Car drivers may hate it, but more cities are converting car lanes into bike lanes, and Covid-19 is accelerating the trend.
“Tabitha Combs, a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been crowdsourcing data on local actions affecting walking and cycling during the pandemic. She’s identified at least 365 global cities that have allocated new street space for these activities since data-gathering began on 24 March.
“’This was clearly a phenomenon that was taking place in cities all around the world at roughly the same time,’ she recalls of her decision to document the movement. ‘It was like a simultaneous global brainwave.’”
And it’s not just about converting lanes to bike use; there’s also a “slow streets” movement that seeks to make streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists by using physical barriers to slow traffic.
However, these ideas aren’t universally popular, and there’s been some pushback in cities like Berlin and New York. Moreover, bikes don’t work for everyone. I’m too old to use a bike for transportation, and the winter weather in many places (including Seattle, where I live) isn’t amenable to that; also, bicycles lack the load-carrying capacity of a car. A reasonable urban transportation mix includes public transit and amenities for bicycles and pedestrians, but with room for cars.
Photo: A dedicated bike lane in Seattle, Washington