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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

#221

Post by bombcar »

em-bee wrote: post #205
bombcar wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slow travel is like going to a bookstore to get the latest O'Reilly book. If you walk or ride your bike to your destination, you're traveling slow enough to notice what you're passing, and you may notice something you've never seen before, or stop in at a store you've always passed on by, just like walking to the tech section in the bookstore would take you past all the other rows of books, which have a chance of cat…

a documentary i saw recently about biking in germany reported exactly this observation about i think copenhagen, where it was noticed that bike riders shop more impulsively because when they see something, they can just stop and get it, whereas car drivers have to find a place to park, and then walk to the shop, which means they will mostly focus on their original destination, and won't allow themselves to be sidetra…

Yep, and cars also cause "false economy" where you'll spend a good dollar's worth of gas and wear-and-tear to go a bit further to the store where you can save fifty cents.

Walking or biking suddenly makes that a matter of time savings and more noticeable.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#222

Post by brewdad »

jmyeet wrote: post #95

People not familiar with the US may not realize just how hostile US cities are to cyclists (and pedestrians). Some examples: 1. Turning right at red lights. Legal in most of the US. This is a huge safety issue for pedestrians and cyclists; 2. Many streets don't even have widewalks; 3. Many major roads don't even have any form of pedestrian crossings. For example, I had Google Maps tell me to just run across an 8 lane…

> 3. Instead of road->cycle lane->parked cars create separation with road->parking->cycle path where the cycle path has a physical barrier to avoid people using it as parking;

We have setup #3, minus the physical barrier, on a few roads in my town. I can say as a driver it can be quite difficult to see cyclists when it comes time to make a right turn at an intersection or driveway. Additionally, dooring may be more likely on those roads since passengers aren't used to looking for cyclists on the curb side of the car.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#223

Post by aiisjustanif »

tablespoon wrote: post #219
ericmay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The economic impact of pulling people OUT OF A CAR and INTO THEIR environment is perhaps under-appreciated. All you have to do is stop and take a look at pictures where you see lots of people riding bikes or walking near businesses and then contrast that with a 4-lane road to get an idea of how much more economic activity is generated locally for a business. If you don't have an automobile industry (and even if you…

> Requiring people to drive a car 20 miles, 40 minutes, whatever to just live their lives is so stupid it defies belief. That's pretty misleading and tendentious framing. There's no law requiring people to drive that much: even in the most suburbanly zoned suburb, if you pick someplace close to your job, you have to drive far less than "20 miles, 40 minutes." If you have a more of a commute, it's probably due to opti…

>> to just live their lives

> if you pick someplace close to your job, you have to drive far less than "20 miles, 40 minutes."

I’d make a good wager that “living their lives”, did not mean going to work. It’s going to the park or the “nice, bustling area” of town a.k.a. the walkable area like the farmers market.

> but those businesses just wouldn't be viable at the density I also want to live in.

The density you want to live in doesn’t sound like it promotes social interactions, drives economic inequality, and takes money from the community.

Also in Texas, California, and Seattle this is a real thing for white collar work. This is a very real thing for blue collar work in almost any state.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#224

Post by notacoward »

ir123 wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How come europe is not that car dependent?

Two basic explanations come to mind.

(1) Most of Europe had less of a population boom during the time that the auto/highway build-out happened. Part of the reason, ironically, is that there was a lot of migration from Europe to the US. Many descendants of Europeans are stuck in car culture in the US, while their cousins who stayed home are not.

(2) There's a strong correlation between the ability of governments to "spend for the future" on things like transportation and the existence of decent transit infrastructure. It's no accident that Europe's infrastructure is better, Japan's and China's better still, while in hyper-individualist government-hating US it's the worst.

These two factors reinforce each other as well. Most of the "developed" world got out in front on this issue, while we veered off into insanity (thanks lobbyists!) and are now stuck with the near-impossible task of retrofitting The Right Thing onto a well entrenched Wrong Thing.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#225

Post by frosted-flakes »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #215
dionidium wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're at a bit of an impasse here because I simply don't find those self-reports credible. These folks are salty about the changes. They're not going to tell people that it's going swimmingly. Does it pass any kind of smell test that most of the traffic in these shops arrived by automobile? We don't need to ask them, anyway. I feel like it'd be pretty easy to set up a test to simply observe how people arrive at shops…

This reads as "I don't believe it's a problem and I don't believe it when people tell me it's a problem". Why exactly do you think these merchants are salty about the changes? What reason do they have to misreport on this stuff?

Because they themselves drive down those streets.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#226

Post by hnaccount141 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #166
ericmay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The economic impact of pulling people OUT OF A CAR and INTO THEIR environment is perhaps under-appreciated. All you have to do is stop and take a look at pictures where you see lots of people riding bikes or walking near businesses and then contrast that with a 4-lane road to get an idea of how much more economic activity is generated locally for a business. If you don't have an automobile industry (and even if you…

"We're literally making ourselves poor trying to do this." I guess you'd need to explain why we've had this infrastructure for the entire history of our country, and it didn't "make us poor" before. You're implying it so obviously doesn't work, yet it's been the default setup for every city in the country for a long time now. It very obviously has worked in the past.

This series from Strong Towns does a good job of explaining the idea (with case studies). The gist is that the specific pattern of infrastructure design we've been using since WWII (car-dependent sprawl) isn't financially sustainable without relying on future growth. We got away with it for a while due to the rapid growth seen in the 2nd half of the 20th century, but as growth has slowed, we're finding ourselves falling behind.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-pon...

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#227

Post by mike00632 »

rayiner wrote: post #134
stephen_g wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

That's the one example people always trot out, and even that one is questionable: https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/20/16340038/los-angeles-streetc... . The streetcar system was already in dire financial straits when those companies bought it. > But Bianco points out that this plan wouldn’t have been feasible if the streetcar companies National City Lines purchased weren’t already struggling. > By the 1930s, LA’s streetca…

It should be mentioned that suburban road financing is currently in dire straights.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#228

Post by hyperbovine »

bombcar wrote: post #28
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.

It's surprisingly not bad - you don't even need the snow tires you see if the paths are plowed. Try it as it keeps getting colder, wear layers, and see how it goes. You may find that you don't need as much clothes as you thought you did.

https://barmitts.com/

I cannot emphasize enough how much less miserable these made my winter commute.

Re: Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

#230

Post by pgodzin »

skrbjc wrote: post #157
colpabar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is common in my city as well. So many people seem to think that if you cannot park directly in front of a business then that business will fail.

Considering the number of food-delivery cars constantly double parked along the restaurant-dense streets of my area, the restaurants would probably lose a fair bit of business if cars couldn't access them.

why can't all those trips be done by e-bike?
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