[HN Gopher] Milan confirms new cycling network linking 80% of th...
___________________________________________________________________
Milan confirms new cycling network linking 80% of the city to bike
paths
Author : znpy
Score : 375 points
Date : 2022-01-10 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (road.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (road.cc)
| laputan_machine wrote:
| I wish my country would invest more into cycling infrastructure,
| PS200m for 750km of track seems like a pretty good deal (if it's
| useful). Road infrastructure costs vary, but the last figure I
| read was around PS10m/mile for the UK.
| the_monocle wrote:
| Also don't forget that road infrastructure actually is a HUGE
| maintenance burden and thats where most of its cost problems
| arise.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Damn this is so cool, I wish we could have something like this in
| the US. We barely even have sidewalks in Texas (a great many
| streets only have them on one side), let alone bike pathways.
| blamazon wrote:
| If you live in a region where bike infrastructure is underfunded,
| and car infrastructure is overfunded, it's probable that's
| because cycling is viewed as a recreational activity in your area
| and thus undeserving of tax dollars compared to 'essential' car
| travel.
|
| If you disagree with that, (and live in a democracy) let someone
| know! Find out who controls the infrastructure spending in your
| area and call/email them.
| netcan wrote:
| >>If you disagree with that, (and live in a democracy) let
| someone know!
|
| You know, I'm not sure that in the current moment in time
| there's much correlation between living in a democracy and the
| efficacy of petitioning the municipality/ government/ etc.
| Diesel555 wrote:
| I just think people's perception in how easily their opinion
| should change public policy is wrong. And I'm glad it is.
| They usually don't know all the nuances behind a given
| policy.
|
| I see people both irritated with the lack of change in
| American government while also not politically active
| (Facebook doesn't count).
|
| Creating policy change is challenging in a government defined
| by federalism and representative democracy like the United
| States. I agree letting someone know is likely not enough to
| make a big change (and it shouldn't be). But if enough people
| think one way and let the right people know, then they can
| influence change. People need to organize. A large group that
| agrees on a topic has influence. Elected officials will
| listen to them because they can move a large number of votes.
| The group needs a way to communicate their desires and power
| (ie. numbers) to elected officials. This is usually
| accomplished via interest groups which can lobby for their
| interest. I know lobbying is a dirty word, but it exists on
| one end of the spectrum. The spectrum exists from attending a
| local town hall and voicing your solo opinion (which I
| recommend doing!) to smaller organizations on local issues
| all the way to the major interest groups (Sierra Club, NAACP,
| NRA, AARP, etc) voicing millions of opinions.
|
| There is a correlation, but not on the magnitude per person,
| work required, or time frame that most people hope for. You
| likely won't make a meaningful change with a single letter (I
| say likely because you can find counterexamples).
| [deleted]
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm fairly anti-car myself, But factor in cycling is not
| practical transportation for most people. It targets a certain
| demographic, people who have the physical ability to actually
| cycle. What about those who cannot, what about disabled people?
| Even if you are fit, anything more that 10 miles a day is
| difficult.
|
| I'm a massive fan of public transit, however, as an American
| this means I can only live in a handful of cities, but it's
| worth it .
|
| When I lived in LA I was miserable, driving to work every
| single day, driving in a city is not enjoyable. So I moved, but
| it's impractical for someone like me to ride the bike to work.
| My office doesn't offer gyms, and I can't bike in sweating.
|
| As for safety, riding the Metro can't be beat. The worst of
| both worlds is our current system where bikes compete with cars
| for a limited set of roads.
|
| If I could build my own city from scratch, I would ban all cars
| completely. Design something like a 5 mile circle, and build
| upward. 24/7 slow metro lines allow for commutes within the
| city. Then have side walks and bike paths covering other
| commutes. Have every pathway so well lit, 3am is as safe as
| 3pm.
|
| Then have garages on the city outskirts if you need to own a
| car to commute out of town.
|
| I can imagine this already existing in Europe. Amsterdam felt
| very close.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's bicycles made with accessibility options; tricycles,
| arm-propelled bikes (sometimes in the form of clip-on
| accessories for wheelchairs), e-bikes in all shapes and
| sizes, scooters, etc. I mean that doesn't make it an option
| for everyone, and a large percentage of people will continue
| to depend on cars, but at least here in NL with a good bike
| infrastructure, you see plenty of people on adjusted bicycles
| getting around, retaining their independence, and reducing
| their dependence on e.g. reserved parking spaces (which may
| still be further away from their destination than they can
| reach with adjusted bikes).
|
| Anyway, e-bikes are great. My girlfriend (genetic joint
| issues) was able to join me doing ~20 kilometers on one of
| the islands thanks to being able to rent an e-bike for EUR25
| for the day or thereabouts. I mean, there were even hills and
| the like there, she would not have been able to do even a
| quarter of the distance on a regular bike.
| blamazon wrote:
| E-bikes and other electric personal conveyances disrupt
| various arguments you raised.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Ok,
|
| Weather ?
|
| Say it's raining, this makes riding a bike much more
| dangerous. Or even just heat, if it's over 90 F out biking
| is going to be rough.
|
| American cities are spread out to the point you may need to
| drive 5 miles to buy some oat meal. Fix that first, I'd
| vastly prefer smaller cities.
| owenwil wrote:
| > Say it's raining, this makes riding a bike much more
| dangerous.
|
| Wait what, why? Because I'm going to get a bit wet? The
| rain is no more a threat to a cyclist's safety than it is
| to a car on a wet day. You just might need to wear a rain
| jacket, too.
|
| The Dutch certainly don't give a shit about rain, snow or
| shine, as the saying goes "there's no such thing as bad
| weather, only bad clothes."
| 999900000999 wrote:
| You seriously think inexperienced cyclist should ride in
| bad weather?
|
| If you have a city of Lance Armstrongs , sure everyone
| could bike commute. That's not practical though.
|
| I'd argue for building more bike infrastructure just
| since cycling is fun. I'm planing on working remote
| forever anyway, so I think we'd agree on alot. But I
| recognize my privilege here, if you need to commute to an
| office biking won't work over a few miles.
|
| The average American is commuting 16 miles each way. Can
| you realistically do this on a bike , I know I can't.
|
| https://itstillruns.com/far-americans-drive-work-
| average-744...
| ghusbands wrote:
| Rain does not make in-city cycling significantly more
| dangerous, and is definitely fine for inexperienced
| cyclists. But if people cycle regularly, they aren't
| inexperienced, anyway.
|
| In areas with frequent rain, people are practiced in
| carrying waterproof overclothes and such. Sub-zero
| temperatures, snow and ice can be a much bigger problem,
| of course, but good maintenance resolves a lot of that,
| too, as it does for cars.
|
| As noted by drakonka, you continue to argue the
| infeasibility of something that works well for many
| cities/countries, citing things that those with
| experience know aren't a big problem. Sure, you can't
| just suddenly start cycling when your life/city is built
| around driving tens of miles, but a city/country can work
| towards biking in a way that has worked well around the
| world.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm actually intrigued by this, I own a bike and whenever
| it rains, even a little bit I leave it at home.
|
| I'm afraid braking won't work as well, and I'll end up
| hurting myself.
| cianmm wrote:
| Sudden braking from a fast speed might be more likely to
| cause a skid (same as a car but scaled down), but if
| you're popping down to the shops or commuting to work,
| you likely will be cycling in a more relaxed style
| anyway. If you're uncomfertable with braking in the rain,
| I recommend finding a quiet strip on a rainy day and
| seeing what it's like. Actively try to skid so that you
| know what your bike's limits are - from decade of
| experience cycle commuting in a famously rainy city with
| some highly aggressive drivers, I've never found the rain
| to cause additional issues beyond getting wet if I'm
| unprepared. The only time I have ever come off my bike by
| my own fault was skidding over a patch of ice about 9
| years ago, so I would recommend higher levels of caution
| in the snow.
| praxulus wrote:
| >You seriously think inexperienced cyclist should ride in
| bad weather?
|
| I don't think inexperienced drivers should drive in the
| snow, but that doesn't mean we completely dismiss cars as
| a practical means of transportations in cities that get
| snow.
| aembleton wrote:
| What should I wear for snow, or ice and how do I know if
| I would encounter those conditions?
|
| Before covid, when I commuted, I used to cycle in 11
| miles each way every day. Except when the temperature
| dropped below 5c. Not because I didn't have warm clothes,
| but because once I hit some ice under a bridge travelling
| at ~20mph and came off. It took a long time for the wound
| on my knee to heel from that.
