Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, without cars we would need no lanes.
What do you do in winter? Or during rain?
What if I want to take grandma to visit family in neighborhing city?
Common grandma, giddy up?
Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
621–630 of 764 posts
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. Without really staring at the underlying geometry, it is hard for laypeople to understand that automobile-centric development patterns are by-and-large incapable of producing the kind of human-scale, dense, walkable areas that are (1) instinctively pleasing to be in,…
How many people want to live in dense cities without any means of escape? It sounds miserable to me. But I live in a really small city (< 250k) and drive maybe 3-5k miles a year (mostly to our cabin in a neighboring state) and bike a LOT. It's kind of ironic I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it.
I would definitely agree with you about the merits of smaller cities, but half the value of density is that "escape" is easier. Driving for a solid hour through nothing but housing estates is not my idea of freedom.
It does depend on your idea of "escape" though. Good trains to beauty spots make a world of difference.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean “no means of escape?” There are trains, buses, taxis, bikes, rental cars etc. To me owning a car seems much more miserable!
Cars offer a level of freedom far beyond that of public transport. That doesn’t mean they are the best vehicle to offer that freedom and electric vehicles will definitely be an improvement over ICE vehicles but in my experience as soon as you’re outside of major metropolitan cities public transport options fall apart and are often incredibly inconvenient compared to owning a car. Maybe the solution would be to build…
In my experience, currently public transport works really well for high density routes, but no one has managed to solve the low density route issue. Take a bus going towards a leaf node at 10 pm on a week day, and you're often the only one in a huge bus with the driver (that's of course if you're in a place where such a bus exists). Environmentally and economically, that's dreadful, worse than a car. I don't think public transports running at 5% capacity is the solution.
The solution might be full self-driving cars, but we're far from it yet.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.
>"Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars." Where? I live in Toronto and I certainly do not feel that I am forced to have a car.
Everywhere where daily amenities are too spread out and the streets are too dangerous for children and old people to cycle on them. That's most of the developed world outside of some very large cities.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#625Switching to electric cars from ICE cars is continuing to do the wrong thing and make the wrong choices, but doing this wrong thing a bit better. It's still the same status quo, woefully terrible and unsustainable transportation model. Automobile oriented transportation doesn't scale, is a huge waste of resources, and perpetuates unsustainable, ultra expensive and resource intensive sprawling urban development patter…
While I appreciate the contrarian view, it’s not either/or. Cars are a wonderful thing and facilitate independence and long distance travel. Electric cars are even more wonderful things. And Bikes are wonderful for active transport and but not a substitute for cars
It should be an either/or for travel within cities. I live in London and own a car, which I never use to travel around the city or at rush hour, only to leave on trips or for occasional movement of bulky items. The congestion charge (£10/day) and schemes such as local government closing off many residential streets to through traffic (which makes Islington wonderfully pleasant to walk/cycle around, it’s awesome!) help make this a no brainer, but I’d be happy for things to be taken much further with more restrictions and charges, as there are still far to many cars in London.
Cycling infrastructure still needs much more investment and we should be changing rules to massively encourage electric micromobility as well. The safety arguments against it are nonsensical when compared to the cars it replaces, and better provision on roads would make it even safer.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
I look at European city centers where cars often times get thrown out now and: they don’t agree. Profits were way down even before COVID. Even if you offer people the option to not use their car, they will avoid it. No form of transportation will ever be as pleasant to use. Cars don’t make cities unpleasant, cities themselves are unpleasant. No matter if cars exist or not. Bikes, pedestrians and cars must be properly…
The cities were there for thousands of years before the cars. In fact part of them were literally destroyed to make room for cars. It is from that point that the upper middle class left the city to live in the suburbs. Before they lived in the center. Now they are too many living in the suburbs, the traffic is hell, and everybody loses. Neighbourhoods where they removed the cars are a big success, where have you seen…
I want to see it more often. Go ahead, build cities where every motorized vehicle is illegal. I am all for it. If it is so superior, then people will move to it.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, the blatant hypocrisy of this comment. Imagine some cause or topic in your local government that you're passionate about and someone saying, "hey, let's just do what we want because f*ck what the other side thinks". If you don't like that a group of people have more perceived power than you in your local government then find a way to fix it ethically. Don't bypass local democracy just because you think it's easi…
Hmm, I think the problem the person you replied to sees is that sentiment community board meetings are not as good at measuring what the "average citizen" wants as opinion polls. Why do CB meetings have the moral high ground?
Because they are part of a local democratic infrastructure that is actually pretty good by global standards in the US.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#628Switching to electric cars from ICE cars is continuing to do the wrong thing and make the wrong choices, but doing this wrong thing a bit better. It's still the same status quo, woefully terrible and unsustainable transportation model. Automobile oriented transportation doesn't scale, is a huge waste of resources, and perpetuates unsustainable, ultra expensive and resource intensive sprawling urban development patter…
In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. Without really staring at the underlying geometry, it is hard for laypeople to understand that automobile-centric development patterns are by-and-large incapable of producing the kind of human-scale, dense, walkable areas that are (1) instinctively pleasing to be in,…
The coming sea change in electrifying transportation will include roads just as much as cars. Right now we are just barely off the bottom of the 'S' curve of transitioning from ICE to electric. But in about fifteen years we'll be near the middle of that curve and that's when we'll realize roads could be much better if the ICE cars where banned.
With only electric vehicles the air will cease to be continually poisoned by emissions and then roads and streets will start to move indoors. Covered roads will become practical with electric only vehicles and the majority of those e-vehicles will be a lot smaller than the current average ICE car because electric technologies make smaller vehicles much more practical. The current boom in e-bikes is just the beginning of a major trend to electric smaller vehicles.
A lot more quickly than you expect ICE vehicles will be restricted to the highways and periphery of towns and cities because they'll be too big, heavy and poisonous. In a word they'll become unsafe for urban transport and our cities will become much more healthy and livable.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're claiming that people will still ride their bikes to work when it's 20 F outside, you're incorrect.
If you're claiming that they won't, I'll happily be your counterexample. Buying a Brompton and riding 3 miles from the end of public transit to work through pretty much all weather in Boston was about the best thing I did for my sanity in all of 2019. Yes, on the snowy and icy days too. I did a fair amount of bike commuting in Cleveland as well, though the drive was less hellish and I drove some of the lousier days.…
I mean, no offense, of course some people like you will bike in all weather, but the reality is that a lot of people will not. See this study, and that's for the Netherlands, not NA winter.
Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
#630I've downloaded the study on which the premise of this article is based and, as usual, it's assumed that the energy needed to move a bike has no carbon footprint, while in reality it has. Specifically on an European diet(~1.5-2g CO2/kcal) a cyclist is responsible for ~27g CO2/km, which is not negligible and puts cycling on par with public transport. I don't believe cycling to be a solution here. It's said that 25% of…
A lot of Dutch people live in suburbs and work in cities, that explains the bulk of car traffic. If you look at trips within cities though, the bicycle has a much larger portion. In Amsterdam 38% and in Groningen 57%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen Comparing distance travelled is not really a useful metric in my opinion. Virtually no one is going to ri…
Fair point, but I believe distance still matters in terms of CO2.
I don't see cycling as a serious proposition here, because it doesn't solve any new problem that isn't already handled by public transport.