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Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

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Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#161

Post by opencl »

gameswithgo wrote: post #18
village-idiot wrote: post #9

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.

I think it depends a lot on the mode of transportation. An hour driving a car is really awful. An hour sitting in transit or a car someone else is driving is ok-ish because you can at least read a book or something. Though a lot of transit is standing room only which is again rather unpleasant. An hour of walking or cycling IMO is not bad if you have a desk job. Much more pleasant way to get exercise than going to a gym all the time, as many car commuters seem to do.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#162

Post by tjr225 »

underhill wrote: post #115
option wrote: post #40

I 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,…

Right...I'm somewhat of a "militant" cyclist. I think it has the capacity to radically change how people get to and from work if we can shift people's perspectives regarding using them, and build protected bike lanes/highways/trails that reach all over and access public transportation.

I bike two miles to a train station downtown, and I take the train to a stop in a nearby city, bike two miles to work. Sometimes I bike all the way home (20 miles-ish) for a nice, convenient workout. I also get to work from home two days a week. I read books on the train, I have made great friends on the train. This is the best commute I have ever had, and I will miss it dearly if/when my situation changes.

That said, I can never go completely car free. My wife and I like to go hiking in the mountains or go to the coast with our dogs on the weekend. A car is the only way to get there with our pets.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#163

Post by toomuchtodo »

the_gastropod wrote: post #130
toomuchtodo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep! This is the "smart for the individual, dumb for the group" type of a dilemma. It absolutely makes sense for you to do this, individually. As a society, it's rather undesirable for people to live this way. Your lifestyle is being subsidized by (mostly poorer) people living in dense areas [1], and by the externalities we all deal with: pollution from extra driving, lawn care (leaf blowers, gas powered lawn mowers,…

I don't disagree. Simply price what it'll cost me to live in low density housing away from other people and I'm happy to pay. I will pay whatever it costs to not live in a dense urban core (to your points about environmental impact, we own two Teslas, have solar panels on the roof, have an electric lawnmower, and consume most of our power on site).

Sprawl is not unsustainable if you internalize the external costs, and I'll argue it'll get cheaper as mobility moves to electric vehicles and trucks, new infrastructure (with higher longevity) is built in new subdivisions instead of trying to replace 100+ year old gas, water, and sewer mains, etc.

@village-idiot: To your deleted comment, yes, my Teslas have a carbon impact during their manufacturing, but it is less than the SUV and pickup truck we used to own. It is very difficult to have no impact whatsoever on the Earth; optimize the best you can.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#164

Post by darpa_escapee »

village-idiot wrote: post #46
chrissnell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ship sailed on low-density suburbs 60 years ago. We're past the point of return on those. Outside of San Francisco, Manhattan, and downtown Chicago, most people live in the 'burbs and that's not changing. We will be living with this housing stock for decades--if not centuries--to come. It's best to engineer around that reality, not to daydream of an Amsterdam-like utopia that will never happen for 99% of this cou…

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.…

> 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

There are plenty of foreigner investors who'd be happy to buy their property.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#165

Post by [deleted] »

village-idiot wrote: post #133
toomuchtodo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair points. My commute is 20 minutes (long enough for one NPR podcast and a Dunkin Dounts coffee on the way), and I only go into the office a few days each month. My employer even installed an EV charger for me!

That sounds about perfect for a driving commute.

[deleted]

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#166

Post by weberc2 »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #70
jbob2000 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are sooo many things that you need to do to make cycling in winter possible; snow must be cleared, you need special tires, you need extra warm weather gear, you need to wait for the blizzard to end, etc. etc. Or I could just get in my car with a light jacket and blast the heat. Rain, shine, snow, blizzard, whatever. I'm good.

The same goes for driving (well, driving safely at least). You need winter tires, you need an ice scraper, probably a snow shovel and other gear. You probably also shouldn't be driving around in a blizzard, either. Come to Copenhagen or Amsterdam. We bike in all kinds of weather, backed up by great public transport.

You definitely don't need winter tires; all-season tires work just fine. And an ice scraper (or even a shovel) isn't a burden for motorists. Also, winters in Copenhagen are probably quite a lot warmer than many places in the U.S. (the lowest average monthly temperature is barely below freezing!). Quite a different story from Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, or Des Moines.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#167

Post by ant6n »

jbob2000 wrote: post #33
adrianN wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other forms of electric transport, like scooters and electric bikes should be pushed more. Together with decent mass transit they solve the last mile problem quite nicely imho. But unfortunately the car lobby is extremely strong and doesn't want to lose its market.

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.

I've commuted on bike in Montreal down to about -10C. No special clothing, no special tires.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#168

Post by nrook »

37,461 people were killed by motor vehicles in the United States in 2016[1]. Whether it's more pleasurable to live in a city or a suburb is beside the point; our only options are to encourage the use of cycling and mass transit, or to condemn 37,461 more people to death every year from now on.

[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8124...

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#169

Post by NegativeLatency »

screye wrote: post #28

A 2 key points about well designed bike lanes that aren't bought up enough are: 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…

If it's a true old school style moped (small engine/electric motor with pedals) that's probably fine, but something like a vespa or small motorcycle should be in a separate area.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#170

Post by village-idiot »

imgabe wrote: post #138
c0nsumer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often not the cold, but the riding surface. Ice, snow, and water really change the dynamics of riding a bike.

The same is true for cars, yet nobody uses that as a reason not to drive a car.

I’m always shocked how few people swap out for winter tires in appropriate climates.

Also distressing was the number of people convinced that all wheel drive made their car safer in the snow.

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