431–440 of 969 posts
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The ”safer” your car is, the more dangerous it is for everyone else in traffic usually.
Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that given current reality the safety of moving in a car is higher than when using a bike. How it could and should be is a different matter.
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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.
This isn’t “more aggressively than I like,” this is a man put in hospital because a driver chose to ignore the UK official guidance on how to drive. Official guidance, I might add, that you must learn as part of your driving course.
Attitudes like that are exactly my point.
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> - 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…
I’ve never seen this not be the case.
Are European cities organized differently or something? I’ve never see affordable living within biking distance of a business district, in the US. Prices are usually double.
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Whilst I'm overall in favour of promoting cycling as a way of getting around, in preference to motor vehicles, I'm not sure I entirely agree with "safer". I live in Cambridge and have lost count of the number of times I've had to contend with cyclists blowing through pedestrian crossings on a red light (or zebra crossings at any time) when I'm trying to walk over them, or cycling the wrong way down a one-way street -…
It is really tempting when on a bicycle to think of yourself as being able to pick and choose rules to follow, magically switching from “more like a car” to “more like a pedestrian” as needed. The rule that I personally follow: always behave like a car (albeit one that rides far over to the side of the road most of the time), and if I really feel an overwhelming urge to act as a pedestrian, time to fully dismount and…
As someone who walks a lot, I find this very frustrating, as a lot of cyclists think it's okay to ride on the sidewalk at road speeds. My ideal world would have the urban core be restricted to pedestrians only. Or at the very least speed restricted to 5 mph. Cyclists could stop, lock up the bike and walk. Or walk the bike.
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.
It also has the best cycling infrastructure in Greater London. One of the big problems London has is that each borough decides how much to invest in cycling infrastructure, and a commute is only as good as its worst section. My commute from northern Camden to the City is a pleasure, a commute from west London through Kensington will be more of a pain. IMO TfL should force the creation of good grade-separate cycle lan…
Examples:
- Cycle-hostile layout changes on Bishopsgate. While I strongly support the number of car lanes being reduced and footpaths being widened, this has been done in a way that is hostile to cyclists - if not downright dangerous. There is no room for cyclists to overtake cars (and vice-versa) and dangerous sharp kerbs that come out of nowhere at a near 90 degree angle to the carriageway. Very poor design.
- Removal of segregated cycle lane on Cannon Street, a street which for much of it's length is much wider than it needs to be for the volumes of traffic it gets. The cycle lane was well-used and really improved conditions for cyclists.
- Removal of the zero-emissions scheme on Beech Street, which restricted the area through and around the Barbican tunnel to pedestrians, cyclists, and zero-emissions vehicles. This was previously very pleasant to cycle through, thanks to reduced traffic volumes and cleaner air. But the change resulted in a rapid return to illegal level of air pollution in the tunnel. The cycle lanes in the tunnel are also in poor condition (potholes, crumbling poorly maintained paving, etc) which besides the stinking air, makes it even more unpleasant to cycle through.
Finally, there has been talk of a proper east-west cycle way across the city of London for many years (in addition to the existing C3), but nothing ever seems to happen with it. TfL's busy C2 (Cycle Superhighway 2) cycle route simply stops at Algate East on the City of London's boundary. After all these years, why hasn't it been extended westwards through the city?
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Bicycles are the best machine from the industrial revolution. Quiet, healthy, efficient, harmonious with our sensibilities. I think it is precisely these aspirational qualities that is enraging the morlocks in their cars (speaking for US only now, it's better in other countries). A bicycle is a shameful reminder of the virtuous path not taken.
Remember back in the 1970s; if you ever saw anything on the news about China, it would feature rank upon rank of cyclists pouring through Peking's great thoroughfares, with nary a motor vehicle in sight. We all laughed at how backward they were. Now we'd view a similar scene from any major city in the world as signs of a great environmental advance. Funny how times change, isn't it?
They went with single use superblocks connected by highways. A terrible system in so many ways.
Thankfully they protected some of the old city centers and those still have the beautiful chinese urbanism.
Thankfully, leadership in China has realized that they really fucked up. Sometimes when building the 5 ring road highway that is clogged you start to rethink the problem. Funny enough by turning to Western New Urbanism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqldZhxl86I
https://www.efchina.org/Reports-en/report-lccp-20171214-en
The book is really interesting, a great set of guidelines for city building. I don't agree with everything but its pretty fantastic.
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The trick is to build your towns and cities such that 15km is longer than most people would need to commute by bike, except perhaps as part of a bike->transit mixed-mode commute. There are places with wintry weather that are good for biking! Oulu comes to mind https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-64354089 And as explored in this video, if the weather is too bad to bike safely in, it's probably too bad to drive sa…
> if the weather is too bad to bike safely in, it's probably too bad to drive safely in. I am sceptical of this assertion. For starters, if you have poor traction in a car you can always slow down, and the risk you face is sliding. In a bike, you need to have a minimum speed to actually bike, otherwise you can't stay upright. And your failure case is no longer sliding, but it's toppling over. To say nothing of what h…
A road bike tire is inflated to 80-120psi which give an aquaplaning speed of about 92mph.
A hybrid tire is inflated to 40-70psi, which gives an aquaplaning speed of about 65mph.
Bikes aren't know for traveling above 60mph, so wet roads don't pose much of a problem for bikes. Their tire pressure is so high compared to their normal speeds, that an unassisted human would really struggle to make a bike aquaplane. Additionally bikes can easily be ridden stably at walking speed. Unless you're riding on ice, going slower simply doesn't pose a problem.
As a result slipping on bike, because you can't cycle slow enough, just isn't a concern. In the only situations where it might be a problem, simply walking would be challenging, and driving would be idiotic.
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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.
Weather has been very rainy, hoping to bike more for short trips around town. Thought about a cheap e-bike for grocery shopping, etc.