The car has long reigned supreme in North American cities.
As car ownership took off in the 1950s, urban planners and engineers designed streets and roads around automobile travel, allowing suburbs and sprawl to proliferate along highways.
Many parts of Europe avoided this car-centric approach. The Netherlands, which was quite car-friendly in the 1960s, rethought its roads after more than 400 children died in car accidents in 1971 and widespread protests called on the government to “Stop de Kindermoord” – or stop the child murder. During the 1973 oil crisis, Denmark figured it was better to use transportation methods that reduced its reliance on oil-producing nations. Ever since, both countries’ cities have led the world in their cycling infrastructure.
A growing number of congested cities in North America are now trying to rethink their streets in similar ways to make them safer and more climate-friendly, but they’re having to undo decades of entrenched engineering practices and standards that favoured cars. Some blame John Forester, a Californian cycling advocate, for those engineering standards. In the 1970s, Forester fought against rules that were introduced in the town of Palo Alto, in Silicon Valley, that forced him to ride in protected bike lanes and on the sidewalk, banning him from sharing roads with cars. He became highly influential, mobilizing cyclists against separate bike lanes and publishing an engineering guide that argued that roads should be shared by drivers and cyclists.
“There’s no question that the John Forester effect on engineering standards has been huge. And those engineering standards are still in the process of being revised,” says Kay Teschke, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia who has done groundbreaking research on helmets and bike infrastructure.
For decades after Forester’s efforts, much of the research around bike safety focused on helmet wearing and showed that, yes, if you’re in an accident while cycling, a helmet will lower your risk of head injury. But the sole focus on helmets neglected something studies later revealed: that proper bike infrastructure prevented cyclists from getting into those accidents in the first place. And research has also shown that a lack of separated bike lanes was the largest obstacle to people feeling safe cycling.
“It’s a bit of a vicious circle,” Teschke says. “When you don’t have infrastructure, people don’t bike; they drive. And then the demand falls off for biking infrastructure. Kids don’t bike to school any more. Parents don’t bike. The whole thing compounds.”
Across the U.S. and Canada, the landscape for urban cycling is rapidly evolving. In some cities, like Montreal, things have shifted into high gear as holistic cycling networks with separate bike lanes are being built. In Washington, D.C., like a lot of North American cities, a combination of bureaucratic inertia and political pushback have kept cyclists in harm’s way.
Like the legislative and vehicular congestion it’s known for, the progress of D.C.’s bike infrastructure has been slow when compared to international cities. So much so that of the G7 capitals in advocacy group PeopleForBikes’s 2023 rankings of the best cities for biking, Washington, D.C., ranked dead last. It came in 261st place overall in the ranking of more than 1,700 cities thanks to its dangerously disjointed bike lanes. Last year, 33 D.C. cyclists suffered major injuries in collisions, and three died. Cycling advocates admit that bike infrastructure has progressed a lot in the city over the last two decades, but its fragmented network of lanes is leaving cyclists exposed.
“By American city standards, D.C. is doing very well. By global standards . . . we have a long way to go,” says Colin Browne, director of communications for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, an advocacy group that pushes for better cycling infrastructure. “There are a lot of places that you still can’t get to in a way that feels safe on a bike.”
D.C. has built approximately 167 kilometres of bike lanes, including just 39 kilometres of separated lanes. When the district looked to build a 2.5-kilometre separated bike lane on 9th Street, the project saw years of delays after a loud contingent of residents and business owners voiced concerns about losing parking spaces and the effects of bike lanes on their bottom lines. And cycling advocates are worried that a proposed project on Connecticut Avenue – a major thoroughfare that runs from suburban Maryland to downtown Washington, D.C. – will suffer the same delays.
“When they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, they mean it,” says Elizabeth Kiker, executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.
To counteract these forces, cycling advocates are organizing one-on-one conversations with business owners to explain the environmental, health and economic benefits of bike lanes. Getting support from within the business community is always a big step up, Browne says. And it’s hard to argue with the research: studies show that building bike lanes improves business in retail and restaurants and that taking one trip a day by bike rather than by car can lower your individual transportation-related carbon footprint by 67%.
