Earlier quoted context omitted.
People might use cars or public transport instead of a bike to commute if there is heavy rain or snow. This is an important consideration in Bergen which is notoriously the rainiest city in Europe (it rains more than half the time).
So there are places in Europe where it rains more than in UK?
Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
111–120 of 250 posts
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#112Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads? I've seen plenty of places that do both very well, like Spain. Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time. I get it, when there's not cycling infrastructure everybody is forced to take the car even if it doesn't make any sense, like for short trips, good weather, single passenger, no…
>Why are they always ignored in these threads? Is this an American thing?
I don't know but Vespa-type scooters are very uncommon in the US. Motorcycles are less rare but are widely considered (with some justification) to be dangerous as a form of transportation. (It doesn't help that there are some crazy motorcyclists out there though of course many aren't.)
May have something to do with the type of road infrastructure and traffic, or just custom, but don't really know.
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also works for me, though it is not optimal in my more rural area. Big cities should be fine.
People also just adjust. If you don't drive--or at least can't rent a car easily/don't want to--you just tend not to do activities or go places requiring that you do so. I couldn't get by day-to-day without a car but even if I lived in the city, I'd regularly want to drive one to visit people, do weekend activities, etc.
Eh, I find I can get wherever I need on public transport, in general. Now, that said, I'm not regularly going to very rural areas, or anything.
I mean, it definitely wouldn't work for everyone, but for me, I can walk or get public transport anywhere I need to go (and this is in Dublin, a city that is... not known for the excellence of its public transport; they'll finish the underground train one day...)
Now I'm in my late 30s, I also have the vague superstitious belief that the enforced walking is keeping me alive; if I wasn't doing that I'd be pretty sedentary.
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, if we assume cyclists use the tunnel 100 days a year going both ways through it, thats saving each one nearly 60+ hours a year. If each one's time is worth $20, that is over a thousand dollars per cyclist per year - it only takes 9k cyclists to make the savings outweigh the costs in five years.
[flagged]
Not everything must be about increasing profits, but being responsible with the public purse to the benefit of all is a worthy goal. Of course, if you do that you quickly find many car-oriented projects shouldn't have been built in the first place.
Also:
* It is unkind and unhelpful need to make personal attacks based on the poster's national origin or religion.
* A Catholicism-oriented email provider doesn't mean they're from the US. For instance, they might live in Ireland, another country with horrifically bad urban design and a lot of Catholic people
* Be nice.
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#115Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads? I've seen plenty of places that do both very well, like Spain. Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time. I get it, when there's not cycling infrastructure everybody is forced to take the car even if it doesn't make any sense, like for short trips, good weather, single passenger, no…
there is one thing I hate more than a car and thats loud motorcycles that ruin everybody's peace
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it might be an American thing - at least the polarization part. Over here in Poland some of my friends and relatives switched to scooters(125cc typically) when fuel prices spiked and are largely happy with the result - especially this one guy who used to daily a Nissan Pathfinder. Of course this becomes difficult in winter and inclement weather conditions, but I also see fewer cyclists then. People need to re…
> People need to realize that even the Dutch generally have cars and drive. It depends a lot where you are. Live in a major city and very few people have cars, they're expensive and spend a lot of time just sitting around taking up space and money. Go to a less dense area and they're a lot more common. Also, pay-by-the-minute or whatever car rentals aren't uncommon for when people need them but don't want to actually…
> It depends a lot where you are.
Of course it does because it's like that everywhere in Europe. I wouldn't expect many e.g. Parisians to own cars.
My point was that there's a whole spectrum of lifestyles with rational choices behind them and you can't just brush over that with a simplistic solutions like "ban cars".
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#117It's the escape tunnel for a tram tunnel with an extra coat of paint: https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycle-tunnel/
Strange, I have never heard of a separate escape tunnel for a tram tunnel. Even German U-Bahn/S-Bahn (which I am most familiar with) tunnels usually just have a walkway beside the tracks that leads to the next station or emergency exit. But I guess that also depends on length between possible stations/exits, or it's due to newer regulations, or maybe it was a "mixed calculation" ("if we build a separate tunnel, it's…
The problem here is similar to underwater tunnels. Making an emergency exit straight up is not possible or too expensive.
In this case it is too expensive/unpractical as you would have to dig several hundred meters up a mountain. Also a tunnel going sideways is easier for those who can not walk. And this long stairs up could be a problem even to those who can walk.
For those who don’t know the tunnels goes through a 477m high mountain/hill and both ends are roughly at sea level.
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare; but in the end you still have to deal with monetary budgets that represent limited societal supply of labor and resources. You may try to take a moral high ground and say that people are more important than $X million, but those money also represent potential housing, cancer treatment research, green energy investment, etc that…
> It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare
Many of those "numerical calculus" measure only savings in time, fuel, etc and attribute ZERO value to saving lives, improving quality of life and even improving mental health. Such calculations are not pragmatic, they are highly ideological.
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#119As a Norwegian - it's always weird to me to discover news from Norway, that I haven't heard about in Norwegian (news) before, on international sites.
Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway
#120Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads? I've seen plenty of places that do both very well, like Spain. Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time. I get it, when there's not cycling infrastructure everybody is forced to take the car even if it doesn't make any sense, like for short trips, good weather, single passenger, no…
They’re naturally opposed in a way. Bike infrastructure is car infrastructure, you need protected cycle paths etc where there’s a lot of cars or they’re going fast. If it wasn’t for cars, the current infrastructure is great for bikes.
I can recommend Carlton Reid's "Roads Were Not Built For Cars" book as a history of the early development of modern roads (i.e. tarmac). Many of them were funded by cycling societies before cars became commonplace. Also quite a bit of interesting history of the early cars.