What would it take to make cycling popular

[Lazarus]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

A little OT, but have you seen the movie The Triplets of Belleville?

EDIT: metacritic link for the movie: http://www.metacritic.com/video/titl...f%20belleville

No I never heard of it. It's looks interesting I'll have to see if i can find t somewhere to rent

[Peakster]

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 16 and a half and people made fun of me riding my bike when they drove by in their cars. That was enough to make me not want to ride any more. That might change this summer, since every 6 kilometres I displace on my car, I save about $1 in overall Geo running costs (and 2 kilometres is all it will take to save $1 from Gloria).

[trebuchet03]

Originally Posted by newtonsfirstlaw

There are negative costs associated with doing that - cul de sacs have lower crime rates, because there are so many eyes, only one exit, and thus only the people who live there really have business being there, strange comings and goings are noticed.

Meh, this is America - So many eyes, yes -- most of them blind or too busy looking the other way. Case and point - my girlfriend's neighbor was cleaned within the past year... And years ago, she had a swastika painted on her garage door. Both houses are within the very inner portion of this cul-du-sac :/

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As for bikes... I agree with the infrastructure point.

[AndrewJ]

Education- educate cyclists and motorists about playing nice with eachother.
That's the main thing that's missing in the picture, that and higher energy prices.
It's kinda sad, of all of the 0.05% of the US transportation budget that goes into cycling, only 3% of that goes into education efforts.

[DifferentPointofView]

There's a new thing, or at least it was new(July, 07'), that in France they have a new cycling program, that allowed you to rent a bicycle by just scanning your credit card. I think it's a splendid Idea, but isn't hitting the states soon because, we are so spread apart!!! And the crime rate here compared to France is probably different. We'd have to put them in large cities, and large cities here aren't too safe.

The Link is located Here

[Lazarus]

Originally Posted by DifferentPointofView

There's a new thing, or at least it was new(July, 07'), that in France they have a new cycling program, that allowed you to rent a bicycle by just scanning your credit card. I think it's a splendid Idea, but isn't hitting the states soon because, we are so spread apart!!! And the crime rate here compared to France is probably different. We'd have to put them in large cities, and large cities here aren't too safe.

The Link is located Here

A lot of the bigger bike shops have rental programs. I travel quite a bit and have rented bikes on the road many times.

Austin Texas has had the yellow bike project for years. The community donate the bikes. They are yellow and when you see one downtown you just take it and ride it to where ever you want and then the next guy takes it. I don't know why more communities don't do it. Follow the link for more info.

[AndrewJ]

We had a community bike library in my community (the next town over really, but it's still only 2 miles away) but it just closed it's doors. The bike library had been going for a really long time, it was modeled after Amsterdam's bike library program.
It got shut down b/c they got evicted from their building after the landlord decided he could triple the rent if he rented to a marijuana growers co-op.