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Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

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Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#101

Post by cranekam »

zck wrote: post #39
cranekam wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wash your hands and try not to touch your face. Any virus that is on the bike isn't going to walk up your arms and down your throat. Personally I find it pretty easy to not touch my face. I doubt I am perfect at it but I catch myself a lot. Being outside has to be better than in an enclosed space (a subway car) holding onto handles that dozens of people touched in the last hour.

I mean, by the time I'm gone from a citibike to a place where I can wash my hands, I've had to touch a lot of other things. It's not like there are sinks directly next to the citibike stands.

Then you should wash them at the first chance and avoid touching your face. The only way to be safe here is to seal yourself into a room and avoid all exposure. Since that’s probably not possible the next best thing is to just do the best you can.

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#102

Post by thedance »

zck wrote: post #99
microtonal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My commute would be almost six miles by bicycle. I'm not especially looking to replace the subway with a bike trip. We cycled 8 miles to high school every day (so, 16 per day). Cycling 6 miles is not a lot, unless you have to stop every minute at a traffic light. Up till 1.5 year ago (when I wasn't working remotely), I cycled 7 miles to work every single day (also through rain and snow). For good measure, I'd take an…

> Cycling 6 miles is not a lot... If you say so. It is for me. It's not only a long distance (google maps says 35 minutes, which I suspect is an underestimate), but also would be significantly inconvenient -- do I shower at work, and when I get home? What if I want to go somewhere after work -- leave the bike and come back for it? I love the idea of biking, but I don't see it being useful for my commute.

Fundamentally there is no transportation solution to land use problems. If your destinations are inconveniently far apart, no bicycle, tram, bus, or train can fix that. The closest you can get to the convenience of a car without all the externalized social costs is an electric bicycle.

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#103

Post by op00to »

ajross wrote: post #97
ineedasername wrote: post #84

But they're bicycling to some place with other people, so it's not like they're out of close contact with others. Although I suppose it's still better than having that same contact and the additional contact of public transport.

No, but they're in less contact. While the infection rate is still low[1], we're not trying to eliminate the "possibility" of infection, we're trying to reduce the likelihood of a transmission event. So biking to a workplace and not sitting in a subway car is eliminating a bunch of transmission events. That reduces the R0 of the epidemic, which determines the exponent with which it will grow (or shrink). Enough measu…

We are there in Westchester, maybe Ocean/Monmouth.

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#104

Post by Hokusai »

drocer88 wrote: post #47
peteradio wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the wrong interpretation. It is a shift in the date of the turn on curve, not a bump in the plateau of 5-10C, that would be end of days bro.

FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesozoic#Climate The climate of the Cretaceous is less certain and more widely disputed. Probably, higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are thought to have almost eliminated the north-south temperature gradient: temperatures were about the same across the planet, and about 10°C higher than today.

> about 10°C higher than today

That is astonishing. Imaging how much energy takes to warm your home 10°C, how much more will take warm a museum or a stadium. Now apply that to the entire planet. Storms in the Cretaceous were probably no fun with so much extra energy.

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#106

Post by zck »

thedance wrote: post #102
zck wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cycling 6 miles is not a lot... If you say so. It is for me. It's not only a long distance (google maps says 35 minutes, which I suspect is an underestimate), but also would be significantly inconvenient -- do I shower at work, and when I get home? What if I want to go somewhere after work -- leave the bike and come back for it? I love the idea of biking, but I don't see it being useful for my commute.

Fundamentally there is no transportation solution to land use problems. If your destinations are inconveniently far apart, no bicycle, tram, bus, or train can fix that. The closest you can get to the convenience of a car without all the externalized social costs is an electric bicycle.

I have an average commute, I'd say, for NYC. It's not like I'm some sort of supercommuter (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-surging-ranks-of-super-comm...).

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#107

Post by ajross »

op00to wrote: post #103
ajross wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but they're in less contact. While the infection rate is still low[1], we're not trying to eliminate the "possibility" of infection, we're trying to reduce the likelihood of a transmission event. So biking to a workplace and not sitting in a subway car is eliminating a bunch of transmission events. That reduces the R0 of the epidemic, which determines the exponent with which it will grow (or shrink). Enough measu…

We are there in Westchester, maybe Ocean/Monmouth.

Not really. There are 20M people in the metro area and 421 positive tests so far. Assume (reasonably conservatively) that those tests reflect about 10% of the active infections, and that there are about 2x as many contagious but asymptomatic cases as sick people (both the doubling rate and the incubation period seem to be about 5-6 days). That's one potential transmission event per ~2500 people right now. You'd have to be on a lot of subway cars to be within infection distance of that many people.

It's close enough to be worried, but not at "going in public will make you sick" yet.

(Edit: covidtracking.com just pushed some new numbers, and NY is at 524 cases. Up 25% in a day is freakout territory -- a doubling period of just a little over 3 days. We have to hope this is an artifact of more testing capability or just a data burp.)

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#108

Post by jcheng »

thedance wrote: post #57
Alex3917 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic issue is that in Amsterdam most trips are only a mile or two, whereas in NYC it's often a 10 or 15 mile commute between home and work. But yeah if you're only going a couple miles on mostly flat terrain then no question a commuter bike is a better choice.

If you have further to go you’ll be even less happy with the sporting bike because it can’t carry your stuff. The solution to long distances is electric bikes, not sports bikes.

There’s a huge range of bikes between ones so sporty that they can’t take a rack and fenders, and step-through city bikes.

Here’s a typical example, it has an endurance geometry and has mounts for a rack: https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/bikes/road-bikes/gravel-b...

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#109

Post by thedance »

zck wrote: post #106
thedance wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally there is no transportation solution to land use problems. If your destinations are inconveniently far apart, no bicycle, tram, bus, or train can fix that. The closest you can get to the convenience of a car without all the externalized social costs is an electric bicycle.

I have an average commute, I'd say, for NYC. It's not like I'm some sort of supercommuter ( https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-surging-ranks-of-super-comm... ).

I don’t doubt it but statistically New York has a very high average commute time compared to other American cities.

Re: Coronavirus has caused a bicycling boom in New York City

#110

Post by saklani »

zck wrote: post #39
cranekam wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wash your hands and try not to touch your face. Any virus that is on the bike isn't going to walk up your arms and down your throat. Personally I find it pretty easy to not touch my face. I doubt I am perfect at it but I catch myself a lot. Being outside has to be better than in an enclosed space (a subway car) holding onto handles that dozens of people touched in the last hour.

I mean, by the time I'm gone from a citibike to a place where I can wash my hands, I've had to touch a lot of other things. It's not like there are sinks directly next to the citibike stands.

Maybe use hand sanitizer
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