This Big City offers a rumination on whether bike infrastructure (lanes, sharing programs, bike parking, bike sidewalks, etc) needs to proceed demand. The idea is that bicycling will solve most of our ills (health, pollution, transit, equity, civic engagement), and if you (the city, the planners, the urban illuminati) make it easy, people will do it, and we will be happy. I'm susceptible to this argument. But it does seem to flout an equally compelling trend toward an "ask first, plan later" strategy, which is so radical because it's based on the idea that people on the whole are not stupid, and if you (the organizer, the NGO, the planner) just ask people (all the people, not just the ones who show up to meetings) what they need, they will tell you, and if you listen, group needs can be met.

In Jersey City, we have had clamoring for bike infrastructure from the 600 or so people who have signed up for the Ward Tours and indicated they like biking around town. But only a few core people (around ten beleagured bike superheros) have given up evenings of "Jersey Shore" or putting their kids to bed or organizing their shoe racks or sleep itself in order to work (unpaid) on building bike relationships around town that result in things like more racks and (eventually) lanes. To buck the "build it for you and you will like it" planning paradigm and head towards the "collective upsurge in communal feeling for bike lanes that just overwhelms city council," everyone needs to donate a terribly scarce commodity, that is, time. It's tough. Suggestions (and time) welcome.