There is local and national evidence of more bicyclists and bicycling lately.
Anecdotally, the three bicycle racks where I work have been full most days this summer, and the greasy old perennial bicycle commuters at the DEP seem impressed with the number of commuting riders this year. I bet there are plenty of other workplaces where the old dogs have noticed an increase in commuters.
We also have circumstantial citywide evidence of more bicycling lately. The inaugural Discover Hartford Bicycle Tour was a smashing success last fall, and there has been a push to get more bicycle racks on city buses.
Word of similar events and trends are wafting out of other cities across the country, but it's good every once in a while to get corroboration from a mainstream source like The Economist. Not surprisingly, this is a concise high-level summary of the current surge in bicycling as transportation in the US. The crux of the article is a few anecdotes about motorist-bicyclist altercations and a relay of statements from bicycling advocates saying "cycling deaths are sharply up" to assert that automobile vs. bicycle conflicts are a problem. Their solution? Better manners from drivers and cyclists.
Is the recent increase in incidents of bad manners and cycling deaths proportional to the recent increase in bicycling, or are motorists and bicyclists getting angrier?
As I've said before, bicyclists must accept the responsibility that comes with power reclamation on the roads. At the same time, I wonder how big this problem actually is, and is it really a problem of manners? I think The Economist falls short of their usual level of insight by offering a solution of minding manners. Better manners could improve a lot of problems, not just bicycle-automobile conflict. This is a political and economic problem with political and economic solutions, no different from other topics tackled by one of my favorite publications.
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