960s and is still largely intact today. (See Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic, 2011, pp. 178-196, 230-234, 253-254.)

The Situation Now
In 2012 the MIT Press published the best survey of current biking conditions and issues that I have been able to find. Edited by John Pucher (he gets around) and Ralph Buehler, City Cycling has contributions from 21 scholars on four continents.

And guess what? There's a bunch of good news. American bicycling is showing definite signs of life. Our national numbers are still low, but there are many bright spots at the local level.

Let's have a look at Davis, California, and Boulder, Colorado. Like Muenster, both of these are college towns. And they both came to the bicycle game early. In 1967, Davis "striped the first bicycle lanes in the United States." Also, in 1967, "Boulder became the first US city to institute a sales tax dedicated to the purchase of open space and the funding of transportation infrastructure." Boulder's 1995 transportation plan was the first in the United States "to set a goal of reducing vehicle miles of travel." (Pucher, ed., 2012, pp. 261, 263-264.)

As of 2009, "Davis and Boulder especially stand out with 15.5 percent and 9.6 percent of workers, respectively, reporting that they usually commuted by bicycle in the 2005-2009 American Community Survey." (Ibid., p. 260.)

Portland, Oregon, has raised bike commuting from 1.1 percent in 1990 to 6.0 percent in 2008 - a more than five-fold increase. Portland has been helped by its location in the state of Oregon, "which since 1971 has required that 1 percent of state highway funds be devoted to bicycles and pedestrians." (Ibid., pp. 134, 292.)

Portland is in a class by itself, but other cities are turning in solid performances. Washington, D.C., moved commuting bike share from 0.8 percent in 1990 to 2.3 percent in 2008. In 2010, in D.C., approved bike infrastructure projects amounted to $8 per capita per year. (Ibid., pp. 134, 292.)

Let's check in with some of our old friends in Europe. Amsterdam's bike share for commuting went from 27 percent in 1990 to 34 percent in 2009; Copenhagen went from 30 percent in 1990 to 37 percent in 2005. (Ibid., p. 292.)

And here's a new friend: Berlin's bike commuting share went from 6 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2008. Other European capitals are lower, but still quite strong by American standards. Paris had an all-trip bicycling share of 1.0 percent in 2000 and 2.5 percent in 2010. London went from 1.2 percent in 2000 to 2.0 percent in 2007. (Ibid., pp. 292, 323.) And remember, Paris and London are very walkable cities. Not to mention the metro and the tube.

So What Can We Learn from the Europeans?
Europe continues to be well ahead of the United States when it comes to bicycling. The national rates are higher - sometimes eye-poppingly so - and their standout cities still outshine our standout cities. So, aside from having the right government policies, what can we learn from them?

In the end, bicycling boils down to an individual walking out the door and climbing on to a bike. The people who do this, or might do it in the future, are not a homogeneous group. I'd like to suggest several different approaches to breaking the group down for closer analysis, along with some implications.

The skinny guys in spandex, and the "interested but concerned." Not all of us want to be bicycle messengers. That's because we're not "strong and fearless." No diss intended. "Strong and fearless" is one of four categories originally developed in Portland. After strong and fearless comes "enthused and confident," followed by "interested but concerned" and my favorite, "no way no how."

This typology has been around for a number of years. A recent national poll, covering 50 major metropolitan areas in the United States, found that the "interested but concerned" category was by far the largest, with about half of all respondents, a figure comparable to the results of other polls.

Here's the thing about the "interested but concerned" folks. If you want them to go biking, you need to give them a protected bike path at minimum. Just striping a bike lane on a street won't do it.

Why is this? It's because the "interested but concerned" are worried about their safety - more specifically, getting into a crash with a car.

If you want to see biking numbers in your city that are comparable to the numbers in Europe, you need a large network of protected bike lanes. It's that simple.

Men, women, children, old people. Humans aren't really four different species. It just feels that way sometimes. Take old people, for instance. There's an unexamined assumption that they're too frail to bicycle. Well, not in Europe. In Denmark, cycling holds steady from 50 years to past 70, and is actually higher than it is for the 30-49 crowd. The Netherlands is similar. (Pucher, ed., 2012, p. 14.)

On to kids. In the Netherlands, 49 percent of children in primary school (ages 5-12) ride bikes to school; 37 percent walk; and only 14 percent ride in a car. In Odense, Denmark, 38 percent of nine-year-olds bike to school. High-schoolers - 15 years old - bike at the rate of 67 percent for boys and 64 percent for girls. (Ibid., pp. 236-237.)

Never happen in the U.S., you say. Sorry. Davis, California, again, where 43.4 percent of high-school boys bike to school, as do 30 percent of girls. "Davis has no regular school bus service because bicycling is the usual mode for children to get to school." (Ibid., pp. 113, 216.) Congratulations, Mom. You just got fired from your job as a chauffeur.

