Clever Cycles

Portland has now approved a plan aiming to bring bicycle trips up to 25% of all trips in town by 2030. Science fiction date huh? Remember 1990? Some habitual drivers assert that this is simply unrealistic in a wet city with quite a few normal people, as if most of Portland wasn’t in fact developed, more or less to its current form, without cars in mind. Another cold, wet city developed without cars is of course Amsterdam, whose low point of bicycle usage dipped below 25% of all trips about 5 years after this clip was filmed in 1965, showing “bicyclists” as anything but a subculture. (Mayor Adams is in 0.22-0.26). Today 40-something percent of trips in Amsterdam are by bike. By 2030, I think, we’ll break 40% by a mile.

And a decade before that (notice oil tanker at 2:42):

Hope you’re enjoying these “intermission” clips, shamelessly scavenged from sources you maybe follow already, during our ongoing remodel. Also, we’re getting reports that these videos interfere with the function of the menus in our top bar above, apparently only in a certain operating system we don’t have access to. If you’re using Microsoft products, does it not work for you?

I’ve only ever been to Amsterdam in the cold, gray months. Seeing this clip a few days ago of the utter normalcy of biking there made me remember, and smile. The man behind the camera is William Hsu, from My Dutch Bike in San Francisco, there to immerse himself in the supply side. Via Amsterdamize.