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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

#811

Post by wolverine876 »

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…

> Pros:

I'd add to your list: No stress of driving in traffic. Imagine your ride home is pleasant personal time and exercise in the fresh air, not cars honking in a standstill in traffic. You feel better after riding.

I've had bike shops apologize for a $20 charge. :D They are thinking in a different context; I'm comparing that to my alternative, a car and its repair bills.

> significantly faster if parking is taken into account for most trips. The bike is faster for any I don't think many people realize it: It's far more practical and efficient to ride. When you start doing it, driving (those distances) becomes frustrating and tedious, an odd choice given one that's faster, cheaper, and much better in all the other ways you listed.

At an easy pace, a bicycle goes ~16 km/hr (10 mi/hr). Especially in a dense city, think what's within 5-10 miles of you. Imagine very little traffic and then parking for free, without looking for a spot, within probably 20m of the door (depending on the city and bike parking rules).

> about €300/month in additional disposable income

And how about the cost of the bicycle? $250-600 for a good one, used or new. I own several for different purposes, guests, etc. That would be pretty expensive if it was a car.

And if it's stolen or damaged, buy another.

> Cons:

Also, not an option for those without the coordination to ride safely or durability to fall safely. Everyone falls. Elderly people can easily break bones.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#812

Post by [deleted] »

oangemangut wrote: post #764
sidfthec wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is no one talking about the safety of hauling kids on a bike? It's incredibly dangerous compared to a car. In my city, it's not if but when you'll get hit by a car on a bike. Yet I see parents increasingly think it's okay to haul their children on their bikes.

Because it should be okay, and it's a societal failing that it currently isn't as safe as it should be. Cars are always safer for their occupants, but using them puts vulnerable road users at greater risk of serious injury or death. In my city I love to see more people on the road with their kids on e-bikes. It shouldn't be a moral failing on part of the parent to be doing that. OTOH, just this morning one of the A*H…

[deleted]

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#813

Post by grouchomarx »

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…

pretty narrow to view ebikes solely as a means to avoid exercise. The list of benefits is long and proven. Regardless, suggesting someone simply dredge up a used bicycle and strap their child to it after a bit of maintenance is unrealistic

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#814

Post by alvah »

KPLS wrote: post #560
gambiting wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

There are ways to fix it, but none of them are politically palatable - for a couple of generations now, homeowners have come to believe their house is an investment. If you propose any action that will reduce the value of their "investment", you will be voted out at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately, I can't see a way this gets fixed under the current political systems in the West, so it will eventually be fixed one of the more old-fashioned ways.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#815

Post by alvah »

CalRobert wrote: post #671
nibbleshifter wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands at least has functional health service, among other things. Ireland does not.

Ireland is horrible at everything. The health service is in collapse, the immigration bureau is incompetent, crime is legal (the garda told me not to vote Green... now remember they're the ones enforcing environmental laws), transport is a joke, the bike infrastructure is 30 years behind the continent, and for all that the taxes are quite high if you make anything resembling a decent salary. But if you DO have the ga…

"Crime is legal" "The Garda told me not to vote Green"

These 2 things are not the same.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#816

Post by kitkat_new »

ars wrote: post #714
jodrellblank wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farms aren't sub-urbs, farms are rural. Suburbia "lesser-urban" is housing estates. Nothing productive happens there. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia - " the outer parts of a town, where there are houses, but no large shops, places of work, or places of entertainment "

People live there. And they create business nearby. And those business are closer to the rural areas than the cities are. And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.

> And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.

this is exactly what suburbs are.

You live there, nothing else. You wake up then you drive to work somewhere else

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#817

Post by q845712 »

acchow wrote: post #809
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…

It absolutely amazes me that places like Amsterdam, London, etc build so much safe bike infrastructure when the weather is so dreary . And despite the weather, of course people will use it because it feels great and is so fast! And yet, here we have California (especially LA) with the best cycling weather but barely any safe cycling routes. LA is laughably bad with tons of "bike routes" that are just the rightmost ca…

it's one of our greatest tragedies in the U.S. that the region most suited for walking/cycling/"active transit" is also the region completely obsessed with appearances and specifically with appearing like you just stepped out of the makeup trailer and onto the set for each scene. I honestly think that the social faux paux of looking like you might have been exercising, or exposed to wind, or the hair and clothing style limitations imposed by arriving via bicycle are major factors for SoCal, moreso than in many other parts of the country and world.

For ~6 years my wife and I lived in Santa Barbara without owning a car. We'd occasionally rent one to get out of town - there were a couple times I left my bike locked up at the airport for a long weekend.

I used to fantasize about making a documentary called "the disappearing bike" where you would video somebody cycling around town but every time the bike lane disappeared and then reappeared a quarter mile later, you'd show them just gliding across the street without their bicycle.

