Let’s get a couple of things straight:

Our cities have no money More and more people are becoming interested in bicycling Our cities don’t do a very good job of accommodating people interested in bicycling

#2 is a great thing. More people bicycling means more people are saving money on transportation costs while simultaneously improving their health and making you and me safer on our bikes too. It’s a win-win-win situation.

#1 and #3 are what a life coach would call opportunities. The good news is that there is no shortage of low cost ways to make substantive improvements to your city’s bike network. The bad news is that we have yet to invent a bike network that builds itself: there is work to be done.

I have found that most cities I work in are eager to improve their bicycling infrastructure. This is universal--small towns, large cities, rural areas, sunbelt boomburbs, rust belt neighborhoods--they all want to make bicycling easier, safer, and more comfortable for citizens and visitors. Despite the interest, real improvements are often stymied by the immutable truth that constraints are fundamentally political in nature, not financial. To make an extreme example, you could turn your entire city into a bicycling paradise overnight with no capital expenditures by simply banning all automobiles.

This is especially important when we remember that bicycle networks are a weak link problem: It only takes one bad intersection to ruin an otherwise excellent route. A bike network is only useful when it provides a continuous, low stress connection to places people want to go. Unfortunately, problem areas also tend to be the most prone to inertia and so represent the greatest challenge for those looking to make a change.

I write all of this to emphasize that despite the relatively low cost, progress on creating a culture of comfortable bicycling for all types of people in your city will not occur without strong advocates. So consider yourself enlisted in the cause. I will now arm you with your most powerful weapon: information. What follows are some ideas for making bicycling safer, more comfortable, and more attainable. Examples can be found in communities of all types. While there are certainly higher-cost solutions to the problem, I’ve intentionally emphasized relatively low-cost strategies.