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We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

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Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#441

Post by ocschwar »

lazyjones wrote: post #294
rapnie wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been to Denmark so I can't compare, but I agree there is much to be learned by looking at how other countries fare. In the densely populated Netherlands we are facing very serious gridlock problems now with cars clogging the highways and railways at full capacity. We can't keep building new infrastructure (highways) at the pace we did before, because - besides being very expensive - we lack the space for it…

> We can't keep building new infrastructure (highways) at the pace we did before, because - besides being very expensive - we lack the space for it. New solutions may lie in promoting remote work, carpooling and shortening home/work commute distances. You can build highways and rails in 3 dimensions. The bicycle simply cannot replace cars and trains in any meaningful way, despite the rise in numbers of single, childl…

In the Netherlands? You can. But it then sinks into the polders.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#442

Post by EForEndeavour »

jsinai wrote: post #400
brnt wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Dutchman who's lived in a few places abroad, the cycling 'problem' is quite simple: it needs to be the norm. No helmet, because neither do you require them for pedestrians. You can cycle in all weather, just as you would walking (a hard mental one, my non-Dutch partner can't get over the idea cycling is for sunshine). Public space design must start with safe (no sharp turns, looking at you France!) and separate…

>In urban areas, cycling is faster, and electric biking is expanding your reach a few times over. In Cambridge, UK, where I used to live it once took me quicker to ride to the same destination than a taxi. In fact it’s well known that cycling in Cambridge’s city centre is much faster than taking a car.

Cycling is often the fastest choice in cities. This spring, Uber revealed that even walking is as fast or faster than ride-sharing in many urban centres: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/22/uber-dat...

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#443

Post by Kim_Bruning »

justin66 wrote: post #420
Freak_NL wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of risk assessment. The chance of a healthy adult cycling in the Netherlands getting a head injury that would have been prevent by a helmet are so incredibly low, that making it a requirement would have a detrimental effect on the collective health of Dutch society due to slightly lower uptake in cycling. For elderly and young children a helmet may make sense, due to the significantly higher risk of suc…

> The chance of a healthy adult cycling in the Netherlands getting a head injury that would have been prevent by a helmet are so incredibly low, that making it a requirement would have a detrimental effect on the collective health of Dutch society due to slightly lower uptake in cycling. That's an easy thing to assert and a difficult thing to prove. I just assume the rules are the way they are because the Netherlands…

Not a particularly active topic.

Combining your two sources suggests that making helmets mandatory would have a large negative effect on public health. (the downtick in injuries would be overshadowed by the reduction in biking)

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#444

Post by blacksmith_tb »

Vrondi wrote: post #431
Freak_NL wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of risk assessment. The chance of a healthy adult cycling in the Netherlands getting a head injury that would have been prevent by a helmet are so incredibly low, that making it a requirement would have a detrimental effect on the collective health of Dutch society due to slightly lower uptake in cycling. For elderly and young children a helmet may make sense, due to the significantly higher risk of suc…

Such sanity simply doesn't exist in the over-protective culture of the USA.

There are no US states that require adults to wear bike helmets, though there are a dozen or so local laws that do[1]. So 'casual' cycling without a helmet should be an option for nearly anyone in the US.

1: https://helmets.org/mandator.htm

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#445

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bluGill wrote: post #388
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could redesign the cars to be smaller and to drive more densely if they were fully autonomous and electric. Their footprint would then more closely resemble bikes. Or maybe someone will invent self driving bicycles/scooters for delivery tasks.

We could, but I don't think we will. There are a lot of fixed costs in a car, so if you need a big car for just a few % of the uses it is very hard to justify having both a small car and a big car when the big car can do both.

A lot of car overhead goes into safety: they have to be big and heavy to counteract other cars that are big and heavy. But if the they are given their own routes and are controlled by the same software, a lot of that girth could easily go away.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#446

Post by ghaff »

Freak_NL wrote: post #390
stronglikedan wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No helmet While I don't think they should be required, I do think they should be worn. I've had a low-speed spill where the helmet saved my head considerably - I hit the pavement so hard my glasses were flattened out. You fall much faster, even at low speeds, and you fall much farther from a bike, than a pedestrian would fall.

It's a matter of risk assessment. The chance of a healthy adult cycling in the Netherlands getting a head injury that would have been prevent by a helmet are so incredibly low, that making it a requirement would have a detrimental effect on the collective health of Dutch society due to slightly lower uptake in cycling. For elderly and young children a helmet may make sense, due to the significantly higher risk of suc…

A lot of people get really dogmatic about safety gear in very specific ways.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of the same people who think that not wearing a bike helmet (and especially allowing a child not to wear one) should be a criminal offense would think the idea of having to wear a helmet driving is just silly.