| drakonka wrote:
| I read these types of arguments a lot from people who
| live in places where cycling is not the norm. They tend
| to read like strange nitpicks in light of how common it
| is for people of ages to cycle in different types of
| weather. 5 miles doesn't seem like that far to cycle. I
| am by no means an avid cyclist myself - for longer trips
| I take public transport. But I see plenty of people
| cycling even while I am on the train, and that's the nice
| thing: good cycling infrastructure allows us to choose
| what is most convenient for us on any given day or
| destination.
|
| "But what about people who can't cycle?" - Most people
| can cycle. Besides, what about people who can't drive
| cars? Why do we invest in extensive car infrastructure
| when some people can't drive cars, either?
|
| "But what about the weather?" - Some people in my city
| don't like cycling on a rainy day, so they take a bus or
| drive that day. Tomorrow, when it's not raining, they'll
| cycle. This still results in less cars and more cyclists.
| Most of us don't live in perpetual rain or snow. Not to
| mention the fact that plenty of people don't seem to mind
| cycling in the rain or snow at all, so they utilize the
| cycling infrastructure year-round. "Sometimes the weather
| is bad" is not an excuse for avoiding bike
| infrastructure, in my opinion.
|
| I agree on cities should be laid out in a way that
| encourages and enables cycling. I think building safe
| cycling infrastructure, such as dedicated paths for
| cyclists (separated from cars) is a good start.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| If every American city was dense, I'd go for metro +
| cycling. But as is that isn't the case.
|
| I don't think most Americans are fit enough to cycle ,
| that's ultimately the issue. But even if your overweight,
| taking a train isn't a problem.
| cianmm wrote:
| Even if you're overweight, cycling a bike is very rarely
| a problem. I'm an active cycle campaigner so I am
| definitely more exposed to many types of cycle commuters,
| but I know many people who are overweight for whom
| cycling is their primary method of transport. At two of
| my friends have told me that they cycle because it is
| actually more comfortable than walking long distances for
| them. I personally have an injury which can make it tough
| to walk long distances, but which doesn't stop me cycling
| 10x that distance.
|
| I also know several people who have various form of
| physical disability who cycle either totally normal bikes
| or ebikes, or adjusted (to different degrees) bikes or
| ebikes.
|
| If we had better cycle infrastructure where I live (a
| relatively small European city), many many more people
| would release that they can get where they're going
| faster and cheaper on a bike than in a car, and have more
| fun while doing it. Even when it's raining.
| drakonka wrote:
| I sympathize, but don't really feel like your comment
| addresses anything I said. Maybe I didn't get my message
| across very well in my comment, so I'll try to clarify it
| here:
|
| My point is not that all Americans should suddenly start
| cycling everywhere at all times. That's unrealistic and
| undesirable. I get the impression that you're viewing
| this as some kind of all-or-nothing thing, where as soon
| as you build a bike path people will be forced to
| exclusively cycle and not walk, or drive, or use public
| transport.
|
| My point is simply that building cycling infrastructure
| that would support people who'd like to cycle some or all
| of the time is a good thing. Me not wanting to cycle in
| snow doesn't mean my neighbor doesn't want to cycle in
| snow, and luckily he and others like him (of which there
| seem to be plenty) have a bike path to do so safely and
| easily.
|
| I think it's relatively safe to say if people weren't
| worried about getting hit by a car, or falling into a
| pothole, or crashing into a pedestrian, or getting yelled
| at for being on the road, _more_ of them would choose to
| use a bike and experience the benefits of cycling.
|
| As a sidenote, I'd also like to point out that you don't
| have to be super fit to cycle, although cycling can
| certainly help improve fitness over time. There are bikes
| built for a more relaxed ride, as well as bikes with
| electric assist. It is possible to pedal as fast as you
| want, and go for whatever distances one is comfortable
| with.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm on your side, infact I'm considering nearby bike
| paths for my next apartment.
|
| At the same time, unless you radically redesigned
| American cities, cycling commuting won't work. City
| layouts take decades to change, even if people want
| change. I don't see a push for more compact cities in
| America ( luckily this is just one country, I already
| have work auth for at least 1 other place).
|
| I plan on getting a cheap Fixie bike next, I had an
| insane amount of fun with a 100$ Big Lots bike a few
| years back.
| drakonka wrote:
| I hope you enjoy your Fixie (and find an apartment with
| nice bike paths!) I have a little folding Brompton that's
| served me well over the years, and a beefier e-bike that
| was a life-saver last year when I didn't want to take
| public transport due to COVID.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| > cycling is not practical transportation for most people. It
| targets a certain demographic, people who have the physical
| ability to actually cycle.
|
| That's... most people.
|
| Like I get it, we have an obesity epidemic, but fat people
| can ride bicycles. It's not unusual. And a lot of them start
| shedding pounds fast once you get them out of the automated
| wheeled easy-chairs we call "cars."
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| It's not necessarily about physical disabilities. Think
| about 1 parent with 2 young children and 3 bags of
| groceries. And that roughly fits a LOT of folks. Maybe if
| both your house and the grocery store (or other
| destination) are within 1-2km of a mass-transit stop you
| can use that - otherwise it's pretty much personal car/bus.
| And if that's the case for one particular trip, you still
| need to have this option for the others.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| For myself cycling takes about twice as long. Assuming a
| peak physical condition, then driving.
|
| Taking the metro is a bit faster than cycling, I consider
| myself to be an okay shape. I still need to lose about 20
| lb to get to where I want to be, and I still don't think
| I'd be up to the challenge of hopping on a bike for all my
| commuting needs.
|
| If you want to propose something, you have to factor in
| what people are willing to actually do. The typical
| overweight American, it's not going to be open to biking 4
| hours a day to get to and from work.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I was referring to the assertion that "most people
| [cannot] ride a bicycle." Nobody, overweight or not, is
| going to bike 4 hours a day to get to and from work,
| that's outside the scope of what we were discussing.
| fahrradflucht wrote:
| This hits on an interesting fundamental that is often
| skipped when talking about bike infrastructure. Zoning.
| If you live in a country/area where living, working,
| recreational activities and shopping all happen in
| distinct areas, like it does in most cities built for
| cars, the distances traveled are often too far for the
| average person. In this case you are kind of right that
| investing in public transport might be more urgent. To
| become a true cycling city, municipalities also have to
| allow for more mixed use development to shorten
| distances.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Thank you !
|
| This might be the only comment that address my point.
| Imagine if we had mixed use high rises, 1st floor is
| retail , 3-5 floors are apartments and 5-8 floors
| offices.
|
| I could live an elevator ride away from work, and still
| buy groceries without ever going outside!
|
| Unfortunately in America we have business zoning and
| residential zoning, ensuring we all have to commute miles
| to do anything. I want mixed zoning. I want to walk to
| work, and then walk to the bar afterwards.
|
| Hell, biking would only be for longer commutes in this
| dream.
| woah wrote:
| Get an electric bike or scooter. The fact that the
| government is willing to offer thousands of dollars in
| subsidies for electric cars, when that amount could buy
| the best of the best electric bike or scooter is insane.
| stefan_ wrote:
| What are the subsidies up to now, $12,500 per car? I
| haven't spent that on bikes all my life, and it's been my
| primary transport. Paid retail for all of it, too, of
| course.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Disability comes in many forms. Many disabled people cannot
| legally drive but can cycle. Others cannot walk easily but
| can use a specialised bike. And yes, some can drive but not
| walk or cycle. But this idea that pro-bike = anti-disabled
| does not hold up.
|
| More generally, if we want to make life easier for those who
| can only drive, we should get the able-bodied out of their
| cars to ease congestion.
| yohannparis wrote:
| This is such a weird argument. Many people can't drive
| (minors, elderly, handicapped, health issues, etc.), and we
| still shade a ton of money on car infrastructure. This is not
| a zero-sum game; more cyclist means fewer cars, which means
| better services/life for people who need to drive.
|
| And we are talking about $280 Million; that's a piss in a
| bucket for a city like Milan.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Many people can't drive (minors, elderly, handicapped,
| health issues, etc.), and we still shade a ton of money on
| car infrastructure.
