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We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

citylab.com

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Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#221

Post by fiblye »

jakecopp wrote: post #208
fiblye wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up skin cancer rate maps. It’s no joke in Australia. People die and often. And then you have most populated regions in Asia with 40 degree summers with air so humid that taking a deep breath makes you cough. People still ride bikes, but there are days where it’s deadly to do so for long distance commuting. That’s not including typhoon periods where you’re liable to be whacked with debris and die (because work is…

Cars kill 65% as many people as skin cancer in Australia. Skin cancer is estimated to kill 1,725 in Australia in 2019 [1]. During 2018 there were 1,135 road deaths [2]. I think we could reduce the number of road deaths far faster than the number of skin cancer deaths would increase. [1]: https://melanoma.canceraustralia.gov.au/statistics [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

Honestly, that's impressively high. Imagine how much worse it'd be if everyone spent their days walking around in the sun. There'd be more than enough skin cancer to offset the lost road deaths.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#222

Post by liotier »

anyzen wrote: post #181
sunstone wrote: post #174

While it sounds preposterous right now this problem will soon solve itself with already built "bike lanes". And bicycles are not the solution. The solution, as this article touches on, is light weight electric transport using the existing road structure. There's a strong indication of this future in the fact that last year the Dutch bought more electric bikes than normal bikes in total. And they paid twice as much fo…

Even electric bikes are not the solution, at least not in many parts of the world. What happens when it rains / snows? I don't know what the solution is though, maybe small electric cars, self driven, as part of public transportation service?

> What happens when it rains / snows ?

Then you ride with appropriate clothing, as usual.

Yes, that means that if one insists on "business" attire, one has to change on arrival - which I do.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#223

Post by chrisco255 »

jakecopp wrote: post #214
chrisco255 wrote: post #83

This article paints the interstate highway system as some sort of evil incarnation without even giving so much as a breath to the idea that the Interstate highway system is one of the largest and most successful civil works projects of all time. The Romans had their aquaducts. The Americans have their highways. Prior to the Interstate system, it would take as much as two months to travel coast to coast. Eisenhower wa…

> Autonomous buses should be within reach this decade. Or we could just deploy more buses, more bicycle lanes and reduce car reliance right now? "A gadgetbahn is a speculative transportation concept that proposes to solve planning and financial issues via some sort of magical techno-fix, likely some technology that doesn’t even exist yet. Classic examples of gadgetbahns are: monorails, “personal rapid transit”, magle…

Most cities are deploying buses. However, there are big problems with buses. The hours are variable. If you're lucky enough to live in an urban core (which most Americans don't), you can find reliable transportation via bus. If you find yourself in the suburbs like most people, bus routes are spotty and there's limited to no post peak hour support.

Labor is one of the most significant costs of running a bus. We've got semi-autonomous cars on the road today. This isn't some far off tech. This is imminent. And it would be theoretically easier for a bus to run a predictable route autonomously than what they're doing with Teslas and Waymos already.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#224

Post by sornaensis »

We need to build bike lanes as their own adjacent network of lanes on our streets, with stop light integration within the city- meaning separation of cyclist and motorist, but adjacent -and bike lanes that run parallel to but removed from major thoroughfares.

Aka the copenhagen model.

Nobody is gonna ride a bike if it’s unsafe or difficult or if the bike paths are disconnected.

So yes, we should be dreaming beyond bike lanes, because we ought to be building proper ones right now!

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#225

Post by bkor »

briandear wrote: post #185
vhold wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a zero sum game. Improving bicycling also improves public transit and walkability usually because bicycles take up so much less room than cars so buses have more space, and it's extremely rare for a bicycle to injure a pedestrian, but it happens hundreds of times a day just in the US alone with cars. Also bicycle infrastructure is way cheaper to build and maintain than car infrastructure. And even when bicyc…

https://www.mountainview.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx... Most bike-car accidents are the fault of the cyclist, at least in Mountain View.

I once made a mistake on my bike, I didn't watch properly and overlooked a car. Fortunately the car watched out and stopped.