The attitudes around helmets for downhill skiing have gone through a similar shift. It used to be that essentially no one except racers (and then snowboarders) wore helmets. Now, at least some people will chastise you if you don't.

And it's not just a US thing. Copenhagen and Amsterdam are both big bicycling cities but a fair number of people in Copenhagen do wear helmets and you don't see nearly as many of the bare headed young kids perched on top of the handlebars that you see in Amsterdam.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#447

Post by peterwwillis »

I love micromobility. I think it's the future of human transportation, in combination with better, more efficient, more convenient, mass-transit.

But this "let's dream big about bikes" is like saying "we should feed the planet". Well that's a great notion, and we can totally do that. But who the fuck is going to pay for it?

The car lobby had lots of money, and was able to seize on an abundance of necessity and want: the military needed to be able to move things, cities needed to be able to expand housing out to suburbs, the country needed work, and politicians needed an answer to these problems and a big win. Interstates were a godsend to all these various issues, and the car lobby's funding made that an easy argument to make.

What the hell does the bike lobby have? Chump change. A lack of necessity. Hopes and dreams. Nobody's going to build a Futurama world based on that. You need more than dreams; you need a cause. And you need to be able to provide real value for everyone, not just people who like to bike. That means businesses, politicians, etc

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#448

Post by big_chungus »

triceratops wrote: post #435
big_chungus wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a goofy response. > bicycles cause far less damage... to the roads used by motorists This only holds true as long as bicycles are a small amount of traffic added on. It's like the SMS bands with telcos: a small bit of auxiliary slack being used for something else. If bicycles become a large part of the traffic, there will still be an impact. Even if the bikes don't tear the roads up much, elements and natural…

Road damage is proportional to the 4th power of the weight of the vehicle.[1] The average bike's weight is about 1/100 that of the average car (unscientific method of searching "weight of average bike" and "weight of average car"). So you'd need approximately 100 bikes to cause the same impact as 1 car! And 100 bikes can transport 25x more people than 1 car. > everyone living densely-packed into the stereotypical SF…

> Road damage is proportional to the 4th power of the weight of the vehicle

Right, which is why I also wrote this:

>> Even if the bikes don't tear the roads up much, elements and natural wear make up a fair part of that.

Roads degrade on their own, and the people who use them should still pay for them. I also specified that this need not be dollar-for-dollar, but it is not costless.

> I don't think you need that much density to encourage biking. Even a city with a lot of townhouses, 3-4 story apartment buildings (for the yuppies), and no parking minimums for businesses ought to be dense enough.

Would you please provide a citation for this? I'm guessing your source is only accounting for being able to pack required amenities into a hypothetical biking range. This wouldn't take into account that many people work across town , have to go there to see people and do things, etc. Without a source, however, I can't accurately respond to this.

I saw another commenter raise the point that if you want comparable convenience, you often end up with EVs. What is the objection to those? Assuming carbon-neutral electricity, that is. I'd hazard a guess that producing the energy required to move people via nuclear electricity is more efficient than producing it via consuming food.

I'm also curious if you'd be open to biking in, say, Texas where summer temps are easily above 100 degrees and above 110 in some places. I have trouble seeing how you could convince people to do this; most hesitate to step outside unless necessary in such weather. How would you mitigate this?

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#449

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bluGill wrote: post #361
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in European city centers shop differently. They more likely don’t even have cars, the stores are smaller, they shop daily or bi-daily rather than weekly like suburbanites do. They aren’t carrying a few bottles of wine and olive oil, they have one bag, and everything is pretty fresh. You can have the same lifestyle almost in the states, just live in a downtown area. Watch out for all the cars though, and wading…

Most downtowns in the states do not have a grocery store anymore. If you only eat at restaurants (there are many fine ones around) you are fine, but forget about a home cooked meal unless you drive to the suburbs, at which point you may as well get a weeks worth of food just like everybody in the suburbs does. Note that there are exceptions where there are stores. However before you point them out, remember that in a…

Uhm, which downtowns? Seattle has a few grocery stores downtown, they even have a target. Downtown Bellevue has a Safeway, QFC, and an H-mart. LA, SF....have thriving downtowns with grocery stores. They aren’t huge, but they aren’t invisible either.

Even red-state St. Louis had a grocery store downtown, though it took a bit to find one near the hotel I was staying at.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#450

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gbrown wrote: post #415
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren’t wrong from a recreational perspective. But from a practical one meant to alleviate traffic and pollution, long distance intercity biking is less viable in addressing those compared to public transit.

No argument there, I just think it's also worthwhile from a quality of life + tourism $ perspective.

Ya, but it should be classed in that bucket rather than to alleviate other problems. E.g. there are some nice new recreational bike trails here in Washington and Idaho along old rail road routes. They won’t do much for rush hour traffic, but they are nice to have.
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