Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 186 posts

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#11

Post by lonelyasacloud »

inglor_cz wrote: post #3

It is my experience that two things correlate positively with widespread adoption of biking: a. Relatively flat city terrain. (Not the case in Prague, for example; a lot of the residential areas are at much higher elevation than the city centre.) b. Moderate temperatures at both ends of the summer-winter scale. Most people won't bike to work at -20 or +35 Celsius.

Climate and terrain aren't that big a deal. Single biggest impediment to cycling is the how likely people are to be maimed or killed by drivers.

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#13

Post by daneel_w »

By choice I use a bicycle exclusively for all my transport needs (with the obvious exceptions like furniture etc.), and I'd like to see more people get up on a bike regularly to help promote the people's collective health, but I can see a problem with how this particular practice is executed. How high is the risk that these children might grow into the reckless assumption that the entire road (especially the middle of the road) is theirs for the taking as soon as they get up on their bikes?

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#14

Post by soared »

daneel_w wrote: post #13

By choice I use a bicycle exclusively for all my transport needs (with the obvious exceptions like furniture etc.), and I'd like to see more people get up on a bike regularly to help promote the people's collective health, but I can see a problem with how this particular practice is executed. How high is the risk that these children might grow into the reckless assumption that the entire road (especially the middle o…

Seemingly low I’d think. On the bike bus they’ve got hundreds of kids and parents around them and a police escort, so it’s not a normal biking situation. Plus parents likely are teaching kids bike safety.

Biking in this bus formation and biking normally are separate enough that it doesn’t seem to be a concern. IMO that’s like asking if kids don’t where seat belts on a normal bus, are they then at risk of not wearing seat belts in normal cars?

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#15

Post by soared »

retrac wrote: post #10
Kafkish wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many places in the world would you get +35 Celsius (95 F) in the morning?

Not too rare in parts of the southern USA in the summer. But you also have the return bike trip home in the afternoon... and by then it might be 40.

The southern us doesn’t even walk, much less bike. The car infrastructure down here seems insane, but you literally do get covered in sweat walking from your car to a building. The southern us is not good for the outdoors due to weather, and because no one bikes/walks the infrastructure is horrible.

(I’m in Tennessee on vacation, walking everywhere. Many sidewalks just end, no crosswalks, etc. biking here would be dangerous)

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#16

Post by Kafkish »

retrac wrote: post #10
Kafkish wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many places in the world would you get +35 Celsius (95 F) in the morning?

Not too rare in parts of the southern USA in the summer. But you also have the return bike trip home in the afternoon... and by then it might be 40.

Sure, but on the return trip, you'd be heading home, so sweating should be no big deal.

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#17

Post by agumonkey »

gadrev wrote: post #2

Yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28970792 (this is a different article)

The bike brigade is loose :)

I don't know how a bike-first city would feel, but biking is a serious bonus in one's life (granted you have safe space or a herd around you). So the more the merrier.

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#19

Post by ikurei »

mucholove wrote: post #7
inglor_cz wrote: post #3

It is my experience that two things correlate positively with widespread adoption of biking: a. Relatively flat city terrain. (Not the case in Prague, for example; a lot of the residential areas are at much higher elevation than the city centre.) b. Moderate temperatures at both ends of the summer-winter scale. Most people won't bike to work at -20 or +35 Celsius.

Someone already linked to Oulu which proves that biking may be unaffected by freezing temps. On the other end of the spectrum, and unanserwed in the article here—Sevilla might be a great place to study the effect of heat. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/13/best-practices-how-se...

Unaffected? I don't think so.

Oulu proves that temperature is a surmountable obstacle. I think the parent comment was right in that biking is very difficult to sell when those circumstances aren't right, even though some cities might overcome anything with sufficient bike culture and good infrastructure.

Re: Barcelona’s Bicibús: hundreds of families biking to school together

#20

Post by doctorhandshake »

Yet another example of how Barcelona feels societally futuristic in some ways. For a couple more - they were way ahead of the curve (at least from an American perceptive) on superblocks[1] and they have centralized vacuum municipal trash collection[2]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...

[2] https://enviropaul.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/all-the-garbage-...

Post reply on HN