Monday, July 18, 2011

#flightvsbike

Well, Carmaggeddon was the non-event that anyone who really thinks about traffic could have predicted.
If you build it, they will come has a flipside-  if it's not available, people will find other ways.

I had heard about the ridiculous Jet Blue cross town flights stunt.  I had not heard about bikers and transit users taking the opportunity for a multi-modal race, and whupping the plane. As anyone who has flown into Houston's Intercontinental airport knows- flying doesn't take nearly as much time as all the folderol involved in flying (driving an hour to the airport, getting your bags, security etc etc).

I thought that this article by Tom Vanderbilt had a wonderful conclusion about what this kind of challenge can show us:

"the reasons people give for not cycling in America are often as much failures of the imagination, or a priori rationalization, as anything else"

In other words,  people think biking is harder than it actually is. 



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