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Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

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Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#191

Post by npsimons »

superuser2 wrote: post #127
lambda wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about replacing cars with bikes, but making biking a viable alternative, such that it is actually possible to get from point A to point B by bike without taking a substantial risk of being killed by substantially faster car traffic. No one actually expects to replace all cars with bikes. But replacing 20% of them would substantially cut down on congestion and emissions; and avoiding further growth in auto…

>but making biking a viable alternative I think the (well-founded) concern is that this expenditure of political capital means mass transit may not get the attention it deserves. Public transit can be ridden by anyone; bicycles are only useful to the able-bodied.

> bicycles are only useful to the able-bodied

Maybe if they biked to and from work, they wouldn't be "disabled" (ie, burdened by fat). The truly disabled make up a miniscule portion of the population, and while accomodating them is important, encouraging more people to bike would solve not just societal problems, but personal health ones as well.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#192

Post by mikeyouse »

msoad wrote: post #20

Palo Alto is also building a bike only bridge over 101 which will make it easier and safer for bike commuters to go over US-101 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/topics/projects/facilities...

Good for them, it looks like a really nice project. Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard about this at all.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#193

Post by jrock08 »

hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #60
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #7

I just biked last evening from downtown San Jose to the southern vicinity of the Google campus. There are two main options: Central Expressway or something close and parallel to it, which I've declined. Or trails near the bay shore, which is what I chose. Bad choice. The trails are for the most part unpaved. Riding my sleek, rigid road bike on those things was torture. Never again. If those trails were paved, that wo…

Man! You guys are a bunch of complainers! I second the get-an appropriate bike line of thinking. I have a basic CX bike with a steel fork and wider tires. Riding on gravel or dirt roads isn't as fast as paved roads, but I'd hardly call it torture.

Why shouldn't we spend some money to pave a bike path that could be well used. When I rode on the bayshore pathway, there were parts of the path that had been partially washed out, leaving about 3 feet of 2-5 inch ruts. Elsewhere there were infrequent, but pretty much constant 1 inch ruts in hard packed dirt. Elsewhere they had filled the path with a softpacked pea-gravel. You shouldn't have to break out a mountainbike and deal with drastically changing road surfaces to commute to work.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#194

Post by analog31 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #183
nickbauman wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Minnesota it's common that suburban "subdivision" neighborhoods don't even have pedestrian sidewalks. And the inhabitants think that's a good thing. I cannot even.

It snows quite heavily in Minnesota, so during much of the year those sidewalks would be unusable or hazardous.

Likewise here in Wisconsin, but we're expected to shovel our walks. I once got a ticket for failing to do so. They only ticket people if somebody complains to the city, so I probably deserved it.

Depending on where and when, sidewalks are optional for new subdivisions, and face a couple of dis-incentives: 1) You pay if the sidewalk in front of your house has to be repaired. 2) You have to shovel it.

So, there are seemingly new and nice subdivisions with no sidewalks. In addition, a lot of those neighborhoods are laid out with lots of twisty streets and cul-du-sacs that make it hard to get through by bike or on foot, so that bike commuters have to ride on the busy main roads.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#195

Post by shard »

natrius wrote: post #97
trhway wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

until people learn how and, more importantly, willing to build good urban space, as a resident of MV (or of SV in general as i lived in other near by cities before) i am even against current 3 story "barracks" being actively built all over the place. For example, one can build 30 story (plus 10 underground for parking/storage/etc...) towers with enough green space around it instead of covering all available space wit…

Towers surrounded by green space has been tried, with mostly negative results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier#Criticism Good urban space is mostly about how nice it feels to be on a street. You want a comfortable amount of walking space, destinations that are close together, and that's pretty much it. Surrounding buildings with parks makes walking harder and less pleasant. There's probably enough demand f…

The Wikipedia article refers to parks surrounding offices ("on the scale he imagined there was no motive during the business day for pedestrian circulation in the office quarter"), and is unclear about what scale the parks are.

For apartment complexes, the towers surrounded by park concept is the standard way to build new apartments in Korea for over a decade now. It works well because the density of residents attract businesses to the outskirts of the park, and in the parks I've seen, they always contain multiple playgrounds, rest areas, sculptures, and exercise equipment for public use. Children play there after school, families gather on weekends, and street markets and street fairs are held in the parks on a regular basis. It is a very efficient use of land to provide both urban density and public space. (Here is a typical apartment complex design: http://image.apt.joinsland.com/contents.upload/1501/1945/bir...)

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#196

Post by nickbauman »

gamblor956 wrote: post #183
nickbauman wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Minnesota it's common that suburban "subdivision" neighborhoods don't even have pedestrian sidewalks. And the inhabitants think that's a good thing. I cannot even.

It snows quite heavily in Minnesota, so during much of the year those sidewalks would be unusable or hazardous.

Substitute the word "sidewalks" with the word "roads" in that sentence and it makes as much sense. Neighborhoods without sidewalks are places where children cannot organize their own play and rely on being chauffeured to do anything. It's one of the reasons kids grow up to be so helpless and why helicopter parenting is the norm in the US.

On the plus side nobody slips on the sidewalk!

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#197

Post by rconti »

mc32 wrote: post #64

To my mind, one of the main issues, in addition to protected bike lanes is the spread. Bike friendly cities are more compact. Commuting to work via bike is not a strenuous fifteen mile commute one way. They tend to be leisurely few mile rides. Now, not to say it's not possible, but a one to five mile bike ride is not the same as a ten to fifteen or more miles bike ride. Now, I do like Copenhagen's above ground bike r…

I had never heard of this. Spectacular! https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/spectacular-ne...

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#198

Post by pbhjpbhj »

gamblor956 wrote: post #183
nickbauman wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Minnesota it's common that suburban "subdivision" neighborhoods don't even have pedestrian sidewalks. And the inhabitants think that's a good thing. I cannot even.

It snows quite heavily in Minnesota, so during much of the year those sidewalks would be unusable or hazardous.

Are the roads unusable? I'm guessing not; you can clear sidewalks too - central European countries seem to use a small snowplough for the pavements (ie sidewalks), the snow is ploughed on to the road, the road plough lifts the snow to a truck and it's trucked away.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#199

Post by tmalsburg2 »

sbov wrote: post #189
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hilarious that Americans made it to the moon but think that commuting to work by bike is practically impossible. Meanwhile millions of people all over the rest of the world, from school children to seniors, are doing just that every single day. I moved to southern California last year (from the UK) and of course I ride my bike to work. My colleagues think that this is a really strange thing to do and some r…

A handful of Americans made it to the moon. The rest of us watched it on TV.

You are not giving your fellow Americans enough credit. If Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin had been born in another country, they would almost certainly not have made it to the moon. It was a gigantic effort and many many Americans helped directly or indirectly to make it happen.

Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

#200

Post by rue »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #62

Based on the photo at the bottom they are going to fail the same way that many other US cities have failed when trying install bike lanes. You MUST put the parked cars between moving traffic and bikes. If you do not bikers are going to get hit and doored and will obstruct turn lanes. Pretty much everywhere in Europe gets this right. Traffic -> parking -> bikes -> peds. How did the US get everything completely backwar…

There are two distinct things here:

1. Bike lanes, which are part of the road; and 2. Bike paths, which are often adjacent to the pedestrian sidewalk (and are often not structurally separated)

There’s movement in Europe toward the former, though I think historically the latter has been the case. It has its own problems—especially when not structurally separated—because in the city, bikes are much closer in speed to cars than pedestrians.

Also, people occasionally get out from the other side of the car too.

The solution is merely to put the bikes far enough from parked cars, not a specific side per se.

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