The main reason why biking is so popular in Amsterdam is mostly because it's flat and secondly all the other things like cars being second-class citizens...
Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#52I'm totally confident that we could replicate Amsterdam in any US city if we wanted to. But before we get there, I need an article about what to do about the fact that so many of my fellow Denver Coloradans hate : bike lanes, buses, trains, places to live, sidewalks, wind turbines, solar panels (but also normal road maintenance and traffic). It's like there is a conscious effort to create more smog and traffic jams.…
> I'm totally confident that we could replicate Amsterdam in any US city if we wanted to.
Of course. Amsterdam and other cycling friendly cities didn't start out that way. They had to be redesigned as such.
You can find plenty of historical photos of a car dominant Amsterdam.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-...
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#53I'm totally confident that we could replicate Amsterdam in any US city if we wanted to. But before we get there, I need an article about what to do about the fact that so many of my fellow Denver Coloradans hate : bike lanes, buses, trains, places to live, sidewalks, wind turbines, solar panels (but also normal road maintenance and traffic). It's like there is a conscious effort to create more smog and traffic jams.…
It's not a "social disorder," it's a bootstrapping problem caused by American cities being very different in nature that European cities. Look at Amsterdam: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Amsterdam/52.3683298,4.89550.... It's a little bundle of urbanization about 4-5 miles in radius, surrounded by farms.
Compare Washington, D.C., which is a smaller city: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Washington,+DC/@38.914686,.... The urban core is smaller, more like 2-3 miles in radius, but it's part of a large metro area with urban clusters connected by highways. The total population of the metro area is substantially more than double that of Amsterdam's.
If you work in Amsterdam, you probably live in Amsterdam. If you work in D.C., there is a good chance you're commuting in from some suburb. After spending more than an hour in traffic to get to the city, how do you feel about bikers whizzing around in a city with no separated bike lanes? How do you feel about losing traffic lanes to bikes in an already gridlocked city? How do you feel about spending billions on a train (much more than Europeans do on a per mile/per ride basis) that doesn't stop anywhere near your house, or run on time?
I don't think it's possible to redesign a city. It's like trying to rewrite software while its still running. Yeah, it's possible to do hot patches here and there, but you're not rewriting the guts.
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#54I ride my bicycle in Boston year-round, and I found Amsterdam to be pretty stressful to bicycle in. Very crowded streets and very confusing traffic. I'm sure it was much less dangerous than Boston, but I never really adjusted to the pell mell chaos in Amsterdam. Maybe I just wasn't there long enough.
You get used to it. It's a different set of skills, and your reaction times also improve over time. Hand signals help too. Although I still avoid the very center, with all the oblivious tourists walking on bicycle lanes...
Maybe that was it; I was one of those oblivious tourists, except trying to ride a bicycle in bicycle lanes full of other oblivious tourists. :)
I had a fabulous ride out of the city to Monnickendam. That more than the city itself was amazing cycle infrastructure to me.
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Call me cynical, but: Anything that threatens the current way of life, the current status quo, or is representative of a school of thought that clashes with the aforementioned can cause cognitive dissonance. Simple as that. Many people don't really believe that driving is wrong, or harmful. But supporting radical infrastructure changes to accommodate an alternative means admitting to that to a further extent that mos…
Nothing wrong with driving. Just drive appropriately. Car sharing. Taxi / Uber. Hybrids. Electric cars. Self driving cars. The freedom to transport yourself is a powerful force for good, and socialized public transport and bikes are not a real solution in many / most places. (am a biker, love biking, only commute by bike to work 3 months of the year)
Driving with shared cars, Uber, hybrids, evs, and self-driving cars doesn't fix the one and ultimate problem with cars in cities: space. A person walking needs maybe 0.5m². Self-driving electric Uber still needs ~50-60 m² of space per vehicle in moving traffic. Plus parking. And if we allocate enough space for people to drive in the first place they can only drive to places. The distances grow too long for biking and walking.
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#56I ride my bicycle in Boston year-round, and I found Amsterdam to be pretty stressful to bicycle in. Very crowded streets and very confusing traffic. I'm sure it was much less dangerous than Boston, but I never really adjusted to the pell mell chaos in Amsterdam. Maybe I just wasn't there long enough.
