Saving American Roads... Again.

I saw a short, interesting article on Autoblog Green about how bicycles built American roads:

In the late 1800s, a business man by the name of Albert Pope had noticed the growing popularity of bicycles and started up his own manufacturing company. In order to make his product more appealing to those who lived outside of well-manicured city streets, Pope began a crusade that would shape the face of transportation in America. He started a magazine with the sole purpose of bringing road quality to the public eye, donated vast sums of money to MIT to start a new road engineering program and eventually succeeded in convincing congress to found the Office of Road Inquiry – what would eventually become the Federal Highway Administration.

Many might not recognize Mr. Pope's name, but you may know about his company, Columbia bicycles. 
Columbia is largely responsible for building the popularity of the current "safety bicycle" design (bikes with two wheels the same size with inflatable tires) here in the U.S.  Pope was a big advocate of having road access for bicycles (largely because he wanted to sell the bicycles) between 1876 and 1900 when horses still ruled the road:

Pope fought laws banning bikers from streets and parks, spending $8,000 alone to gain access to Manhattan’s young Central Park. As a riding culture emerged, Pope financed the publication of touring guides that fed the growing urge for suburban retreat. Soon city slickers shed crowded streets for weekends in the wilderness. Courtship habits changed, and fashion soon followed: Ladies donned bloomers to keep from getting their gowns tangled in bike chains, causing a stir by exposing a then-scandalous bit of leg.

As Todd Scott has pointed out on m-bike.org last summer, Detroit enjoys a part in bicycling history as well, thanks to development of the first mile of concrete road (Woodward Ave.) in June, 1909.

[Edward] Hines, former chief consul for the League of American Wheelmen Michigan Division was a Wayne County road commissioner (along with Cass Benton and Henry Ford.) He helped oversee this project. Back in 1893, he helped create legislation that enabled county road commissions....
It’s highly ironic that some motorists question cyclists rights to the roads when we were there first and literally paving the way for improved motoring.

At the turn of last century, we had wheelmen (bicyclists) trying to create viable roads which were co-opted by motorists.  Now we've got wheelmen in the form of the League of American Bicyclists with other groups, attempting to "save" American roads again, by making our streets more livable.

The streets of our cities and towns are an important part of the livability of our communities. They ought to be for everyone, whether young or old, motorist or bicyclist, walker or wheelchair user, bus rider or shopkeeper. But too many of our streets are designed only for speeding cars, or worse, creeping traffic jams.

While some drivers might not immediately see how this will "save" our roads, the goals of the coalition is to make our streets more useful for everyone.  Motorists' commutes will be more tolerable thanks to reduced traffic, and life in our communities will be more pleasurable because there will be more options other than just hopping in the car.  Bikes to the rescue again, I say.