The Best Available Network
A map is a key to unlock the world around us. And as the world around us is imperfect, and there are no direct, human-sized pneumatic tubes from A-to-B, a map is the best representation of how to navigate imperfection.
On a recent call, one of the godfathers of American bike advocacy, coined this term to describe our work: identifying the “Best Available Network.”
In recent months, we’ve been working with a group of volunteers to create the Best Available Network in Lakewood to extend the Bike Streets map all the way to the mountains.
Lakewood is a complex, suburban city that often lacks a grid and has massive highways and arterial roads like US 6, Kipling, and Wadsworth that have few reasonable crossings. And yet, we’re finding that there are low-stress routes that can get you anywhere.
Best Available Networks have existed throughout history and created incredible new opportunities and possibilities. The shipping route around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America was a Best Available Network.
Then Magellan came along in 1520 and discovered a workaround through the fjords of modern day Chile that made it less hazardous to navigate.
As circuitous as these southern routes were, they were the Best Available Network because the coveted Northwest Passage – a sea route to the Pacific Ocean across the top of Canada – was plugged with pack ice.
The Panama Canal opened in 1914 and changed everything. And the climate change melting of the Arctic Ocean has further advanced the ease of global shipping as the Northwest Passage becomes increasingly navigable.
How on Earth is this relevant to biking in Denver? It demonstrates the evolution in our understanding of how people can get to the places they need to go.
It also shows the importance of a truly connected network. A maritime shipping route from the landlocked Great Salt Lake is not going to be viable because it’s not connected to anything. Yet bike networks in cities across America are disconnected archipelagos. Hence the importance of identifying the Best Available Network.
And lastly, it shows that sometimes routes are circuitous. Until infrastructure like the Panama Canal is built, we have to use workarounds. Here’s how Bike Streets avoids the Iowa staircase in our most recent video.
We’re walking in well-worn footsteps. Since the Silk Road meandered through the Afghan high plains rather than crossing mountain passes and since the Oregon Trail used South Pass to surmount the Rockies, rather than going up Clear Creek Canyon, people have been finding Best Available Networks to get places.
As new low-stress bike infrastructure comes online, we add it. But until that magical day at some indeterminate point in the future when a formal, complete, connected network exists in Denver, we can still find great ways to get to the places we want to go.