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“What is the only difference between a Bike Boulevard and a regular street? Hopefully there are fewer cars to honk at you.” [Zarathustra]
What happened to RWC’s first Bike Blvd?
While investigating the plans of this project from 2010, this Signature Project of our Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), the Original Slow Street, the core achievement of RWCMoves, WalkBikeThrive and Vision Zero, the Community Benefit of both the Elco Yard and Sequoia TOD project, the First Safe-BikeRoute-To-School ever, I noticed this award-winning project does not even exist.
My sources tell me it was closed off a few months (or years?) back to build the Red Morton Senior Center, and apparently, nobody noticed. There was no huge public outcry, nobody spoke at the city council, no discussion on social media, and no signs pointing to “Road Work” or “Detour.” The project simply just vanished. So I’m very sorry, but there is no Vera Bicycle Boulevard to talk about now.
“Berkeley’s bike boulevards are fictions.” [BerkeleySide 2019]
Last week, I focused on why the Last Generation and everybody else needs bike lanes. The missing Vera Bike Boulevard gives us a chance to find out what or who got us into this whole Bicycle Boulevard and Slow Street mess in the first place.
“Don’t call this a ‘bike boulevard’. It’s actually about automobiles — like everything else in America, the only and last civilization on earth built entirely around the automobile.” [Urban Milwaukee 2017]
The Invention of the Bike Lane
Germany invented the bicycle in 1817 (Karl Freiherr von Drais), the automobile in 1886 (Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler) and by 1893, they had bike lanes so motorists could go faster. The Dutch took those bike lanes and improved on the concept. By the 1930s, they started focusing on the safety of people riding bicycles. While the German motives might have been more car-centric and the Dutch looked more people-centric, in the end, the separation benefited everybody.
“And God looked at all the things they made, and behold, it was very good.”
The “Un-Inventioning” of Bike Lanes
A few British cyclists thought they were smarter by pooh-poohing this separation. In the early 1930s, the UK also had millions of people on bicycles who would have benefited from bike lanes as well. However, UK bicycle elitists invented “bicyclism” mostly to make money. But they also didn’t want to share narrow bike lanes with the slow-cycling “riff raff.” Together with traffic planners and city builders, they came up with the idea of calling bicycles “vehicles” and pushing them onto regular streets. Through this marvelous idea, these elitist cyclists would own the biggest “bikeway network” in Europe and do it in the fastest possible time.
A small California university town in the US looked at the Netherlands and liked it very much. However, a British subject named John Forester introduced Palo Alto to the UK version, and Palo Alto liked their version better. All Palo Alto had to do was invent the “Share the Road” sign and call themselves California’s Bicycle Capital. Many other US cities looked at Davis and Palo Alto, saw Davis’ version was better, but Palo Alto’s version is easier … and chose Palo Alto’s version. There was just one problem with that approach. British and Americans on bicycles kept dying at a higher rate than people in those other countries.
“And God looked at all the things they made, and behold, this did not look good.”
The Emperor wears Clown Gear
All these injuries and fatalities did not mean these guys would acknowledge Davis-style bike lanes as the solution. Instead, these cyclists in the UK, The Commonwealth, and the U.S. kept doubling down on all kinds of nonsense, like …
- The Big Bikeway Bluff – where “traffic planners” made Class III the rule instead of the exception
- The Magical Bike Helmet – an 1-inch plastic crumple zone that protects cyclists from 6-ton vehicles.
- Bicycle Education For Adults – I believe they teach “duck, cover and roll.”
- Clown Gear – is ideal for victim shaming. We laugh if you wear it and about you, if you don’t.
- Disco Flashing Lights – in honor of the Bee Gees.
- The Bicycle Horn – or you just keep shouting at cars, “On Your Left!”.
- Traffic Calming – how about if we use slow cyclists to “calm down traffic”?
- Traffic Calming – if we punish drivers more, they will switch to cycling, right?
- Taking the Lane – this is like a fraternity hazing ritual or maybe a new TikTok Dare.
- Hope and Pray that everything works out
- … and of course Thoughts and Prayers when it predictably goes wrong.
“And God looked at all the things they made, and behold, this was bad to the bone.”
Well There’s Your Problem
“Vehicular Cyclists” and traffic planners making and supporting all these bad decisions led to the suppression of ridership and increased injuries and fatalities. Whereas European cities now have bike mode shares of 10%, 20% and growing, UK and America are around 1% and shrinking. And while European downtowns have become more and more people-centric, America’s business-centric downtowns are struggling. Even the American Mall – “The Goddess of Car-Centricity” – is dying. And all the while, politicians love to talk about how they are fighting in the name of air pollution, Global Warming, and Transportation Equity and how they want to create a better world for our children. So right about now, American city planners should take a few cues from cool cities in the Netherlands, Denmark, or Germany on how to turn things around by adding bike lanes. And while they constantly put the words Bike and Lane in many plans, like Madmen they just return back to the old Marketing Machine.
“In Emeryville, bike boulevards are being used to enhance the ease of and encourage the use of automobiles at the expense of bicycling.” [Emeryville Tattler 2010]
Ramping up The Marketing Machine
Instead of adding a few cheap and easy bike lanes to create a solid bike lane network, U.S. traffic planners, their expensive consultants, and “Vehicular Cyclists” are constantly in brainstorming mode. How can we sell Class 3 like it was a Class 2 Bikeway?
