The non-profit group Individuals For Bikes not too long ago launched its annual rating of the bike-friendliness of cities. What I discover most fascinating was a dialogue of cities that improved probably the most final yr, together with Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah. Town did some main infrastructure enhancements together with the 9 line path alongside an deserted railway and improved bike lanes on main streets. However what actually caught my eye was that the town lowered the velocity restrict alongside 420 miles of native roadways from 25 to twenty mph, in an try to decrease pedestrian fatalities ( a neighborhood engineer mentioned “Solely about 4% of the crashes in our metropolis contain bicycles and pedestrians, however they make up greater than 46% of all of the fatalities that now we have right here”). A neighborhood advocacy group “candy streets” has pushed for this with the phrase “20 is a lot”. I like this for 2 causes. The primary is that proof exhibits that the probability of a fatality in a collision between a motorized vehicle and a pedestrian or bike owner goes down dramatically as velocity limits are lowered. The second is that I bear in mind this being emphasised in a guide about biking within the Netherlands [1]. Everybody assumes that the bike friendliness of locations like Amsterdam outcomes from good infrastructure, which is certainly a part of the answer. But additionally of nice significance is that velocity limits in residential areas are sometimes a lot decrease than within the US, like 15 mph vs. our extra frequent 25. Going from 25 to twenty is an enormous step in the appropriate route. I preferred this remark from a metropolis councilman on the choice: “We as a nation actually have inherited generations of site visitors engineering solely targeted on getting automobiles from level A to level B in a short time and never targeted on making the streets secure for all modes of transportation.”
References
- Bruntlett, M, and Bruntlett C, Constructing the Biking Metropolis: The Dutch Blueprint for City Vitality, Island Press, 2018.
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