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Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

forbes.com

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Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#311

Post by scott_w »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #301
scott_w wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a car drive straight into someone yesterday. The police refused to come out. I don’t see how that squares with your statement at all.

That's because an accident and a traffic violation are different. Minor accidents are usually handled without police intervention, and this is by design.

See my other comment: he pulled out without looking because he was in the middle of cutting up other road users (me in this case). That’s driving without due care and attention which is a traffic violation in the U.K.

The police don’t care. What mechanism will put him in jail?

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#312

Post by pclmulqdq »

chriswarbo wrote: post #295
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone non-UK types are interested in this weird entity — technically dates back to Roman days, and predates the United Kingdom by hundreds of years — this podcast episode is quite funny and informative. Just an example of what a weird anomalous zone it is: the King (or Queen) of England is not legally allowed to enter without explicit permission from the mayor — not the mayor of London, the Lord Mayor of this squ…

> It's like if Wall Street could tell the President of the US to take a hike An alternative take: If it turns out, by some legislative fluke, that a particular square mile of the US is not bound by all of its laws, it won't be long until Wall St companies start moving their headquarters!

This is kind of what happens in Las Vegas, but to a lesser extent than the City of London. Most of what we think of as "Las Vegas" is actually the unincorporated territory known as "Paradise."

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#313

Post by stevenwoo »

ehnto wrote: post #18
lscdlscd wrote: post #2

Amazing news! More cyclists (and fewer motorists) on the streets creates a safer, less polluted city environment for everyone.

Quieter too. When wandering Tokyo I started asking myself, why does it feel so quiet when there are so many people and so much advertising? Then you hit one of the roads with cars, and you realise just how much road noise impacts a space. It is obvious in theory but I bet most of us in car-centric cities have learned to live with it so much, that it doesn't cross our minds as the source of discomfort.

I go on long rides on my bicycle between San Jose and San Francisco listening to audiobooks for background entertainment. I could listen to these at the same volume I listen to at home while taking it easy, unless there is a motor vehicle passing by, then sometimes no volume is loud enough to make the audio intelligible until the vehicle has gone far enough away.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#314

Post by crote »

TexanFeller wrote: post #51

I would celebrate if this happened naturally, but this seems more a case of if you punish driving enough you get less drivers. When I was in London over a decade ago they already had restrictions on car traffic into certain parts of the city and additional fees to go there. Tax on a new car is 20% and lots of regulations on their characteristics. Large taxes on petrol which is already much more expensive than in the…

People have lived in the area now known as London for over 6000 years, and London has been a city for nearly 2000 years. It has grown very naturally.

Cars are the recent addition, and they are being restricted because they were causing issues. The alternative is bulldozing the city for some highways, which does not really sound very natural to me.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#315

Post by ovi256 »

idopmstuff wrote: post #245
Tade0 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I think we will see a shift in where people settle, where they will no longer base their lives around owning multiple cars. Not if real estate in cities remains as expensive as it is now. That's one of the main reasons why so many people move out and choose to spend so much time commuting. Cars are just a means to an end, which is not living in a one-bedroom apartment as a family.

Yeah, unfortunately it seems very much like we're heading the opposite direction. People largely congregated in cities because of proximity to work, but as remote work increases that's becoming less of a factor. As people try to find cheaper property and more land, they're going to end up in places where bikes are a whole lot less practical.

> bikes are a whole lot less practical I'm sure you meant as daily transportation. As a non-daily, I bike several times per week even if I drive daily.