|
| Most of those who can't drive also couldn't get very far on
| a bike on their own. They can, however, _ride_ in a car (or
| bus) driven by someone else, making use of that same
| infrastructure. Bikes are not typically designed to carry
| passengers.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Most people between age 7 and 16/17/18 can ride a bike,
| but not drive a car.
|
| Younger children can be a passenger on a bike.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right.
|
| There are American roading projects for a single
| interchange that cost more than $280 million.
| angio wrote:
| If more people cycle, then thoes with special needs that need
| a car will have less traffic and more parking space
| available, thus improving their experience. People using
| public transit like busses will also have less problems since
| busses won't be stuck in traffic as much.
| grst wrote:
| > It targets a certain demographic, people who have the
| physical ability to actually cycle. What about those who
| cannot, what about disabled people?
|
| So do cars! What about people who can't drive, because they
| are too young, too old, don't have a license, or don't own a
| car?
| dan_pixelflow wrote:
| Re: London's cycle network...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gohSeOYheXg
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| TBF the new biking lane in Viale Monza sucks big time.
|
| Also: you can make how many bike lanes you want, they will never
| make biking in the cold comfortable, especially for people that
| are not used to it.
|
| A lot of people living in Milan come from warmer weathers.
|
| So the main users of bike paths are riders delivering food with
| their e-bikes and/or tier scooters.
|
| EDIT: I've been living in Milan for 8 years, i live where the new
| bike lane is, it's 100% a design by committee [1], that it's so
| bad that sometimes it runs on the right of public transports, so
| when the bus has to stop, the bikes run into the people getting
| off, some other times it runs on the left of the bus stop, so
| when the bus has to stop it needs to cross over the bike lane,
| which is as dangerous as you might think.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee
| thoweri3434 wrote:
| +1
|
| I wish we could have something like this here in the overcrowded
| cities of India, with increasing number of single-driver
| cars/taxis hogging evermore traffic. Motor vehicles run at an
| average speed of ~20km/h despite all the pollution and general
| danger, and will take about the same amount of time as commuting
| by bicycle - a cycling network will make it a lot faster.
|
| Alas, amidst the political dramas, crooked bureaucrats and the
| real-estate mafia, I doubt we'll get serious town-planning in the
| next 20 y.
| taude wrote:
| Bikes are a pretty big part of Italian transport, or at least
| more so than any other place I've been other than Amsterdam.
|
| My girlfriend lived in a small town about 1.5 hours outside of
| Milan for a year, and was surprised by the bike path system that
| linked all the towns together around Lake Garda, and how old some
| of the people were who were riding to visit friends and family.
| Literally, age wasn't a reason to not ride a bike on these safe
| bikeways.
| martopix wrote:
| I don't quite agree. I mean yes, we use bikes, but Milan is one
| of the most car-heavy cities I've seen in Europe. There are
| cars everywhere, parked on tram stops, parked in the middle of
| the road, etc. It sucks, and I definitely don't feel safe
| cycling. What you say holds for smaller towns. In my hometown
| 40 km from Milan I never needed a car nor a bus. (However as
| soon as you need to go to the next town you need a car.)
| mdrzn wrote:
| Italian here: good weather, bikes are kinda cheap, why wouldn't
| you bike often? The more you bike, the better the
| infrastructure gets around you.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Bike theft. When I lived in Bologna it was so rampant that
| there was a place where you could assemble a bike for free
| out of the parts left by thieves, picked up by the cleaning
| services.
|
| Then again Bologna isn't particularly large. I never had a
| need to cycle there. I would either walk or drive and
| occasionally use public transport.
| bandzest wrote:
| Now if they could just pick up all the trash and dog shit, we'll
| be great.
| PopeUrbanX wrote:
| kavaruka wrote:
| Milan has no problem with trash
|
| I also don't think that this "benaltrismo" is useful :)
| bandzest wrote:
| Looking out of the window in Cinisello where I am right now,
| I'd be inclined to disagree with you. Far far different to
| Sweden, where I normally live.
| pmontra wrote:
| It's not as bad as in other places but there should be less
| trash and dog shit around. About dogs, owners started to
| pick up their poo and dispose of it years ago so it's not
| as bad as it used to be. However everything is relative. I
| was in Japan, maybe Tokyo, with a friend of mine from
| Switzerland (regarded by Italians as a very clean place)
| and he looked around and told me with a sad face "It looks
| cleaner than home."
| martopix wrote:
| benaltrismo = whataboutism, for those who don't speak Italian
| martopix wrote:
| Milan and other large Italian cities have a terrible car-centric
| culture. In Rome this is more justified because public transport
| sucks. In Milan, I don't get it.
|
| I will believe this kind of change only when I see it.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > In Milan, I don't get it
|
| Italian from Rome living in Milan for 8 years now.
|
| The explanation is simple: transport of goods _and_ a lot of
| people coming from Monza/Brianza area to work in Milan and back
| home in the evening.
|
| Crazy at it seems, they prefer to use their cars over the
| (frankly terrible) regional trains, that in theory can do
| Monza-Milan in 10 minutes, but in practice most of the times
| are late, overcrowded or canceled, with no warnings.
|
| There's also a lot of traffic between Milan and San Donato
| Milanese where a lot of large companies have their own old
| school giant offices with thousands of employees (Eni, for
| example) .
| mrtksn wrote:
| Europe has some serious success in this. UK is also not that bad,
| London has "Cycle Superhighways"[0], which are essentially 2 way
| designated lines with 1 bike per line capacity.
|
| The problem comes down to coverage patchiness. In some places
| these lines are simply a marking on the road that will not always
| be respected by the cars and there are places where you need to
| cycle among large buses and other vehicles which can get scary if
| there are many of those.
|
| But other than that, even in relatively large cities like London,
| bike only transportation is very feasible.
|
| Even better, if you are not feeling like break sweat, there are
| hybrid electric bikes where the electric motor will propel you
| down the road and you can push the pedals only when you want to
| do it.
|
| Bike lines are also good for other personal transportation
| solutions that are getting popular.
|
| Carless transportation in the cities is mostly solved problem
| actually.
|
| [0] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/routes-and-maps/cycleways
| pmontra wrote:
| If any of you have been to Milan, the inner circle of the image
| [1] is more or less the city boundary. That path could be
| anything between 70 to 100 km according to how they'll design it.
| I had no problems cycling 100+ km around the city during the
| second quasi-lockdown of one winter ago.
|
| The grey area is what's called "citta metropolitana" now,
| basically the old province of Milan including more than 100 of
| other cities. Milan accounts for almost half of the population.
|
| [1] Deep link to the bike paths network
| https://cdn.road.cc/sites/default/files/styles/main_width/pu...
| eCa wrote:
| I would have thought that the inner circle would be the Via
| Santa Sofia-Via Senato circle road.
|
| I've never been to the city-proper, only the train station, but
| it seems strange that any of the missing 20% would be in the
| city center.
| pmontra wrote:
| I found this PDF from the City council [1]
|
| There is an example about "Line 6" at page 14. It starts
| almost at the eastern city border.
|
| [1] https://www.cittametropolitana.mi.it/export/sites/default
| /po...
| bonzini wrote:
| If you zoom it enough you can read the text albeit only
| barely. The second circle goes as far as Assago and Sesto San
| Giovanni; the third goes as far Rozzano and Rho; the fourth
| goes as far as Cornaredo and Pioltello. Based on this the
| first circle should be the circonvallazione esterna (viale
| Liguria etc.).
| trosi wrote:
| Giving how well public transportation works in Milan and how
| expensive it is to own and park a car in the city center, I am
| surprised at how many people still insist on driving.
|
| Personally I can't wait for reserved bike lanes everywhere. Milan
| is small in size if compared to other European main cities, you
| could probably bike across the city in half an hour
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| the real competition for bike paths will be for normal unpowered
| bikes and slow pedal-assist ebikes competing with fast throttle
| "ebikes" and electric scooters/mopeds.
|
| The fast bikes are still not fast enough and safe enough to ride
| with cars, but too fast for regular bike paths, so what will
| give?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The role those fill isn't that different from scooters, which
| are common in a lot of places. The traditional solution is to
| let them crowd the road, slowing car traffic and incentivizing
| using more scooters and other vehicles better able to navigate
| the congestion.
