Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.
This is what a tipping point looks like.
Around the country in the summer of 2014, community groups across the United States have been using open-streets events and other festivals to give thousands of Americans their first taste of a protected bike lane.
From small-town Kansas to the middle of Atlanta, communities (many of them inspired by last summer's successful $600 demo project in Minneapolis) have been using handmade barriers and relatively tiny amounts of money to put together temporary bikeways that spread the knowledge of the concept among the public and officials.
"Every traffic engineer who touches a street in Oakland, they were all out on their bikes checking it out," said Dave Campbell of East Bay Bike Coalition, who led the creation of maybe the year's most beautiful demo on Telegraph Avenue there. (Click to enlarge — it's worth it.)
"We wanted this to look awesome," Campbell said in an interview. "People would see this and go, 'That's f------ awesome. I want that on my street.'"
Here are some of the results from around the country:
