Bike plan redux: innovation

A few more thoughts on the bike plan occurred to me on the way home tonight (while riding my bike no less!).

One is that a City-wide bike program has to link with COTA. The COTA Bike 'n Bus program is a great way to facilitate adoption of biking. Bike 'n Bus provides infrastructure where either none exists or is perceived by novices as too daunting. This connection can be leveraged by building and promoting bikeways to Park & Rides.

But perhaps the best way to build on Bike 'n Bus is to integrate online route-finding maps that link bikeways with bus routes. Commuters may find that a one mile ride on either end of the bus ride is a low threshold activity and try it out. And as mentioned in my previous post, these maps should be interactive, allowing users to annotate it with their knowledge of the route. This information can lead to improvements or rerouting.

Innovation Diffusion

I keep using the word "adoption." I use this because I think we should view cycling and cycling infrastructure, not merely an amenities, but as conditions and components of public goods. I listed the goods in my previous post: public health, reduced carbon footprint, reduced car-ownership burden on moderate to low income families, and youth engagement.

When considered as a public good, our public policy should be geared toward promoting adoption of behaviors that result in social goods. This leads to strategic programming and resources to targeted communities.

For instance, Alta estimates that .05% of Columbus commutes by bike. But 8% of Columbus does not commute by personal vehicle. How much of that 8% can adopt cycling? Likewise another unknown percentage of the public may be predisposed to this new behavior. They need to be able to confidently try cycling and recognize a measurable value from doing it.

There is some science behind innovation adoption, much of it by Everett Rogers whose book, Diffusion of Innovations, is a classic in social anthropology. He maps a complex of social and personal dynamics that serve to propagate or quell the innovation. Potential adopters go through a process of:

• gaining knowledge
  
• persuasion by peers
  
• a decision to adopt or reject the innovation
  
• implementation of the innovation
  
• confirmation that the adoption is valuable

When somewhere between 10% and 20% of a community adopts an innovation, it takes off. Over time, the adoption looks like the S-curve to the right: slow to start, rapid uptake, then leveling off.

Bringing cycling to the take-off threshold is very doable since cycling is a familiar behavior to all: at some time in our lives, almost all of us rode a bike. Among some immigrant, cycling as transportation may be very familiar. But it won't take off without knowledge, persuasion and immediate return on newly formed behavior.

Thinking this way about Columbus bikeways will help us to avoid merely going after what appears to be the easiest to build or fund. Instead we can think strategically about what factors will promote the most rapid adoption of a social good.

Arrogant or stupid?

Finally, too often bicycle education campaigns are assumed to be needed to educate motorists. As someone who commutes 18 miles a day on city streets I can tell you: motorists need to be educated. But for every step forward we make in the motorists mind some cyclist, out of either arrogance or stupidity, sets the acceptance of cycling back by flagrantly violating traffic rules. Education has to go both ways.

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