|
| I am genuinely sincerely in favor of this. It's inelegant but
| effective. Driving a car should be more frustrating and
| uncomfortable than it currently is in the US. Giving slight
| advantages to slower, non-car road traffic can improve safety
| and increase the costs of driving over other options, which is
| long term good.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| A local university was surprised apparently. The city had put in
| a protected bike lane next to their campus, thinking to help
| students. Welp, it was gorgeous, until they immediately had it
| all removed, thousands upon thousands of dollars wasted. They
| needed the few dozen parking spaces back apparently, and the bike
| path wasn't 100 percent safe as it used the sidewalk in a couple
| sections. Sigh. It will take us hundreds of years to figure out
| the proper infrastructure.
| jsinai wrote:
| This is great news to see. I've spent a considerable amount of
| time in Milan. It is one of my favourite cities, although the
| pollution is noticeable. Something else I'm hoping this plan will
| improve is noise pollution. Thanks to the ubiquitous Milan is one
| of the noisiest cities I've been in.
|
| One thing I'm curious to know is how the cobble stones will be
| handled. Some of those circular routes have cobbled sections.
| They remain for historical reasons, however the vibrations to a
| cyclist would be jarring.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Meanwhile our idiot city (Oxford, UK) is spending PS1.2m on
| "Quickways", which are painted lines on existing roads...
| guaranteed to keep cyclists 0% safe. This in the face of national
| Government guidance in favour of physical segregation from cars.
| (Plans at https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/quickway-cycle-
| route-oxf...: the promise of "segregation where possible" in
| reality means about 5% of the network.)
|
| It is really frustrating how highway engineers, as a profession,
| are unwilling to consistently learn lessons from the Netherlands
| in designing cycle infrastructure. Many cities seem to delight in
| half-assing their own solutions. So congratulations to Milan, who
| look like they may have got it right.
| the_biot wrote:
| It's equally frustrating how a certain class of people, i.e.
| rabid anti-car cyclists, only read publications within their
| bubble that are equally anti-car, while constantly throwing
| shade at any country that is not the paradise Netherlands. I
| encourage you to take that next step: only commenting on these
| type of stories within your bubble.
| jimmytidey wrote:
| I'm a cyclist but I try to get as many perspectives as
| possible.
|
| Can you recommend some alternative material for cyclists who
| want to see the other side?
| laputan_machine wrote:
| When I commuted to work I cycled 16+ miles a day rain, snow
| or shine. I also own 2 cars, I love working on them. I've
| built a few bicycles and regularly maintain them for my
| friends and family. I think I have a pretty decent
| perspective on both sides.
|
| Cycling in the UK is 1% of road traffic, and are drowned out
| of the conversation on how roads are built up until very
| recently. They are the most vulnerable things on wheels. They
| are treated as second class citizens on the road, and are
| subject to abuse car drivers do not get. I'm not 'anti-car',
| I'm 'anti-getting-killed-while-cycling'.
|
| If a cyclist crashes into a car, the cyclist comes off worse.
| If a car crashes into a cyclist, the cyclist comes off worse.
| It's not even close. The relentless amount of hate cyclists
| receive in the UK is genuinely shocking to me, and any time
| any sort of positive action is attempted to be brought up
| (e.g. building new cycling infrastructure) the haters come
| out of the wood-work to act as if they're being oppressed.
|
| Do you cycle? My money is on 'no'.
| tohmeiphun wrote:
| I agree with you. Having a car maximizes your opportunity, so
| by making it difficult and expensive to own a car and drive
| hurts the people who need the help the most.
| jimmytidey wrote:
| It really depends on the context. Driving is often the only
| feasible way to get around in sparsely populated areas, or
| areas with extreme weather.
|
| In densely populated temperate areas, cars are often no
| faster than other modes of transport (although they may be
| more comfortable), and they impose a very high cost on
| others, including: fatalities and injuries associated with
| traffic accidents, premature deaths and reduced quality of
| life due to air pollution and noise pollution. Parking and
| road lanes typically consume a great deal more space per
| passenger mile than buses, trains, trams, bike or walking.
|
| I'm not sure I understand what you mean by hurting 'people
| who need help the most', but in most urban situations
| owning a car for personal transport is not an option for
| those with the lowest income, and no realistic policy will
| make it affordable.
|
| Again, I'm happy to have my views challenged on this.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > Many cities seem to delight in half-assing their own
| solutions.
|
| You can expand this out to so many other areas, like building
| code too. It's enormously frustrating that everyone thinks
| they're a unique snowflake, they cannot learn from other
| jurisdictions and they must re-invent the wheel.
|
| There are so many issues that so many cities are facing that
| are solved problems in other places.
| maxwell86 wrote:
| > It is really frustrating how highway engineers, as a
| profession, are unwilling to consistently learn lessons from
| the Netherlands in designing cycle infrastructure.
|
| These decisions aren't made by highway engineers, they are made
| by politicians.
|
| The highway engineer puts a proper bikelane, makes the highway
| wider, and tells the politician that its going to cost 100
| million dollars to do a couple of kms.
|
| The politician says that there is no money for that, at most 10
| million, and that they "promised it", and suggests whether one
| can't paint a line or something for cheap instead. Otherwise,
| the engineer is fired.
|
| So the cousin of the politician ends up being paid 10 million $
| for painting a shitty 1000$ line that serves no purpose.
|
| There is a systemic difference between the UK and the
| Netherlands.
|
| Suggesting that the UK doesn't have good bike lanes cause
| Netherlands has better highway engineers is as accurate as
| suggesting that the UK did Brexit cause their highway engineers
| are bad.
| trgn wrote:
| > The highway engineer puts a proper bikelane, makes the
| highway wider, and tells the politician that its going to
| cost 100 million dollars to do a couple of kms.
|
| Yikes! That's criminal. You can get an excellent bikelane
| with a few bollards and a paint can. I would say that's a
| failure of the engineering profession.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| I wish that were true but, having sat in lots of meetings
| with them (including an hour with the leader of the County
| Council last month), that's not my experience.
|
| The highway engineers were generally trained in the 80s or
| thereabouts to value vehicle throughput and continuous speed
| as their principal outputs. So they continue to build
| junctions with massive corner radiuses, shared-use
| pedestrian/cycle paths to maximise the space available for
| cars, priority for turning cars at side-road crossings, and
| so on.
|
| Here in Oxfordshire you could describe the situation as
| "officer capture" - the officers continue to design dreck,
| and the elected politicians aren't (yet) strong enough to
| reject it.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > These decisions aren't made by highway engineers, they are
| made by politicians.
|
| They are made by the public. We need to persaude other
| citizens, not rely on (and blame) some higher power.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I've pretty much given up on cycling in the UK. I drive now.
| It's just not safe or fun any more.
|
| The problem is car dominance. 20mph speed limits are flagrantly
| ignored everywhere, even right next to schools etc. Most
| drivers have zero experience on the road except for in a car.
| Cars are getting bigger and bigger and more and more powerful.
| Streets are lined with cars. Pavements are filled with cars.
| It's cars everywhere. We've a long way to go before even
| stopping the tide, let alone turning it around.
|
| Even when Netherlands style infrastructure is introduced in the
| UK it's a laughable failure. It ends up making things worse.
| See the Dutch style roundabout in Cambridge, for example. It
| turns out you can't change people's behaviour by painting a few
| lines on the road.
| csmattryder wrote:
| You want to move yourself oop north, Greater Manchester's "Bee
| Network" delivers fully segregated cycle lanes - they've just
| done a large tranche of work to the roads south of Stockport to
| resize the road to make the walkways wider.
|
| That said, haven't seen them actually used yet. Pass a lot more
| cyclists that choose the road, still.
|
| https://activetravel.tfgm.com/bee-network-vision/
| aembleton wrote:
| If the bee network gets fully built then it could be great,
| but even then it relies upon a lot of paint on the road
| rather than segregated cycleways. There are some, such as
| Stockport and Oxford Road but there needs to be far more.
| kombine wrote:
| So what would you propose as a solution specifically for
| Oxford? Many streets such as Abingdon Rd are already narrow
| enough and I can't see how one could segregate a dedicated lane
| for cyclists there.
| the-dude wrote:
| NL does not segregate in historical inner cities either.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Abingdon Road is the difficult one because it genuinely isn't
| wide enough for segregated tracks. But it's also the easy one
| because there's a parallel, direct backstreet route
| (Marlborough Road/Wytham Street), and Abingdon Road itself
| has few enough businesses that it's not really a destination
| in itself.
