How the Dutch created a casual biking culture • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#361

Post by culiuniversal » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

Rainymood wrote: post #2

As a Dutch person I am pleasantly surprised by this article, it gets basically everything right. One thing though is that our geography works well with biking. I visited the US recently and you can drive for 30 minutes in a car and you are still in LA, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Netherlands you're in a completely different city. Everything is just closer and hence more bike-able. As a dutch person I would abs…

Well part of the reason everything is so spread out and part of the reason cars drive like that IS because it is such a car-centric infrastructure. More bikers and a political push to change zoning laws and city planning would help alleviate all of the issues you mentioned

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#362

Post by KozmoNau7 » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #323

bluejekyll wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Idaho it is perfectly legal for bicycles to treat Stop signs as yields, and Red lights as stop signs. It was attempted to get a similar law passed in CA: AB 1103. https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler... Many cyclists would agree that a rolling stop allows them to get through, when there is no traffic, the intersection much faster and more safely due to the dangers of an intersection. I'm no…

Coming to a full stop on a bike is downright dangerous. The act of unclipping from your pedal, stopping, and then starting again and having to clip back into your pedal is far more dangerous than just slowing down sufficiently to make sure there's no oncoming traffic. You're more likely to fall over when transitioning between moving and stopped on a bike than any other time, and falling over at an intersection is ver…

I have never had clips, clipless pedals or anything similar. All of my bikes have had flat pedals with a bit of rubber and/or protrusions to keep my feet in place.

I have literally never felt that to be a disadvantage. I'm not racing, I'm commuting.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#363

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 11:09 PM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #262

jodrellblank wrote: post #150

Cities designed for bikes and bicyclists, are still not cities designed for humans. https://newworldeconomics.com/the-problem-with-bicycles/ Bikes are expensive personal transportation, compared to not owning any, they take up space in every home with muddy, oily mechanisms, they take up a lot of space in bicycle parks outside every desirable destination serving to push everything further apart for humans on foot, th…

Dutch-style bicycles go perfectly well with nice clothes, the oil is inside the chain compartment and they don't really become very muddy inside the city. Yes of course walking is better but not everything people want to do is within easy walking distance, and bikes are preferable to huge infrastructure for public transport within a city.

Not everything is, but most daily things should be. And when things aren't, there can be public transport, bike hire, taxi hire, car hire. But they shouldn't be the default, the city shouldn't be designed around them, designed for them, they shouldn't be necessary.

bikes are preferable to huge infrastructure for public transport within a city

preferable to whom?

Everyone pooling their resources should make for way way better solutions than everyone solving the same problems individually over and over.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#364

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, Aug 29, 2018, 11:28 PM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #227

jodrellblank wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I'd rather breathe pedal bicycle air than internal combustion exhaust fumes, for sure. And I'd rather pay bike prices than car prices, sure. But, designing for not-cars feels like a choice of designing for humans or designing for bikes, not both. If things are close enough for walking then most people don't need bikes. If there's dense, regular, clean, affordable public transport, you can't really bring one bi…

Bicycle and pedestrian traffic mesh rather well with each other, and both mesh well with public transit. I submit Copenhagen as an example, you should come visit sometime :-) The problem with car traffic is that it only really meshes well with car traffic. Making it mesh with public transit requires a lot of parking, and cars take up way too much space on the streets compared to bikes, the density is way too low for…

I was on a train (in the UK) a few weeks ago. It was crowded, to the point of standing room only, maybe a hundred people in a few carriages I didn't count - and two people brought their bikes. One didn't fit in the bike space because of a high child carrier on it, a space which took up half a carriage couldn't take two bikes. And they took a lot longer to load and unload than the people took to step on and off, and everyone had to make room for them to unload, wait for them.

There's no way it would have worked if even 10-20% of the people had brought bikes, let alone everyone.

