Cyclists are portrayed in debates about bike lanes as younger, athletic people. Berkeley's Commission on Aging recommended against supporting the city's current bike lane project (#Hopkins), apparently thinking bike lanes were not for older people.
And yet, over the past eleven years, the median age of the six cyclists and pedestrians severely injured or killed on Hopkins is 69. Only one of those people was under 50. The oldest was 78.
The stereotypes are wrong.
Good lord, as we 60+ like to say.
What's the status of that process? Those numbers are pretty stark, obvious.
Creating risk and hazard for the benefit of the few people using parking spaces over a day has been a stalling point here in Seattle as well.
I can see the need for addressing access for folks genuinely needing proximity to a door, part of our overall problem with car dependency. To some extent-- for a number of people-- functional streets would help with that.
Leaves some out-- the sole justification for parking anachronisms.
Already fully sussed out better, I'm sure.
@marcprecipice I’m sure it’s an attempt to delegitimize cycling by implying it’s just for kids.
Funny because my riding buddy is 60 while his teenage kids don’t ride.
@marcprecipice Most of the cyclists I see around Tilden Park are older.
I think they're insane. Even the people walking along Wildcat Canyon Road seem as if they would be better off hiking trails, rather than along a road where there is little to no bicycle lane.
I gave up riding a bicycle in the East Bay circa 2011 and my gf at the time nick named her bike the "death cycle" because of how precarious the roads are here. I don't even feel safe in a car. At least we have BART? ;-/
@Kenneygeorge @marcprecipice Oy, "May be less observant".
Have you meet teenagers?
It makes perfect sense - "If we built a bridge across the river, it would just benefit the fit young people in bathing suits we see swimming across the river today"
@iapfel @marcprecipice I read your link in full and I don’t see it concluding “bike lanes lead to increased gentrification.” It specifically emphasizes “correlation is not causation” and suggests improving bike lanes, but in conjunction with public transit improvements and expanding affordable housing stock.
That sounds good to me. After all, much of the point of improving bike safety is precisely to improve access to biking for those who don’t have access now.
@scott @iapfel @marcprecipice bike lanes increase gentrification only incidentally, in the same way that any other uncommon amenity does.
The answer isn't "don't build bike lanes", it's "build them so much that their presence isn't a unique incentive".
Nobody chooses where to live because roads are there, but if roads only existed in say 5% of neighborhoods they sure would.
@iapfel Have bike lanes on MLK Jr Ave SE (installed 2014), the rehabbed Oxon Run Trail (2018), or the new S Capitol Street Trail caused any gentrification and displacement in Livingston/Congress Heights?
How about bike lanes on Mass Ave SE (2012 maybe?), Ridge Road SE (2017), and Alabama Ave SE (2019) and the neighborhoods around Fort Circle Park?
@marcprecipice
@marcprecipice E-bikes are significant in this analysis.
@marcprecipice Oh, speaking as an Old Guy, I predict that E-bikes are going to keep a lot of bikers going further into old age, and actually turn some retired non-bikers into bikers. I'm an example of the former and I know people in the latter basket.
E-bikes are life-changers.
At the risk of buying in to stereotypes:
The composition of that graph arguably may serve as an illustration of the relative degrees of common sense and healthy risk-aversion of females vs. males, given the shockingly lousy job we're doing with prioritizing safety of cyclists and pedestrians on streets.
And/or some other things, such as women get stuck with the car full of kids being shuttled hither and thither, etc., as we well know.
Stark disparity, anyway.
That is an -excellently- reported article. A wealth of information, exposes a lot of questions to be investigated more fully, has a few possible hints toward workarounds in an environment of lethal disparities.
And most of all, "It's not simple, simple answers won't do," if we're not able to separate these traffic flows.
One wonders about alternate separation of roadways akin to one-way schemes, in cities with amenable grids.
Thanks so much.
@Doug_Bostrom @marcprecipice
Within a few miles of my house in Glasgow, the last just a few weeks ago, 2 young female cyclists have been killed by HGV's.
Will anything happen as a result? Will the city spring into action & install safe cycle facilities? Will it restrict urban traffic? I doubt it.
I am gutted by these tragedies ☹️.
Yes.
As I tell people who'd prefer to refuse to wear lifevests, "the misery is only starting when the dying is done."
We do not use our fine imaginations as much as we ought. These poor young women leave expanding ripples of grief. If we could all work harder to picture that, perhaps we'd figure out how not to drop such heavy rocks into our lives.
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