It is a must read — hopefully one of LA’s great bike bloggers will pick up on it. The article opened my eyes, although it states the obvious. (Some brief quotes below.) I will try to be even more sensitive to the women’s point of view whether hear it on the BAC (Ramona Marks) or from BAC speakers or I read it in a blog (e.g., Bike Girl LA, Green LA Girl, Enci’s post “A Woman’s Comfort on Our Streets” on this site).

I did not read that the Draft Bike Plan considered women in particular. It should.

Now some quotes from the Scientific American:

An emerging body of research suggests that a superior strategy to increase pedal pushing could be had by asking the perennial question: What do women want?

“Despite our hope that gender roles don’t exist, they still do,” says Jennifer Dill, a transportation and planning researcher at Portland State University. Addressing women’s concerns about safety and utility “will go a long way” toward increasing the number of people on two wheels, Dill explains.

So far few cities have taken on the challenge. In the U.S., most cycling facilities consist of on-street bike lanes, which require riding in vehicle-clogged traffic, notes John Pucher, a professor of urban planning at Rutgers University and longtime bike scholar. And when cities do install traffic-protected off-street bike paths, they are almost always along rivers and parks rather than along routes leading “to the supermarket, the school, the day care center,” Pucher says.

cause if its the former i don’t get it, the latter, i do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-caUzux4D4