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Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

citylab.com

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Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#161

Post by PoachedSausage »

comicjk wrote: post #78
sliverstorm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe your parent is alluding to the fact that if you are regularly active & get exercise, biking at an easy pace on flat land in good weather won't even cause you to break a sweat, whereas if you sit on the couch all day it will. (Hopefully don't need a source for this)

I would certainly like a source. As far as I can see, the only way to sweat less over time would be to lose weight. A more-conditioned cyclist still does the same amount of work and thus produces the same amount of heat. Source: from the Washington Post, "athletes tend to sweat sooner and more." https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/sweat-its-...

I'm not a sports scientist but from what I read about and my experience with doing exercise, it modifies your metabolism so that the intensity of exercise that causes sweating goes up.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#163

Post by hannob »

I have followed the debate for a while and am familiar with the situation. I wouldn't be overly optimistic yet.

Until now there have been a lot of bold announcements and very little changes.

Some of the things in the article paint a picture much more rosy than reality: "Meanwhile, the city’s existing bike-lane network—already extensive, but not always well segregated from car traffic—will be more rigorously protected by bollards."

The fact is right now bike lanes are never segregated from car traffic in Berlin. There exist two kinds of bike ways in Berlin: Paintings on the street and cycleways on the pedestrian sidewalk. The bike lanes on the streets are often occupied by parking cars, and pedestrians usually walk on the other kind of cycleway like they don't exist.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#164

Post by lmm »

rorykoehler wrote: post #92
kqr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often seem to miss this. In many ways, cycling is a terrible form of exercise precisely because it is such an efficient mode of transport.

As someone who gets repetitive strain injuries from running and isn't a great swimmer cycling is a God send. I can go biking 7 days a week. If i need a blow out then i push a harder gear without dropping cadence... Or i do tabata.

Wouldn't being a bad (assuming you mean in the sense of inefficient) swimmer make it a good form of exercise?

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#165

Post by lmm »

jopsen wrote: post #103
a_bonobo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many European cities are a bit lucky in that regard, they are much older than US or Australian cities. The European cities are built on top of plans that were made for pedestrians and horse carriages, with city walls and small streets. Muenster, for example, has a beautiful bike circle around the inner city because that's where the city walls used to be. US and Australian cities are much younger and don't have such '…

That makes no sense... US cities are super lucky to have such wide streets. If they WANTED to they could easily make dedicated bus and bike lanes that are safe. It easy they have so much space. European cities have to almost ban cars, to make room for bikes... This is a political issue, where Americans choose not to do something.

The US has plenty of space for bikes and pedestrians, but being a cyclist or pedestrian makes less sense there because the cities are so spread out. All the space taken up by those highways and parking lots mean that the places people actually want to go to are much further apart.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#166

Post by bkor »

scythe wrote: post #69
fovc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were the case you'd expect that families with children in those cities wouldn't be bike users. In Amsterdam at least they very much were. I lived next to a primary school where 90+% of parents would show up on bikes to pick up their kids. You can easily transport 3 kids in a bakfiets

That's not statistically valid reasoning. If biking vs driving makes some people not have kids, but not everyone, then in a city where driving is prohibitively expensive you'd still expect most parents to be on a bike. That's because the others didn't switch to cars, they didn't have kids, or they moved. I don't know what riding with one of those bike chariots is like, but being confined to a bike already sucks, I as…

You're assuming the cycling is causing people to have less children. It would be nice to provide some statistically valid sources to explain why you think that's so.

I live in the Netherlands and your assumption is pretty strange one. Mostly because it's not one or the other. You can do loads of things by bike while also having a car. Further, especially now with electric bikes you can transport an insane amount of children via a bike easily. Meaning: I see people transporting 5 or 6 children by bike (PS: this is on some fixed schedule, so not a one off, it is around the same time Mon-Fri).

A bike is often more convenient than a car.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#167

Post by stevesimmons »

bkor wrote: post #156
mamon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the biker will always go first and take any space left on the sides and will often go the wrong way or on the sidewalk. Shouldn't they get fined for such behaviour? Why is this tolerated?

The behaviour differs per city. Cyclists on sidewalks isn't tolerated in my city. Eventually they'll start checking and handing out fines. What's super common is ignoring traffic lights. I also do that regularly. That's mostly due to pretty terrible traffic lights. IMO it just smooths things out. What they hardly enforce is ensuring that cyclists have proper lights on their bike. Often nothing, sometimes something as…

When I lived in Amsterdam, the police always had campaigns at the start of winter to enforce bike lights. For a few days, police at major intersections would first remind and then fine cyclists who didn't have lights or whose batteries had gone flat over the summer. Very visible and hard to avoid. By the end of that week, nearly everyone was properly illuminated for the winter.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#168

Post by odiroot »

laingc wrote: post #98
Svip wrote: post #90

Another important point often missed in these discussions is training. If you take a driving licence in Denmark, a big part of the training is how to deal with bicyclists. I have also taken a bus driving licence in Denmark, and there it becomes an even bigger thing. Like counting bicyclists as you approach a junction you wish to turn right, placing the bus correctly, so you can see the bicyclists coming towards you i…

I’m not sure about the explicit training, but drivers in Germany are generally pretty excellent when it comes to dealing with cyclists.

Maybe it's Berlin specific but I can't count how many times I've got bump/pushed by a right-turning car while going straight ahead myself. Usually it's taxis, delivery and BMW drivers trying to catch the "late yellow".

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#169

Post by masklinn »

Cynddl wrote: post #121
masklinn wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Louvain-la-Neuve also has an interesting take on this. Like Ghent it's a student city but it's also a planned city, and was built as a "two-levels" city, buildings sit on top of a huge concrete "slab" and topside is completely car-free, with roads & parkings downside. Not having to "burn" any surface on carspace makes the city pretty inherently walkable. One issue is I don't remember the public parkings providing ele…

I still find that Louvain-la-Neuve have failed to build a city for cyclists, but I can't pinpoint exactly why. There are very few people who bike there, almost zero bike parkings despite being a car-free city. The city is small but still, some places are quite far by foot (>30 minutes walking from one side to the other).

> I still find that Louvain-la-Neuve have failed to build a city for cyclists, but I can't pinpoint exactly why.

That is definitely the case. I think they planned for a very walkable/human-scale city but made many of the passages just a bit too small, I remember side-roads where you can only walk two abreast and you have buildings/walls on both sides (at least some of the time) with pretty sharp cornering, that makes it very inconvenient and unsafe for cycling beyond a walking pace, definitely not safe to have pedestrians and cycles both going in both directions.

I guess the planning could have benefited from a few cyclable "arteries"/ring roads.

Re: Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

#170

Post by ocschwar »

abalashov wrote: post #29
jacobolus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 1.5 year old child, and I must disagree. Car-centric places are horrible with a child (or really anyone who isn’t a healthy ~20–65 year old adult who can afford a car). To get anywhere you need to pack all your stuff into a car, get the child in and out of a carseat, unpark and park, walk around in a big parking lot, etc. Every trip has huge overhead. It gets even worse when there are multiple kids involved.…

> It’s going to be an even bigger difference when the kid is older, and can walk around and take transit and engage with the city by himself, instead of being completely isolated and dependent and needing to be chauffeured and chaperoned by an adult on every trip. This. I don't think most Americans realise how detrimental and significant this often-overlooked aspect of average middle American suburban life is.

Walking down an English high street with an intrepid 1 year old explorer was an eye opener for me.

(Translation: a high street is a main street in an English town. They're usually car-free.)

Every time my son bolted, I had a full 30 seconds of slack before having to chase him down because there was no risk of him being squished under a tire.

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