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Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

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Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#81

Post by alistairSH »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #57
alistairSH wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if weather permits Reminds me of an old cycling adage (possibly predates modern cycling, not sure): There's no such thing as poor weather, only poor clothing choices. I hate to come across as a Nordic fetishist, but there are several cold northern cities known for their year-round cycling. Bike paths are plowed and/or heated. And people just layer up. Oulu, Finland comes to mind - paths are designed to drain well so…

Having done it a few years in the Midwestern US my experience is the salt will rust the bicycle. And avoiding the salt is impossible until it is washed away in spring.

So buy a $6000 carbon bike! /s

Salt sucks. It's better in my area (suburbs outside DC) since they switched to brining roads in advance of storms instead of dumping salt mix afterwards. And we have a horrible freeze/thaw cycle - below freezing overnight, low-30s daytime, so we get slick "black ice" if nothing is put down.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#83

Post by stephen_g »

rayiner wrote: post #63
nick_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't somebody please think of the oil and car companies!

Oil and car companies just sell a product that people want to buy. Toyota didn’t hold a gun to my head to get me to buy an SUV that gets 15 miles a gallon. Attacking them is an out to avoid confronting the real issue, which is that you don’t like the life choices most other Americans are making.

There’s actually some interesting history about how over decades and decades the oil and car companies have done a lot of things beyond just strongly lobbying for planning laws that were extremely good for car drivers and not good for other modes of transport, but even did stuff many years ago like buying up trolly bus and streetcar lines in many cities, ripping up the rails and wires and replacing them with diesel busses. So it’s not quite as consumer-led as you say, the way cities have been designed and have evolved (including in a lot of ways many people now acknowledge is pretty crappy) has actually been affected quite significantly by people who want to sell you cars and gasoline.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... for example.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#84

Post by mcv »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #57
alistairSH wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if weather permits Reminds me of an old cycling adage (possibly predates modern cycling, not sure): There's no such thing as poor weather, only poor clothing choices. I hate to come across as a Nordic fetishist, but there are several cold northern cities known for their year-round cycling. Bike paths are plowed and/or heated. And people just layer up. Oulu, Finland comes to mind - paths are designed to drain well so…

Having done it a few years in the Midwestern US my experience is the salt will rust the bicycle. And avoiding the salt is impossible until it is washed away in spring.

On one of our rare snowy winters, the underside of my cargo bike developed a serious case of rust. The front-wheel was constantly spraying a stream of salty sludge over the entire lower part of a bike.

A mudflap fixed the problem. Well, not the rust, but the spray.

Fortunately bikes are pretty sturdy and a bit of rust won't take them down. Mine is still doing fine over a decade later.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#85

Post by analog31 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #57
alistairSH wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if weather permits Reminds me of an old cycling adage (possibly predates modern cycling, not sure): There's no such thing as poor weather, only poor clothing choices. I hate to come across as a Nordic fetishist, but there are several cold northern cities known for their year-round cycling. Bike paths are plowed and/or heated. And people just layer up. Oulu, Finland comes to mind - paths are designed to drain well so…

Having done it a few years in the Midwestern US my experience is the salt will rust the bicycle. And avoiding the salt is impossible until it is washed away in spring.

For this reason I built up a dedicated winter bike. "Winter" starts when the salt trucks come out.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#87

Post by onychomys »

pwenzel wrote: post #8

Minneapolis resident here. Biking is pretty serious in our city, even in the winter. Many of the bike lanes and paths are plowed with the same priority as car traffic. We also have the Grand Rounds, which is almost 80 miles of paths that circle the lakes in Minneapolis and further into St. Paul. It's pretty amazing.

The day after the Metrodome collapsed, I was able to bike to work on the greenway even though every road in town was out of commission. It was plowed with a higher priority than anywhere else!

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#88

Post by gonzo41 »

aBioGuy wrote: post #6

If you make it pleasant to ride a bike - people will do it. Where I live, there is an off-street bike path that was completed about 10 years ago. Since then many new businesses have opened along the path. The economic impact of pulling people OUT OF A CAR and INTO THEIR environment is perhaps under-appreciated.

Yep yep yep, add an electric bike to the mix and you've gotta winner EV for the people that gets over the range concern so many have.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#89

Post by vel0city »

alistairSH wrote: post #36
boringg wrote: post #9

Easy equation - make safe biking in the city and people will use it instead of driving if weather permits. It's such an easy equation to improve the quality of a city.

if weather permits Reminds me of an old cycling adage (possibly predates modern cycling, not sure): There's no such thing as poor weather, only poor clothing choices. I hate to come across as a Nordic fetishist, but there are several cold northern cities known for their year-round cycling. Bike paths are plowed and/or heated. And people just layer up. Oulu, Finland comes to mind - paths are designed to drain well so…

> There's no such thing as poor weather, only poor clothing choices.

Where I live the heat index is supposed to be 108F with almost no cloud coverage. Riding a bike a few miles in the middle of the day is definitely risking heat stroke. It is without a doubt poor weather for riding.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#90

Post by onychomys »

dhr wrote: post #14

I recently moved to the twin cities. The bike paths are absolutely amazing, and given that the whole state is pretty flat, it's not hard to get around the city for work or for fun. Bike paths are plowed in winter, but biking in -10C weather doesn't sound pleasant. I haven't tried winter biking yet, and honestly, I'm a bit scared to.

I was a year-round bike commuter for five years in Minneapolis, and I had a strict rule that I wouldn't climb on the bike if it was colder than -15F. At that temp, even with all the cold weather gear I had, it's still just really darn cold.
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