Effect and side effect seem mixed up here. What is great about Amsterdam isn't the bikes, it's the lack of cars. Yes adding infrastructure for bikes takes space away from cars so the results appear one in the same. But perhaps focusing instead primarily on car reduction we'd find better ways to plot more livable cities.
Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
331–340 of 382 posts
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have Yeti/Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Harry and the Henderson's type bike? Or skinny tires and determination? The commute is about 45 minutes in the summer, so in the winter that's a long time to be cold.
The only cold problems I have with long distance biking in cold weather are caused by poor circulation in my hands and feet. I inevitably get too warm in my core within 15 minutes of commencing biking and start unzipping my outer layer. To keep my head warm, a balaclava and helmet suffices. It's the cold hands that are the worst though; even in thick gloves they still get too cold. I might have to start trying chemic…
I have similar problems, but experimentation suggests that gloves can easily be too tight, esp. at the wrist, and that interferes with circulation. I pretty much always buy XXL gloves now.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about lanes on interstate highways on upgrades that mix 40 mph truck traffic with 70 to 80 mph car traffic?
Those can be unsafe, but trucks almost always keep to the right lane if they can't maintain the speed limit. And long grades will often have an extra lane on the right for slow vehicles. Either way, it allows safe passing on the left, as all interstates are at least two lanes wide.
How does that differ from a city street with multiple lanes?
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
And creating the infrastructure is wildly unpopular, because typically it involves either taking lanes away from cars, or slowing them down. The initiative to reduce car-pedestrian collisions in LA has stopped because the drivers put pressure on politicians to stop slowing traffic down. Advocates are implying (and sometimes outright saying) that a few dozen deaths a year are an acceptable price to pay for a shorter c…
Not to mention the drivers who are offended by the simple act of spending a dollar on someone who is not them.
Cars kinda make people act like sociopaths.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Advocates are implying (and sometimes outright saying) that a few dozen deaths a year are an acceptable price to pay for a shorter commute. Why are you implying that this is faulty reasoning? I mean traffic deaths would be virtually eliminated if the speed limit across the board was 15 mph. But I know I would rather drive 65 because the risk is worth it -- and over a large population that increase in risk turns int…
Theoretical/in-a-vacuum numbers like this always make me suspicious; it isn't as if workers would have $163m less at the end of a year any more than companies would have $163m less in accounts. That isn't how life works. EVEN if it did - what if, as traffic were slowed and bike lanes and walking lanes were put in, commuter life improved? Society appreciated the new living space and they got healthier and spent less o…
Also, self consciously trading other people’s lives for a few minutes a day is gross.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sure. But in other geographies, what kind of clothes can possibly protect from 96-degree heat and 100% humidity?
A shower at your destination
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. But in other geographies, what kind of clothes can possibly protect from 96-degree heat and 100% humidity?
A shower at your destination
A shower after biking in shitty weather - while certainly helpful - does not address the characteristic sensation-of-imminent-death during biking in shitty weather.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. But in other geographies, what kind of clothes can possibly protect from 96-degree heat and 100% humidity?
Look at how Bedouin nomads dress.
Image-searches say their clothing appears to be long-sleeved, multilayered and often head-covering. I can't tell the weight or the fabric-type, but I'm pretty certain they're not minimum-weight synthetics.
That much insulation seems utterly counterproductive for hot-weather exertion, though it probably would at least protect from sunburn.
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
locating them in random suburban office parks is much worse, except for those in that particular 'burb.
Even if you are in the suburb it is bad. They office park has no houses within walking distance. Sure technically you are in the same small city, but you may as well be 30 miles apart - either way you will drive to work. (it is possible to bike to work, but you are doing it for exercise or because you are some sort of "new age hippie" - it isn't practical)
I wouldn't want to live in that kind of area, no matter how much I enjoy working in it; the land is far too valuable as office parks.
Why are people willing to spend out their butts for just the right housing, when all they really need is a half-decent car?*
*and perhaps a two-thirds-decent library of hair-raising music or enlightening podcasts
Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theoretical/in-a-vacuum numbers like this always make me suspicious; it isn't as if workers would have $163m less at the end of a year any more than companies would have $163m less in accounts. That isn't how life works. EVEN if it did - what if, as traffic were slowed and bike lanes and walking lanes were put in, commuter life improved? Society appreciated the new living space and they got healthier and spent less o…
Also, self consciously trading other people’s lives for a few minutes a day is gross.
Assuming we're still going with 1 minute a day saved which was an intentionally low estimate we're still talking about 12 years worth of time saved over the course of a year. Those minutes add up.