Pedaling Revolution

Thanks to Matthew Harding for the tip on this one. There’s a new book out from the Oregon State University Press called Pedaling Revolution. David Byrne had this to say in his review in the New York Times:

…the book is useful — for those of us who occasionally find ourselves on the defensive, Mapes provides names, dates, facts and figures. He details how cities from Amsterdam to Paris to New York to Davis, Calif., have developed policies encouraging cycling in recent decades, and how other towns are just beginning to make way for bikes. He lays out in an easily digestible way a fair amount of material on trip patterns, traffic safety and air pollution. He quotes the relevant studies and shows how those studies have been either heeded or ignored. All this information is great ammunition for those of us who would like to see American cities become more bike-friendly but may be a tough sell for the people on the fence — the ones who’ve taken the occasional Sunday ride along a riverfront greenway or in a park, or have a vague feeling that they might possibly bike to work somehow someday.

“Pedaling Revolution” is not all facts and figures. Mapes, a journalist who covers politics for The Oregonian, describes how he gained weight and started feeling a bit down when he was forced to exchange his 10-mile daily bike commute in Portland for a “super-sized, 50-mile” drive to the Legislature in Salem. He argues that cycling promotion can raise society’s level of general fitness, since people exercise more when it seems less like exercise and more like something mostly enjoyable that also performs a function, like getting to work. “Bike and walking advocates,” he writes, “have been rebranding their cause as ‘active transportation,’ which manages to come off as nonthreatening to your average couch-bound American while carrying a nice touch of gravitas as well.”

There’s also an excerpt online, which I thought added a nice insight into the writing style. I haven’t read the whole book yet, but I expect that I will pick up a copy, read it, and share what I discover.

Right off the top of my head, though, I will say that this sounds like a great read for those who have been wrestling with the idea of transit in a automobile-oriented city. Rapid rail is a phenomenal technology for moving huge volumes of people at high speeds over medium to long distances – but at shorter distances there’s a fine balance between covering enough stops and going too slow. The best combination is probably some sort of high speed service with stops 3-5 miles apart, linked by medium speed networks with stations spaced between 1/2 and 1 mile apart. The challenge is, for areas in between that are low density residential, depending on a park and ride system defeats the purpose, and only works on one end of the system. The beauty of the bicylce is that it can fit easily on a train (unlike a bus) and provide vastly improved mobility on both ends of the trip. A bike + train system could provide extraordinarily efficient transportation to any region in the US, especially one like Houston that is mercifully flat. As Mapes points out, Active Transportation is an opportunity to improve two major societal problems at the same time for a very low cost. That sounds like a good idea to me!