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Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

citylab.com

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Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#31

Post by adrianN »

chrissnell wrote: post #12

I love cycling. I grew up in my father's bicycle store and nearly 50 years later, he's still running the business and we've all worked in it at one time or another. I ride bikes around the neighborhood with my kids every day. With that said, the U.S. is not the Netherlands. Like most Americans, I depend on my vehicle to get my kids to school and myself to the grocery store, which are 4-5 miles away from my house. Thi…

The first step to improving bikeability is not closing traffic lanes, it's improving density. For example be taxing parking space appropriately. There is no good reason why supermarkets should be so far apart from each other in a city or why commutes need to be two hours long. Where I live I can reach five supermarkets in less than ten minutes on a bike.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#32

Post by chrissnell »

village-idiot wrote: post #9

Anyone who's believed that the key to sustainable futures is simply swapping out ICE for electric motors simply is being wishful at best, willfully difficult at worse. The biggest problem I have with electric cars is that they continue to encourage low density low efficiency suburbs with hours long commutes into the high density cities. This is economically unsustainable, roads are expensive, and will only get worse…

The ship sailed on low-density suburbs 60 years ago. We're past the point of return on those. Outside of San Francisco, Manhattan, and downtown Chicago, most people live in the 'burbs and that's not changing. We will be living with this housing stock for decades--if not centuries--to come. It's best to engineer around that reality, not to daydream of an Amsterdam-like utopia that will never happen for 99% of this country.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#33

Post by jbob2000 »

adrianN wrote: post #20
village-idiot wrote: post #9

Anyone who's believed that the key to sustainable futures is simply swapping out ICE for electric motors simply is being wishful at best, willfully difficult at worse. The biggest problem I have with electric cars is that they continue to encourage low density low efficiency suburbs with hours long commutes into the high density cities. This is economically unsustainable, roads are expensive, and will only get worse…

Other forms of electric transport, like scooters and electric bikes should be pushed more. Together with decent mass transit they solve the last mile problem quite nicely imho. But unfortunately the car lobby is extremely strong and doesn't want to lose its market.

There's this weird thing that happens in northern climates where all the bikers and scooter riders magically disappear sometime around October and don't reappear until sometime in April. I can't figure out why this happens, we should really aim to understand that before we push bikes and scooters on half the human population. I don't think it's the car lobby that causes this disappearance.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#34

Post by village-idiot »

jbob2000 wrote: post #23

I can't afford a condo in the big cities, I'm not sure how riding a bike will change that? In fact it will probably make it worse as people move to the cities to ride their bikes, which will make real estate there even more expensive. Low density and low efficiency means low cost. Efficiency doesn't maintain itself.

Low density does not mean low cost if you actually factor in the cost of public infrastructure, which we do not currently. Suburbs require much more miles of pipe and road per person, all of which must be funded by local taxes and federal subsidies. Most of them only appear cheap because the initial setup is funded by developers and federal grants. There are "cheap" suburbs in the US that wouldn't be able to meet their future infrastructure maintenance costs with a 100% tax rate.

So they're not cheap, they're just structured in a way to hide how expensive they are in the long run.

The housing pricing crisis in the US is also being driven by other factors, such as zoning laws and NIMBYism from current property holders. Also we need to repeal Prop 13 badly.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#35

Post by cgoecknerwald »

village-idiot wrote: post #13
CloudYeller wrote: post #5

In most cities, especially in America, there's a vicious cycle: 0) Cycling is dangerous because there are too many vehicles on the road 1) There are so many vehicles on the road because everyone knows it's dangerous to cycle 2) Go to 0 Breaking out of that loop requires building safe infrastructure for cycling, like indestructable cement dividers between bike lanes and vehicle lanes or no-vehicles-allowed-in- days

And creating the infrastructure is wildly unpopular, because typically it involves either taking lanes away from cars, or slowing them down. The initiative to reduce car-pedestrian collisions in LA has stopped because the drivers put pressure on politicians to stop slowing traffic down. Advocates are implying (and sometimes outright saying) that a few dozen deaths a year are an acceptable price to pay for a shorter c…

I have some hope for the movement that installs a bike path along a restored LA River! [1]

[1] https://www.railstotrails.org/trailblog/2017/october/02/bike...

Edit:

The webpage for the LA River project: http://lariver.org/

The webpage for the LA River Trail: https://www.traillink.com/trail/los-angeles-river-trail/

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#37

Post by adrianN »

5parks1 wrote: post #30

The Dutch cycling culture is worthy of praise, but people frequently forget or ignore a key element of its success: Amsterdam is pancake flat. I live outside of Denver, and my neighborhood is very cycling friendly, but my 8-year old daughter can't make it up the hill on our street without walking.

There are many cities that are as flat as Amsterdam and have a similar climate but have a fraction of the cyclists.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#38

Post by ajmurmann »

jbob2000 wrote: post #23

I can't afford a condo in the big cities, I'm not sure how riding a bike will change that? In fact it will probably make it worse as people move to the cities to ride their bikes, which will make real estate there even more expensive. Low density and low efficiency means low cost. Efficiency doesn't maintain itself.

I don't think it has to be like that. We subsidize the suburbs by spreading the cost of roads across everyone. It's a hidden cost that makes living in the suburbs much cheaper than it actually is to society. At the same time we increase cost in high density areas with zoning regulations.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#40

Post by option »

I wonder how a bike or even public transit is going to replace a car? 1) How am I supposed ro go to the beach with two kids, stuff for picnic and surfboards on a bike or even on a bus?!! 2) Public transit is all good, but have you ever been in a PEOPLE jam during rush hour in a subway? Because I had. And I will take SV traffic jam over it any day.

The truly bad things happen because of radicalism - it should not be bikes + public transit vs cars. It should be a healthy, safe mix of both.

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