Quite by accident, I stumbled upon an interesting blog post from a few years back, by a blogger who at the time lived in Orlando and was an active bicycling advocate. He was/is an an acquaintance through my sister-in-law, who knew him back from ca. 2007 or so. We may have even met once or twice, but he wouldn't know who I am. Anyway, I digress.
I was going through his blog, and stumbled on this, which is a fascinating comparison of what I'm looking at right now:
It's a great blog, and definitely worth reading this. Orlando is missing voices like this, as the zenith of interest in alternate modes of transportation is in the rear view window.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this 'No Excuse Zone' map, and decided to overlay this with the Bicycle World map study:
The red ring is mine, a 5 mile radius. The yellow ring is his, a 6 mile radius. I'd be curious to know why 6, but I digress. You can see dashed black contours that ring 3/4ths of downtown Orlando, they are roughly concentric, and each represents an amount of time to reach Lake Eola, or the city center. The innermost is 10 minutes, the next 20, and the final 30. Bear in mind that this is under the current paradigm of sharing the road with cars, obeying traffic lights and signs, and possibly choosing less challenging or busy routes into the center. I assume that the location of the contours is somewhat interpolated, but I think it's fairly accurate as things stand today, even though this was done a few years ago. I also think this is at a reasonable speed, maybe an average of 15mph or less, very achievable by most people on a bicycle.
So I traced those shapes onto the Bicycle World Ring:
At first glance, it makes me think that the 5 mile radius may actually be a good place to start. My thinking when establishing that distance was that in the proposed new scheme, where all intersections receive all-way yield signs, no stop lights or signs necessary, a bicycle would reach the city center in roughly the same time it would take a motorized vehicle under normal traffic conditions with lights. If bicycles could take the most direct route with no stops, only yields, the 20 minute line would be much closer to where the 30 minute line is now, and this at an average of 15 mph.
Also, by coincidence, the traditional zone for travel in the Netherlands for bicycles is 7.5km, as a benchmark. This equates to 4.66 miles, so again, pretty close. What's a third of a mile between friends :) Also, the average speed on a bicycle in the Netherlands is 12kph, or about 7.5mph. Even the most novice riders and young children can easily achieve those kinds of speeds.
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