Alissa Walker: ‘Don’t Ban Scooters. Redesign Streets.’

Alissa Walker, writing for Curbed:

Cities need to design for the modes they want people to use because they already lost the opportunity once, says McPherson. In the 1890s, American cities experienced a bicycle boom so pervasive it changed women’s fashion. Bikes were such a popular mode of urban transportation that cities scrambled to build cycling superhighways for them. Yet bikes lost that valuable urban real estate as sprawling cities prioritized cars.

With shared mobility companies providing a wide range of multimodal offerings themselves, McPherson thinks there’s an opportunity for bike advocates to merge with the momentum behind other non-car vehicles and all take the lane together. “Human-powered bikes got shoved onto the sidewalk and have been fighting to share street space ever since,” he says. “Now they just might get it.”

I’d support this wholeheartedly.

★ Tuesday, 24 July 2018