If I had my choice, I'd rather ride horses every day.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#316

Post by iso1631 »

bartread wrote: post #247
zimpenfish wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "[whatabout cyclists who break the law]" I can stand at my local crossing on Old Kent Road and there'll be non-zero cars jumping the red light (often accelerating from a good ways back) or entering the junction without a safe exit blocking the crossing, a bus lane, and another junction (in peak time this will often get into double figures). Multiply that by all the crossings and you'll absolutely dwarf the amount o…

> > "[whatabout cyclists who break the law]" Your attempt to classify my post as whataboutism is in incredibly poor faith. I'm very pro-cycling, but it would be foolish to ignore the very real and observable safety concerns that occur because of factors such as poor behaviour (and also, although I didn't mention them originally, issues like infrastructure and quality of road surfaces). You cannot simply assume that w…

> I'm very pro-cycling, but it would be foolish to ignore the very real and observable safety concerns that occur because of factors such as poor behaviour

You'll no doubt be able to point to the statistics that back up these very real safety concerns.

You could start with the number of KSI caused by cyclists compared with motor vehicles

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#317

Post by zimpenfish »

aisengard wrote: post #147
zimpenfish wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "[whatabout cyclists who break the law]" I can stand at my local crossing on Old Kent Road and there'll be non-zero cars jumping the red light (often accelerating from a good ways back) or entering the junction without a safe exit blocking the crossing, a bus lane, and another junction (in peak time this will often get into double figures). Multiply that by all the crossings and you'll absolutely dwarf the amount o…

Or, you know, we can do both at the same time? Also, once police are no longer occupied ticketing motorists, I hope cyclists are prepared for actually being held accountable to laws. The police budget isn't going to refill itself.

> Or, you know, we can do both at the same time?

Or maybe we prioritise the class of vehicles responsible for almost 5 fatalities and 75 serious injuries a day[1]?

For comparison, [2] says that 30 pedestrians were killed and 1093 serious injuries involved cyclists in eight (8) years. In 416 weeks, that's less than one (1) week of car deaths (0.2% ratio) and two (2) weeks of serious injuries (0.4% ratio).

Anyone that says "we should prioritise X and 416*X the same" is either not arguing in good faith or should be nowhere near decision making.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... - 1760 fatalities, 28044 serious injuries.

[2] https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/pedestrians-kill...

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#318

Post by bertil »

sandworm101 wrote: post #81
alkjsdlkjasd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - weather might make the ride unpleasant; As the Dutch like to say: there is no such thing as bad cycling weather, only bad cycling clothes. I would strongly recommond a pair of water/wind proof trousers to go over your regular trousers, if you don't already have some. This has lead to a much more pleasant riding experience, especially in winter. They aren't very practical on a regular bike as they make you uncomfo…

>> As the Dutch like to say: there is no such thing as bad cycling weather, only bad cycling clothes. Easy to say in a country famously flat, small, and with a relatively narrow weather window. I welcome any Dutch person to attempt a 15+km commute during a rocky mountain winter. I know of driveways in US/Canada with more vertical than any Dutch commute.

The worst weather when riding a bike is the wind (trust me: I live in the Arctic circle, we have snow or black ice on the road half the year and it’s routinely -25ºC; bikes handle both fine). The Netherlands has more wind than anywhere on land. It can be literally impossible to bike against the wind without the local training when it’s strong enough. If they can do that, I doubt a mountain pass would scare them.

And it rains, a lot. Which is fine if it’s vertical and you have a rain coat, but Dutch people made windmills, the Netherlands and horizontal rain. No coat can protect you from that.

The weather band is indeed narrow, but half of that band is terrible.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#319

Post by rhaway84773 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #38

What are the per-mile statistics? What percentage of total miles traveled occur via bike? If every trip counts equally, pedestrians should outnumber everyone. (Most every cyclist or driver becomes a pedestrian at some point during the day.)

The article points out that walkers do outnumber everyone.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#320

Post by ovi256 »

judge2020 wrote: post #299
ArcticLandfall wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live in a city bubble Or relatively, you live in a suburban bubble? Different lifestyles, different modes of transport.

There is no bubble, only a lack of desire to seek out knowledge about other lifestyles. The problems with car culture were not surfaced until the rise and dominance of the internet.

When people are accused of living in a bubble, it's usually because they show a strong universalist desire to expand their lifestyles to others, without consideration for the others' preferences. The opposite of humanist liberalism that was foundational for Western liberal democracies, or 'live and let live'.
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