Give Bicyclists Their Own Set of Roads -- All Across Town

Give the bicycle its own transportation grid, it's own set of roads and bridges and tunnels. 

All across town.

Maybe in places you run the bicycle paths right alongside existing city streets, but when you can, run the bike trails beside canals, through parks, and across open areas. There's already a bike path along the Jordan River. Expand it. Widen it where necessary. Give northbound traffic one lane and southbound another -- just like there is for cars.

Take away all the stop-and-go intersections. Create tunnels and bridges and on ramps and off ramps to keep the cyclists going uninterrupted all the way to the end of their commute. Well, almost all the way to the end of the commute. The north-south and east-west paths might be a couple miles apart, so eventually the bicyclist has to spill out into the city streets to complete the journey. When you can -- especially downtown, since that is a big destination -- give the cyclists dedicated lanes so they don't have to worry about cars coming up from the rear and smashing into them. We love our bicyclists, right? so we anxiously want to preserve and protect them.

 "Unfortunately, no cities in the U.S. have yet built a network of bicycle lanes that are large enough to analyze," says Taylor Reich, a senior research associate at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

This would change all that. Big time. Do this and you become the bicycling capital of the country. Do this and you take a step forward in transportation by taking what some would think is a step back. Bicycle transportation might seem to be something being swept into the past, but don't let it be. 

Instead, let it sweep us into the future. 

(Index -- climate change info)