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Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

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Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#61

Post by brute »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #46
sharpercoder wrote: post #4

I was in Valencia (Spain) a few weeks back. This city is one of the most ideal cities I have been to for cycling; flat, perfect climate, riverbed running right through the middle of the city, spacious roads and high density. One of the inhabitants told me they dedicated cycling lanes a year back or so. That was visible: They had painted bicycle lanes right over roads & pedestrian areas. I guess when the Valencian peo…

Having wide streets where you can set side space for bicycle lanes also helps. After WW2, Berlin was in ruins, and the city was never built up to the density of many other European cities. The Soviets, in particular, were particularly fond of wide, open spaces. (The earlier Prussian kings also liked wide avenues they could march their soldiers through.) Berlin is definitely a great city to bike in.

The major factor here is Berlin's street width, which was chosen to be 22m by law in 1862 for fire safety reasons, much wider than other german cities. Consequently during WW2, Berlin proved to be a problem for allied incendiary bombs. At some point they were even building a to scale model city in the desert (Dugway Proving Ground) for testing various methods of igniting fire storms.

> Berlin, however, would “prove more difficult than most other German cities”, the leading incendiary expert Horatio Bond avowed before the national commission for armament research of the USA. “The building quality is higher, and the single blocks are better separated from each other.” As the tests at the Dugway Proving Ground showed, is “was hardly to be expected that the flames would jump unhindered from one building to the next”.[1]

[1] http://www.principality-of-sealand.ch/pdf/sealandbrief0503e....

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#62

Post by aaron-lebo »

kazinator wrote: post #58
sharpercoder wrote: post #4

I was in Valencia (Spain) a few weeks back. This city is one of the most ideal cities I have been to for cycling; flat, perfect climate, riverbed running right through the middle of the city, spacious roads and high density. One of the inhabitants told me they dedicated cycling lanes a year back or so. That was visible: They had painted bicycle lanes right over roads & pedestrian areas. I guess when the Valencian peo…

If the cycling commute is flat, it has to be long to get decent exercise, because you have to apply a flat-out effort and you cover a lot of ground. If my bike commute were flat, I'd prefer to be some 14 miles from work rather than the current 7. Or else I would have to run it (more often). To me, what would make an area ideal for cycling (if it has good roads and such) is: dry climate. No rain, no snow.

7 miles isn't much on a bike, but anyone riding 14 miles 5 days a week should be in great shape.

14 mph is a decent clip, whereas 20 mph is constant exertion. I'd hate my commute to be a hour long both ways and at 14 miles, that's what the average person is going to hit.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#63

Post by adrianN »

kazinator wrote: post #58
sharpercoder wrote: post #4

I was in Valencia (Spain) a few weeks back. This city is one of the most ideal cities I have been to for cycling; flat, perfect climate, riverbed running right through the middle of the city, spacious roads and high density. One of the inhabitants told me they dedicated cycling lanes a year back or so. That was visible: They had painted bicycle lanes right over roads & pedestrian areas. I guess when the Valencian peo…

If the cycling commute is flat, it has to be long to get decent exercise, because you have to apply a flat-out effort and you cover a lot of ground. If my bike commute were flat, I'd prefer to be some 14 miles from work rather than the current 7. Or else I would have to run it (more often). To me, what would make an area ideal for cycling (if it has good roads and such) is: dry climate. No rain, no snow.

Most people don't cycle to get exercise, they cycle to get to where they need to be.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#64

Post by flexie »

jacquesm wrote: post #55
sharpercoder wrote: post #4

I was in Valencia (Spain) a few weeks back. This city is one of the most ideal cities I have been to for cycling; flat, perfect climate, riverbed running right through the middle of the city, spacious roads and high density. One of the inhabitants told me they dedicated cycling lanes a year back or so. That was visible: They had painted bicycle lanes right over roads & pedestrian areas. I guess when the Valencian peo…

> I guess when the Valencian people start to see how much fun cycling ones life makes, Valencia will become the cycling capital of the world soon enough. Beijing and Amsterdam can probably make a better claim to that title. Valencia is on the right track though and I hope their project succeeds and will last.