I Googled Copenhagen Bike Parking, and this was one of the top results: http://jtwonggg.com/2017/11/06/photo-diary-copenhagen-street... - those bike parks are not meshing nicely with a human world, they're big areas of nothing of any interest to living walking humans except for the individual bike owner, space taken up by matter storage that you have to walk further to get past, they're ugly, they're a greedy use of public space for "my personal transport", and that size of parking almost has to be replicated all over the place. Even if bike parks were underground, that's still prime city usable space which could be put to use by things of interest to more people.

The picture with the outdoors clothes racks and Zara shop - lots of pedestrians. Imagine a cyclist trying to go fast down that street - they can't, there's too many people. This either means the pedestrians have to dive out of the way (maybe urged by a demand of a ringing bell) or that the cyclist has to go at walking speed - and in that case may as well be walking. And if there was a rush hour of cyclists, that street would become a much less pleasant place for people to walk.

Bikes let you go further - ten miles is a fairly short bike trip but a long walk - but they do it by letting you go faster. You can't go faster in dense pedestrian traffic unless you prioritise the bike and make the pedestrians second class who have to watch out and make way, and that - each bike taking precedent over dozens of pedestrians - seems the wrong kind of tradeoff.

but then, Copenhagen appears to be a city with car-streets, and in that situation, preferring a bike over a car in a place spread out for cars, is possibly the best compromise you're going to get.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#365

Post by mcv » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 12:04 AM UTC

u801e wrote: post #318

mcv wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works only on roads where cars and bikes go the same speed. There are many roads where cars want to go faster than that.

Cars and trucks and buses don't really go the same speed and it still works for them. Plus, on city streets where traffic is going 40 mph or less, the speed difference isn't really that great.

Buses and trucks are a bit bigger and less vulnerable than bikes, and their speed difference with cars isn't remotely as big as that between cars and bikes. It's really not a comparable situation.

Bikes taking up the place of a car, would really slow car traffic down to a crawl. There's a good reason they get separate lanes.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#366

Post by rorykoehler » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 12:54 AM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #342

rorykoehler wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have killed to swap my 60-90min bus journey for your bike ride... and yes I regularly cycled for leisure in the conditions you mentioned. That said I know not everyone is a glutton for that kind of suffering which is why I am hopeful electric bikes will take off in a big way. The electric assist will make the wind (and hills) a non-issue and then you can just cruise anywhere if you dress right. If electric bi…

How many transfers does that bus route have? I'd prefer being able to use a smartphone/etc than having to bike all that way.

Zero transfers. It was a school bus. Cycling for 45 minutes is much more enjoyable and rewarding than using a smartphone (which didn't exist at the time)

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#367

Post by u801e » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

mcv wrote: post #365

u801e wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars and trucks and buses don't really go the same speed and it still works for them. Plus, on city streets where traffic is going 40 mph or less, the speed difference isn't really that great.

Buses and trucks are a bit bigger and less vulnerable than bikes, and their speed difference with cars isn't remotely as big as that between cars and bikes. It's really not a comparable situation. Bikes taking up the place of a car, would really slow car traffic down to a crawl. There's a good reason they get separate lanes.

> and their speed difference with cars isn't remotely as big as that between cars and bikes.

Cyclists can go between 10 to 20 mph. Some faster ones can go 25 to 30 mph. On a city street, you have cars going between 20 to 30 mph. On other roads, they may be going up to 40 mph. Given typical speeds, you have a 0 to 30 mph difference.

On highways, there are trucks that are limited to 55 to 60 mph amongst cars that go 70 to 85 mph. In that case, you have speed differences ranging from 10 to 30 mph.

> Bikes taking up the place of a car, would really slow car traffic down to a crawl.

Not really. If there are multiple lanes of traffic going in the same direction, then they don't slow down traffic any more than a bus would. If there's a single lane of traffic going in that direction, then cyclists are far more easy to pass compared to a bus or truck. In many states, it is legal to pass cyclists by crossing a double-yellow line when safe to do so. Second, it's much easier to see around a cyclist compared to a bus or car.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#368

Post by schlumpf » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:27 AM UTC

u801e wrote: post #284

schlumpf wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyclists also willfully break traffic rules in SF with alarming regularity. Stop signs are generally regarded as ornamental, and even lightly traveled red lights. I am reminded of this every time my seven year-old cycling companion asks why such and such a person hasn't followed the rules when they blow past us. Both classes of vehicles have to be diligent.

