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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

#411

Post by dublinben »

loeg wrote: post #355
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…

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…

Long tail cargo bikes like the Tern GSD avoid those issues of the bakfiets style ‘wheelbarrow’ bikes. They’ll take two passengers, and there’s plenty of less expensive options as well.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#412

Post by kkfdkerpoe »

I think the sensible model is to eventually get rid of most car traffic in city centres, and concentrate the parking spots in suburbs, with adequate public transport to denser areas.

Personally I couldn't live without a car. Not because I need it much in the city right now, but because I need it to reach my relatives and meaningful places in the countryside, far away from any public transport. Cost of living is also something to consider, not everyone can afford a proper house within reach of public transport, and living in a flat sucks.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#413

Post by DrBazza »

mnd999 wrote: post #59
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.

I think most of the commenters missed this. It should also be taken in the context of the city not being an area many people drive to anyway. Many of these cyclists will have switched from the tube, and many of them will have taken a train to a terminal station and biked from there.

For non-UK people, particularly American readers, the City of London, and inner London in general has zero public parking. It feels like even saying 'zero' is being pretty generous. Every street is restricted in some way (no parking, or exorbitant parking meters), and there are decreasingly few car parks/parking lots.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#414

Post by gambiting »

CydeWeys wrote: post #407
rickydroll wrote: post #376

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. 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.

Sure but like.........people always say that (for example) in London you can't live closer to work because houses/flats are too expensive. Ok, I mean that's true, but how are you going to solve that? It's a gigantic city which is already full to the brim, with literally 1000+ years of building on top of every single square inch of land available. You would probably have to demolish large areas of London and replace them with high-density housing to match demand - but obviously that's never going to happen. What other options are there? Maybe the only inevitable conclusion is that not everyone can live in London(or any other major city). You can't fix expensive housing in them by just wishing they were cheaper, or with regulations(or I'd love to hear how any regulations would help, beyond banning things like AirBnb).

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#415

Post by pclmulqdq »

scott_w wrote: post #378
pclmulqdq wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Driving without due care and attention" sounds like a statute that has a much more specific interpretation than you think, and the police probably aren't the ones who misinterpreted that here. "Careless driving" and "reckless driving" are against the law in many states in the US, but both actually have very specific interpretations that are not entirely contained in the text of the statute. This is the joy of living…

So just to be clear “drivers who fuck around go to jail” is not true. But it’s cyclists that are the problem in this discussion.

Yes, drivers who blow through red lights and stop signs like the bad actor cyclists do will find themselves in jail (on reckless driving charges, incidentally) pretty fast. You're trying to compare apples and oranges here: a driver who happened to not see someone while driving (because they were driving more aggressively than you liked) vs. people who regularly flout traffic laws.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#417

Post by lacker »

I'm worried about riding my bike in the city. A friend of mine died on her bike when hit by a truck in Seattle a few years ago and since then I just don't feel okay biking alongside cars any more, especially with kids.

I know this is fundamentally born of emotion rather than rationalism, but still, it does seem like riding a bike is much more dangerous than driving. Bicycles are somewhere from 3x to 11x more dangerous than cars.

https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/

When I visited Amsterdam I liked how they often had separated bike lanes, not like in the US where cars can and do just drive through the bike lanes, like an actual physical barrier preventing cars from driving through bike lanes. Maybe that would be a lot safer, but, I won't hold my breath on that coming to the US.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#418

Post by Wowfunhappy »

nonethewiser wrote: post #176
raphaelj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my bike is insured, and I bought a recently released angle grinder-resistant lock [1]. My workspace is also fairly well located so that also helps. [1] https://eu.litelok.com/products/litelok-x1

Insurance won’t get you to work. And if you don’t need it to get to work you don’t need a car in the first place, so I wouldnt see a point in comparing.

You can take a cab on the one day you're without a bike.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#419

Post by nicehill »

jkaljundi wrote: post #279
nicehill wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating How do Europeans keep ice off bike lanes? Salt?

Tractors and snowplows. Salt kills the bicycles and salty slush is much worse to drive in. Hard packed snow is actually the best to ride on. Interestingly Oulu bike roads clearing contract states the company doing the snowplowing can do inspections only on bicycles, not cars :)

Maybe hard packed snow is a strategy for only flat cities

Seattle infamously tried the hard packed snow strategy about a decade ago, and it turned it into a dangerous (hilly) ice rink

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#420

Post by rootusrootus »

barnabee wrote: post #20
lscdlscd wrote: post #2

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

It really is fantastic news. The more that pedestrians and cyclists dominate, the faster the shift from ugly, dirty roads to a pleasant human centred urban environment.

The urban core should be pedestrian only. Bicyclists can stop at the edge and lock the bike and then walk. Then outside the bike zone there could be a car zone as it gets more suburban.
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