We often hear the term ‘walkable’, which can evoke images of people on foot, walking between destinations like shops, parks, schools, and workplaces in desirably close proximity.

Walkable places are human-scale.

A similar term but opposite we almost never hear is ‘driveable’.

Think: Boulevards, freeways, parking lots – infrastructure that is car-scale.

The de facto design of the US is ‘driveable’. It’s an uncommon term because saying “this highway is so driveable” is like saying “this air is so breathable”. But we understand it, especially compared to walkable areas, like downtowns, that are NOT as ‘driveable’.

So we have ‘walkable’ and ‘driveable’, but what about ‘bikeable’? Intuitively, ‘bikeable’ is likely on-par with our idea of ‘walkable’. And rightly so – biking is more human-scale than car-scale.

In practice, bikes and pedestrians can safely share mixed-use paths [show marina green], and there are many great examples of separated bike paths, right next to walkways.

The crux of bikeability is safety and connectivity – if bike trips are to replace car trips in urban areas (and not just be a leisure activity), then our infrastructure needs to support this human-scale activity within a car-scale network.

And therein lies the problem – it may be possible to bike from A → B, but in most cases, our infrastructure is hardly conducive to it.

But the demand is there. One study of Portland residents found that a whopping 60% of people were “interested but concerned” in biking, citing discomfort with negotiating car traffic, yet responding well to separated bike paths and low-traffic streets. (aka human-scale infrastructure)

These desirable routes are safe, but they lack connectivity.

Another study by the Mineta Transportation Institute found that the city of San Jose, California had “islands of bike connectivity” meaning that a bike trip within an ‘island’ such as a college campus or a neighborhood was considered safe, but going between these islands would mean biking on dangerous urban arterial roads.

And to be clear, paint is not infrastructure. If you wouldn’t walk there, then you shouldn’t be expected to bike there. These types of lanes are way underutilized, and I would argue that these types of bike lanes in particular are actually WORSE than not existing at all.

Good examples of bikeable streets are not hard to find. Here’s one that I take almost every day, and I absolutely love it. Note the other cyclists, the pedestrians on a grade-separated sidewalk, and the guard-rails keeping cars in their lane.

If American cities are keen to usher in more cycling as a primary means of transport, and earn the prestige of being “bikeable”, then the first step is designing safe, well-connected, human-scale bike infrastructure.