Firstly, cities with a lot of bikes already exist or have existed(Copenhagen, Netherlands, China 30 years ago), but I assume you guys mean on a scale hithero never attempted.
I think a city built around bikes would be slightly more spread out than one with only pedestrians and transit but not as spread out as a city built around cars.
Bikes would need parking, while not as much as cars buildings would still have plazas with bike racks in front. For very large bike storage areas the preference would be structures with attendants who take your bike rather than multilevel garages.
Street lighting needs would be different. Surprise obstacles at a distant aren't a problem as a bike is slow and can stop quicker than a car, but objects on the surface of the pathway could cause a rider to fall. In some places it might be more cost effective to mix area lighting on poles with lamps on short posts that just light the path.
Bikes don't like to make full stops, so very busy intersections would have roundabouts?
Maybe a change in the way roads are paved. A thin layer of asphalt resurfaced now and again would be better than concrete slabs that would become uneven and create a crash risk. More common street sweeping since broken glass or trash is an injury risk to a person on a bike.
The cost of bridges and tunnels and over/underpasses would be a lot lower for bike trails than for roads - and coupled with the desire for level and shorter pathways they would be more common. Sharper curves on a bike trail are okay too. A civil engineer wouldn't do so much grading for a new road to get around a fold in the terrain so much as he or she would put up a steel or even wooden raised bridge for several hundred meters over a creek bed to get around the obstacle.
The pathway might be relatively flat and buildings would be built on foundations at varying elevations, with split level bike garages underneath.
Funicular railways and public elevators would be very common in cities with hills. So might tow cables or some other sort of bike lift apparatus for shorter hauls.
Ferries would be more common since some bridges can be very long and also too steep for bikes(and the channel is too busy for a moveable span). A cable car system would work just as well.
Really busy bike routes might necessitate the invention of roadway lane markings and a system of traffic codes as well as things like turn signals. Sure, a big crowd on bikes could just dismount and walk around one another, but it would be more efficient if cyclists signalled before changing lanes and nobody had to stop and could roll through a roundabout by yielding to one another.
While bikes versus bikes in an accident is typically unlikely to cause serious injury, speed control would still matter if downhill gravity let you exceed 20 mph or so and ran into someone else. Speedometers, and maybe a powerless magnetic braking system to govern speed would be imposed?
If everyone rode bikes, the typical consumer bike might evolve. Airless tires and plastic rims instead of pneumatic tires and spokes on every bike sold, flywheels, standardized chain assemblies, etc. Also it wouldn't be unmasculine to ride a tricycle that could carry cargo. Maybe pedal powered vehicles that have covers for the rain.
If everyone rode a bike, it wouldn't just be an activity for do-gooders with a lot of civic responsibility and a lot of tolerance for inconvenience. That's a good thing, it would lead to innovations to make riding a bike less clunky for the average person.
Last edited by llamaorama; Feb 17, 2018 at 11:06 PM.
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