Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London • Hacker News Board

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#401

Post by loeg » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

lock-the-spock wrote: post #372

loeg wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the big front-loaded cargo bikes are, well, big. Almost as long as a car, if not as wide. You need to park them somewhere and they're definitely too big and heavy to carry up any stairs. They're also expensive, like mid 4 figures USD. This starts to look like a similar problem to car ownership and parking. (I say this all as an avid cyclist -- my household has four bikes and one car.) Rentals seem like…

I own a bike with a big box in the front and parking has absolutely not been an issue for me. In the last six months I rode > 2600km in and around one of the densest European cities and parked in many different places. I have yet to find a place where I cannot park the bike . You can use regular car parking, but you will always find a dead corner, bike rack, big sidewalk, etc where you can leave the bike. And to be c…

Glad to hear it. The biggest barrier for me is parking it at home. I don't have an indoor space big enough for a cargo bike and don't want to leave a $8-10,000 bike exposed to the elements and thieves (regardless of insurance).

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#402

Post by lenlorijn » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

fipar wrote: post #96

raphaelj wrote: post #36

Somewhat unrelated to the article, but I live in a mid-size EU city and dumped my car for an e-bike a few months ago. Surprisingly, it hasn't been that hard (my GF kept her car, and I have a car-sharing subscription): Pros: - Immediately stopped having insomnia. Better feel overall; - about €300/month in additional disposable income. That's basically a free lunch everyday! - significantly faster if parking is taken i…

About not killing someone if you ride after drinking, Obviously it is ver difficult for a bike to directly kill someone other than the rider (as opposed to a car, where this is very easy), but a drunk cyclist can still hurt other people directly or indirectly (causing a bigger accident by forcing someone to avoid them). Even on a city free of private cars, you’d still share the road with pedestrians, other cyclists,…

I see lots of folks in the comments assuming what would happen when you bike drunk, seemingly not ever having done so themselves or seen it.

I live in a student city in the Netherlands (Groningen), where most students go out on the town by bike. It's really not much more dangerous than walking drunk. And it's very much preferable to driving drunk.

Thousands of students park their bikes in the city's central underground bike parking spots every weekend. I have never heard of someone dying because biking drunk. The biggest danger for any bike, drunk or not, remains the car. This is also reflected in the enforcement of laws by the police. Although driving drunk, and being drunk in public is not allowed, fining cyclists for this is rarely enforced. Partially because the consequences are not too bad, and partially to make sure people don't drive home drunk instead to avoid a fine.

According to the Dutch central bureau of statistics in 2021, out of all deaths of cyclists 34% are due to losing consciousness, getting a foot stuck in the wheels, making a wrong movement, or due to bad road conditions and slipperiness. Out of this 34%, 72 % is over the age of 70. https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/37/meer-fietsdoden-na-e...

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#403

Post by trgn » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #291

trgn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol way to miss the point. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device to emphasize a point. I'm so tired of the internet. Anyway, yes, let me revise, bicycles are the best invention, of ALL TIME! Power loom: ushered in capitalist mode of production, alienating us from our labor. Electrical generator: it's cool I guess. Steam engine: start of the fetishization of the engineering aesthetic. Awful. Only redeeming quality is that…

> lol way to miss the point. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device to emphasize a point. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/738/025/db0... Your "hyperbole" was solidly within the fat part of the bell curve of "what people of your bent say unironically". You don't get to say you were just pretending when it's called out for being absurd. Also, poe's law is very relevant here. >ower loom: ushered in capitalist…

> what people of your bent say unironically"

Fair enough. I am certainly of that bent, and proud (ie. smug if you prefer) about it.

I don't see irony and hyperbole as equivalent though. I am serious that bicycles are an excellent invention, certainly in the context of personal mobility, most certainly contrasted with horrid technology like cars. So unironic in that sense. But certainly hyperbole, as in, "best" invention, that's hard to determine. There's millions of axes on which to judge inventions, can't really put them all on a single line, and find "good, better, best".

> no shortage of people saying more or less exactly the same thing unironically

I was joking, doubling down on the original premise of exaggeration, I thought that was obvious.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#404

Post by bloke_zero » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

lock-the-spock wrote: post #372

loeg wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the big front-loaded cargo bikes are, well, big. Almost as long as a car, if not as wide. You need to park them somewhere and they're definitely too big and heavy to carry up any stairs. They're also expensive, like mid 4 figures USD. This starts to look like a similar problem to car ownership and parking. (I say this all as an avid cyclist -- my household has four bikes and one car.) Rentals seem like…

I own a bike with a big box in the front and parking has absolutely not been an issue for me. In the last six months I rode > 2600km in and around one of the densest European cities and parked in many different places. I have yet to find a place where I cannot park the bike . You can use regular car parking, but you will always find a dead corner, bike rack, big sidewalk, etc where you can leave the bike. And to be c…

Not easy at home in London. Our flat would not allow a cargo bike (1st floor) and there is no where outside to lock it safe and dry.

