This isn’t just about bike lanes although it might seem that way.

If you’re going to build bike lanes, you don’t simply build bike lanes. You build a bike lane network. Off-road doesn’t mean out of sight. It’s all well and good to dedicate hydro corridors to a safe and leisurely Sunday meander but if it leads only in circles, going nowhere in particular, it won’t serve as a needed form of transit.

And that’s why we build bike lanes. We’re not merely slapping in a lane here and another there, wherever we can find space that least inconveniences the non-bike riders amongst us, to score empty political points. As responsible city builders rather than hell bent ideologues, we’re all looking for ways to help alleviate traffic congestion.

At least, that’s what cities that take alleviating traffic congestion seriously do. (No, not just in Europe. Look what’s happening in New York City.)

Rather than view cyclists as irritants, determined only to inflict the maximum amount of aggravation on already put upon vehicle drivers out of nothing more than smug, self-righteous spite, there are places that accommodate bikes as viable transit alternatives. Modes that help ease traffic flow not impede it. Infrastructure gets built enthusiastically with the expectation of removing cars from the roads. Yes, there’s an ecological element to it — fewer cars mean less pollution — but each additional commuter on a bike, well, you do the math.

Over the course of 3 days last week in the Netherlands, I rode some 160 kilometres from small seaside towns through country sides, across protected dunes and into cities. In my best estimation maybe 10 but probably closer to 5 kilometres of that distance was on shared roads without some sort of designated lane, and truthfully, some of that happened due to errors in my navigation. There were segments entirely segregated from everything but other bikes. Some shared with only pedestrians. Protected on road lanes and those demarcated only by painted lines.

No one size fits all solution. Just an accepted notion that cycling was an integral part of any rational transit system and should be accorded appropriate space and value. Biking as more than some left wing conspiracy seeking to bring about the downfall of capitalism. People wanting to go about their business on 2 wheels.

It really is that easy. There just has to be the will. The will comes from understanding this isn’t a zero sum equation. Cars and bicycles can exist together in something resembling harmony. Places as cold and wet as ours is sometimes; places as seemingly inhospitable to a culture of cycling as ours can be in, say, mid-February. Places that weren’t always the bike friendly havens they appear to be today.

Failure to accept this possibility is nothing more than a failure of imagination and nerve. A basic inability to move past the status quo.

That’s why this is more than just bike lanes.

— cyclingly submitted by Cityslikr