Foto Friday: If you build bicycle infrastructure, they will like it

It’s been a while since we posted anything under the “Foto Friday” category, but some of you miss it so hopefully this will be back in regular rotation again.

From the People for Bikes blog, good news about the Calgary bike lane network – which isn’t too dissimilar from what’s being proposed as part of the Downtown Mobility Plan here in San Diego.

The city of Calgary, “piloted a connected downtown network of low-stress bike routes all at once.”

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Calgary’s quick-build protected bike lane network doubled bike counts in three months – PFB

the results have been large and almost immediate. Weekday bike counts on the affected corridors soared 95 percent in September 2015, three months after the network opened, compared to the year before. The proportion of those riders who were female jumped from 20 percent to 27 percent, and younger people are reportedly riding downtown more, too.

They say, women are an indicator species for a bicycle friendly city and so Calgary seems to be moving along to becoming a bicycle friendly city.

And to think that the bike network almost didn’t come to fruition:

Despite a very close city council vote to create the network, once the public saw it in action, 64 percent decided they approve.

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Image via People for Bikes

And on this cold and somewhat rainy day here in San Diego, perhaps we can appreciate the woman in the photo above riding on Calgary’s (still new) protected bike lane network and imagine how neat it would be if we could get that here too.