What's entirely strange is to blame one person and blame all the fault on the other. Accidents happen. What's great is to find ways to minimize them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#226

Post by jakecopp »

briandear wrote: post #166
socialist_coder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A mom with three young kids in tow Ha! Go see how they do it in Europe. Bike trailers, extra seats in the front & back, built in cargo decks, longer bikes; there are lots of fancy ways to load a lot of kids & cargo onto your bike. And don't forget that kids can ride their own bikes too! My kid was riding a bike with me to daycare at 3-4 years old. Your thinking is too car-centric!

But why? It takes a long time to get kids helmeted up and they don’t ride very fast. Not everyone has the leisure to ride bikes everywhere. My kids schools are 10 miles from home and 5 miles from each other. Even with a dedicated bike lane, it would still take dramatically more work to drive. Then, if it rains.. I have to worry about it rain gear for everyone. Then if one kid gets sick at school, I’m supposed to ride…

> In the event of a natural disaster or an evacuation, are people supposed to ride their bikes to escape a wildfire or a hurricane?

This article is arguing for cycling/public transport infrastructure in city cores. Of course cars (or high speed trains in developed countries) are more suited for travelling large distances.

Building more bike lanes in the inner city doesn't stop people from evacuating by car.

As another commenter said, density and urban layout problems are one of the major problems relating to your other points.

Also - kids love riding bikes by themselves when it's safe, at least myself and my friends did!

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#227

Post by greglindahl »

anyzen wrote: post #181
sunstone wrote: post #174

While it sounds preposterous right now this problem will soon solve itself with already built "bike lanes". And bicycles are not the solution. The solution, as this article touches on, is light weight electric transport using the existing road structure. There's a strong indication of this future in the fact that last year the Dutch bought more electric bikes than normal bikes in total. And they paid twice as much fo…

Even electric bikes are not the solution, at least not in many parts of the world. What happens when it rains / snows? I don't know what the solution is though, maybe small electric cars, self driven, as part of public transportation service?

Is there only one solution? No.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#228

Post by bkor »

asjw wrote: post #191
tralarpa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I appear to have kicked off a frenzy of folks eurosplaining Ah, come on. You asked for it, didn't you? You wrote "I'm guessing it's a special magic planet with startlingly good weather year-round, without disabled people, where everyone gets to age into spry Euro-oldsters". Of course, such an extreme statement will trigger a reaction from people who actually experience every day what you claim to be impossible. It'…

> One quarter of the Dutch population If only the world was flat and below the sea level as Holland...

Not flat? Use an electric bike

There's various reasons not to use a bike, e.g. the mentioned way too humid/hot weather. However, the high usage is not due to "flat". Netherlands used to have a very high car usage and pretty much no bike usage.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#229

Post by saiya-jin »

sunstone wrote: post #174

While it sounds preposterous right now this problem will soon solve itself with already built "bike lanes". And bicycles are not the solution. The solution, as this article touches on, is light weight electric transport using the existing road structure. There's a strong indication of this future in the fact that last year the Dutch bought more electric bikes than normal bikes in total. And they paid twice as much fo…

Many issues with this approach - for example back home roads are frozen with snow +- 4 months per year. Often heavy rains outside this period. There are no 2 lanes - only one, so your approach would be blocking rest of the traffic heavily (even e-bikes are much slower than most cars FWIW, maybe people are just lazy and don't use the potential, don't know). People simply don't have 2000$ for an electric bike, thats super luxury back there (hard to explain to HN crowd used to buy their latest iphones, almost nobody back home has apple products).

And back home is still above global average in terms of income. It might work for western hipster places like SF, but globally this is harder to achieve.

Re: We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes

#230

Post by greglindahl »

AstralStorm wrote: post #154
dcolkitt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe does not have some magical equation for drastically reducing car use. The number of cars per capita in the EU is only about one third lower than the United States. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it certainly means that the sizable majority of Europeans are still car-centric. And even then that's mostly a function of lower incomes (vis-a-vis the US). The high-income European states of Luxembourg, Switzerland,…

This is probably a function of distances between living space and work. Beyond 10 km the car catches up and starts to get ahead in total travel time. Public transport is meant to close this gap but there's not enough for people, much less bicycles, especially long distance. So it gets crowded. The car is universal until you run out of parking space.

Do roads not get crowded where you live?

Here in Silicon Valley, there's no more room to widen 101.

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