Even in SB, which has a much more chill attitude on the roads than anything south of Thousand Oaks (as you head into the LA metro area), some drivers would be bizarrely unsympathetic to the fact that you were traversing a short strip with no bike line in order to connect two bike lanes, with reactions ranging from honking, yelling, revving the engine to loudly pass, "buzzing" you by passing much too close, ... but I think it generally follows that rule that most of us are kind and some small constant percentage (5? 10%?) of the world is jerks.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#818

Post by andy_ppp »

wolverine876 wrote: post #811
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…

> Pros: I'd add to your list: No stress of driving in traffic. Imagine your ride home is pleasant personal time and exercise in the fresh air, not cars honking in a standstill in traffic. You feel better after riding. I've had bike shops apologize for a $20 charge. :D They are thinking in a different context; I'm comparing that to my alternative, a car and its repair bills. > significantly faster if parking is taken…

> I'd add to your list: No stress of driving in traffic. Imagine your ride home is pleasant personal time and exercise in the fresh air, not cars honking in a standstill in traffic. You feel better after riding.

I imagine you have never cycled across London during peak hours, depending on the day some of the most nerve shredding cycling you can imagine; some of the angriest motorists in the world running people off the road (even squeezing me into the curb in a cycle lane, before threatening to kill me after I knocked on the back of his van) in their metal boxes completely oblivious to safe driving around cyclists and how defensive you have to be to be seen and yes sometimes get in the way of vehicles. Once some moron on the Kings road swings the door of his Lexus into the road (only cars exist right?) and I career into the opposite lane managing to just about stay on my bike and avoid the on rushing car beeping his horn at me as if I was cycling on the wrong side of the road deliberately. A near death experience I'd say.

But yes cycling can be relaxing on occasion, just not on the roads motorists use and not in London during rush hour.

I have to say having cycled across France the motorists there are absolutely amazing and give you loads of space when overtaking.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#819

Post by wolverine876 »

_hcuq wrote: post #774
sharkweek wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In upfront transparency to avoid sounding like I have a superiority complex based on just how much I love my cargo bike, our family does still have a car. Okay that being said… our cargo bike has replaced 90% of our “last mile” driving here in the city. We take the kids to school on it, we do grocery runs, we take it to the park, out to dinner, just about anywhere we can. In the first two years we’ve put at least 2k…

Presumably you live in a place where it's safe to cycle. If so, I am envious.

I might be safer than you think. I used to refuse to ride in a city because it seemed dangerous and many people I knew who rode in traffic had been in accidents with cars. But when I ended up on a bike trying it out, I found I could almost always (~95% of the time) avoid traffic, even without bike lanes.

Side streets and alleys are great - too slow for cars, but you're probably cycling at 10-15 mph, which is fine. Parks can be great - a shortcut with no cars and beautiful scenery, while the cars have to go the long way. Campuses, plazas, etc. etc. Even sidewalks when empty or nearly-empty can work to bypass traffic or go the 'wrong' way.[0]

[0] Second to riding, cyclists love to lecture others on how to ride. And a favorite outlet for their obsession is sidewalks. They don't discuss or consider the reasons or merits, they just have found an easy outlet for self-righteousness and repeat the same phrases over and over. Just remember that sidewalks are for pedestrians first; you are a visitor. Give them the right of way always, let them know when you're behind them (e.g., 'on your left!'), and give them plenty of space (trying walking when a bike buzzes past in either direction - from behind, you can't even hear it coming). Defer to their safety, real and perceived. It's easy. No problems at all IME, except self-righteous people over-excited at an opportunity to lecture someone.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#820

Post by Karrot_Kream »

ars wrote: post #714
jodrellblank wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farms aren't sub-urbs, farms are rural. Suburbia "lesser-urban" is housing estates. Nothing productive happens there. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia - " the outer parts of a town, where there are houses, but no large shops, places of work, or places of entertainment "

People live there. And they create business nearby. And those business are closer to the rural areas than the cities are. And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.

Most American incorporated cities are subject to zoning. In the US, most zoning codes define the following: minimum setbacks (how far from the edge of the lot the building line begins at, aka the buffer between the home and the street for residential zones), minimum lot sizes (what's the minimum size a lot can be parceled out into), and maximum FARs (Floor-to-Area ratios, the maximum amount of floor space buildable in a given area.) This is true in most zoning codes across Residential, Industrial, Agricultural, Commercial, and other zones.

The "suburbs" are generally Single Family Home (SFH) zoned areas (the name of the zone differs per-city) defined by a requirement to have a single dwelling, a large minimum lot size, large setbacks, and low maximum FARs. Nothing mandates that SFH zones need to be adjacent to agricultural areas. In fact most zoning codes detail a long list of uses allowed within the zone and a buffer between zones. For example, most zoning codes require a larger buffer between industrial or agricultural zones and residential zones. By definition how much "closer to the rural area" suburbs are is defined purely by how much SFH housing there is, nothing more.

The reason why most US suburbs abut dense inner cities is that historical US city development occurred densely before the automobile and then postwar development happened according to zoning codes which carved most new residential areas into SFH zoned areas. Cities were grandfathered into the new zoning codes. The codes themselves developed slowly and only started mandating huge minimum lot sizes in the last 30 years or so. This is why suburban development tends to form around a city.

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