I’m pretty sure it’s safe to assume that many of you reading this are long time viewers of the Youtube channels Not Just Bikes, Climate Town and probably Adam Something. All three of these channels have mentioned in their videos that car companies lobbied governments and pressured urban planners to create infrastructure suited for cars. So if car companies can throw money at politicians to get legislation passed that suit their needs why can’t bike companies counteract by playing at their own game? Hell, shoe companies could ‘counter-lobby’ as well. Nike, Adidas, New Balance, etc. would benefit greatly from walkable and bikeable cities. So why don’t bike companies like Trek, GT and Tern lobby governments to make cities more bikable? They could ask for subsidies so they can open official shops in city centers and with it the promise of employment. I’m pretty there are flaw this approach so I would like to know your thoughts on the matter. Thanks in advance!
@SpiceDealer my guess is the bike companies don’t have as much profit for lobbying, but I like the direction of this. I’d love to see a grassroots movement demanding infrastructure for active travel.
I certainly don’t. It’s just as possible for us to make the same mistakes with bike infrastructure as we did with car infrastructure. The purpose of all types of traffic should be getting people from where they are to where they want to go, but these “bike superhighways” are the same bullshit we’re fighting against with cars.
Out of curiosity, what are bike-highways like where you are? The most I’ve seen are bike streets where cars need to yield to bikes, or one way streets that work for bikes both ways
There aren’t any bike highways near me at the moment, though some cities are starting to design bike highways the same way they made highways for cars. I want cities to thoughtfully design their bike infrastructure, instead of designing infrastructure to benefit lobbyists.
That’s fair. I am also completely in favour of well thought out bike infrastructure solutions. Bike lanes just for the sake of bike ways with no connection to people’s lives and usage patterns will do us no favours
But we should eliminate the worst forms of transit, shouldn’t we?
Absolutely. But we also need to do thoughtful planning in rolling out our next forms of infrastructure