713ryan713 t1_iuivz66 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:47 PM

Reply to comment by Too_LeDip_To_Quit in D.C. Revamps Vision Zero Effort by superdookietoiletexp

People don't want to hear it, but relatively speaking, very few District residents commute by bike. Greater Greater Washington and others peg it at about 3% of the city's adult population. The entire D.C. transportation policy focuses on catering to this super niche demographic that uses a mode of transportation the overwhelming majority of residents don't use.

BrightThru2014 t1_iuixq0v wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:58 PM

A lot more people would bike if you built a critical mass of useable and safe infrastructure. Source: I biked for awhile until I moved jobs and my new route to the office felt unsafe.

apendleton t1_iujrw3a wrote on October 31, 2022 at 9:23 PM

It's aspirational. Amsterdam, which now seems like a cycling utopia, had a cycling modeshare not too different from the US until the 1970s, when citizen outcry about motor vehicle deaths prompted major policy changes, which resulted both in drastically improved cycling infrastructure and disincentives to the owning of cars (taxes, etc.). Now cycling modeshare there is about 30%, but the infrastructure and policy came first, and the modeshare followed. DC ostensibly has a goal of increasing bike/ped/transit combined modeshare to 75%, and the way to accomplish that will be improvements to the infrastructure and service for all three, after which (hopefully) more people use them instead of driving.

I haven't been particularly impressed with Vision Zero stuff so far, but "[t]he entire D.C. transportation policy" as being about bikes is disingenuous: they've also added dedicated bus lanes, new crosswalks, leading pedestrian signals at existing crosswalks, traffic calming measures that increase pedestrian safety by reducing car speeds, etc., etc.