Bikeaboo Manifesto

What is “Bikeaboo”?  Bikeaboo is a bridge between the current state of bike amenities and a ‘bikeable’ city.  You’ll recognize the term ‘bikeable’ from frequent use in popular media (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bikeable).  If you live in an urban area in the United States, your local governments are at least making limited attempts at achieving ‘bikeability’ by designating or developing bike amenities.  

Bikeaboo believes that there needs to be a middle step between the current (poor) state of bike amenities in most cities and the envisioned fully bikeable city.  Bikeaboo attempts to be that middle step in developing bike amenities.  

While professional transportation planners use site analysis and data to determine the need for bike amenities, there is less focus on the experiential aspects of route planning, and altogether too much respect for lines on the map and boxes in which to put allowed uses.  In the current system of bike amenity planning, need for a bike route must first be demonstrated through data: 

• Are there enough trips passing through a given corridor to justify investment?  

• Are the right types of trips being looked at?

• Are indefensible assumptions being made about what is possible/impossible or safe/dangerous? 

Then, once need for a route is established, a political process is engaged: 

• In whose district is the corridor located?  

• Who does the corridor connect, and to what?  

• Are groups of cyclists going uncounted and unrepresented? 

• Is there a preference for a certain type of cycling among decision-makers?

• Are special interest stakeholders (landowners, business groups, advocacy organizations, agencies, feral and misguided cycling advocates) obstructing potential cycling routes that conflict with their goals? 

Finally, an established route is designated or built:

• When will funds be available?  

• Will funds only be available for a minimum operable segment? 

• How can limited funding be equitably distributed while still providing noticeable benefits?

At every step along the way of the traditional bicycle planning process, there are pitfalls capable of eliminating safe bike routes from consideration:

• Suppressed demand for cycling due to dangerous current conditions

• Emphasis on certain types of bike uses and trips over others

• Bias against the behaviors of ‘other’ cyclists

• Political decisions

• Stakeholder pressure

• The vision for the future held by the wealthy and powerful

• Lack of consideration of the viewpoints of all cyclists

• Low funding levels 

This is ass backwards.

To avoid these pitfalls, the concept of Bikeaboo suggests a way of using our existing urban environment to force use of the best existing bike routes through our cities and to do it now, before infrastructure can be planned and built.  Bikeaboo routes cobble together existing access (whether intended for cyclist use or not) to form long continuous routes through areas with generally poor bikeability, and most importantly — away from cars. Examples of existing access types are:

• Officially designated bike amenities (routes, lanes, paths)

• Roadways with very wide shoulders

• Un-striped local roadways with low auto traffic and good connectivity,

• Roadways with diversions that do not allow through access to autos but allow through access to pedestrians and cyclists

• Walkways and other non-motorized connectors where cycling is not prohibited (in parks, corporate campuses, commercial developments, etc)

• Walkways and other non-motorized connectors where cycling is prohibited (where the connecting pathways are too appealing to ignore)

• Closed roadways

• Vacant areas with cow paths and cut-throughs

• Patio apartment complexes

• Equestrian areas

• Creekside footpaths

• Utility corridors

• Vacated rail corridors

• Seldom-used rail corridors

• Farm access roads

• Driveways behind gas stations and shopping centers

• Haunted areas

• Cement plants and junkyards

• Supermarket aisles

• Active construction zones*

• Aerospace defense contractor and military secure zones*

• Airport runways and radioactive areas*

• Underground caves with inextinguishable year-round fires*

By linking routes through the above geographic typologies (and more), a network of unofficial bike routes can be created.

While Bikeaboo routes tend to meander and connect seemingly random locations, our intent is to layer numerous routes into a network.  Bikeaboo is also developing superblock tiles which can be explored in detail and then later fit together to identify new routes. And social riding is part of it too.

Cataloging the ~500 square miles of the contiguous urbanized greater Sacramento area will take some time, and will be out-of-date well before it is complete.  But, if Bikeaboo were to become popular (it is not), then numerous cells could intensify Bikeaboo’s impact. 

*These areas are still in many cases safer than riding a bike on Greenback Lane.