The non-profit group Individuals For Bikes not too long ago launched its annual rating of the bike-friendliness of cities. What I discover most fascinating was a dialogue of cities that improved probably the most final 12 months, together with Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah. The town did some main infrastructure enhancements together with the 9 line path alongside an deserted railway and improved bike lanes on main streets. However what actually caught my eye was that the town diminished the pace restrict alongside 420 miles of native roadways from 25 to twenty mph, in an try and decrease pedestrian fatalities ( a neighborhood engineer stated “Solely about 4% of the crashes in our metropolis contain bicycles and pedestrians, however they make up greater than 46% of all of the fatalities that we’ve got right here”). A neighborhood advocacy group “candy streets” has pushed for this with the phrase “20 is loads”. I like this for 2 causes. The primary is that proof exhibits that the probability of a fatality in a collision between a motorized vehicle and a pedestrian or bike owner goes down dramatically as pace limits are lowered. The second is that I bear in mind this being emphasised in a e book about biking within the Netherlands [1]. Everybody assumes that the bike friendliness of locations like Amsterdam outcomes from good infrastructure, which is certainly a part of the answer. But additionally of nice significance is that pace limits in residential areas are sometimes a lot decrease than within the US, like 15 mph vs. our extra widespread 25. Going from 25 to twenty is an enormous step in the fitting path. I appreciated this remark from a metropolis councilman on the choice: “We as a nation actually have inherited generations of visitors engineering solely targeted on getting vehicles from level A to level B in a short time and never targeted on making the streets protected for all modes of transportation.”

References

1. Bruntlett, M, and Bruntlett C, Constructing the Biking Metropolis: The Dutch Blueprint for City Vitality, Island Press, 2018.