MobilityMainehttps://mastodon.social/@CelloMomOnCars/109910011510962064 I’m looking for suburban examples of this in the U.S.: “Cambridge MA wrote an ordinance that says every time a street is re-surfaced, they MUST put in the best bike facilities that will fit on that street. NIMBYs bypassed: now it's a law. They build a new bike lane every few months now.” #bikelanes #biketooter #WalkableCommunities
This looks like an excellent model for other cities: "In 2019, Cambridge City Council passed the Cycling Safety Ordinance, which requires the construction of separated bike lanes when streets are being reconstructed as a part of the City’s Five-Year Plan for Streets and Sidewalks and they have been designated for greater separation in the Bicycle Network Vision." #biketooter #bikepaths #urbanism #bikesafety #bikes4transport https://www.cambridgema.gov/streetsandtransportation/policiesordinancesandplans/cyclingsafetyordinance
Can #suburbs afford to do the same? My guess is they would need to also begin allowing multi-family and multi-use buildings in order to increase the tax revenues. Another intersection of #housingcrisis , #MultiModal transport, and #happycities
Robert Cassidy@MobilityMaine Cyclists should reduce their net road costs, so suburbs should be plenty dense.
darren is Not Going Back@MobilityMaine it works extremely well. Relieves staff of having to make decision in the face of fierce resistance IF to do separated lanes, rather they just have to deal with questions of HOW. We'll have a low-stress network that reaches and connects most of the city within two years
@MobilityMaine but even in a community with lots of support for fewer cars, resistance has been fierce. It's required incredibly adept staff-work, both to give politicos the cover to continue supporting the ordinance and to win lawsuits against it. And it requires a majority of politicos who feel strongly and passionately enough about it to maintain support and defend the ordinance against efforts to water it down.
@bikepedantic That makes a lot of sense. This is another reason it will be more challenging to bring bikelanes/paths to suburban towns, even those within easy bike access to a city: Suburbanites often can barely conceive of a trip anywhere outside of their car. This includes even very short trips to drop off kids at school, to a local park, or to a shop.
@MobilityMaine Yeah, it's really hard to accept, but change sort of has to happen along a continuum. A place with little/no on-street bicycling has to start with a facility, a place with crappy facilities has to begin upgrading, places with random patchwork of good lanes need to start connecting them, places with some connections need to force the hardest last connections to be made... And then we hopefully move on to reducing general motor vehicle access.