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Could Building Bike Lanes Become America's Next Big Infrastructure Project?
(usa.streetsblog.org)
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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It could, but I bet it won't.
Even busy urban centres here in North America are struggling to add basic bike infrastructure and transit options, let alone major bicycle networks and pathways. NIMBYism and self-centred drivers often axe these projects before they even break ground. Once you get outside of dense urban cores then you barely even see things like sidewalks for pedestrians and certainly not even the most basic of bicycle gutters.
The damage that car-centric urban planning has done to North America is absolutely catastrophic and there is still enormous resistance to altering anything even on a basic level. Fixing such poor urban design is going to take a lot of work and money and even putting in basic things like accessible sidewalks is constantly being fought against.
Nothing will change as long as people keep voting for the same old policies for non-related reasons. I think a lot of conservatives and rural citizens would actually like bike paths and sidewalks everywhere, but keep voting against candidates who want these things because of non-related issues like abortion and resistance to LGBTQ rights. It's an awful feature of the two-party, winner-take-all system.