Or Copenhagen where 62 percent bike to work, 21 percent take metro, bus or train, 8 percent walk, and only 9 percent drive a car to work.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#65

Post by toomuchtodo »

jacquesm wrote: post #56
toomuchtodo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it someplace you'd recommend living for a few months? From the US, always looking for new, interesting places to work remote from.

Absolutely. It's a beautiful place and lots of very friendly people. Another place that you probably wouldn't catch on to from abroad is Croatia, the coast there is a great and still relatively cheap place to set up for a couple of months - or years, it tends to stick.

Thank you!

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#66

Post by [deleted] »

adrianN wrote: post #63
kazinator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cycling commute is flat, it has to be long to get decent exercise, because you have to apply a flat-out effort and you cover a lot of ground. If my bike commute were flat, I'd prefer to be some 14 miles from work rather than the current 7. Or else I would have to run it (more often). To me, what would make an area ideal for cycling (if it has good roads and such) is: dry climate. No rain, no snow.

Most people don't cycle to get exercise, they cycle to get to where they need to be.

[deleted]

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#67

Post by adrianN »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #14

The cities mentioned as being great for cyclists are Copenhagen and Amersterdam, and now Berlin is trying. What is interesting is that the countries these cities are in Denmark, Netherlands, and Germany have fertility rates of 1.7, 1.7, 1.5 births/female [0]. In other words, people aren't having that many children. When transporting children, cars become a whole lot more convenient than bicycles. You don't have to wo…

If people with children in their cars made up a majority of traffic that would be a good argument. Most trips are made solo though. Replacing at least some of those trips with cycling is better for everybody: the cyclists health, the environment, the children playing on the streets.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#68

Post by adrianN »

ekianjo wrote: post #48
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Dutchie with no kids I must kindly disagree with you. Go to any Dutch city and you will see tons of parents riding on bikes with their kids. It's common to see 1 adult and 2 kids on the same bike.

Go to any city thats not flat and you will soon find bikes to be unpractical for about everything.

You can get an e-bike a lot cheaper than a car.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#69

Post by scythe »

fovc wrote: post #18
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #14

The cities mentioned as being great for cyclists are Copenhagen and Amersterdam, and now Berlin is trying. What is interesting is that the countries these cities are in Denmark, Netherlands, and Germany have fertility rates of 1.7, 1.7, 1.5 births/female [0]. In other words, people aren't having that many children. When transporting children, cars become a whole lot more convenient than bicycles. You don't have to wo…

If that were the case you'd expect that families with children in those cities wouldn't be bike users. In Amsterdam at least they very much were. I lived next to a primary school where 90+% of parents would show up on bikes to pick up their kids. You can easily transport 3 kids in a bakfiets

That's not statistically valid reasoning. If biking vs driving makes some people not have kids, but not everyone, then in a city where driving is prohibitively expensive you'd still expect most parents to be on a bike. That's because the others didn't switch to cars, they didn't have kids, or they moved. I don't know what riding with one of those bike chariots is like, but being confined to a bike already sucks, I assume dragging a kid around behind you is even worse.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#70

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thomasfortes wrote: post #16
sevensor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth? An aunt who used to live there tells me the air pollution is quite bad -- one would think reducing emissions by encouraging cycling would be a priority.

The previous mayor was from PT, a kinda left-wing party that a good part of the middle class loves to hate (there are a few good reasons, but the hate at this point is insane), so the actual mayor won with promises to revert the policies. Combine that with the fact that São Paulo is a city where people seems to love cars more than their relatives and have an upper class that oppose bike lanes in front of their houses…

> These people (the upper class, not the middle) are also against subway expansion because it would be easier for people from the poorer regions of the city to come to their neighborhoods

Guess why the D.C. Metro doesn’t go to Georgetown and the Phoenix light rail doesn’t go to Scottsdale?

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