It might work in NY, worked well for me in central London, but I'd like to see how the people will prefer that in cities that are built on the hills, like San Francisco or Seattle.
When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
241–250 of 294 posts
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a longtime NYer who recently moved to SF. for the past 10 years I've commuted by running each way, ~3-5 miles each way. plenty of experience with bikes and cars in urban areas. Biking on the sidewalk is WAY more common in SF than in NYC, especially in manhattan. In SF, there seems to be a few main reasons: 1 - Biking on the street would clearly be unsafe. An example here is 3rd st between portrero and soma. 2 - B…
> I'm a longtime NYer who recently moved to SF. on HN is there seriously only two places to live in the US?
I don't know about HN, but, I moved to NYC after college because I'm a jazz musician, and NYC is that jazz capital of the world. I've also always worked a day job as a software engineer.
moved to SF last year for work.
Both NYC and SF have a relatively high concentration of tech folks, which is probably a lot of the HN readership.
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can get to most of Manhattan under 125th st and almost all of northwest Brooklyn without leaving a bike lane: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bikemaps.shtml Even in my neighborhood in Queens I can get into Manhattan with only a 3 block stretch outside of a bike lane. Obviously there is going to be more traffic than Stockholm, we have almost 8 million more residents. There is a already a large effort t…
A bike lane is just paint on a road. Biking in Manhattan is still perilous, because cars and people routinely occupy the parts of the road with that green paint on it. A bike lane is an improvement , I guess, but it's the minimum a city claiming to care about cycling infrastructure can do.
That's not necessarily true either, many of the new bike lanes being put in are protected lanes. That still runs in to the issue of pedestrians but they're a problem for car traffic in Manhattan too. Take this stretch of 7th avenue where they are removing a whole lane of car traffic to add in a new protected bike lane: https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170925/chelsea/seventh-av...
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can definitely kill someone with a bicycle. And a punch. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gay-basher-ge... http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/10/stanley-park-pedestrian-d... This is just recent local news from my neck of the woods, off the top of my head.
Just because you can do it, doesn't mean it has anywhere the same likelihood of happening. Not even sure what argument you're trying to make. This is why concealed guns are banned in most states and fists aren't.
You're likely confusing the (intuitively low) probability of someone being hit by a cyclist with the conditional probability of someone sustaining a serious injury or being killed given they've been hit by a cyclist.
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a longtime NYer who recently moved to SF. for the past 10 years I've commuted by running each way, ~3-5 miles each way. plenty of experience with bikes and cars in urban areas. Biking on the sidewalk is WAY more common in SF than in NYC, especially in manhattan. In SF, there seems to be a few main reasons: 1 - Biking on the street would clearly be unsafe. An example here is 3rd st between portrero and soma. 2 - B…
I'm curious to hear more about your commute. I live ~3 miles from work, and would love to run there, but there isn't a good way for me to store my towel, a change of clothing, etc at work, and it doesn't seem feasible to carry all of this in a backpack. We do have showers, but they don't have overnight storage.
Sure. The basic answer is that I use a good running backpack and it's easy for me to carry all that stuff. When I first started, I was sparring (boxing) in the morning before work, so I used a eagle creek overnight hiking pack. it was bulky but not too bad for a 3 mile run.
Once I stopped sparring in the morning, I switched to a Black Diamond Dart. Easy to run with, and ample room for all the stuff you mentioned.
I now use a super light pack, and only pack my lunch, pants/shirt/socks/underwear. I live in SF, and generally don't shower unless I get really sweaty. Some people find this gross in theory but I don't, people in NYC get sweaty as hell walking from the subway to work in the summer in their regular clothes, so I've never really seen the difference.
Two big things I do come to mind: I never take my laptop to/from work everyday. I also keep dress shoes at work under my desk.
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately Seattle is also not an especially flat city. It makes it hard to get started.
If it helps as motivation, it is quite common to cycle on Swiss cities, and the Alps aren't properly flat. A light bike with a good set of gears helps a lot.
Novice American cyclist here: what makes a set of gears "good" for usage in Swiss cities?
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I'm riding toward a stop sign at a clearly deserted intersection, I would very much like to roll through at 10~15 MPH without risking a ticket Surely that should apply for cars then int his case. If the intersection is clearly deserted, cars should be able to clear the junction too.
It should, and in most places it essentially does... as they don't have the American obsession with stop signs, and will indeed mark the sort of low-traffic residential intersection with....nothing at all most of the time.
No, it shouldn't. If the junction is marked as a stop, all users should stop. If you have a low traffic junction like that, then the stop sign Shouldn't be there. But that's a different argument to allowing vehicles/bikes to blow a stop sign.
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I'm riding toward a stop sign at a clearly deserted intersection, I would very much like to roll through at 10~15 MPH without risking a ticket Surely that should apply for cars then int his case. If the intersection is clearly deserted, cars should be able to clear the junction too.
Cars aren't reliant on the driver's own power to get going again after an intersection and don't tend to fall over sideways if stopped.
If you can't stop your bike without falling over, you have no business cycling on roads.
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#249Not much love for biking here; You'd almost think that most of the people on Hacker News are from Californian suburbs... Seriously though, biking in cities is great. It's one of those critical mass problems where the more people that do it the better the infrastructure gets, the more aware drivers become and there is a herd mentality where bikers tend to flow together making them more predictable and therefore safer…
What I have found is there is a tiny minority of people who _hate_ bikers. They tend to pop up and make wild claims about how dangerous bikers are, or how much they dislike how bikers use the streets since streets are for cars, and bikes are for children. What I have found in actually talking to people is most people support and encourage bikes, and would love to bike, but don't feel safe. Bikes make everything about…
> most bikers observe the traffic laws
Why the fixation with traffic laws whenever bikes come up?
I bike to work and I don't follow the rules, I run reds, blow stop signs, ride on the sidewalks and so on.
However, I am courteous and polite to everyone. My goal is to not startle or inconvenience any other user of the road (or sidewalk).
Why should I stop at stop signs like a boyscout? That's just false piety.
The rules don't keep us safe, because the rules weren't designed in a perfect world.
What would help is if everyone just paid attention-texting while driving creates a huge hazard.
Re: When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cycle myself and also enjoy the pedestrian life. Some bikers in the city are irresponsible and ignore traffic laws. The same treatment given to cyclists by some drivers is meted out to pedestrians by some cyclists. Something to do, no doubt, with that pesky issue of power imbalance. In terms of risk assessment as a pedestrian in NYC, I always watch out for (1) MTA bus drivers, (2) any sort of livery, and (3) people…
Uber drivers are working their way up the list for me
"Any sort of livery" would include Uber drivers too, right?