Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#151

Post by sandworm101 » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:08 PM UTC

lambda wrote: post #120

sandworm101 wrote: post #111

I do laugh at the image of society at large switching from cars to bikes. At the moment biking is dominated by young fit and generally healthy people. That may be silicon valley but it isn't the general population. I see lots of young parents going to work by bike, but do they take their kids to school on bikes? Does grandma get to the doctor on a tricycle? And what about the growing number of people who need to be b…

This is not about replacing cars with bikes, but making biking a viable alternative, such that it is actually possible to get from point A to point B by bike without taking a substantial risk of being killed by substantially faster car traffic. No one actually expects to replace all cars with bikes. But replacing 20% of them would substantially cut down on congestion and emissions; and avoiding further growth in auto…

> This is not about replacing cars with bikes, but making biking a viable alternative...

That isn't the rhetoric from bikers in my neighbourhood. They actively campaign for the dismantlement of motorvehicle-related infrastructure. Whether it is turning car lanes into bike lanes, reducing available parking in new constructions, or new road taxes, their avowed goal seems to be to make driving more painful.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#152

Post by mgraczyk » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:09 PM UTC

Not sure how they generated that stress-level map, but it seems to be an unreasonably simplistic approximation. For example, there is a dedicated bike path along the 101 from the region marked "North Bayshore" all the way past the top-left corner of the map. That entire stretch is less stressful than any place south of El Camino. By extension, most of northern Palo Alto should be dark green instead of yellow and pale green. There's also a dedicated bike trail from very close to the San Antonio Caltrain station all the way to Google, but that path is not evident from the map.

I'm mainly saying that the situation is actually much better than depicted for most of Palo Alto. By contrast, the situation is worse than depicted everywhere south of El Camino except very close to bike crossings.

I'm speaking from personal experience here. I've biked from Crescent Park to Google every day for over a year. I also don't own a car and bike throughout Palo Alto most weekends with no stress.

EDIT: There is a second stress map in the full plan (Figure 5) that shows "average" stress as opposed to "total" stress and represents much more accurately, in my opinion and apparently the opinion of the plan's authors, the true stress associated with riding to Google from each point in the South Bay. In that map you can clearly see the positive effects of the trail to Palo Alto (green blob at top left) and the trail through central Mountain View (green blob center right), as well as the negative effect of El Camino and the 101 (red blobs across those roads).

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#153

Post by ptaipale » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

gangstead wrote: post #146

sliverstorm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many, many people: - do not have showers at work - do not have safe routes to ride - are not experienced cyclists - average more like 10mph The discussion is not "how do we get hardcore bike nuts to ride to work". That's not hard.

With the exception of showers and possibly safe routes these problems are addressed by experience. Cycling is not something it takes years to be an expert at or gain fitness in. Biking to work once or twice a week for a month and you'll no longer be going 10 mph and you know what to look for in a route and you'll notice more route options as you get a chance to explore. Experience can even over come the shower issue.…

> and you'll no longer be going 10 mph

If we go back to talk about Copenhagen, that's about the speed the bikes there ride: 16 km/h.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#154

Post by __d » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:16 PM UTC

stbtrax wrote: post #25

dogma1138 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The denser areas, especially the bay side belt are quite are quite bike friendly. Public transportation is a completely different question, bikes on buses do not work, some train services can be adopted with special carriages to carry bikes on board. The main issue isn't just roads its and entire infrastructure, e.g. giving bikes priority over motor vehicles like in some European countries which might not work well,…

Why do bikes on busses not work? They have this already, as well as bike storage on the regional trains. Do you have a citation for bike lanes digging into sidewalk? I've literally never heard of that, especially in the US where sidewalks are never near bike lanes and separated by a curb/parking/grass.

The usual way to carry bikes on a bus is on a shared horizontal rack at the front. The problem is when someone gets off, their bike is invariably at the back, and so they have to remove all the bikes stored later, get their bike off, and put all the others back on. This takes many minutes, which makes it infeasibly slow for commuters.

A better rack design (hanging vertically on the rear?) could solve this.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#155

Post by sandworm101 » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:16 PM UTC

jkyle wrote: post #142

superuser2 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but making biking a viable alternative I think the (well-founded) concern is that this expenditure of political capital means mass transit may not get the attention it deserves. Public transit can be ridden by anyone; bicycles are only useful to the able-bodied.