Professor Peter G. Furth, writing in Pucher's 2012 book (p. 135), says, "It is this writer's opinion that the turning point will be when children begin again riding bikes to school in large numbers. When bicycle infrastructure and children's safety become intertwined, funding for bicycle infrastructure will be secure."

Recreational cyclists and commuters. Actually, let's broaden "commuters" to "utilitarian cyclists." You'll remember Inspector Van der Valk and the Ladies Who Shop. Historically, the ethos of U.S. cycling has been overwhelmingly recreational, although there have always been utility riders. If we want to build a real bicycling community, we need to think about commuters, and we need to think about all those intraday trips - taking the kids to pre-school, grocery shopping, you name it. There are implications here for where we put bike lanes first, and where we put Indego bike-share stations.

Beyond that, we need to rethink the spandex thing. The Dutch aren't riding $3,000 road bikes; they're riding utility bikes, with comfortable seats, handlebars well above the seat, chain guards, fenders to keep the mud off. (See Pucher, ed., 2012, chapter 5.) And they're wearing street clothes. So when they get to the office, they don't need a shower, they don't need a locker room, and they don't need to change their clothes because they're not spattered with mud (at least not most days). The Danes even have a bike fashion blog, called Cycle Chic. (To see it, click here.)

And finally
Here we are at the end. Before we part ways, let's consider for a moment what the Europeans are really doing. It's not just about bicycles. It's about rebuilding our public spaces for people, not cars. I think it may be hard for us to admit that we've been doing it wrong since the days of Herbert Hoover. But maybe the Europeans really do have a better idea. Personally, I'm quite certain of it.

See also Cars and Bikes - the Back Story and Reimagining Our Streets: Bikes Will Lead, But They Will Not Be Alone.

Reimagining Our Streets: Bikes Will Lead, But They Will Not Be Alone

Bikes are a disruptive force on our streets. Thank God. I've spent my life watching a frozen standoff between cars and pedestrians, and it was well past time to start moving in a better direction.

Our streets have an interesting history. The pedestrians were there first. The cars arrived around World War I, and they hit this country like a tsunami, rearranging our built environment, our laws, and our minds. (To read more about all this, see Peter Norton's book Fighting Traffic.)

Before the cars came, the streets were open to all who wished to come and go - pedestrians, beer wagons, hansom cabs, horse-drawn trolleys, the occasional coach and four (that would be four horses). Things could be a bit chaotic, but when it came to getting killed, people seem to have been more worried about Typhoid Mary and other carriers of infectious disease.

When cars showed up, they had a number of advantages - they were big, and heavy, and fast. Before then, the occupants of the street had largely all gone about the same speed. Cars were also very popular. People loved their cars. Now that we're jaded, and overwhelmed by the sheer number of cars on our streets, it's a bit hard to imagine what it was like.

Cars came to own the streets in the 1920s. They basically muscled their way in, and they literally marginalized the pedestrians, pushing them over the curb and confining them to the sidewalk. (Sidewalks date back at least to Roman times, but until the car arrived, they were an amenity, not a ghetto.)

And so there things stood, until a few years ago, with pedestrians pinned to the sidewalk and cars owning the cartway - the street space between the curbs. Pedestrians were allowed to cross at the corner, but it was best to look both ways.

Then along came the bicyclists, and all of a sudden we are reimagining our streets.

I live in Philadelphia, and recently I attended the city's first Vision Zero conference, which was organized, not surprisingly, by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. Bikes are going to lead the reimagining of our public spaces. But they will need some help - and I think they will get it.

Runners, for instance, have been doing Open Streets for years - they call their events races. The Broad Street Run has shut down the full length of Broad Street in Philadelphia on the first Sunday in May every year for decades.

Children used to play in the street. News flash: In Philadelphia, they still do, on the many little side streets of our town. Now, I live on Lombard Street, which is an access road for the Schuylkill Expressway, and I don't expect to see children in short pants and floppy hats shooting marbles in the middle of Lombard Street anytime soon. But one block away, on Addison Street, children often draw with chalk and play ball in the good weather as their parents sit on stoops, watching over their little ones and socializing with one another.

Restaurants are also getting more aggressive about pushing out on to the sidewalks and even into the streets. Special props to the bagel shop Spread on 20th Street, for figuring out what to do when the pope visited, and vehicular movement was greatly restricted in a large part of the downtown. Spread took the lane, with tables. And very happy customers.

Bikes will lead these groups, because bikes have organization, focus, and even a little bit of money. And because, for bikes, the issue is not optional.

We need bike lanes. We need a network of bike lanes that will allow people to get around town safely. This network will make the streets better for everybody. It will calm traffic, and it will make the streets safer for pedestrians to cross. (See, for instance,  the New York City Department of Transportation's 2014 report Protected Bicycle Lanes in NYC.)

And yes, this means that motorists will need to learn to share the road with the many other groups that have legitimate claims on the space.

Twice I have run down the middle of the Champs Elysees in Paris. And I was not alone. It was called the Paris Marathon.