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

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#551

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #494

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines, such as with personal swipes and flamewar posts? You've done it a lot, we've asked you to stop, and you've continued to do it. Eventually we're going to have to ban you if you keep this up. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

>You've done it a lot, we've asked you to stop,

I know this is probably boilerplate but if it's not I'd be really interested in seeing where you've called me out previously because as far as I know you haven't.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#552

Post by ChrisKingWebDev » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #81

alkjsdlkjasd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - weather might make the ride unpleasant; As the Dutch like to say: there is no such thing as bad cycling weather, only bad cycling clothes. I would strongly recommond a pair of water/wind proof trousers to go over your regular trousers, if you don't already have some. This has lead to a much more pleasant riding experience, especially in winter. They aren't very practical on a regular bike as they make you uncomfo…

>> As the Dutch like to say: there is no such thing as bad cycling weather, only bad cycling clothes. Easy to say in a country famously flat, small, and with a relatively narrow weather window. I welcome any Dutch person to attempt a 15+km commute during a rocky mountain winter. I know of driveways in US/Canada with more vertical than any Dutch commute.

Luckily there is already a video about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

The quick takeaways are that there are cities in Finland that are colder than any Canadian city where 50% of the kids rides bikes to school. Also, a test project in Montreal gave a bike path a dedicated snow removal budget and ridership was up 30% in one year.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#553

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #227

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…

You live in a city bubble. I have three kids and live in a suburban town about 40km away from the nearest big city. No way i can live without a car. I do have bikes and use them often to bring kids to school. But many friends and family are scattered arround the country. Many places i go to with my kids can only visited by car. And i find a car often very useful during a period of reconstruction of my house or garden…

no-one is arguing you should cycle 40 km - but that doesn't mean we live in a bubble.

That distance is more than the radius of the largest city in Europe -> it's 25km from Heathrow airport to the Buckingham palace.

I don't think having a car is a big problem, I think we could hand out free e-bikes to every family and reduce amount of cars of the roads, because for ~50% of journeys, they make sence.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#554

Post by electriccatblan » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #461

jonahrd wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could probably count the number of times I've changed or showered after cycling on one hand, and cycling has been my main mode of transit for 10 years. When your trip is like 3km you don't even have time to work up a sweat, especially if you're limited to just going at the speed of traffic. (Yes, on my own I could probably ride faster, but I'm limited by car/infrastructure speed)

When your trip is 3km you can easily walk. Bicycle commuting is very hard in warmer climates, because you will get sweaty. But motorcycles solve that problem at least. Then you have those cold climates with awful weather, where bicycle commuting is pure misery, compared to riding a car or bus. So it is all very location dependent.

Bike commuting during winter is fine as long as you have the right clothes. I have commuted in a -55F wind chill in perfect comfort. I will concede that it takes a few weeks to calibrate clothing if you're not used to it, but it's not some huge barrier if it's something you're interested in

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#555

Post by koonsolo » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #529

snozolli wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>How many times have you hit someone while riding a bicycle? I never have. I suppose I should stop paying for car insurance then, since I never had an accident either. Or maybe more accurate example is that I shouldn't worry about the safety of my car, since I never actually hit anyone with it. >>How much harm do you suppose it would do, leading to "massive legal trouble"? There was a cyclist in london recently who…

Even with minor infringements with e-bikes in Belgium they punish pretty severely.

For example: bike not properly licensed: Lose your car license for 15 days and pay 800 euros.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#556

Post by chroma » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

electrosphere wrote: post #262

November 2020 I ordered a Swytch e-bike kit and fitted it to my bike. It replaced the car for many things (weekly grocery shops, city centre trips). I moved to London last year and this turned out to be a fortune timing. My car, a Honda Civic 2007 diesel, is not ULEZ compliant and I will have to pay £12.50/day to drive it from August 2023 due to the low emission zone expansion. I plan to sell it in July. Guess what?…

So the reason more people are cycling in the area is that the government made cars extremely expensive, almost certainly more than the externalities created by those cars. If they instead instituted a carbon tax and congestion pricing, I doubt your daily expenses would exceed £12.50/day.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#557

Post by toshredsyousay » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

tgtweak wrote: post #547

Works well when you don't have 3-4 months of snow and ice. This is probably my biggest gripe with the whole "change roads to bicycle paths" push that is happening in most big cities (emulating this and using it as a guiding example). That infrastructure is essentially useless for 1/3 of the year.

And cars work so well on snow and ice? Some cities in Finland have lots of people cycling in the winter and last I heard they get lots of snow and ice. You can get snow tires for bikes just like you can for cars. You can also plow bike lanes like you can plow the roads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#558

Post by textread » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

I was finding it difficult to stick to cycling.

Hearing my plight, an avid cyclist friend of mine suggested me to try a trick:-

  Get a 3 way folding cycle such as the Brompton. Now, play around with hybrid modes of transport.

My programmer's brain loves building abstractions neatly on top of each other. Folding my cycle and carrying it onto another form of transport brings a smile to my face every time.

The biggest tower of babel I have achieved so far is this:-

A barge carried my car accross a river. I was sitting in the car with my Brompton next to me.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#559

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #448

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also just put seats on a normal bike. I have two kids seats on my bike, front and back, and take my 3 and 6yo to kindergarten that way. It's cheaper than a cargo bike, and much less likely to get stolen.

I am dismayed but not surprised at just how much money people will spend on e-bikes to avoid exercise. There are literally millions of decent analog bike frames bouncing around in various corners of . Getting one up and running, and strapping a seat to the front and back as you have done, would be about 10% the cost of a new e-bike, and maintenance would be negligible. Plus, you get to eat whatever you want guilt-fre…

> I am dismayed but not surprised at just how much money people will spend on e-bikes to avoid exercise.

I am dismayed at how much people spend on plastic coffee pods just to avoid making a proper coffee!

Before I got an ebike, I didn't have confidence of riding on the road proper- > now I know I won't be slowing down to 5 MPH on an uphill, with someone behind me honking incessantly or overtaking dangerously.

I installed nice bright lights powered from the central battery, mirrors and a horn. This makes a world of difference.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#560

Post by KPLS » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

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…

In terms of regulations, I'd propose we bring back bigger down payment requirements (20%) and end the infinite availability of artificially low-interest debt. The absurdly cheap debt has driven speculation by bigger entities on housing, driving up the prices, and eased lending standards have just attempted to give individuals and families a fighting chance at competing for homes, also driving up the prices. I'm not sure how financing of homes in London compares to the US, but the effect of near zero interest rates (which is behind us at the moment but I wouldn't hold your breath) have been global. I don't know how you encourage mom and pop landlords while cutting out a lot of the wild speculative money looking for a home in real estate, but it seems pretty important to figure out.