The City or London as a whole?
Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
581–590 of 969 posts
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#582Only a quibble, but "Bicycles outnumber motor vehicles" might be more accurate. It's a vehicle count, not a person count.
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a parent myself who has always had a car but has aspired at times to go car-free, I think the whole "semi-frequent short term car rental" thing only really gets realistic when the kids are old enough to just need those tiny Mifold booster seats / seatbelt adjusters. Conventional UAS-attached car seats are just too bulky and troublesome to be installing and uninstalling all the time in cars you only rent for a few…
I guess if renting was big enough there could be option to rent a car with those pre-installed
That's generally an option, but it's not exactly cheap!
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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".
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Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#585Earlier 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 see lots of folks in the comments assuming what would happen when you bike drunk, seemingly not ever having done so themselves or seen it. I live in a student city in the Netherlands (Groningen), where most students go out on the town by bike. It's really not much more dangerous than walking drunk. And it's very much preferable to driving drunk. Thousands of students park their bikes in the city's central undergrou…
I once heard somebody describe cycling after a few drinks as the closest thing humans can get to flying.
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who dick around like that in a car find themselves in jail really quickly. People who do it on a bike wave self-righteously at the police while flagrantly violating the law, and get away with it.
I watched a car drive straight into someone yesterday. The police refused to come out. I don’t see how that squares with your statement at all.
I have video proof of a car ramming me when pushing into my lane. Police declined to investigate because there “no proof of deliberate action.”
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 orega…
I mean the reality of it is that cars are damned convenient and it's way easier to drive, even for three minutes, than walk for 15 minutes, especially if there's a suburban parking lot at the other end. Getting people out of that habit is an uphill battle, and I'd be lying if I said I've never driven those three minutes to Safeway vs walk. Especially if I'm grabbing a months worth of groceries for the whole house.
What's different now is ebikes/related which allows those three minutes to be done via bike. Dean Kamen claimed that cities would be redesigned around the Segway. He was too early, and only half right, but I think his claim was more prescient than we give him credit for. Ebikes, as we're hearing about here in London, really are enabling a new kind of city design that takes advantage of this semi-new technology.
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> So many people don't seem to realize that without suburbs you don't have farms.
This strikes me as a bizarre take. What do you consider a "suburb"?
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
As this is a UK based article, I'm assuming you mean the Cambridge in England. I happen to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the while cyclists can be reckless, the drivers pose a 1000x greater threat to safety than cyclists. As a tip for dealing with cyclists: continue your movement as a pedestrian: they'll go around you. Most pedestrians have headphones in/little awareness of their surroundings, and as a cyclist…
> As a tip for dealing with cyclists: continue your movement as a pedestrian As a pedestrian (I am not wearing headphones) please ring your bell if you are passing me on a shared path. It is very frightening to have a cyclist suddenly appear in your field of vision, from behind, terrifying.
The problem is that a lot of people will jump to a random side if you ring. Another large fraction will yell at you.
Something that worked comparatively well for me it so shout “I’ll pass on your (left/right)”
Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London
#590Works 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.
> Works well when you don't have 3-4 months of snow and ice.
Should work just fine IF there is biking infrastructure.
You plow the bike roads just like you do with car roads.