Much like Lebron, i recall the days of my youth when i was old enough to start biking around town, 20/30 minutes or more away from home. Felt like a whole world out there and many great memories doing simple stuff like biking with a few friends to the nearest gas station or walgreens and pooling up a few bucks to buy candy and a drink.
Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
111–120 of 382 posts
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's this weird thing that happens in northern climates where all the bikers and scooter riders magically disappear sometime around October and don't reappear until sometime in April. I can't figure out why this happens, we should really aim to understand that before we push bikes and scooters on half the human population. I don't think it's the car lobby that causes this disappearance.
There's also these things called "clothes" humans have been using to protect themselves from the elements for quite a while. Humans walked across Siberia with little more than animal skins. I think most can handle a 30 minute bike ride when it's a bit chilly.
It's often not the cold, but the riding surface. Ice, snow, and water really change the dynamics of riding a bike.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#113The Dutch cycling culture is worthy of praise, but people frequently forget or ignore a key element of its success: Amsterdam is pancake flat. I live outside of Denver, and my neighborhood is very cycling friendly, but my 8-year old daughter can't make it up the hill on our street without walking.
If you can't make it up the hill then you need a lower gear. Utility bikes are easily controllable even at walking pace. The bigger problem is wind. Headwinds can easily slow you down as much as hills, and crosswinds make the bike harder to control. Amsterdam has higher average wind speeds than Denver.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
You act like Millenials don't already have children, when the oldest members of that cohort are 37.
Anecdote of one. 36, wife and two kids. Have a quarter acre of land, a pool, and a 2600 sq ft house in a Tier 2 city for ~$200k. Why would I ever choose higher density and city living? I would not pay more for a lower quality of life (and distance means little to me, as I work from home and my kids don't go to school). I happily bought my suburban home instead of living close to others in a condo or a townhouse.
Make that an anecdote of 4 - you, I, and 2 neighbors. Also, better school quality compared to the urban core.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#115I wonder how a bike or even public transit is going to replace a car? 1) How am I supposed ro go to the beach with two kids, stuff for picnic and surfboards on a bike or even on a bus?!! 2) Public transit is all good, but have you ever been in a PEOPLE jam during rush hour in a subway? Because I had. And I will take SV traffic jam over it any day. The truly bad things happen because of radicalism - it should not be b…
It doesn't have to totally replace cars. The ideal is to drop down from a 2 car household to a 1 car household and only use it for bigger errands and trips, or you drop down to a 0 car household and use the money you save on car payments, gas, and insurance to occasionally rent or carshare. The best is for biking/walking/transit to replace daily trips to/from places like work, dinner, downtown, the movies, the park, etc.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Millennials neither want nor can afford large suburban homes I see this often. Very few people want large homes when they are either single or don't have kids. As soon as you do have kids and they start to grow to an age where they want to play outside, having space to run, play sports, be away from traffic, have their own room, etc gets a lot higher on your priority list. You can also get a suburban home without i…
Yes, but fewer people are having children, which reduces the demand for suburban living. The suburbs also have less attraction for me as a parent. In the old days you could let your kids roam a suburb freely - now you can't. So why not live in a city? You have the same restrictions, but also a lot more distractions such as free museums.
My kids roam freely every day in our suburb. They are 6 and 3 years old. Suburbs like mine are awesome: most residential streets here have no outlets and don't have a lot of car traffic as a result. My boys have friends up and down the block and we know everybody in every house on the street. It's a fantastic way for kids to grow up.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are far too certain. 70 years ago a prognosticator wouldn't be considered insane to say "the ship sailed on cities 50 years ago, Americans live in downtown and that's not changing". These things do change, often quite quickly. Personally, I think the Boomers are in for a big shock when they try to sell their homes for a "fair" price, and discover that Millennials neither want nor can afford large suburban homes.…
> Millennials neither want nor can afford large suburban homes I see this often. Very few people want large homes when they are either single or don't have kids. As soon as you do have kids and they start to grow to an age where they want to play outside, having space to run, play sports, be away from traffic, have their own room, etc gets a lot higher on your priority list. You can also get a suburban home without i…
Somehow Americans managed to have large families 100 years ago without the palatial McMansions. You don't need a large home unless you're running on the real estate investment treadmill.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#118Ctrl-F 'Snow' : No hits I know about Denver and Minneapolis...they both have times where cycling is a non-starter
I've cycled through winters with wind chill in the -15F range and up to a half foot of snow on the ground. So, it is more than doable to do in both those cities.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#119Anyone 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…
Another way to look at the problem: Locating offices unnecessarily in the middle of high-density cities creates long commutes.
It may sound like a good idea at first but it really isn't.
Switching jobs is much easier if you can essentially keep the same commute. Companies are more efficient if their employees can easily meet with clients, potential recruits, attend conferences or just have coffee with their peers. All the positive spillover effects would go away if each company had its office in some random suburb.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#120Anyone 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…
There are problems with cars, but returning to the bicycle, an 18th century city technology, is regressive, not the way forward. The car was a great liberator from the congested and dirty density of the city which was once the luxury of only the rich to escape with their estates and private coaches. Make the suburbs more energy efficient, and figuring out an innovative and fairer way of financing roads is the progressive path.