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Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

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Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#691

Post by globular-toast »

JohnPrine wrote: post #681
globular-toast wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my fondest memories are of when the weather was "too" something. Some of them make great stories. But I'm sure you enjoy recounting your tales about how comfortable it was in your little box. I prefer to live and experience the world. I lived day in day out with a bicycle for years. Do you not believe me? Even now, I have a car, but I don't use it every day and I cycle if it's close enough regardless of the w…

I mean you're not wrong but you're not refuting that bike's are less comfortable, just that our lives would be better off with a little less comfort. I agree with you, but I don't think most people would.

I'm not trying to. My point is that there is no absolute scale of comfort. We are comfortable with what we are used to. That's why one person's comfort zone is different to another's. When I started to drive seriously it was way less comfortable than cycling for me. Manoeuvring a four-wheeled vehicle around is considerably more difficult. Acceleration is pitiful and you can't stop easily. You have to actually queue behind other cars in heavy traffic! Trapped in the little box in which you must remain, even if walking is now quicker. And just look at how angry it makes people. I've seen people literally go mad stuck in traffic. They're all on edge and the slightest mistake or unexpected behaviour can turn them into a frenzy. And this is meant to be the pinnacle of comfort! Because I don't get wet when there's a little rain?!

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#692

Post by lm28469 »

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #689
lm28469 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cycling is fine until its too cold, too wet, too hot, and oh I am late or I need to carry something else or .. or... or.. Welcome to life, it's hard, and this will hardly be the worst thing you'll face. I bike year round in Berlin, all you need is a rain coat and waterproof shoes, I'm faster than cars on any trip People in the past, and a lot of people today, still live perfectly fine without cars. We fucked up by…

I think there are a few convenience sacrifices you're neglecting. Not everybody has the luxury of living in such a mild climate as Berlin. In north Texas for a quarter of the year anybody will be a sweaty mess in a few minutes after stepping outside. Berlin has average of freezing temperatures in the winter months. That's not suitable for biking in a raincoat. You're fortunate that your job/school is a brief bike rid…

> when your spouse needs to commute 30 minutes in the opposite direction.

They wouldn't need to if we didn't design cities around roads instead of designing them around people.

Cars pushed people away from their working place, we commute as much as in the paste but we travel much greater distance and now we're trapped. It was a curse in disguise, and I'm not even talking about the financial stress owning a car ads to most people's budget

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#693

Post by cycomanic »

Laarlf wrote: post #613
Daho0n wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like an American talking about European cities.

I live in Germany near the Ruhrgebiet.

Maybe you should get out of the Ruhrgebiet more often. Pretty much all German cities that implemented Fußgängerzonen (pedestrian only malls) I can think about have thrived, big and small ones. I don't know what time frame you are talking about, but most cities in the Ruhrgebiet have been on a downward spiral since the 80s, so we might be looking more at a case of correlation not causation.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#694

Post by digital-cygnet »

tomjen3 wrote: post #669
digital-cygnet wrote: post #484

Earlier 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,…

>In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. In my experience, most people who are against cars really do not understand how fucking awesome it is to drive a car and how well it works in terms of getting me from A to B in the minimum time with the minimum fuss with plenty of space for my shopping. Nothing else…

The key driver of our apparent disagreement is likely the definition of "urban (or dense suburban)" in my post. There are plenty of places and use cases for which cars are magical things, whisking you from place to place with no effort and a minimum of cost. However, the important things to understand are:

1) Many countries effectively subsidize cars over public transit in ways that are non obvious (not charging for externalities, minimum parking requirements, huge comparative investment in automotive public works), so your accounting of the costs you see (insurance, gas, depreciation) will likely underestimate the true societal cost.

2) The problem that cars seem to solve (getting around a sparse world) is also _the problem that cars cause_ (sparsification). If you have to drive three miles to get to the grocery store, you could think "thanks cars for making this drive easy", or "boo cars for making this drive necessary". In the city I live in there are 3 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk of my apartment.

3) Some people truly do prefer the spread out, population-sparse lifestyle enabled by cars. But some other people truly prefer the dense, walkable urban lifestyle that, as I have mentioned, cars seriously disrupt. The damage comes when people in one group try to force the other to adapt to rules that make sense in their preferred environment (e.g., if Urbanite A wants to ban cars while Ruralite B wants to put highways through the urban center so she can get to work via car). I tend to side with the Urbanites on this issue at present, because it doesnt take much to see who has the upper hand in American cities right now. (viz: Rober Mosesization of most major American metros in the 60s-80s)

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#695

Post by yourmom2 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #532
browningstreet wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in the Dutch suburbs and everything you say can’t be done on a bike were pretty normal there. I think people think bikes don’t work because they’re thinking about the problem, as opposed to trying through the problem.

Ok, I'll bite. How do I get my family to church? 4 kids between 1 and 6. 6 miles from home. It would be nice if we didn't smell when we arrived.

how you get your family to church isn't relevant to solving huge problems facing humanity.

try zoom.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#696

Post by ric2b »

geoduck14 wrote: post #532
browningstreet wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in the Dutch suburbs and everything you say can’t be done on a bike were pretty normal there. I think people think bikes don’t work because they’re thinking about the problem, as opposed to trying through the problem.

Ok, I'll bite. How do I get my family to church? 4 kids between 1 and 6. 6 miles from home. It would be nice if we didn't smell when we arrived.

In European cities you usually walk to church because it's not 6 miles away, there aren't massive 6 lane roads taking up valuable city space.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#697

Post by ric2b »

moistbar wrote: post #405
Ericson2314 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it should be!

I don't know about you, but I don't drive better when I'm stressed.

Actually you probably do. People slow down and pay more attention when they're not comfortable driving.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#698

Post by slaymaker1907 »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #53
vinni2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like what you need is this https://www.podbike.com/

That's an electric car which, according to the article, is the wrong choice. It has all of the parking issues as a regular car. It needs all of the electricity to move its weight. Just because it has two pedals doesn't make it a bike.

In terms of the parking, it can apparently be parked on its end with a density of 8x compared to a car. I agree it's not quite a bike, but it's also not fair to characterize it as merely an electric car.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#699

Post by uoaei »

adrianN wrote: post #581
moistbar wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A more long-term, better solution would be to redesign infrastructure either to keep cyclists separate from motor traffic That's what I'd propose. Carving up the already scarce roadways to try and squeeze in a "safe" lane for cyclists is going to make it far more dangerous for both bikes and cars. Bike lanes that run above the street would be far safer.

That's a ridiculous proposal. Imagine the cost of creating a whole secondary road network above the current road network and the extra spaces needed for ramps up and down the elevated cycleway. This is something you can do in very special circumstances, but nowhere close to a general solution.

Imagine not being able to imagine something as simple as what most European cities have already figured out, which is to put the bike lane between parked cars and the pedestrian sidewalk.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#700

Post by uoaei »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #643
uoaei wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cycling on roadways with motor traffic is not for everyone...

Exactly, it only works for the very few. Accessible cycling is what we need, and that usually means physical separation from cars.

No, because cycling is not for everyone. Multiple modes of transportation should be equally available, but that doesn't mean you should expect that everyone be able to use every mode.

For instance I don't see any particular utility to making infrastructure so that there's enough room for every person to use a motorized wheelchair.

Different conditions demand different solutions.

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