Do “Car Heads” contribute to “Bicycle Neglect”?
In Alan Durning’s new series or articles at the Sightline Institute, he discusses challenges to bicycles as transportation. He introduces the reader to several concepts, such as Car Head and Bicycle Neglect.
While bikers are often marginalized as “too poor to own a car” or “elitist,” Durning attempts to redefine bicycling:
Bicycle Respect gives independence to young teens and affordable mobility to low-income households and retirees. Like such democratizing social guarantees as public schools and unemployment insurance, Social Security and national parks, safe, separate, continuous facilities for cycling and walking put a common foundation under us.
Durning makes a number of valid points. His focus is in laying the groundwork for creating more velocommuters. That is definitely one part of the big puzzle. There are a lot more pieces than just street layout, however.
~ms