Last week, I shared a video of the recent Critical Mass ride in Budapest which drew an amazing 35,000 riders, and I threw out the idea that that number of cyclists was approximately equal to the number Austin’s supposed to be at on a daily basis in 2020 under the Master Bike Plan. (Actually, the number at 5% was more like 38,000 assuming no population growth.)

Reader comments pointed out that the film was somewhat of hyperbole as the streets were full for a specific ride on a specific day, and if you spread all those cyclist out over a city, the streets wouldn’t look so crowded with bikes. I’ve argued that while this was an organized ride getting to 5% will not happen with 5% of the population uniformly choosing to bike. Instead, we’ll start to see a tipping point in the highly bikeable areas reaching 10-15% while the ‘burbs see modest increases of less than a percent to 1-2%. This will yield a citywide average of 5%. Indeed according to city staff, our current 2% is achieved from an estimated 5% in the urban core. So achieving a citywide 5% will look more like a citywide 76,000- 114,000 on the central city streets. Wow.

So what does that look like when it’s just a regular day in Austin? Take a look at this amazing video from Utrecht in the Netherlands where an estimated 60% of a population of 300,000 bike to work every day.

Insane Rush Hour In Netherlands

Now imagine 6th and Congress, MLK and Guadalupe, Burnet and Anderson, and South 1st and Oltorf looking like this every day. We’ve got some serious work to do to change our streets and make this a reality.

The Political Pedal is today at 4:45 PM at City Hall. It is a chance to ride with our elected officials and talk about the needs of the cycling community. I encourage everyone to show up and demand this city not let up on building the proper infrastructure until what occurs in this video is the everyday occurrence in Austin’s urban core. Recently, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made the policy change to return the balance of the streets from cars back to people. It’s time our city got serious about this and made these changes a reality.