> Cyclists also willfully break traffic rules The same thing also applies to motorists and pedestrians. Also, generalizations like this lead to the attitude that it's somehow the cyclists fault if they get hit by the car even if they are following the rules.

I don't follow your argument. Grandparent had pointed out correct cyclist behavior at intersections to avoid accidents. Parent had commented that both motorists and "especially" cyclists made mistakes resulting in violations of traffic rules and expected behavior. I added the observation that many cyclists' incorrect behavior in San Francisco is willful, not only accidental.

Both parent and I agree with GP's point that, "Turning conflicts...are a significant hazard to cyclists"; I simply argued for vigilance in the presence of deliberate rule-breaking by cyclists. Surely you would not argue for less vigilance by motorists? SF drivers are a whole other rant...

If you meant to say that I am making a hasty or sweeping generalization, I did no such thing. I make no claim as to the proportion of two-wheeled scofflaws. Anybody who rides in SF can see it, and some riders have owned up in child comments herein. If your complaint is against motorists who justify their own shitty driving with claims that cyclists are 'always' flouting the rules, then I agree that this is dangerously fallacious. But such a sweeping generalization nonetheless starts with cyclists who clearly break traffic rules.

That's why I wish they would stop. This is about saving lives. And if you are also a rider then you know the apportionment of blame becomes moot when 1800kg of SUV hits 80kg of cyclist. I think GP is absolutely right that good infrastructure design is key to avoiding such risks, but like all transportation systems it has to be built on the assumption that traffic rules will be followed.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#369

Post by mcv » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:02 AM UTC

rahkiin wrote: post #285

Rainymood wrote: post #2

As a Dutch person I am pleasantly surprised by this article, it gets basically everything right. One thing though is that our geography works well with biking. I visited the US recently and you can drive for 30 minutes in a car and you are still in LA, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Netherlands you're in a completely different city. Everything is just closer and hence more bike-able. As a dutch person I would abs…

It got only one thing wrong: there are roads that allow 50km/h and 60km/h without dedicated cycling roads (or with curbs). The former sometimes has no cycling indication, the latter is seen with a 1.5 width car lane with two smaller res bicycle lanes around it. These are rarely seen in cities though but are very common in rural areas (the Dutch rural, which would probably be 'suburban' in the US).

Yeah, I assumed that was a goal for the future, rather than a description of the current situation.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#370

Post by schlumpf » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:03 AM UTC

halbritt wrote: post #218

schlumpf wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyclists also willfully break traffic rules in SF with alarming regularity. Stop signs are generally regarded as ornamental, and even lightly traveled red lights. I am reminded of this every time my seven year-old cycling companion asks why such and such a person hasn't followed the rules when they blow past us. Both classes of vehicles have to be diligent.

Sure. There's a myriad of reasons why this is the case. Traffic signals and signage aren't designed for cyclists. Google a little. Further, this is a false equivalence. When a cyclist fails to be diligent, the risks are fairly small. When a motorists fails to be diligent, other people die.

You are being unnecessarily abrasive.

I ride the streets that I'm speaking about. San Francisco has a team of engineers who redesign road infrastructure, markings, and signage to promote safe cycling. I think they do good work and I benefit directly from their work. I think the infrastructure is better suited to cycling than your dismissive comment implies.

I disagree with your characterization that the risks to motor vehicle-bicycle interactions are fairly small risks as long as motorists are diligent. But I don't suggest that you accept my risk assessment. My equivalence is grounded in California law[0]. Cyclists have equal responsibility with other drivers. Both groups of vehicles need to be operated diligently.

[0] http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....