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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

#531

Post by gambiting »

plugin-baby wrote: post #510
gambiting wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just saying "look at Tokyo" doesn't mean anything. How exactly would you change London to be more like tokyo? As the simplest question - which areas of London would you demolish to make room for high density Japanese housing? Alternatively, if you're going to build wide, how would you connect those areas with the centre, if building new metro lines is pretty much impossible in London for historical reasons? "London's…

> building new metro lines is pretty much impossible in London for historical reasons Didn’t they open a new one last year?

They did - it was in development for over 20 years. At this rate to reach the density of Tokyo we would have to wait until the 4th millenium.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#532

Post by yieldcrv »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #312
chriswarbo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

I started digging and noticed there are lots of little fiefdoms in plain sight in the US.

Its... amusing.

Either a little unincorporated hamlet to escape taxes, or a little incorporated hamlet to collect taxes from some warehouses.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#533

Post by r00fus »

TomK32 wrote: post #481
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, Let's hope not all will want to live above the supermarket they work at: https://3pod.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-of-happiness

This is the case in Hong Kong when I visited my extended family who live there a decade ago.

Powered walkways/escalators/elevators everywhere, metro came every 2-3m, shopping/city offices/food courts connected to it all and you did a LOT of walking.

That was the closest to Trantor I'll ever be in my life. Sigh.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#534

Post by Mashimo »

cypress66 wrote: post #282
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…

> you will not kill someone if you ride after a night drinking; Wow. After a family member of mine being injured by a cyclist crashing into them, reading something like this is quite infuriating. If you drink, don't drive, even if it's a bicycle.

I drink and bike.

I'm debating with myself how safe it is. Currently I'm still on "it's fine" side of things. I'm open the change though.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#535

Post by tomatocracy »

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…

One big con you missed is "where do you keep it?" Cargo bikes big enough for (say) one adult plus two large children basically take up the space of a small car. I have room for bikes (and cycle to work myself) and a car in London (and I need my car for journeys outside London) but no way I would have room for a cargo bike as well.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#536

Post by pastage »

mrpopo wrote: post #469
margorczynski wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is looking at reality and making choices that based on that analysis are best for the safety of you and your family self-defeating? You're putting activism into the mix and if you're willing to put more risk on yourself and/or your family to prove a point then it is your choice to do so.

It's not "activism" or "proving a point", it's the prisoner's dilemma. You maximize the global reward (fewest accidents) by putting yourself on the most risky position.

As I state in a sibling above this is not the case it is just how we think as humans. You do a lot more harm to you kids and family by driving them in a car.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#537

Post by lacker »

sofixa wrote: post #491
lacker wrote: post #417

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 dangerou…

"Painted bicycle gutters" is the derogatory term for what many North American cities call "biking infrastructure". There have even been some studies that suggest they have worse effects than nothing, because they give a false sense of security to cyclists without providing any protection against drivers. Especially when coupled with total lack of general planning (e.g. bike planes splattered from random place A to ra…

Yeah, I can believe that. I remember one spot off the 280 there are some bicycle lanes that go right over highway off ramps. Drivers are just constantly zooming through at near-highway speeds. Yeah, they're painted green, so what? It's like a particle accelerator encouraging bicycles to smash themselves.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#538

Post by myrmidon »

avianlyric wrote: post #438
_aavaa_ wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You can calculate the approximate speed a vehicle will start aquaplaning at based the vehicles tire pressure (V = 10.35*sqrt(psi) ) [1]. A car tire is usually inflated to around 30-35 psi, which give an aquaplaning speed of about 61mph. 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…

While interesting, this is almost completely irrelevant to bikes: The problem is not primarily water but wet ice or fresh snow.

Wet ice is especially dangerous because it can be pretty much invisible and you can transition directly from normal road surface to essentialy ZERO steering ability (and immediate crash if you initiate a turn or anything). There is pretty much no avoiding occasional crashes from this, the only way is to leave the bike at home when conditions are wet and close to freezing.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#539

Post by ars »

uoaei wrote: post #392
ovi256 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

If we taxed suburbs what they actually cost us as a society, no one would want to live in suburbs. The land use is abysmal compared to cities. Suburbs are effectively subsidized by the cities they are near, and those living in suburbs get off way too easy. That's a good thing if you have an extractivist, individualist mindset, but if we are to continue functioning as a whole society, something needs to give. We love…

If we actually tax them, it would be a negative tax.

So many people don't seem to realize that without suburbs you don't have farms.

Suburbs and farms produce all the things that cities rely on. You don't see heavy industry in the middle of a city.

So we actually wanted to do your plan then cities should cough up way more money than they currently do.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#540

Post by estebank »

airza wrote: post #430
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…

A bakfiets is nowhere near the size of a car. Come on now.

I feel it is useful to provide actual numbers on conversations like this.

On some brand I quickly googled[1], the bounding box that covers all of their models for electric bakfiet's size is 253cm x 95cm (with no individual bike being both that long and wide). Comparing them with a Fiat 500 and a RAM truck[2] (just for kicks), that bounding box is 1 meter shorter in both dimensions than the Fiat. And their classic model is 228cm x 63cm.

[1]: https://www.bakfiets.com/bestanden/documenten/618-22bakfiets...

[2]: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/abarth-500-2008-3-d...

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