You get used to it. It's a different set of skills, and your reaction times also improve over time. Hand signals help too. Although I still avoid the very center, with all the oblivious tourists walking on bicycle lanes...
I have been that tourist. It takes a few to adjust to the heavy bicycle traffic while walking around there because it challenges the "who-goes-first" hierarchy.
The states: Cars go first, and watch out. Norway (Trondheim): Pretty much walk where you will, others will stop. Amsterdam: Bicycles go first, and the others wait.
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#57tl;dr Bicycles are first class vehicles in Amsterdam, public transit coming in second, cars last.
This will never work in America because Americans are completely obsessed with three things: 1) Living in suburbs, 2) Owning cars, and 3) Not paying for realistic public transportation.
If Americans had to pay for realistic public transportation, it would be harder to afford a car, and they might not be able to live as far from their jobs as they often do now. It's not exactly a chicken-and-egg problem as much as an eat-my-cake-and-have-it-too problem.
If you live in the county seat of Hunterdon County, New Jersey, you're about 50 minutes drive to Trenton, 1hr to Newark, 1.2hrs to Philadelphia. There is no real public transit to get to a bigger city (one that might have jobs). There are, however, "shuffle routes", basically small shuttles that run four or five times a day inside the county, from which you can take more shuffle routes and eventually buses and trains to get to a major city. But this is more an exception than the rule: to get into and out of Hunterdon County, you must use private transit companies like greyhound and trans-bridge.
Large swaths of the country are like this, and it directly affects cities because people are coming to work in the cities in cars, or via trains and buses after they drive to them. Bikes are not really even remotely an option.
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you are traveling so fast that you cannot stop at the limits of your vision ... I could stop just fine, I'm worried about the idiots behind me. Taking the moral highground doesn't help if you end up dead in the end. There's a ton of motorhomes, boats and equipment trailers on these roads. Even at 35mph they may not be able to stop in time when they are towing ~15-20k GVW. There's a large difference between being…
So those roads would require lower speed limits?
Most of these kinds of roads do have low speed limits (especially around "blind" corners). The problem is, drivers feel confident traveling at speeds higher than the posted speed limit. Roads need to be designed better so that the speed limits more closely match speeds a normal human would feel comfortable driving. Narrowing lanes is one trick for accomplish this.
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#59I'm totally confident that we could replicate Amsterdam in any US city if we wanted to. But before we get there, I need an article about what to do about the fact that so many of my fellow Denver Coloradans hate : bike lanes, buses, trains, places to live, sidewalks, wind turbines, solar panels (but also normal road maintenance and traffic). It's like there is a conscious effort to create more smog and traffic jams.…
> I'm totally confident that we could replicate Amsterdam in any US city if we wanted to. Of course. Amsterdam and other cycling friendly cities didn't start out that way. They had to be redesigned as such. You can find plenty of historical photos of a car dominant Amsterdam. https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-...
Amsterdam has the advantage that its history predates automobiles, and it has continually adapted, multiple times, to modernity.
Americans seem unwilling to do that for some reason ..
Its a pity because there are so many wonderful aspects of transportation process in the American world - I'm looking at the "Jet/Air Parks" that have managed to survive, for example. The Dutch may have their bicycle advantage, but nobody does flight like America does.
So its really somehow quaint that Americans appear to be enslaved to their cars. Personally I blame designers of car interiors - these gilded thrones appear to have inflicted a mass neurosis on the customer.
Re: Why Amsterdam Works So Well for Bikes
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Call me cynical, but: Anything that threatens the current way of life, the current status quo, or is representative of a school of thought that clashes with the aforementioned can cause cognitive dissonance. Simple as that. Many people don't really believe that driving is wrong, or harmful. But supporting radical infrastructure changes to accommodate an alternative means admitting to that to a further extent that mos…
Driving is neither wrong nor harmful. And if you want that bike acceptance, maybe talk about advantages without framing everyone else as "bad". If you do, you are guaranteed to create yet another pointless culture war instead of damm bike lane.
Driving is wrong and harmful because it advances global warming.