The best coverage so far on the City of Vancouver’s update on active transportation actually comes from Portland – through Michael Andersen at bikeportland.org:
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… an amazing slideshow of survey results presented to the Vancouver City Council on Wednesday are a rock-solid reminder that good bike infrastructure can have a spectacular payoff, even in a city that already has quite a bit of biking. …
Vancouver’s 2014 bike-commuting estimate was 9 percent, up from 4 percent in 2011. According to the U.S. Census, Portland’s bike-commuting rate in 2014 was 7 percent. …
So what has Vancouver been doing differently on transportation over the last few years, enabling it to add tens of thousands of new commutes but hardly any additional auto trips?
Among other things, it’s been taking heat.
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Details follow. It’s a good overview of what has happened here in the last few years.
The actual infrastructure is of course the biggest and most valuable legacy of the past several years of bike lane building. But almost as important in my mind is the mindset change among those who used to be adamantly against it. We’re just not seeing the same level of organized opposition because the results, not just in terms of (a lack of) negative impacts but also in the very impressive ridership gains, have pretty much killed the credibility of the doomsayers.
That makes the way forward very bright indeed.
I find the same thing. Well, I see it having gone 360º actually. Cycling used to be considered be considered beneficial about ten or more years ago, (although marginalized of course) but then once things percolated up from the populace into politics, suddenly it was considered bad. This was a surprise. I don’t think before then that anyone could have guessed that someone could be bothered by cycling infrastructure, but they were. I don’t see it having much to do with anything real as much as it has to do with politics and with the auto industry not doing so well and threatened by alternatives.
What has changed though is people seeing for themselves and using it for themselves. Possibly the auto industry is less worried now because of the promise of autonomous cars that could provide them with a new market.