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What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

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Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#41

Post by larrymyers »

Shivetya wrote: post #34

If exposed to weather it is an automatic fail. Sorry, that is just how it works. From any transportation alternative that is no enclosed it always comes down to comfort. One day it is too hot, another too cold, or too wet, and on and on, until the excuse is no longer needed as the alternative mode is parked. So any bicycle or pedestrian friendly environment needs weather protection as part of its design. It does not…

I happily commute by bike year round in Chicago, as do many other thousands of people that live in the city. It gets into the 90's in the summer, and well below freezing in the winter.

If it's hot I pack my work clothes and change (and shower if needed) at work.

If it's cold I dress warmly. It's amazing how quickly you warm up when pedaling more than a few miles.

If it's raining I wear a rain jacket, and the fenders on my bike keeps water from splashing up on me.

So no, weather is not an automatic fail. It's just a mindset change if you're used to be in the enclosed bubble that car provides.

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#42

Post by jules »

I wonder if that expert has been to the Netherlands or Copenhagen. In fact I wonder whether he has really experienced a bike for day to day use, because some of the ideas are very strange. It's telling that most bikes in the pictures are racing bikes. What's the advantage of bikes in apartment buildings? Why not park the bike at the ground floor? It would waste a lot of space in the corridors. Think about what you'd rather have: 2 meters extra apartment, or 2 meters extra wide corridor.

Bikes in shops will not work either. Walking through a shop with a bike seems extremely unwieldy; you would need much larger space between the shelves. A bike in your hand makes it hard to pick up things from the shelves. A bike does not stay upright by itself when you go to pick up something from the shelves, so you have to park it with that thing that I don't know the English name of. Even then, if you load the bike with a bag of groceries it usually falls over. When you are walking on one side of your bike it's hard to reach over your bike while not falling over. Bike parking space is a non-problem compared to car parking space. No cars whatsoever is unrealistic even in bike utopia. How do you move big and heavy things? No ambulance, no fire trucks?

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#43

Post by yodsanklai »

hackuser wrote: post #37

I had thought the custom on HN was to post valuable, constructive comments, and not to find fault or to post typical Internet forum sniping and hyperbole. Perhaps it's my impression, but I've rarely seen anything constructive recently. Almost everything in this discussion, for example, is reaction and sniping ("useless", "absurd", "stupid", etc.). It's a way to hang out and socialize online; there's nothing wrong wit…

No problem with people saying "it's useless" as long as they make their point with some arguments (which was the case with some of the other comments).

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#44

Post by cdnsteve »

I think the concept is interesting but needs some tweaking. The main issue with any core downtown is space. There simply isn't any available, for anyone. The space that is available is extremely costly so we need to think outside the box. Bike paths on the ground aren't the only option.

Go up. Elevated bike paths, much like the Vancouver Skyrail, are an option. http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/vancouver/vancouv...

- The elevated structure would only be for cyclists - You could literally ride above all the downtown traffic - Dedicated lanes so you don't get road rage

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#45

Post by jules »

mayneack wrote: post #20
Avalaxy wrote: post #3

A bike ramp into the apartment is useless. You can just take the elevator with your bike, or you know... Just make a garage for bikes on ground floor. The article doesn't really say much about how to design a city for bicycles, which mostly comes down to providing good roads where you aren't bothered by cars.

Also to make the ramp reach a reasonable height with a reasonable angle, you'd have to have incredibly long buildings that would require going all the way to one end to reach the top floor.

Indeed, even taking the stairs would be much faster. With a bike you would carry more weight to the top, and go a longer distance. This more than offsets the difference between walking and biking.

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#46

Post by hackuser »

yodsanklai wrote: post #43
hackuser wrote: post #37

I had thought the custom on HN was to post valuable, constructive comments, and not to find fault or to post typical Internet forum sniping and hyperbole. Perhaps it's my impression, but I've rarely seen anything constructive recently. Almost everything in this discussion, for example, is reaction and sniping ("useless", "absurd", "stupid", etc.). It's a way to hang out and socialize online; there's nothing wrong wit…

No problem with people saying "it's useless" as long as they make their point with some arguments (which was the case with some of the other comments).

