Two cities' plans for cycling

Washington D.C. wants 25 percent of all trips to be taken by walking or bicycle by the year 2032.  The Sustainable DC Plan doesn't include data on current bicycle use, but from commuting data it might be inferred that about 3 or 4 percent of current trips are by bike and about 12 percent are on foot.  So the District wants to see these two forms of getting around grow by about nine or ten percent over two decades.  If the two increase proportionately that would mean about an 8 percent increase in walking and a 2 or 3 percent increase in bicycle use.  That's over twenty years!  I don't know about walking, but that's a terribly modest objective for bicycle use, if it's any objective at all.

If the District was really interested in building bicycles into transportation plans it might look to Strasbourg, France, a city in the eastern part of the country on the border with Germany.

© Frederick Florin/Getty

Over the next ten years the Strasbourg metropolitan urban council will be creating a network of bicycle lanes consisting of three concentric rings and nine connecting spokes.  These will be dedicated lanes designed to allow riders to maintain speeds of at least 12 mph (20 kph).  They will be wide enough for two cyclists riding abreast.  Already in Strasbourg cycling accounts for 8 percent of all trips.  And they're aiming to increase that to 16 percent by 2025.

Certainly there are differences in culture and local experience with cycling.  But even allowing for that, one city seems to offer an example of how bicycles can be made a real part of transportation planning.  The other, despite the flourish of a "sustainability plan," seems to be treating them as an afterthought.