Fast forward to today:
Officials hope downtown bike lane opens by end of year. Dug Begley, HoustonChronicle.com ($)
The article goes on to focus on the lack of availability of so-called armadillo land dividers and spends much time talking about green epoxy to coat the lanes and how wonderful everything will be once bicyclists have one road lane all to themselves.
It really is a beautiful vision of no-cars with thousands of Houston bicyclists pedaling along, although apparently without the pointy hats reminiscent of 1980's Saigon.
One tiny problem however:
(Just a quick snippet from the HoustonChrnoicle.com news story in respect to their pay-wall. Please go read the entire thing if you can)
It will take some time before officials can judge the lane's effect on cycling, however. Houston's first bicycle master plan is a work in progress ,and Payne said little data is available on Houstonians' bike habits.
"We have not been measuring cycling activity in our city, unfortunately, but we are going to start," he said.
The onus behind this dedicated bicycle lane is to allow riders to safely access and interconnect between bicycle trails on the East and West sides of downtown. The belief being that, again, thousands of cyclists will suddenly fill these lanes, cars will suddenly disappear from downtown and your morning commute will suddenly look more like this:
Rather than this:
Of course, Peter Brown would tell you that, without a plan, Houston is going to get stuck with this:
It seems however that we might end up with this:
Because, and this is typical of Houston, we don't know how much demand there is for bicycle riding in downtown, or any part, of Houston. The City is not studying it, they aren't tracking it, in reality, they have no idea.
Of course, supporters of bicycling in Houston will wildly point at Critical Mass Houston as proof of case that "thousands" of people are dying to commute to work under pedal power and two wheels. The flaw in that logic is this: There's a big difference between having some upper-middle class Caucasians joining in on a bit of low-level social protest than there is ditching the car and footing it into work solo on a daily basis. Critical Mass is popular because it's developed a reputation as being somewhat edgy. The few hard-core bicyclists that made up the core of this ride go on a once-a-month power trip against cars, slam their fists on them, and stick their hands up ordering them to stop as the families, college kids and young professionals slowly meander by taking selfies and getting a tingle up their spine thinking that they're engaging in something that might, just possibly, be a little bit illegal.
I've said before that I take no issue with grade separated bike lanes which allow those who want to to commute throughout the city in spandex and awkward shoes. I like the addition of bike trails and I think that their construction is a worthy cause. However, we're talking about cordoning off an entire street lane and making it inaccessible to automobiles, in a city that has a notorious traffic problem and where the Danger train has already made certain areas impassable.
And Houston is doing this without having any idea whatsoever if there's sufficient demand to justify this decision.
Ready! Fire! Oh....Aim!