“Sharrows – as installed in Chicago during the study period – provide a false sense of security to bicyclists. When a bicycle lane or other separated facility is provided, the bicyclist is granted dedicated space. This dedicated space lowers the risk of collision with a motor vehicle.” [ScienceDirect 2018]
Now, let’s remember that Class 3 Bikeways are supposed to be used very rarely, on very short stretches of very narrow streets, where there is really no other way than slowing down all traffic and somehow sharing the road for the only acceptable reason. They should be used as the exception and not the rule.
So remember: short, slow, narrow, rare, exception, exemption.
Ellen Fletcher Bicycle Boulevard
This “Mother of all Bike Boulevards” is also known as a Nothingburger. The street width would allow 5 lanes for cars. It’s a long, straight, 4-mile stretch of a 30 mph street with clear views encouraging speeding. It’s 40 blocks of STOP-sign-free intersections, and there are only 3.5 modal filters to prevent cars from taking advantage of this. All these modal filters are in the southern part, and none is through downtown. So, there is nothing short, slow, narrow, rare or exceptional about this contraption. Over the years, Palo Alto has even removed some safety features instead of adding them.
But because the city council, the city traffic planners, groups like the League of American Wheelman, and the more local Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) celebrated this contraption like sliced bread, the Bryant Street Bicycle Boulevard became the root of all evil Class 3 Bikeways.
Since council members, traffic engineers, and vehicular cyclists found a “compromise” that only works if people wear clown gear and helmets, it has not become a crowd-pleaser. It seems to feature anything but bicycles.
But many U.S. cities still liked to statistically fill out their bike plans and claim success—just as Palo Alto and its “Vehicular Cyclists” did. So did many consulting companies or organizations that should have known better. We are talking Berkeley, Vancouver, Seattle, NACTO, Toole Design, Fehr and Peers, loby.org, University of North Carolina, etc.
Other cities – like Philadelphia or Tucson – weren’t so enamored by the name …
“‘Bike boulevard’ sounds like a major street to me. And just having ‘bike’ as the first word is a nonstarter in Philadelphia.”
“If a city hasn’t yet ventured into the ‘bicycle boulevard’ realm, I’d recommend against that terminology.”
… but they still liked the concept.
The Emperor has no Clothes
Portland became a world-renowned bicycle city once it started installing bike lanes. It lost that status when traffic planners and bicycle advocates stopped caring and followed Palo Alto’s lackadaisical example. Instead of “Bicycle Boulevard,” they liked “Neighborhood Greenways,” which sounds like Class 1 Bikeways leading through a nice park or along some river, but of course, that was just more advertising.
Eventually, it suppressed ridership, and Portland was thrown out of the Copenhagenize Index. With Bike Lanes, Portland went from 1% to 6%; with “Neighborhood Greenways,” it fell back to more like 3%.
“For one, we’re concerned that Portland residents are so good at getting around by bike that they’ve forgotten what it’s like for newbies. We’re not doing the work to get new people on bikes. In fact, at council meetings we have actually heard experienced riders arguing against the addition of protected bike lanes. They’ve been cycling on streets for a long time and they figure that because they’re okay with it, everyone should be okay with it.” [remorseful Portland Bicycle Advocate]
Despite its failure in Portland, other cities and organizations latched onto that name, like BikeMore, Alta Planning, PBIC, East Bay Bikes, etc.
Some cities didn’t like the words “bicycle boulevard” or “neighborhood greenway,” and for various reasons, they invented more names for the ‘Un-inventioning of Bike Lanes’:
Calm Street, Neighborway, Neighborhood Boulevard, Neighbor Way, Greenways, Local Street Bikeway, Quietway.
By now, we can be pretty sure different cities have different trademarks on these Class 3 Bikeway names … and T-Shirts. And once all involved parties pretend to buy into the scam, your scam can go bigger:
“It makes sense. [After we’ve communicated that it’s fundamentally part of a bike network] we can layer on walking, we can layer on public space.”
“Local street bikeway: It doesn’t get any more intuitive than that. Just simple and dry. … You’re going to know what that is just by hearing that.”
All these streets are still car-centric, with little or no features that invite people to switch to bicycles. It’s all about filling up “Bike Plans” and “Climate Action Plans” to look like a green or healthy city without becoming one. But adding insult to injury, the traffic planners have always been using Active Transportation grants and funds to pay for these car-centric projects, basically defrauding those taxpayers who approved the funding in the first place.
Slow Streets
Case in point: Slow Streets. During the pandemic, when it became very clear that resilient cities must have bike lanes, Oakland and Redwood City gave us the “Slow Streets” and more “Bicycle Boulevards”. And as usual in Redwood City, cars are encouraged to drive 30 mph and more on both of them and even faster around schools.
“Sharing the Road” is a dangerous policy and increases the risk for the most fragile, which are people walking and cycling, especially children and seniors. People on bicycles and especially slow-riding children are used as traffic calming devices similar to Speed Humps or Chicanes. But when kids actually do test that theory and try to share the road – all social media hell breaks loose. Let’s face it, Americans are just not good at “sharing” or “caring”.
“So why are speed humps on a ‘bike boulevard’? Because the ‘bike boulevard’ is about automobile traffic.” [Urban Milwaukee 2017]
It’s been over 100 years since the invention of bike lanes, it’s time to bury the philosophy of “Vehicular Cycling” or “Driving your Bike”.
More Information:
- Emeryville’s Bicycle Boulevard Scam
- Berkeley’s Bike Boulevard Fiction
- Milwaukee thinks Bike Boulevards are a bad idea
- Bike Boulevards don’t even work in Palo Alto
- ScienceDirect about Safety and Sharrows
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.
