Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bicycles are inherently more space-efficient than cars— the space-inefficiency of which is the root cause of urban automobile congestion: http://urbanist.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83454714d69e2017d3c37d8a... As cycling becomes more popular, the larger cycling constituency will be able to demand more road space— but congestion will much less of a problem, because it simply requires less space to move a large number of peopl…
We have learned from freeway expansion projects that constant-factor improvements in capacity induce growth in utilization until we return to an equilibrium level of congestion. We're in the early stages of this process for bicycles, so the pain is low for now, as it was when early adopters had the brand-new interstate highways all to themselves. As it was, more recently, when hybrids were allowed in the Bay Bridge f…
But Tokyo's 38M-citizen megaregion of train stations accessed by pedestrians and cyclists[0] is probably the best-scaled megaregion yet to exist.
[0]See this random suburban station in Tokyo full of parked bicycles: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7324121,139.4176845,3a,73.1y...