Because sometimes there aren't even sidewalks from the suburban tract to the Old Town they are reviving, much less a safe way to bike let alone a bus route with any reasonable level of frequency. So they have to do it because There Is No Alternative. That's why actually having alternatives on offer are important.
It's a chicken and egg problem. They aren't viewed as complete alternatives, because they aren't in many locations.
For example, you're going to have a hell of a time getting me to depend on my local bus network, which takes an hour to get me to work- a whole 6 miles away- and I still have to walk one mile. That's not complete.
I'm lucky to live in a bike friendly city with more public transit ambition than many other places, but people can't about-face tomorrow and depend on the public transit or bicycle infrastructure that isn't there, which I think you'll find informs policy.
Mostly because good transit implementation is so expensive only like a half dozen cities in the US are financially capable of building new rail transit or hiring a lot more bus operators. Also the fact bike lane projects in this country are seemingly done like a half mile at a time to the lowest standards, rather than a one shot whole network wide rollout of lanes that would make suburbanites feel safe to bike to errands. A robust bike network seems difficult only if you forget its just a matter of how you put paint on a road thats probably already regularly budgeted in routine road surfacing work, over having to spend real money and actually expand budgets. This all goes to show how timid politicians have become in recent years towards stepping off into the unknown and actually diverging from the status quo.
Its probably more complicated than that. In areas that don't have bike lanes, people tend to just bike on the sidewalks, and pedestrians just put up with having to move out of the way. The reason is likely a mix between being historically ignored by the city, not bothering to really try, and also just knowing that sidewalks are safer to bike on (even if inconvenient).
When wealthier people move into a neighborhood, expecting bike lanes, they push for them. They probably have more power/influence, but they also have a higher since of entitlement that causes them to not give up, even if the city pushes back.
But it isn't the perfect reason. I live on a dead end road (road ends at the creek), it doesn't take much intelligence to realize the pavement is nearly worn out and so will be replaced soon. However because the road doesn't go anywhere, there is no need for any bike lane. If anything it needs a basketball hoop in the middle - all that hard surface is wasted on cars: let the kids play when there isn't a car coming.
Even if you wanted to use another mode of transport it's often impossible if you live in the suburbs / exurbs.
Sidewalks can be patchy at best and bike lanes are an afterthought; often they include the steepest part of the road grade to shed water off to the side and include pinch-flat-happy sunken sewer / drain grates. Roads are often laughably designed in a car-centric manner, i.e. higher than an European highway with no lane markings or stop signs, turning it into a veritable drag strip.
Whenever someone in the boomer generation says "why don't kids go outside to play these days?", I always retort "look at the Outside that y'all designed for them" :|
There is simply no space in most inner cities for this mode of transportation.
Which is fine, since inner cities are the most walkable places in the world, and the most well-served by public transit.
Unless we're prepared to spend billions on new construction over decades, there is just no infrastructure for a mode of transport that conflicts with all of the existing modes.
If anything, we should be building more bike lanes (on a gargantuan scale) since they are proven, efficient and already have substantial infrastructure.
To be fair, suburb streets aren’t that car unfriendly. Many of the subdevelopments I’ve been to are extremely chill, low traffic, low speed.
The problem is really twofold:
- suburbs are far away from anything worth biking to. Strip malls and chain stores aren’t great destinations. The nice stuff (or bike friendly stuff) is closer to the city and many miles away from the subdevelopments.
- Those connection stroads are dangerous to walk and bike on. On the flip side, the public right of way used to built them is so large, it’d be “easy” to add bike lanes and sidewalks. By easy, I mean it won’t make people’s lives worse. You could remove a lane or a handful of parking spots and it wouldn’t make a huge impact to human life.
But at the end of the day… if there’s nowhere to go, no one would use those modified roads.
So it’s a catch 22, and I doubt it will get better with small local initiatives because the suburb lifestyle is so ingrained in many people’s lives.
I've never understood why bicyclists can't just use the sidewalk for most of the commute. I get that it becomes impractical in dense areas where people are actually walking but most of the roads I travel along have vacant sidewalks.
Worse still, the fact that few are using the bike lane to nowhere is used as a justification for not building any more of them and completing the network.
Really now? That's the entire reason the US has problems with transit because some old rails are now bike paths? There really isn't any other reason you can think of?
So as a suburban area, it is generally not optimized for biking as a mode of transportation. Suburbs absolutely cater to cars, and this road is no exception. There are significant and wide-reaching bike trails across the surrounding county, but if you're going to and from work in the area, you have a car, almost exclusively.
The very nature of the fact that very little of the surrounding area caters to pedestrian traffic, the road would do a bad job if it was optimized for that.
I am just saying that in my suburban context, a bike could make sense if there's proper bike infrastructure.
It would also make sense if there's a plan to reduce the amount of traffic because the road is used for through traffic both way which makes residents in the neighborhoods being forced to wait a long time before they're able to enter the road safely.
There's also a gas station much nearer, but it's not very easy to bike there. Walking there can get your shoes very muddy. There are also offices building nearby too, but once again, it's not very easy to get there on foot or bike.
This is all within my local suburban context, but it's not easy to do when large stroad make it difficult to cross relatively short distance, or when protected bike lanes and sidewalks are extremely lacking, or when crossing the road is a dangerous activity or when getting to your local gas station might get your shoes muddy and wet.
I think the key point is that they already have a right of way reserved for cycling use, so even if they all need to be rebuilt the cost is merely that of breaking up and laying down concrete. Generally any bike infrastructure project has to contend with the politics of taking space away from cars.
Lower population density areas are easier to make bike friendly, less people which means that taking off road lanes or making sidewalks slightly narrower has a smaller impact.
It also means that other bike infrastructure like parking is easier to build (need less of it).
Construction is also easier when you either do need to move buildings at all, or you are moving 2-3 story buildings instead of huge complexes.
Fixing public transportation is more important than fixing biking at this moment, especially in California. When more people move with cars than with public transportation it's harder to allocate the needed resources for bikes, the impact of public transportation improvement is also quicker and bigger than improving bike lanes.
Not saying that having a bike / walk to work alternatives isn't important, but jumping straight to it when everything else isn't even remotely close to being right is a foolish mission in my book.
> Most suburban neighborhoods have low traffic and plenty of places to ride your bike
Until you actually try to go anywhere and find that you cant't without riding through an arterial road with heavy dangerous traffic. The quiet suburban roads don't form a network that allows you to go to actual destinations.
Here in Toronto they are trying to address that by building (a few) cycle tracks running parallel to these horrible arterial roads, but it's still an awful experience. There are a few quiet greenways without any motor traffic, but they don't help you reach any destination.
Neighborhoods that were built before the advent of the car are more amenable to cycling.
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