Bikes also alleviate congestion on public transit and roads.

That is situation-dependant. I have seen slow bikes cause backups on roads. I've also seen heavily-used bridge lanes turned into empty bike lanes. Even when fully used, the carrying capacity (people moved / time) of a bike lane can be far less than a lane dedicated to buses or even cars. (It depends on slope and traffic speed.)

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#156

Post by kaonashi » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:20 PM UTC

Thlom wrote: post #148

buro9 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, you're never going to get people who live 15 or 20 miles out biking the whole way to work That's what I do every day in London. Why wouldn't you? Myself and a lot of my friends choose our housing approx' 45 minutes to an hour away from the centre of London just to ensure we've got a good ride every day. At a commuter average of 16mph, and an experienced cyclist average of 18/19mph means that 15 to 20 miles is…

Most people don't want their daily commute to be a workout.

They'd rather be stuck in traffic feeling dead inside.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#157

Post by peatmoss » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:20 PM UTC

mgraczyk wrote: post #152

Not sure how they generated that stress-level map, but it seems to be an unreasonably simplistic approximation. For example, there is a dedicated bike path along the 101 from the region marked "North Bayshore" all the way past the top-left corner of the map. That entire stretch is less stressful than any place south of El Camino. By extension, most of northern Palo Alto should be dark green instead of yellow and pale…

As a planner and a person with a quantitative orientation, I think you've just illustrated some of the wickedness of many problems in planning. You've talked about stress, which will be dependent on the user--one user's stress is another user's expedient route. Then there's the hyper-local urban form characteristics that you allude to.

That isn't to say we shouldn't apply quantitative analysis to such problems. It just should illustrate how easy it can be to oversimply problems involving highly stochastic human behavior and preferences. And, since there is no complete theory of Urban planning, we should be prepared to exist in an uncomfortable state where neither the ends or means are universally agreed on.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#158

Post by ultimoo » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:21 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #71

mc32 wrote: post #64

To my mind, one of the main issues, in addition to protected bike lanes is the spread. Bike friendly cities are more compact. Commuting to work via bike is not a strenuous fifteen mile commute one way. They tend to be leisurely few mile rides. Now, not to say it's not possible, but a one to five mile bike ride is not the same as a ten to fifteen or more miles bike ride. Now, I do like Copenhagen's above ground bike r…

Sure, you're never going to get people who live 15 or 20 miles out biking the whole way to work, but there's lots of people who live You also have to keep in mind biking as a first-mile/last-mile complement to rail transit. If there's good bike paths to get to a transit station, that effectively extends the usable radius of the station. Already, lots of people bike to Caltrain and then bike from their stop to work (I…

The only problem to this otherwise ideal solution is how bursting at the seams the Caltrain is. No parking at the stations, no room to sit for the passengers, and no room for the bikes in the bike car. We really need a better rail system on the peninsula.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#159

Post by npsimons » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:21 PM UTC

When I did my on-site interview with Google in Mountain View, it was very obvious to me I would almost certainly be car commuting every day, for (at least) two reasons:

1) Cost of houses close to Google was ridiculous.

2) The city is very car centric.

Fixing the second may be possible, but the first seems like a more insurmountable (and more important) problem. Where I currently live, I can bike commute to and from work on a daily basis because I can afford to live four miles away, and it only takes 18-20 minutes. It's one of the reasons I still live where I do, and I haven't accepted further interview offers from Google.

Also relevant: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#160

Post by rwhitman » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 10:22 PM UTC

Retrofitting American suburban sprawl to be less car-centric is going to be one of the enduring puzzles of the 21st century.

The suburban model of planning championed in the 50's onwards became so deeply embedded in development projects and just the entire culture of small city planning across the country that a huge chunk of Americans are completely unaware that a less car-centric lifestyle is even possible, let alone desirable.

We're only starting to scratch the surface of understanding how much friggin work it's going to take teasing out the messes that were made by lazy cookie cutter civic planning. And it certainly doesn't help that local governments, planners and many many ordinary car-dependent citizens continue to fight tooth-and-nail to uphold the status quo in this regard.

It's great that Google is at least attempting to transform Silicon Valley, at least a little bit. I just wish that the hundreds of other communities around the country that don't have a progressive mega company in their neighborhood can get a little nudge from this type of work someday...