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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

#511

Post by Symbiote »

matth3 wrote: post #223
worik wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the London tube have good facilities for carrying bikes?

Nope, they are not allowed on the underground network unless they are folding bikes.

Outside peak hours they are allowed on the sub-surface lines (Circle etc) as those have larger trains and simpler emergency evacuation.

It's still not something you'd want to do very often. I think I did it once with a new bicycle that I'd bought from the other side of London, where the route home would have been long and completely new to me.

Map of allowed lines: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/cycles-on-public-transport.pdf

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#512

Post by ClumsyPilot »

gambiting wrote: post #414
CydeWeys wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The population is only 20% of the problem -> look at Berlin, it's population has grown 0.3% over the past 30 years, but the house prices have gone stratospheric just like they have in every other major city.

40% of the housing problem is whatever the fuck is going on in the banking system -> it enables us to commit all of our life savings for the rest of our productive lives to pay for a roof over our heads. It's like a hostage situation with the highest bidder.

> 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.

So true, my friend is not even allowed to raise your roof by 20 cm to create an extra room in the loft.

The planning system here is so crazy, I am confident it's like 40% of the problem.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#513

Post by pastage »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #325
CalRobert wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I cycle in areas with ice and snow have done so all my life, all I do is lower my speed and my saddle. That means when there is ice I can always use my feets. This is more stable than walking, in wintertime I will stop and help pedestrians over vast swaths of ice.

I have managed to skid out once and that was with studded tires.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#514

Post by Mashimo »

jefc1111 wrote: post #127
fipar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am on board with this. You can do someone a serious injury while cycling. Also, you might kill yourself by drunk cycling. And that is likely to have a huge effect on lots of people you care about. It's just a bad idea all round...

> It's just a bad idea all round...

Drinking alone is a bad idea all around.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#515

Post by snozolli »

gambiting wrote: post #441
snozolli wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure your friend was actually allowed to take that shortcut with an e-bike going 45 km/h? If it looks like a bike and you ride it like a bike, you're not going to have any problems riding it where bikes are allowed. It sounds like you envision this person riding at absolutely maximum possible speed at all times.

Until you hit someone with that bike, in which case you will be found 100% guilty and in massive legal trouble.

How many times have you hit someone while riding a bicycle? I never have.

How much harm do you suppose it would do, leading to "massive legal trouble"?

Incidentally, 45kmh is 28mph, which I was just barely able to maintain on level ground on my road bicycle when I was fit. The "speed pedelecs" laws seem a bit silly rather than simply enforcing speed limits and penalizing reckless behavior.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#516

Post by stonogo »

loeg wrote: post #401
lock-the-spock wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

A coworker of mine has a cargo bike from a company called Tern. I thought that is was the GSD but looking at their website it's different than the one he rides. Nevertheless, a neat feature is you can kick the bike backwards onto its own cargo rack, and the bike stands on its own vertically. He rides it to work and it fits in his comically small office; the footprint is about the same as a vertical filing cabinet. I'm told several of the newer cargo bikes have this feature.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#517

Post by jagtstronaut »

What is a constructive way to respond to cyclist hate? I used to commute to work quite a bit and got a lot of flack both on the road and off (people giving their opinion).

I don't really understand the hate first of all, but more importantly how do you respond to it appropriately and maturely? Is there another way than just ignoring it?

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#518

Post by Symbiote »

hammock wrote: post #213
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.

>it's a remarkable statistic If you consider levying a $20-30/day tax to every driver,[1] plus another $12/day if your car is too old,[2] plus $200-600/year to park on public roads,[3] causing people to stop driving as remarkable, then sure. Edit: why the downvotes? [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10279911/Sadiq-Khan... [2] https://www.carthrottle.com/post/youll-now-be-charged-extra-... [3] https://en.wi…

VED is to drive on public roads.

Parking is about £7/hour during work times, although it would be optimistic to expect to find an on-street spot every day. The maximum time is 4 hours anyway.

Apart from the mistake, you are probably downvoted for posting a hysterical Daily Mail article. Note the "up to".

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#519

Post by Mashimo »

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,…

> but don’t ride a bike.

I'm drunk biking and thought about if I should stop.

But I have never hear about anyone having an accident related to drunk biking. In theory I could run head first into oncoming biker. But I never felt being that drunk in a way that would lose control. That would also make it illegal where I live.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#520

Post by estebank »

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.

Even if proximity to work were to be completely irrelevant for everyone, a lot of people (most?) would want to be close to something, be it their hobbies, hospitals, restaurants or at the very least shops. If your hobby is growing groceries and something outdoorsy (including road/gravel/mountain cycling!) and don't mind doing big shops/having to drive when you open a drawer and you realize that you ran out of oregano, then living in an isolated area is a valid choice (despite it increasing your individualized carbon footprint; if you fly more than once a year then that will dwarf almost any other lifestyle choice you make on that front).

I live in a city despite working remotely since the pandemic started, not because of proximity to the offices I might have to go back to, but rather because I can walk a block to buy groceries. I know people that live <.5 mile away from a Safeway in the peninsula that drive there because the streets are not very pedestrian or cyclist friendly.

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