> No problem with people saying "it's useless" as long as they make their point with some arguments

My opinion differs:

1) IME, comments which begin with hyperbole such as "it's useless" rarely improve beyond that. I generally stop reading there (I don't have time to read everything). My theory, anecodotally confirmed, is that if they are careless with their language (i.e., the lazy use of hyperbole), probably they will be careless with their content.

2) It's rude to whomever wrote the article, and it also creates that environment for interactions between commenters.

3) That kind of rant is like a virus; it spreads through discussions and through the community. I believe this concept is well-established among veteran forum maintainers. From Paul Graham, talking about what he learned from running HN: [1]

It's pretty clear now that the broken windows theory applies to community sites as well. The theory is that minor forms of bad behavior encourage worse ones … I was living in New York when Giuliani introduced the reforms that made the broken windows theory famous, and the transformation was miraculous. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and the transformation was equally dramatic.

...

Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly. … If someone submits a lame article, the other submissions don't all become lame. But if someone posts a stupid comment on a thread, that sets the tone for the region around it.

----

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#47

Post by Kluny »

I'm a cyclist and I love the idea of making cities more bike friendly, but this group of designers has missed a major point. Cities are for PEOPLE. Not for cars, not for bikes, but for humans. Space for people to live and exist in should be the highest priority, and anytime you start cutting into living space to make more room for vehicles, you're making the city less human friendly. That's what these guys seem to be doing. They're saying, "cars aren't important, bikes are!" But neither bikes nor cars are important. People are.

I'd even suggest that a major reason why cars have supremacy at the moment is that they are more inclusive of people than bikes are. I prefer using my bike any time I possibly can, but I am young, fit, childless and live within 2 minutes of my job. Cars are inclusive of people who have more than one kid, live across an interstate from their job, and may have mobility issues - and bikes are not. This redesigned city needs to make room for people who aren't 25 years old and single.

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#48

Post by _delirium »

hackuser wrote: post #37

I had thought the custom on HN was to post valuable, constructive comments, and not to find fault or to post typical Internet forum sniping and hyperbole. Perhaps it's my impression, but I've rarely seen anything constructive recently. Almost everything in this discussion, for example, is reaction and sniping ("useless", "absurd", "stupid", etc.). It's a way to hang out and socialize online; there's nothing wrong wit…

I mostly agree. I do sometimes find valuable counterpoint in the HN comments, but most often that's on topics where the community here has actual expertise (mostly programming) and the counterpoint is pretty specific.

This has been a discussion on HN for years, though, and even has its own jargon term, the "middlebrow dismissal": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#49

Post by [deleted] »

micheljansen wrote: post #7
Avalaxy wrote: post #3

A bike ramp into the apartment is useless. You can just take the elevator with your bike, or you know... Just make a garage for bikes on ground floor. The article doesn't really say much about how to design a city for bicycles, which mostly comes down to providing good roads where you aren't bothered by cars.

Yep, I live in the Netherlands and my apartment complex has a separate entrance to a bicycle storage area on street level, which connects to the central hallway. Parking's only half the story though. You also need to feel safe to ride a bike, which requires infrastructure and attitude.

[deleted]

Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes

#50

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jacquesm wrote: post #11

That's a city designed for ONLY bikes, and no city will ever be designed like that, no cars allowed is nice in theory but not workable. To be practical it would at a minimum have to accommodate foot-traffic, supply lines to stores (or did you think that those stores will be supplied by cargo bikes?) and access for disabled people (not everybody can ride a bike). So it's a nice thought experiment but not at all practi…

> To be practical it would at a minimum have to accommodate foot-traffic, supply lines to stores (or did you think that those stores will be supplied by cargo bikes?) and access for disabled people (not everybody can ride a bike).

And trash removal. When people design their utopian non-car city where everything is by bike or by train or whatever, they always forget about trash removal.

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