60,000 people on a 4 year waiting list for on street bike parking:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-cyclists-bike-...

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#405

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #238

jerrre wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most of you points also apply to drunk walking?

Literally just being drunk enough can end up in you being dead or maimed. From a harm reduction perspective, Drunk Driving -> Drunk Bicycling feels like it reduces the capacity for damage roughly proportionally to Drunk Bicycling -> Drunk Walking. At a critical level, the speeds you can comfortably achieve are reduced at each step, thereby increasing the amount of reaction time available to avoid an incident, reducin…

one major difference is that someone who is incredibly drunk can still drive a car at 100kmph, but they can't balance well enough to ride their bike.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#406

Post by avianlyric » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #119

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #3

Note that the "City of London" is not the whole of the London built-up area, but just the financial services district, slightly more than one square mile in area. Still, it's a remarkable statistic even then.

The City of London is notable for allowing businesses to vote because so few people live there. There is one residential district inside the City in the Barbican estate, the rest is commercial.

The City of London allows corporations to vote because its existence as local authority predates anything else that exists in the UK. Mentions of The City of London's special rights exist in the Magna Carta, and it was never included in any of the local authority voting reforms the occurred since its creation.

The local population number have absolutely nothing to do with the existence of corporate votes in The City of London. It's not even the smallest local authority by population, the Isles of Scilly are, and corporations have no votes there.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#407

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

rickydroll wrote: post #376

matsemann wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - might be impossible depending on work or children; The newer style of cargo bikes can for many families replace a car. Have two kids seated in the trunk of the bike and drop them off at kindergarten, then continue biking to work and pick them up on the way home. Those are a bit on the pricier side, though. Still cheap compared to a car, but people often look at them as something "extravagant" or "in addition" to…

> So I think we will see a shift in where people settle, where they will no longer base their lives around owning multiple cars. Magical thinking will not make it so. My partner and I moved further away from the city where she works because we wanted to move in together and we can't afford rent or property where either of us used to live. I work from home so most the time my car sits charging the driveway. However, a…

It sounds like your underarching problem here is housing costs.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#408

Post by DrBazza » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #3

Note that the "City of London" is not the whole of the London built-up area, but just the financial services district, slightly more than one square mile in area. Still, it's a remarkable statistic even then.

There's also the slight quirk of geography that it's next to the Thames, so therefore at the bottom of a hill, almost completely flat.

TfL had the good fortune and opportunity to repurpose two lanes of Upper Thames St. and Victoria Embankment (one single road) into cycle lanes, and also Southwark Bridge.

Without that last part, there's pretty much no other major 'through' routes that could be made safe for cyclists in the City. If there aren't any protected bike no one uses them. The vast majority of journeys into the City are along that new cycle 'superhighway'.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#409

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #280

yourusername wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said someone that has never lived across the street from a elevated subway, on a street with a streetcar or near a bus stop.

What is louder: 1 subway train, or 200 cars?

It's a different kind of sound. Tire noise is white noise (or at least, similar). My experience working in close proximity to a light rail line was 1) the train shakes the ground as it goes by, and 2) if you're near a corner, the squeaking is pretty loud. We have water sprayers in those areas to try and cut down on the howling, but it's not a panacea.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#410

Post by trgn » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #394

trgn wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to see. The last ten years, the galvanizing project of every european city has been calming cars. I didn't really realize it until I was there the last few summers on vacation, and the difference is night&day with 10 years ago (Brussels, Paris big examples, many smaller ones too). Unreal, a truly positive transformation. It's one of those things, you just can "feel", although maybe hard to explain, I cer…

I wonder, why there is not dealds between land speculation and public transportation. One party buys fields from farmers, the other creates a privately financed railroad/subway out in the "new suburbs", shooting the areas value through the roof. Then build denser, better citycore, connected to the old citycore.

From what I gather, there used to be, the "streetcar suburb" was exactly that. It no longer exists, at all. best you may get is some new urbanist toy town in the exurbs. They're great because they're better than a regular suburb, providing local walkability, but they're still isolated pods.