It’s the weather, stupid
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@dasgeh 45856 wrote:
Just returned from a week on California’s Central Coast, near San Luis Obispo. It’s gorgeous. Last week was really “crappy” weather for that region – highs in the 50s, even some rain.
On the sunny days, I kept thinking “there are tons of cyclists here”. The infrastructure is pretty good: wide shoulders and/or bike lanes on just about every street. Lots of options to get somewhere without getting on busy roads. Lots of cyclists, so cars look for cyclists. AMAZING scenery pretty much every way you look.
But running around Arlington and DC yesterday and this morning, I saw a similar number of cyclists.
So it seems like weather is a major factor in getting cyclists on the roads.
I thought the same thing as I was heading out to San Diego a couple weeks ago, looking at forecasts in the 70s. I was wrong. Sure, there were a few cyclists here and there, but I probably see more cyclists on my 7 mile commute on a 20 degree morning than I did on several 60+ mile rides through the a wide range of neighborhoods/areas of the city. Even riding out on the MUP (called the Bayshore Bikeway) to Coronado, I saw maybe 5 other cyclists (temp was 70, sunny, and very little wind, basically the most perfect day imagineble) on the way out and maybe 10 on the way back. While some of that was due to my riding on weekdays, a couple of my rides were ending during the PM commute. But it blew my mind…until I reflected on the bike infrastructure. On paper, San Diego has great infrastructure…a decent number of bike lanes, a few MUPs here and there, wide streets…but holy hell is it a mess in practice. Most of the bike lanes are just rough shoulders, simply with “bike lane” painted on it but totally neglected otherwise, and since most California roads are as close to freeways as possible, most bike lanes end up having to merge through sliplanes with little notice and no paint/guidance for bikes or cars. Added to that, the speed limits are INSANE. One bike lane was on a 65mph road with on and off ramps (and F-18s roaring over head)!
You can’t quite see it, but the speed limit at this merge is 65mph, and I’m taking the photo while standing in the bike lane, which is freshly paved across the on-ramp.
And the 65mph sign with the “bike lane” sign underneath, just a couple hundred feet down the road from the above photo.
So I agree, to a point…but I think places like San Diego make great case studies for how weather can effectively be removed from the equation and allow us to see how bike infrastructure on its own (poorly implemented in this case) can affect cycling rates.
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