With the born of bikes, isn’t weird to think that bike path arose at the same time, after all; the arise of a new mean of transport required their own circulation way, however, the bike way history is not that simple due had its own evolution.
In today’s journey we’re going to explore more about this, meaning, the emergence of bike path. So, you know, warm up because we are going to use our legs in this ride. Let’s start:
History of bike path: the beginning
At the beginning bikes were nothing like the ones we know now. Their official appearance is in 1817, when Baron Karl Von Drais invented the first bike in Germany. However, the model as the one we know now (or the most similar to this) arrived after 1880, an age where these had their boom.
It’s logic that the presence of more people riding by bike in streets led to bike paths or exclusive lanes for cyclists. After all, even though reduced the presence of other transports at the end of XIX century, the roads were more adapted to carriages or wagons instead of bikes.
In other words, you could ride by bike for streets but these weren’t in optimal conditions, as the pavement. This caused that certain cyclist groups that already existed, demanded for better highways and exclusive lanes for them.
In United States (EE.UU.), the Good Roads Movement and League of American Bicyclists, as the Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC) in United Kingdom raised their voices to improve highways in 1886.
The first bikeway
Nevertheless, passed 10 years to finally in 1896 construct the first bikeway in EE.UU. by dividing the pedestrian road from Ocean Parkway (Brooklyn). Since then is considered the beginning of bike path history, from then started the creation of separated bike lanes in avenues.
On the other side of the world, in Netherlands, now considered one of the greatest cyclist nations. The bike use was normalized in 1870 and for 1920 the 75% of population preferred bikes instead of motorized transport.
In fact, in this country, the first bike path was built in 1883 in Utrecht over Maliebaan. Germany followed the example, even though until 1897, two years later, Hamburg joined to this action.
Cars vs bicycles
The emergence of automobile (1886) created a conflict among users of automobiles and bikes. In one hand, motorists ask bicyclists to get out of the road. On the other hand, bicyclists asked cars to drive in separated highways of cyclists.
It was until 1926 that United Kingdom considered to build lanes for bikes at one side of highways. Even, they offered that cyclists pay their taxes, as these were useful to maintain and ample these routes. The proposal didn’t happen at those times.
The first paths for bikes at the border of highways existed until 1934 next to Western Avenue between Hanger Lane and Greenford Road. However, opposite to the expected, this idea wasn’t well received by bicyclist groups neither CTC.
The main reason to don’t accept the idea of cyclists use separated lanes is due at least in Netherlands, United Kingdom and Ireland take as an offense that being bike the most used transport by their population, wanted to separate them from streets and roads to give instead more importance and preference to cars.
Decline and boom
The arrival and conclusion of post-war, performed a great decline in cycling in all these countries. First, this led to advantage from the low influx of cyclists to create more parking lots for cars and get rid of bike paths.
Ironically, when growing the use and flow of cars, it also demanded the attention and infrastructure for cyclists. The main reason was that more cars caused more accidents and run overs, mainly on children.
Then in 1978, Amsterdam provided more importance and priority to cyclist lanes. The difference is that, this time exist more acceptance for bike paths to be apart from highways.
History of bike paths: the approval
Of course, existed sectors that defended separated bikeways, these weren’t to protect cyclist, but allow a more relaxed circulation for motorists; then, bike lanes were more accepted by everyone.
Much of this was due to the fact, if these have a good construction, planning and separation from busy roads, are more convenient and faster for bike transport.
Of course, each country has their own infrastructure, logistics and implementation for bike paths. After all, is not the same to create these lanes in cities that are 100% cyclists than those where still proliferates the use of cars.
Anyway, there are so many advances along bike path history. We just have to wait for every city & country to find, apply the best formula to construct cycling lanes for a better coexistence for everybody.
