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I love cycling. I grew up in my father's bicycle store and nearly 50 years later, he's still running the business and we've all worked in it at one time or another. I ride bikes around the neighborhood with my kids every day. With that said, the U.S. is not the Netherlands. Like most Americans, I depend on my vehicle to get my kids to school and myself to the grocery store, which are 4-5 miles away from my house. Thi…
I'll pass.
Low density and low efficiency means low cost. Efficiency doesn't maintain itself.
In most cities, especially in America, there's a vicious cycle: 0) Cycling is dangerous because there are too many vehicles on the road 1) There are so many vehicles on the road because everyone knows it's dangerous to cycle 2) Go to 0 Breaking out of that loop requires building safe infrastructure for cycling, like indestructable cement dividers between bike lanes and vehicle lanes or no-vehicles-allowed-in- days
I'd love to see safer bike highways, but the city doesn't seem able to do more than mark the pavement with sharrows. I understand that Pasadena's urban planning model frequently pits cars and bikes against each other - but, I wonder if we could cut into some of the significant lawn space on each side of the street in order to make bike lanes?
[1] https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2018/07/09/pasadena-to-pull...
[2] It turns out people in the affluent parts of Pasadena aren't driving because they can't afford a bike.
It's time IMHO that extreme convenience comes at a high price. That is, car access to every city block doesn't need to be the status quo. Make me walk a few blocks if I drive to town, or make me use transit/etc if my car can only make it up to major city boundaries. At the very least, put high incentives in place to keep daily flows down.
There are fair solutions to be found that do not disproportionately different working classes/income levels.
Keep biking.
Anyone who's believed that the key to sustainable futures is simply swapping out ICE for electric motors simply is being wishful at best, willfully difficult at worse. The biggest problem I have with electric cars is that they continue to encourage low density low efficiency suburbs with hours long commutes into the high density cities. This is economically unsustainable, roads are expensive, and will only get worse…
Hour+ long commutes are also just terrible. Terrible to live through psychologically, they waste time with you sitting still and not moving so you get fat and weak, and they are dangerous.
There have been a bunch of studies trying to measure the relationship between commuting time and (subjective) quality of life. Most of them find exactly what you'd suspect: longer commutes reduce quality of life.
The weird thing is that they found a small uptick at the absolute extreme edges of commuting, like in the 5+ hour a day range. It's still shittier than a 30 minute commute, but it was better than a 4 hour commute. Nobody really seems to know why this is, but it's there.
Either way, I walk to work. There are few better ways to commute, IMHO.
1. raised / structural separation between the road and bikes path.
2. bike paths can be used for just about anything that is not a car/motorbike or a pedestrian. Skaters, skate boarders, mopeds and bikes can all share a common separated path way.
I have tried biking in Boston and it is a nightmare. Bike Lanes marked on the road are taken as suggestions by cars, rather than a proper space for bikes. Taking the side of the road causes cars to pass me too closely and taking a lane draws verbal abuse ( happened 3 times in 1 month...then I stopped). Technically Boston suburbs allow bikes to ride on empty sidewalks, but that draws silent stares and again occasional verbal abuse.
In addition to that , everyone from pedestrians to car owners seem to be complaining about the new bird bike scooters and boosted boards. With major ride sharing companies trying to move to 2 wheelers and community shared biking hubs becoming a thing, giving all the problem children their own space would be an excellent solution.
All of these alternate means of transportation run at about the same speed and can't cause fatal damage on collision. Definitively separating them from cars should significantly improve safety.
IMO, biking might be the solution that allows for zoning laws to be lax, as increased density wouldn't affect traffic as adversely. The increased density should also cut commute times. Aren't those literally the 2 biggest complaints about tech hubs in US ? The decreased pollution and healthcare benefits just the cherry on top.
In most cities, especially in America, there's a vicious cycle: 0) Cycling is dangerous because there are too many vehicles on the road 1) There are so many vehicles on the road because everyone knows it's dangerous to cycle 2) Go to 0 Breaking out of that loop requires building safe infrastructure for cycling, like indestructable cement dividers between bike lanes and vehicle lanes or no-vehicles-allowed-in- days
There’s more to it than that. China was a cycling nation for most of the 20th century. They went from safe cycling nation, to now, where the most populous cities with good mass transit are clogged by cars and some motorcycles. Affluence is a factor. Later on post-affluence may permit a social signal to again take up biking becuase it’s a choice of the upper middle class and become aspirational..