When they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, they mean it.
- Elizabeth Kiker, executive director, Washington Area Bicyclist Association
Advocates say policies that mandate separate bike lanes can help cut some of those arguments off at the pass. “It shouldn’t really be a debate at the start of every bike project – whether we’re going to [build bike infrastructure],” says Rebecca Davies, the city ratings program director for PeopleForBikes, which has released a legislative guide for lawmakers. “It should be about how we can [build bike infrastructure] in a way that best meets all of the needs of the community.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser has helped spearhead a lot of the new cycling infrastructure in D.C., but advocates say her office has let bike-lane opponents stall important projects, such as the 9th Street one.
Electing strong, consistent leaders who won’t let these kinds of arguments slow down bike infrastructure can be a huge part of the battle, say advocates, who point to cities like Montreal and Paris, where Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s government shut down a major road running along the River Seine to car traffic.
“Without the political leadership, it’s hard to move quickly on anything,” Davies says.
Lessons from Montreal
D.C.’s bike network stands in stark contrast to that of a city that has been an outlier in North America: Montreal. Quebec’s largest city boasts a network of more than 900 kilometres of bike lanes (717 kilometres of which are cleared of snow during the winter months and 218 kilometres of which are separated from car traffic) – and it’s building more.
The city, which placed 57th in the PeopleForBikes ranking (and was the top-ranked large Canadian city), has had a bit of an active transportation renaissance in recent years under the leadership of Mayor Valérie Plante, whose Vision Vélo initiative plans to expand the bike network with an additional 200 kilometres of separated cycling lanes by 2027 and a network of high-capacity lanes called the Réseau Express Vélo.
Montreal built its first bike paths in the late 1970s, connecting a few parks. Cyclists later started pushing for paths that would take them to other places they needed to go. In the early 2000s, the city built westbound bike lanes on De Maisonneuve Boulevard in downtown Montreal. Simply having those paths made residents see what was possible, and from there, they wanted more. “You can see a progression in the bike infrastructure in Montreal that shows what can be done,” says Stéphane Blais, the director of research and consulting at Vélo Québec, an advocacy organization.
It’s taken a while since its first bike paths for Montreal to build out its infrastructure, but things have been accelerating in recent years. And electing a staunchly pro-bike mayor has gone a long way in getting good bike infrastructure built. Advocates say that the city, under Plante’s leadership, refocused its efforts on bike infrastructure that is separate, rather than simply painting “sharrows” on the roads. The city is looking to expand popular bike lanes that opened on Saint Denis Street in 2020.
You can see a progression in the bike infrastructure in Montreal that shows what can be done.
- Stéphane Blais, Vélo Québec
Beyond electing the right leadership, bike advocates in Montreal say it’s important to have meaningful consultations on bike plans to figure out exactly what communities want. “So every time people are arguing that we’re taking away space for not the right reason or that we should put it on another street, we go back to these consultation nights and say we heard what people had to say, and this is what they wanted,” Blais says.
It’s also vital to have officials go door-to-door to explain the new infrastructure that’s coming. But the point is not to restart the whole debate on whether the infrastructure is necessary. “You are not consulting people [at that stage] on whether we need a bike lane or not,” Blais says. “You’re consulting people on small issues that maybe the designer didn’t see.”
And rather than making the debate about bikes versus cars, Blais maintains that we should be talking about the fact that these kinds of projects simply provide more choice for how people can get around a city.
Blais says that within three to six months of a bike lane being built, the anger tends to dissipate and people tend to see the benefits and forget what it was like before.
Blais and many other Montreal residents now bike with their children down streets that they would never have imagined biking down just a few years ago. With any luck, that will also be the case for a growing number of Washington, D.C., residents and cities across North America as the bike infrastructure grows.
“We’re really fortunate to live in this period of time when a lot of change is coming,” Blais says.
This story is part of the Sustainable Cities package in our Spring 2024 issue.
