So yes, we need to encourage the infrastructure, get the gov’t on board, but we also need to offer the bikes to get people out and about.

When we B&B up in Northern Cal, they always have a “bike barn” on site for us to grab a bike and go. If it’s not profitable for someone to start a business renting them out, perhaps the hotels could just have them to offer?

Esteban wrote: “We don’t have a critical mass of commuters and visible infrastructure that would give the impression to outsiders that this city is bicycle-friendly.”

That’s a great sentence, Esteban, packs in a lot.

I’m curious about the relationship between these three factors:

A) critical mass of commuters (and other types of bicyclists, presumably, both utilitarian as well as recreational)
B) visible infrastructure
C) bicycle-friendly impression

To this list I would like to add one more factor, because I believe it plays an enormous role in cities that have high bike modal usage, probably the most significant role:

D) car-UNfriendly impression (expensive and/or impractical to use a car due to high congestion, too little and very expensive parking, etc.)

In particular:

1) How effective is more visible infrastructure (B) in encouraging more bicycling (and, in particular, more commuting)?

2) When you have both critical mass of bicyclists (A) and visible infrastructure (B), is one or the other more important in creating (C), the bicycle-friendly impression? Can you have (C) with only (A) or only (B)?

3) Can (A) be achieved without (D)? Can (A) be achieved with only (D)? – That is, by making it expensive and inconvenient to use a car for commuting, shopping, etc., is that enough to achieve critical mass of bicyclists, or do you really need the infrastructure (C) too? And if (D) (car-unfriendliness) is not achieved to any degree, can any amount of (B) (infrastructure) make much significant impact towards achieving a critical mass of bicyclists (A)?

4) If infrastructure (A) creates problems for bicyclists, and if without carrying out car-unfriendly measures (D) it does little if anything in terms of increasing bike modal use, is there really good reason to work for more infrastructure?

It seems to me that as long as most SD destinations continue to have adequate free or inexpensive parking, and the roads aren’t too congested most of the time, and case stays below $4, there is very little we can do to effectively encourage more bicycling instead of motoring. In contrast, consider what kind of boost we (and bicycling all over the U.S.) would get if gas doubled in price, or Lance won an 8th Tour, without any additional infrastructure anywhere…

I really think the main factor, by far, in encouraging more bicycling is D, discouraging motoring. Make no mistake, that’s a big component in the ability of N. European cities being able to achieve high bike modal uses. Not only do they have narrow streets with lots of congestion and expensive parking that is far away from most destinations (so the motorist often still has to walk or bike a ways after parking), but there are enormous taxes on cars and gas too. Politically and culturally, that might be impossible to achieve here, but that’s no reason to ignore reality and pursue sure-to-be-doomed alternatives.

Serge

Attracting bicycle tourists is a great way to convince city and business leaders to develop a comprehensive bicycle infrastructure system.

Again, bicycle tourists = $$$$$

- focusing on the urban core is right
- increase rental shops with different bicycles (not just cruisers)
- hotel bicycle rental
- social bike rides
- cycle chic blogs
- urban bicycle tours
- free air pumps around the city
- bicycle site-seeing brochures & guide books (can someone hire me to do this please?)