Fast lane. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)“How much does a tank of gas cost these days?” a friend from San Francisco asked recently.
She actually didn’t know. She rides a bicycle and does not have a car — or even a driver’s license.
She’s rare, and her stories from the road, like those of many bicyclists, are full of harrowing close-calls and hard-earned insights into the best — and safest — routes
The American here-to-there infrastructure, after all — from the miles of highways crisscrossing the country to city streets and urban transit systems — is designed to facilitate forms of mobility that burn fuel or, at the very least, draw power from the grid.
Considerably less thought has been devoted to easing the way for the self-powered — those who prefer to walk to a neighboring town, say, or ride a bicycle to the market, or canoe to work.
Yes, canoe.
Seems the Swiss have thought of canoers, just as they have hikers and inline skaters. In 2004, the Swiss Mobility Foundation,
a union of nonmotorized transport enthusiasts, began conceiving a nationwide network of interlinked and, perhaps most important, well-marked routes for those who preferred muscle power to motor power. The completed
project was unveiled earlier this year with a ribbon-cutting of sorts in the town of Murten.
From the National Geographic Intelligent Travel blog:
[T]hese charming folks have created a linked network for hikers (3,914 miles/6,300 km), touring cyclists (5,281 miles/8,500 km), mountain bikers (2,050 miles/3,300 km), inline skaters (683.5 miles/1,100 km) and canoeists (115 miles/250 km), all marked across the independent 26 cantons of Switzerland. The system of trails will use over 100,000 standardized signposts with different markings for national, regional and local routes, for all the various forms of human-powered mobility. Some 18,000 public transport routes connect with the network.
Sure, the feat is perhaps easier to pull off in a country slightly less than twice the size of New Jersey, but it does help put the country at the top of Yale University’s 2008 Environmental Performance Index. The United States, meanwhile, ranks 39th.
And because most public transportation in Switzerland is electric, it is actually possible to travel the country without using a drop of gasoline.
Whether elevated energy prices in the United States will lead to similar efforts is an open question, but there has been a small resurgence in short-trip bicycling, according to the League of American Bicyclists. For those looking for Swiss-like guidance on their own state’s nonmotorized transportation systems, the league offers a ranking system on its Web site.
Washington tops the list; West Virginia pulls up the rear.
Comments are no longer being accepted.