|
| The Quickways proposals are focused on East Oxford where
| there is enough space. Broadly speaking, all of the East
| Oxford arterials have enough space for a segregated track on
| at least one side, usually both. It's only the immediate
| vicinity of the Plain where they're very narrow. But you
| could get two protected tracks along the Cowley Road as far
| as Marsh Road, assuming you reworked the road furniture and
| parking spaces; one protected track along the Iffley Road
| from the Plain to somewhere round Magdalen Road, and two from
| there on; two along most of Headington/London Road, Marston
| Road, and so on.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Remove all paint and signage to make car drivers slow down
| from fear. Require cyclists to have extremely bright flashing
| rear lights. If all else fails increase the number of tiny
| roundabouts and speed bumps.
| xenocratus wrote:
| And that's why the national cycling network actively avoids
| Abingdon Rd:
| https://explore.osmaps.com/en/route/3647727/Sustrans-
| Hanson-...
| gsliepen wrote:
| In the Netherlands there are also roads with just a painted
| bike lane. The difference is that the whole bike lane is
| painted in a solid color (usually reddish). This gives a
| constant visual feedback to drivers. Because of the paint it is
| just ever so slightly raised and has a different texture than
| the regular asphalt, so there can be a noticable difference in
| sound when car tires go onto the bike lane.
|
| See for example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands#/me...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The main difference is that the decision of painting the road
| or segregating traffic in the Netherlands is based on traffic
| volume and traffic speed. High speed high traffic zones get
| segregate bicycle traffic. Low speed low traffic routes can
| cope with mixed traffic and just a side lane for bicycles.
|
| The decision of just painting over curbs for cost is the main
| infrastructure mistake and 'false saving' in a lot of
| European cities outside NL.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| > The main difference is that the decision of painting the
| road or segregating traffic in the Netherlands is based on
| traffic volume and traffic speed. High speed high traffic
| zones get segregate bicycle traffic. Low speed low traffic
| routes can cope with mixed traffic and just a side lane for
| bicycles.
|
| The current standard technically doesn't allow for bicycle
| gutters: Traffic should be either fully mixed on low speed,
| low volume streets or fully separated. Though bicycle
| gutters do still get made (space being the primary excuse),
| from what I've seen it's primarily old roads that have yet
| to be renewed since the standards changed.
|
| https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2020/08/12/cycle-lanes-
| in...
| masklinn wrote:
| Cycle lanes are the subject of active and intense debate in
| the netherlands, and while they remain grandfathered (not
| sure they're allowed for new roads) they are not the part of
| the recommendations.
|
| Furthermore, the legal management of cycle lanes is a lot
| harsher in the netherlands: drivers are not allowed to drive,
| park, or stop in cycle lanes. Cycle lanes with solid lines
| can not be encroached on at all, while cycle lanes with
| dashed lines may be crossed or used to pass an obstacles.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I have seen too many cyclists hit and bloodied up by
| automobiles that I would never think twice about cycling on the
| road in my area, either.
|
| It's just not safe.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| NYC has, at least in Brooklyn, a quite extensive bike lanes
| network.
|
| It's of very inconsistent quality, besides workarounds that are
| tolerable given circumstance, like that the path cuts off at
| one point and resumes on the other lane in the street, the
| abundance of bike lanes that lack any separation at all from
| the main street makes it so morons use it as a place to stop
| their cars or trucks, and then you have to make dangerous
| maneuvers to get around them, or stop and hope some car gives
| you right of way when the street is busy.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Cars and trucks? That's nothing. Go along Vernon Blvd in
| Queens and you might be interrupted by large commercial
| dumpster-trailers being staged in your lane.
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FHZG-
| kPX0AQs4wf?format=jpg&name=...
| lelandfe wrote:
| Neistat's Bike Lanes is a perennial classic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ
| iso1210 wrote:
| Forget the paint, just remove the cars from the roads. Suddenly
| they become really safe, for everyone.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| In Holland they learned the hard way that you have to
| physically cordon off half of every road for bicycles. But you
| have to remember that just putting some paint on the pavement
| is a lot cheaper so that's what the government tries first.
|
| The reason why roads were taken back by Dutch cyclists and
| pedestrians is that they never stopped doing it. At some dark
| moment in the 1970s the number of children run over by cars was
| too much for society to ignore. It was a battle won by blood.
| s0rce wrote:
| Americans seem really good at ignoring cyclists being run
| over. Children don't seem to walk/cycle and rely on being
| driven around by their parents here so they don't die as much
| (good, obviously people know its not safe) but doesn't
| promote infrastructure investment for alternative transit
| (bad).
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Reminds me of this. https://twitter.com/darren_cullen/statu
| s/1422550369985605637
| uncletammy wrote:
| This is one of my favorite artists! It's so great to see
| him referenced here!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And there's plenty of space in the US; most roads can be
| half as wide and still service most cars. Plenty of space
| to build in a hard shoulder / fencing and a dedicated two-
| way bike lane.
|
| But that's only part of the problem, the amount of
| entitled, and selfish drivers that ignore traffic rules,
| lights and sometimes even roads is crazy.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| In suburbia America, where bike lanes are abound and
| plenty of cyclists to boot, it is the cyclists that are
| entitled, selfish, arrogant, and ignore the traffic
| rules. They've recently resorted to riding 4-5 cyclists
| wide to take up the entire roadway. They ignore stop
| signs and traffic lights, trying to pass as a pedestrian
| whenever it is convenient, and have been responsible for
| many pedestrian related injuries.
|
| For the record, I am a cyclist. I would love to use it
| more. But the roads are too dangerous, and town hall
| meetings are always full of the same two sides talking
| past each other. It's a perception issue, but hardcore
| cyclists refuse to acknowledge it. So the situation
| continues to not improve.
| _robbywashere wrote:
| Yet the worst is you are annoyed, not dead. Bicycles and
| cars are not the same.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "They ignore stop signs and traffic lights, trying to
| pass as a pedestrian whenever it is convenient, and have
| been responsible for many pedestrian related injuries"
|
| No doubt, there are ruthless cyclists as well. Still, are
| you aware of the difference in numbers and quality of
| "car driver killed cyclist" vs. "cyclist hurt
| pedestrian"?
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Yes. I am aware. This doesn't change the argument, and
| more importantly, nor does it change the perception of
| the situation. Cyclists situation in America will not
| improve so long as the perception of them are they are
| smug assholes. Everyone already knows there are smug
| asshole drivers. But we already have roads for cars
| everywhere. If you want to try and get more tax dollars
| for segregated bike lanes, the perception and the
| argument has to change.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Everyone already knows there are smug asshole drivers.
| But we already have roads for cars everywhere. If you
| want to try and get more tax dollars for segregated bike
| lanes, the perception and the argument has to change."
|
| So you say, it is ok, that there are some asshole drivers
| but roads still needs to be build and maintained, but not
| OK, that there are some asshole cyclists and therefore no
| cyclist deserves more bikelanes? (Or do you want me to
| dig up numbers on how much is spend yearly on roads vs
| bikelanes?)
|
| But for real? Arguments for support of cycling by
| allowing them to do so safe?
|
| How about cycling is way more energy efficient. Does not
| poison the surrounding with toxic fumes and noise.
| Increases the health - studies showed it does so even
| _despite_ the toxic fumes of their fellow car drivers who
| often overlook and directly kill or criple them and now
| want more arguments of why the tax dollar is not only for
| them?
| f7f6ehdufu wrote:
| whoiskevin wrote:
| We were able to find a few cyclists who misbehaved so we
| are going to justify killing them with 1 ton metal
| machines because we feel threatened by them?
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| This is the absolute least charitable interpretation of
| what I am saying.
| bobthebuilders wrote:
| Death because you are annoyed is not a good look you
| know. We shouldn't advocate that here.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I was very fortunate to raise kids in low density exurbs.
| My son completely wore out a bike going to school and
| visiting friends, often miles away. Dozens to hundreds of
| serious cyclists visit town on weekends to ride here. We
| also have people on roller skis and longboards on our
| roads. It seems really shortsighted to exclude these people
| in favor of cars.
| ced wrote:
| Are there bike paths, or does he ride on the road
| alongside cars?
| Zigurd wrote:
| No bike paths, just rural roads. Generally without any
| center line, even. We gave our kids mobile phones early
| on so they could stay in touch while being independent.
| It is common for kids in town to go fishing or sailing
| small boats on their own on a large pond in town. Lots of
| autonomy.
| llampx wrote:
| In America you just get social services called on you if
| you let/make your child walk or cycle anywhere.
| jpthurman wrote:
| Yes! I bike with my kids to school daily and if one of
| them gets out ahead of me inevitably a car stops to ask
| if they are alright
| vishnugupta wrote:
| I lived in the NL for a year. Their road ways are a work of
| art. I can go on and on about their beauty, utility all day
| long. I mean look at this [1] and this [2] for instance.
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/aEwTSm0
|
| [2] https://imgur.com/4Lreaar
| tda wrote:
| Those are pictures of a Cambridge roundabout, trying to
| imitate a Dutch roundabout. However except for very light
| traffic situations all (as far as I am aware) roundabouts
| newly constructed in the Netherlands are so called turbo-
| roundabouts [1]. Other than that, I agree that the standard
| of roads and infrastructure in the Netherlands is a fair
| bit higher than anywhere else I know of. Of course there
| are nice roads in every country, but in the Netherlands,
| there are almost no really bad roads, and every freeway is
| properly designed and maintained.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Turbo_roundabo
| utsle... turbo-roundabouts.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > Those are picture of a Cambridge roundabout,
|
| I realised it minutes after posting it when I noticed the
| driving was on the left (as opposed to right in NL) :-).
| The architecture is very close to those in the NL though
| which fooled my lazy eyes. Pedestrian islands, enabling
| free movement of cyclists with clear markings etc.,
| usrusr wrote:
| How does right of way with this wide separation work
| though? In my experience (not Dutch) it always goes like
| this when a car and a cyclist approach a point where
| their paths cross and the cyclist has right of way:
| cyclist slows down to be ready for an emergency stop
| knowing full well that right of way won't be of any help
| when bones are crushed, driver takes it as an invitation
| to "slip" through.
|
| The usual cooperative approach of "I have right of way, I
| can help my peer by accelerating a bit so they don't have
| to wait so long" seems to only work with participants in
| roughly the same weight class.
| pipodeclown wrote:
| Basically, the bike always has right of way and cyclist
| act like it as well, cyclist don't slow down and assume
| the any cars will stop, on the other hand, car drivers
| are drilled to always be on the look out for cyclists and
| give them all the space required, you get drilled on this
| and don't get a license untill you fully understand how
| to keep cyclists safe, that in practise means you need
| about 40 hours of driving lessons before you have any
| change of getting a driver's license. On the liabity side
| of things, the law basically assumes the driver of the
| car (more generally a motorised vehicle) is always at
| fault. Aside from some extremely reckless behaviour
| bordering on intentially throwing yourself in front of a
| car, any damages to your own vehicle as well as the
| cyclist you hit, is coming out of the motorists
| insurance.
| mpol wrote:
| Car drivers get trained when doing driving lessons. There
| are so many roundabouts that you have to cooperate as a
| car driver. Also, it is well-known that when an accident
| happens, the car driver gets the financial damage, and
| yes, the insurance will pay, but he/she will lose a big
| percentage of the no-claim decrease in insurance fee.
|
| Recently, local governments are moving away from the real
| small roundabouts like this one because in the dark, when
| it is raining, with cyclists who are without lights,
| these are still somewhat unsafe: https://www.telegraaf.nl
| /images/1540x866/filters:format(jpeg...
|
| These are much more modern, and car drivers can more
| easily see cyclists and mopeds come: https://www.denhaag.
| nl/upload/0690e94f-f7ac-43a3-8c1e-4fb768...
|
| Oh, and yes, car drivers can sometimes be aggressive. The
| same counts for cyclists though. I guess both kinds of
| people are just like normal people. And by the way, a lot
| of people are one day car drivers, the next day cyclist,
| there is a lot of sympathy.
| usrusr wrote:
| I simply don't understand why roundabouts aren't just
| shared. Do separation as much as you like 10m away from
| them, but in the roundabout, there's exactly zero excuse
| for a speed difference between motor vehicles and bikes.
| When drivers are expected to let segregated cyclists pass
| on leaving the roundabout, they actually have to go
| _slower_ than they would merged behind even the laziest
| cyclist. I really don 't get it.
|
| (yes, the answer will be "but children!", but I'm a
| believer in "treat cyclists like children and only
| children will ride bikes!" and I'd be a firm believer if
| the Netherlands didn't have this annoying habit of
| proving me wrong ;))
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Cyclists have unilateral priority over everything else. I
| suppose first few years a few cyclists' bones did get
| crushed. However through training, stringent laws etc.,
| it's drilled into everyone to make way for cyclists. At
| the roundabouts there's no negotiation etc., Motor
| vehicles dare not slip through. They patiently wait lest
| they invite the wrath of authorities.
|
| I suppose there's a better way. However, as a society,
| Dutch have decided to go whole nine yards to being a
| cycling friendly nation. And it shows and has its
| benefits.
| usrusr wrote:
| Have the roads been taken back though? Segregated trickle-
| lanes have been taken, but in the process the roads
| themselves have become effectively limited access down to
| tertiary level. I'm not saying that the Dutch method is bad,
| the results speak a very different language, but "taken back"
| is not what happened.
| greggman3 wrote:
| But apparently your Danish counterparts to the north are
| doing just fine without?
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| > It was a battle won by blood.
|
| This is the current battle in Toronto, Canada.
|
| Last year, there were more people killed by cars than gun
| violence, but you wouldn't know it by the media coverage.
|
| The city, largely due to strong local advocacy, has started
| to respond with physically separated lanes, but we're talking
| double digit KM/year, if we're lucky, when we need 100s of KM
| to link the city together like this Milan proposal.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _but you wouldn 't know it by the media coverage._
|
| Yeah, it doesn't help that the media used to almost
| exclusively refers to car crashes as "accidents", falsely
| implying there was nothing that could have been done to
| avoid the situation, putting zero fault on any drivers
| involved. At least nowadays you see headlines about "car
| crashes", although you'll still find ledes like "person
| struck by dies of complications". No need for passive
| voice, a driver struck and killed that person.
|
| ..and on that note, they are doing much of the same with
| gun violence, too. "A 14-year-old girl has died after she
| was struck by a stray bullet shot by police while in a
| North Hollywood department store. [0]" Passive voice,
| putting the intent on the bullet, not directly saying the
| girl was shot to death. To read that quote, you'd think the
| bullet took it upon itself to strike the girl, who died of
| her own volition.
|
| 0 - https://people.com/crime/14-year-old-girl-killed-by-
| stray-bu...
| vkou wrote:
| > Last year, there were more people killed by cars than gun
| violence, but you wouldn't know it by the media coverage.
|
| Same thing in the Greater Seattle Anarchist metro area, but
| we don't get screaming Nextdoor or city subreddit posts
| every time there's a fatal automotive crash.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| In the US far more people have died of COVID-19 than we've
| ever seen of dead bike riders. The bar for the US to change
| policies because of a "dark moment" is going to be in the
| millions of deaths, which just isn't going to happen when
| bike riding has such a small mode share here.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| Road safety measures would benefit all road users, not just
| cyclists. Around 40,000 Americans are killed each year on
| the roads, and 1% of the population are injured seriously
| enough to require medical attention. Those are scary large
| numbers, and the fact that the country has gotten
| accustomed to this is really unbelievable.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Vulnerable road users have a disproportionate share of
| crash fatalities. And the commonly accepted safety
| improvements might reduce crash frequencies for drivers,
| but it doesn't do it enough (and have enough impact on
| major injuries death) to overcome their complaints of
| slower traffic and less parking. If it did, America's
| traffic safety numbers would look more like Western
| European countries.
|
| For example pedestrian bulb outs and daylighting reducing
| on-street parking while making pedestrians more visible.
| Bike lanes remove travel lanes or parking, making traffic
| slower. Lower speed limits make crashes more survivable,
| but slow down traffic. When used for safety (and not
| cash) speed and red light cameras increase safety, but
| make driving costlier.
| llampx wrote:
| 9/11 was an anomaly and the aftermath was that we are now
| comfortable with constant surveillance and a region that
| hasn't known peace in decades.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| 9/11 policy changes had barely any long-term impact on
| civilian Americans. Taxes didn't have to go up. Airports
| already had security lines, TSA was largely a management
| change. And the constant surveillance is largely
| transparent (unless you lived near a government or
| military installation).
|
| I'm talking about policy changes that require a massive
| change in daily life. Wearing masks. Street redesigns
| that reduce parking or slow down cars. European-style gas
| taxes.
| Arnt wrote:
| Uhm, don't the Dutch separate cyclists and motorists only
| where the speed limit is >30km/h? At <=30km/h there's no
| separation at all IIRC.
|
| Good news about Milan, though. That'll be such an
| improvement.
| watwut wrote:
| 30km/h is very low speed. Majority or roads are faster.
| estebank wrote:
| 30km/h is not an uncommon speed in European urban areas.
| For example, in France within towns 50km/h is the default
| speed limit for main arteries, but it is 30km/h for areas
| where pedestrians are expected. Most of Paris has made
| the switch, so has Brussels. I would go as far as saying
| they are a majority of _streets_ , while yes, _roads_ are
| always faster, but that would be playing semantic games.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| All streets are roads, no? While not all roads are
| streets.
| Arnt wrote:
| Majority by road count, road length, road surface area,
| number of trips travelled or what? The answer varies. And
| BTW, 30km/h isn't very low speed in a country where
| bicycles are common.
| lobochrome wrote:
| I'm a road biker and would love fully separated bikeways
| wherever possible. The scheme in Milano sounds exciting and
| full of the right spirit.
|
| That being said, painted lines, in reality, do positively
| affect safety, both perceived (at least by me) and in accident
| statistics. Rethinking our cities towards multi-modal
| transportation will take time.
|
| I believe maximalist positions ("only physically separated bike
| lanes are acceptable!" probably don't lead to better results,
| faster.
| usrusr wrote:
| Painted lines can be both very good and very bad. It really
| depends on implementation. A painted strip right through the
| door-zone of parking is the well known example of bad painted
| lines. But painted lines next to a pair of narrow lanes are
| bad even without parking: here, without the bike lane a
| cyclist would effectively take most of the full lane, with
| overtaking cars easily doing a half-width zip merging on the
| outside lane. It's an easy flow with cars temporarily
| "compressed" onto "1.5 lanes". But when you compress the cars
| onto two permanently narrow lanes, with an explicit bike
| lane, drivers will reliably stop the zip merge and just plow
| through, often even much closer to the bike lane than to the
| other car lane. The worst examples are those where the
| original road was slightly too narrow to make 2x car and 1x
| bike and they painted a minimum width bike lane: on those,
| drivers keep doing double file and those on the right
| routinely enter the bike lane - and they still don't do the
| "partial zip" they'd do without the bike lane. Those things
| are not only worse than fully separated, they are worse than
| absence of bike infrastructure.
|
| But a not-bad lane implementation (either enough room for
| well-sized lanes for both cars and bikes or making the
| remaining car lane _clearly_ too narrow for double file),
| yeah, I 'd take it over fully separated _any single time_.
| Much better coordination with right turning traffic
| (occasionally, when speed happens to match, I even merge
| through the right turn lane so they don 't have to give me
| right of way, clear win-win), _much_ safer access to left
| turn lanes if you need it, much easier merging into traffic
| when the bike infrastructure _is_ blocked (plenty of
| occasions, both sides of legality) and in general sooo much
| less interaction with stray dogs, children, cyclists who ride
| against traffic because in their mind they are a pedestrian
| with wheels instead of a very light vehicle, pedestrians who
| walk there because in their mind they are cyclists (yeah,
| that has happened to me, I admit) and so on. I love painted
| lanes! Just please avoid those horrible mistakes that you
| have to avoid while setting them up when you set them up.
| zip1234 wrote:
| In regards to painted lines--they mostly do not pass the
| 'would you let your kids ride on them?' test. Drivers treat
| them as additional car lanes or a place to drift off into
| while texting.
| kawsper wrote:
| Casey Neistats video about painted bike path obstructions in
| New York comes to mind: https://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQ (2011)
| chimprich wrote:
| > That being said, painted lines, in reality, do positively
| affect safety [...] in accident statistics
|
| Could you cite any studies to that effect? Some studies
| suggest painted cycle lanes are actively dangerous:
|
| https://findingspress.org/article/18226-cycling-injury-
| risk-...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014.
| ..
| mathieuh wrote:
| I have the opposite opinion of painted-line bike paths: I'd
| rather they not be there at all. If they are there I feel
| forced to use them by drivers punishment passing me, despite
| the fact that the so-called bike lanes are full of glass,
| potholes and cars.
|
| If they aren't there I feel like I get treated with more
| patience when I ride in my normal road position, about 75 cm
| from the kerb.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I both agree and don't agree, having recently cycled across
| the US and experienced areas with no cycle paths, painted
| cycle paths and separated cycle paths.
|
| Obviously separated paths are the safest, although
| unfortunately in the US they often aren't maintained as
| well as the road surface, so for long trips it's usually
| more comfortable to cycle on the road anyway.
|
| But when it comes to painted lines, the situation is a bit
| hazier. You're right that drivers tend to be ruder and more
| obnoxious when you - as a cyclist - leave the painted cycle
| path for some legitimate reason, like to avoid an obstacle
| or poor road surface... On the other hand, at least drivers
| who drive in places with painted cycle paths know how to
| share the road, even if they resent doing it.
|
| For example, I can't count the number of times in the US
| where I cycled straight ahead in the straight ahead lane
| after the shoulder abruptly turned into a "right turn only"
| lane, only to have ignorant drivers beep and hurl abuse at
| me for doing what I was supposed to be doing. In areas with
| painted cycle lanes, the drivers understand that in this
| situation they are supposed to watch for cyclists, give way
| and then cross into the "right turn only" lane on the
| cyclists' right, instead of fuming and raging because a
| cyclist dared to follow the signage.
|
| In places where drivers tend to be more educated about how
| to share the road, it might be the case that painted lines
| are more trouble than they're worth, but in the US I think
| it's still useful as a way to teach drivers how to handle
| having cyclists on the road.
| u801e wrote:
| > In areas with painted cycle lanes, the drivers
| understand that in this situation they are supposed to
| watch for cyclists, give way and then cross into the
| "right turn only" lane on the cyclists' right, instead of
| fuming and raging because a cyclist dared to follow the
| signage.
|
| While this works to some extent when a right turn only
| lane is present, this actually sets the cyclist up for a
| right hook when the right most travel lane can be used to
| proceed straight through the intersection or turn right.
| In that case, the bike lane is still painted to the right
| and leads to the situation where a motorist making a
| right turn is to the left of cyclist traffic going
| straight through the intersection.
|
| > [I]n the US I think [that painted lines are] still
| useful as a way to teach drivers how to handle having
| cyclists on the road.
|
| The problem in the US is that they paint lines in such a
| way that there's insufficient lateral space between the
| cyclist and motor vehicles. Most US states have passed
| laws requiring motorists to leave at least 3 feet between
| their vehicle and a cyclist.
|
| In the case where a general purpose lane is 10 feet wide
| and the adjacent bike lane is 4 feet wide, you end up
| with a siutation where it's not possible to leave 3 feet
| of distance between the motor vehicle an and the cyclist.
| A typical larger vehicle is about 7.5 feet wide from
| mirror to mirror. Centered in a 10 foot wide lane, they
| have 1.25 feet on each side.
|
| A cyclist is about 2.5 feet wide. 2.5 feet centered in a
| 4 foot wide bike lane leaves 0.75 feet on each side.
|
| 0.75 feet and 1.25 feet add up to 2 feet, which means
| that the distance with both the motorist and cyclist
| centered in the lane they're in is not sufficient. This
| doesn't account for moving side to side within the lane
| for either the motorist or cyclist.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I think your calculation of car sizes is a bit wide. I
| think most cars in the US are around 6 feet wide. Even
| large minivans are only around 2m. Granted, the mirrors
| add width and some drivers add excessive dongles on the
| edge of that, but conscientious drivers of wide vehicles
| should already be accustomed to passing slow moving
| vehicles more carefully. In addition, in the places where
| there are proper dedicated cycle lanes, the lanes are
| painted inside a full-width shoulder, with space to spare
| on both the left and the right.
|
| I found there were quite a few stretches of road in
| Florida, for example, where there were 3 or 4 lanes of
| high speed traffic going parallel to a painted cycle path
| in the shoulder. It wasn't the most relaxing place to
| ride, but it still felt safer than going down some of the
| highways and arterial roads in other states where there
| were few (if any) cycle paths, simply because the drivers
| had more visual aids (signage plus lines) to tell them
| what to do when they saw a cyclist. I felt more confident
| cycling even in other parts of Florida without the cycle
| lanes because despite the drivers being fairly
| inconsiderate, at least they didn't visibly panic when
| they saw me there.
