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

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

#111

Post by pharmakom »

This is wonderful to see. It’s sad how such an old technology, that can fix so many urban problems, is overlooked in most of the developed world.

- Childhood obesity (around 30% in some areas of developed nations)

- Independence for children (meet friends, get to school, etc.)

- Time poor “taxi service” parents might save 1hr+ / day

- Congestion (bikes can be even more space efficient than buses)

- Air quality (many developed cities exceed WHO guidelines

- Money saved on car payments for the poorest in society. This is a huge burden.

- Independence for those too old, with a disability or medical condition that prevents driving. Did you know many epileptics are not legally allowed to drive?

- City saves money on road repair etc. Road damage is a power of vehicle weight.

- Local shops favoured over out of town, big box etc.

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

#114

Post by jseban »

agumonkey wrote: post #109
jseban wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like having a gym membership, you really like the idea of yourself, and you can be smug and get virtue signalling points, but in practice people rarely use it and it's mostly empty except for a short season.

you mean people using their bikes don't do it regularly ?

Yep, that's what I mean. They like the idea of being a good person, but when push comes to shove, in reality it's only used/usable when the weather is nice, and people don't use it when the weather is bad.

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

#115

Post by Tarsul »

pvaldes wrote: post #92
sveme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That‘s winter in Munich; plenty of people, me included, don‘t mind.

Children are much more fragile than adults to cold and hot. It does not matter if a fit adult can do it, you need to adapt it to the weakest link.

it's pretty typical in Germany that kids of all (school) ages bike to and from school, basically every day of the year. I did.

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

#116

Post by pachico »

doctorhandshake wrote: post #20

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-...

Lots of opinions about Barcelona, I see. Somehow I feel I know the city quite well. I moved here more than 20 years ago and I can compare it to others cities I live in or visited.

Barcelona is relatively safe, although, as it's been mentioned, it had several hot spots (I used to live in some of these, actually). Crime is in most of the cases about pickpocketing or, sadly but infrequently, with assault. Still, believe me, it's a relatively safe city.

Anyhow, it's not a city to grow your children. Traffic is high, bike lanes are not safe and there are very few parks. This is the reason people try to move to nearby cities whenever they have kids (my case also).

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

#117

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

ResearchCode wrote: post #102
mrexroad wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much time have you spent in Barcelona?

Enough not to get gaslighted.

I lived there for eight years until this year, and what you're saying is entirely divorced from reality.

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

#118

Post by jseban »

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.

[flagged]

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

#119

Post by agumonkey »

jseban wrote: post #114
agumonkey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean people using their bikes don't do it regularly ?

Yep, that's what I mean. They like the idea of being a good person, but when push comes to shove, in reality it's only used/usable when the weather is nice, and people don't use it when the weather is bad.

Ah well I was surprised to keep biking 24/7 after I started in July. I'd even do it 100% of the time if I was living in my own house and if it was safe and easy to park my bike (bike theft is so prevalent). Even soaked in rain, even when cold, even after falling hard.. I kept doing it.

I'm even thinking making a bike club / bike repair shop to motivate other people. The benefits are huge.

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