Where I live now -- in Beachmere -- the asphalt roads are broad with generous two metre wide strips along each side for bike riding. People walk these strips too in preference to the contours on the footpaths next door. The foot or bike traffic along these pathways goes either way as they are broad enough to allow for two way traffic.
So Beachmere is a bike and scooter town. Every kid has a skate board or micro scooter or BMX bike and to or from primary school it is push wheel transit. The skatebowl is the juniors social hub.
Because of the significant number of retirees here another primary user of the bikeways are electric scooter users -- people who have conditions that inhibit their walking mobility.
So on an evening you'll see aged electric scooter owners taking their dogs for a walk, battery driven, just as early in the mornings the streets are occupied by the get fit cycling crowd.
Some women in their seventies who I know peddle their tricycles to the dog park each morning with their mutts on board.
That Beachmere is only 6 kilometres long is the main drawback and the two roads in are not cyclable -- unless you want to die: narrow, pot holed, with high car speeds allowed.
Within the town, these special conditions (and no cop shop) encourages cyclists not to wear helmets -- so a lot of us don't.
But the rich cycle culture of Beachmere -- a product only of the way the roads were built and the flat terrain-- suggests what could be possible if a more conscious program of cycle friendliness was engineered as a matter of course across the urban envionemnt.
Like in Copenhagen. This great video says it all:
