Very interesting and practical story outlining the three pillars of a successful program to encourage mode shift away from cars:
For me it is a bit of an eye opener that people are inhibited from cycling due to concern about it being considered ‘abnormal’ (clearly this doesn’t bother me!) - and that this can be mitigated.
Jackie and I were just talking about this today. Lots of adults don’t know how/when to change gears, for example. I wonder if we could organise/support efforts to teach adults basic stuff which would make it so much more likely for them to jump on a bike.
I’ve talked to a handful that fit into that category of not wanting to be abnormal. Some were even worried about becoming hated in society with the prevalence of anti-cycling hate speech and the general negative outlook on cycling by a very vocal minority of people. Changing that general fear is, in my opinion, a very important step to helping normalize cycling for the general public.
Oh, I haven’t heard people say they were afraid to cycle due to a fear of being targeted; that’s not nice at all!
My feeling is that there are a lot of people who rode as kids, or maybe ride a little recreationally (eg. on the harbour shared path), but who don’t commute due to various fears and obstacles. Lack of expertise seems to be one, but there are definitely a lot of people (eg. my German neighbours who always rode to commute in Germany) who think it’s just too dangerous. To be honest, they’re not entirely wrong 