Transportation Officials Pool Knowledge for Bicycle Planning

"[T]he U.S. Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey had some sobering news about bicycling: Only about half of 1 percent of Americans bike to work. A number of city planners are seeing that statistic as evidence that some more radical bicycling strategies are in order. It's time to think beyond bike lanes, they say, and start using bike-only traffic signals, traffic-protected "cycle-tracks," and other street designs that are common in European cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where up to 40 percent of all trips are made on two wheels.

Doing that is harder than it sounds. American street-design manuals and regulatory mechanisms revolve around cars, not cyclists. As a result, few traffic engineers possess the technical knowledge - and bureaucratic savvy - necessary to implement novel bike treatments."

The initiative is called Cities for Cycling and it's intended to serve as a clearinghouse of bicycle plans and other information to help cities adopt best practices.