John Pucher shows us how to make “Cycling for Everyone”

Go John P ! This is the work that deserves exposure – it\’s going to take this message in concert/tandem with education, infrastructure, funding, enforcement, livestyle/inspiration and all of us strong riders to be inclusive and inviting to the mainstream pop \”interested but concerned\” to consider or reconsider the bike as a transportation tool. Speak the truth and shame the Devil, John… or something like that.

\”I\’ve never known anyone who went broke buying a bike\”

Ha. Maybe not one bike. But who is satisfied with one bike?

Very interesting. One major obstacle to getting more people on bikes is the fear inherent to many Americans. This is a fear that is grounded deep in the mindset of many Americans. Fear of letting your children play outside, fear of leaving your house or car unlocked, fear of terrorism, fear of inner city neighborhoods, etc. Better infrastructure will help some, but the American psyche at large must be changed. How to do that is enough for an entire book.

A long watch (80 minutes) but well worth it. I recommend downloading the video from the Simon Fraser site; more than once I had to restart the embedded video because I hit the arrow key (!)

I\’d love to see some footnotes sourcing Pucher\’s data. But his gist is that more bikes = safer cycling = yet more bikes, in a virtuous cycle. It\’s hard to argue with such a thesis when you have real-world examples of places like Northern Europe where almost no one wears lycra, wears a helmet, or rides a $3000 bicycle … and where everyone rides, not just young jocks in good physical shape.

He makes the very important point that Northern European cities made a conscious effort to increase the mode share of cycling in the 1970s. In the two decades previous they made the same kind of auto-oriented infrastructure decisions as American cities, but reversed themselves in the 1970s to their current benefit.

I\’m guilty of thinking that cycling is somehow \”just part of the culture\” in places like Copenhagen or Berlin, and that Europeans are \”just lucky\” to have a \”culture\” that promotes cycling. Pucher demonstrates to the contrary, the current bike-friendly climate there is the direct result of public policy and political action — not luck or history. Amsterdam didn\’t \”just happen.\” It was lobbied for, fought for, politicized, planned, legislated and implemented.

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The last four minutes are full of thumpers (I\’m paraphrasing here):

\”For every hour you spend cycling, you add more than an hour to your lifespan.\”

\”When you figure in the time spent paying for a mode of transportation, cycling is the fastest form of transport.\”

(Most important, especially vis-a-vis recent discussions about political coalitions [e.g. with motorcyclists]:)

\”The success of bicycle programs depends on political success. You have to gain widespread public support for cycling as a mode of transport through coalitions, education, and outreach.\”

\”Motorists need to see themselves as part-time cyclists, too.\”

Hi all,

I would like to get a transcript of this created – at least John Pucher\’s part.

I figure if we each take 5 minutes, then we can get it together pretty quickly.

I\’ll take the first 5 minutes. John\’s part of the video goes from about 0 to 1:18:40 (almost 80 minutes) — so that\’s 16 parts.

If you\’d like to participate, just drop me an email at the address here so I can make sure we don\’t have folks doing the same segments:

http://googlemapsbikethere.org/contact/

If you\’d like to get started asap, just leave a comment here and say, \”I got segment 2, 5-10 (minutes)\”.

When you\’re done, just email your text file and I\’ll put them all together.

It\’s a lot to ask, but I\’d like to have this done by Monday morning.

I\’ll probably put up a \’translation/status\’ page soon.

I would suggest you grab about five seconds on either side of your boundaries so we can link them up easily (so, start at 4:55 and go to 10:05).

I\’d suggest we put in some line breaks just to make reading it all easier – nothing literary/scientific necessary – just every 2-10 lines – whatever works, maybe there are some natural breaks with each slide – but you do _not_ have to worry about labeling your text with each slide, etc. – I just want the text written down so we can all use it, refer to it, etc.

As an earlier commenter suggested, you might want to download the .mov file to play from your hard drive, and I uploaded the video to Vimeo, but it\’ll take another couple of hours before it\’s ready:

http://vimeo.com/1096179

Here is just a visual representation of the translation I\’d like to see – I won\’t list your name or any contact info or anything like that, unless you\’d like to be publicly recognized, of course – by default, I\’ll assume your participation is to be kept private:

Segment # Time Period Translator
——— ———– ————
1 0:00- 5:00 Peter Smith
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Thanks!