|
| It is important to compare like with like, though. A
| "cycle path" which is just a bit of different-colored
| paint in the gutter of an existing traffic lane is pretty
| much useless. But if the painted cycle path is explicitly
| painted in what would otherwise be a full-width shoulder,
| I agree with other commenters here that it allows more
| flexibility to the cyclist than a separated lane (e.g. in
| turning left without needing to do a pedestrian-style
| hook turn) and it has the side effect of teaching drivers
| how to more carefully consider other traffic.
|
| I really think a lot comes down to driver education. For
| example in areas where there is frequently slow farm
| equipment or horse and buggies on the main road, drivers
| have learned how to share the road, so it feels safe to
| cycle when there is no cycle path or even no shoulder at
| all. Unfortunately my experience in a lot of the US is
| that most drivers don't know how to deal with cyclists,
| so they'll ignorantly tailgate, cut you off or abuse you
| just for following the road rules. I'm not sure if that
| results in more casualties, but it certainly makes the
| experience of cycling more fraught, which means less
| people will want to cycle, so there is a vicious circle
| of increasing driver ignorance. I think painted lines at
| least provide some antidote to that.
| u801e wrote:
| > I think your calculation of car sizes is a bit wide. I
| think most cars in the US are around 6 feet wide.
|
| You're not including mirrors in the width of the vehicle.
| Typical exterior mirrors on passenger vehicles extend out
| about 6 inches from the body, so that adds a foot to the
| vehicle's width. My VW Golf Sportwagen is about 7 feet
| wide mirror to mirror. My Honda Odyssey is about 7.5 feet
| wide mirror to mirror. I've measured both vehicles by
| dropping a string from the edge of the mirror housing
| down to the ground, and marking it on both sides and
| measuring the distance between the marks. Take a look at
| the interactive graphic towards the bottom of the page by
| Cycling Savvy[1]
|
| Commercial vehicles like tractor trailers and buses are
| 8.5 feet wide at the body. Their mirrors extend out
| further, meaning that they're close to 10.5 feet wide
| mirror to mirror.
|
| [1] https://cyclingsavvy.org/lane-width-space/
| u801e wrote:
| > I ride in my normal road position, about 75 cm from the
| kerb.
|
| The rationale behind riding closer to the edge of the
| roadway is that drivers of motor vehicles have more room to
| overtake. But would a motor vehicle be able to fit between
| you and another motor vehicle in an adjacent lane when
| overtaking while leaving sufficient distance between their
| vehicle and the cyclist?
|
| I would posit that's not possible, meaning that there is no
| benefit derived from riding closer to the edge of the road.
| I would also assert that it's actually more dangerous
| compared to just riding in the center of the general
| purpose traffic lane.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I would posit that's not possible, meaning that there is
| no benefit derived from riding closer to the edge of the
| road. "
|
| When you overtake a cyclist driving in the middle of the
| road, you have a longer time on the other side of the
| road while overtaking, than if the cyclist drives on the
| right. So that can mean, a driver will sometimes do a
| more dangerous overtaking and then in fact, endanger you,
| when he quickly has to change lanes again to abort the
| overtaking.
| u801e wrote:
| > When you overtake a cyclist driving in the middle of
| the road, you have a longer time on the other side of the
| road while overtaking, than if the cyclist drives on the
| right.
|
| The amount of time needed to move completely to the
| opposite side of the road as opposed to straddling the
| center line time 2 is not significant. The amount of time
| to actually overtake the cyclist easily exceeds that by a
| factor of 10 or more. In other words, there really isn't
| any signficant difference in terms of the time required
| to complete an overtake.
| zip1234 wrote:
| A more dangerous overtaking than someone trying to
| 'squeeze' through without even going into other lane?
| tosser0001 wrote:
| I feel like I must be in a distinct minority because I
| personally prefer painted bike lanes over any other
| alternative. It's pretty rare in my own experience to have
| cars ignoring or being impatient with them (maybe because I
| like in a fairly bike-friendly city) I also don't like
| getting stuck behind really slow people in physically
| separate lanes where there's no room to pass.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| My issue is that painted bike lanes are also de facto
| loading, waiting, and short term parking zones. The bike
| lane existing makes car drivers more hostile when I'm
| forced to enter "their" lane because of cars blocking
| mine.
|
| Yes sure this is an enforcement issue _I guess._ Why not
| just build a physical barrier that doesn 't require
| enforcement though.
| mathieuh wrote:
| We have 200 m total of segregated bike paths in my city
| so I don't have too much of an opinion on them.
|
| My complaint is the feeling of being forced to use them
| when they are the dirtiest and most dangerous part of the
| road. They are just dashed white lines that were designed
| by someone who drove down the street in a Transit van
| once.
|
| Since I've been moved to WFH I exclusively cycle on
| country roads, I feel like if we had more segregated bike
| paths in the city I wouldn't mind being stuck behind
| people, I feel like commuting or cycling into town is a
| different thing from cycling for exercise or as a sport.
|
| I live in a country where cycling as a mode of transport
| is basically non-existent, 95% of the people I see on
| bikes are on road bikes and wearing lycra, so it's
| possible I'd feel differently about segregated lanes if
| there more of a cycling-as-transport culture here.
| greeneggs wrote:
| Physically separated bike lanes are even worse. You can't
| get out of them easily if you come across a lot of debris.
| And they are harder to street clean, so debris accumulates
| more.
| aix1 wrote:
| As a counterpoint to the "harder to clean" argument, I
| can offer the following.
|
| I've just been to Montreal, and with temperatures well
| below freezing and lots of recent snowfall, the
| segregated bike lanes were completely clear of snow.
| Every day. In the places I've been around town, I am not
| sure I've ever come across any significant debris, in any
| season.
|
| This is in stark contrast with many (especially older)
| bike lanes in the UK, which are basically unrideable in
| any season as they're covered in drain covers, potholes
| and debris.
|
| I think the difference here is not so much the
| difficultly of cleaning as the commitment to doing it.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Why would they be any harder to clean? A city can just
| have one of their sweepers be a much smaller, cheaper,
| sweeper. Likewise for snow clearing. A much smaller and
| cheaper machine can often be used.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| I do have some sympathy with your latter point, but there
| comes a point where you have to say "if not now, when?".
| Oxford built one world-class segregated track in the 70s
| (Marston Ferry Road) and has basically regressed since then.
| I'd be a bit more forgiving if it were Piddleton-on-the-
| Marsh, but Oxford has "A Cycling City" signs at every
| entrance to the city...
| lbriner wrote:
| I think it's tricky really. The only way it can work well is if
| a council starts closing certain roads to motor traffic or to
| through-traffic but this does cause a knock-on effect that is
| not easily fixed. There are lots of people who can't
| realistically use public transport (at least not until it is
| better etc.) and so if they are completely screwed by traffic
| decisions then that isn't really fair.
|
| However, what they are currently trying to do by keeping the
| level of motor traffic and simply slotting in lanes for cycles
| where there is space clearly doesn't work.
|
| I think a few places like Bristol have been a bit more forceful
| but they are large enough to have alternate routes for motor
| traffic.
| dahart wrote:
| > if they are completely screwed by traffic decisions than
| that isn't really fair.
|
| What does "completely screwed" mean? And is anyone really
| proposing something that will "completely screw" drivers, or
| is that more fear speaking than reality?
|
| The existing system of prioritizing cars was never built on
| fairness for all, and hasn't been fair to cyclists and
| pedestrians, nor even really to people who can't
| realistically use private transport. It has to be okay for
| the most privileged among us to experience some changes in
| their road usage, if we're to improve the situation for all.
| 7952 wrote:
| But in the long term people need to take responsibility for
| their own choices. If you live in the middle of a medieval
| city and expect to travel 50 miles to a random market town at
| rush hour you are going to have a bad time. That was never a
| reasonable choice and puts an unfair burden on everyone else.
| Oxford can be made suitable for bike and pedestrians. It can
| never be made suitable for significant vehicle traffic.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > There are lots of people who can't realistically use public
| transport
|
| What kind of people can't use public transport but can drive
| a private car?
| Schroedingers2c wrote:
| Ah, the ol' Oxford cycle "lanes". Where (if they exist) the
| paths themselves are bumpier than the Netherlands, and every
| few dozen meters you are greeted by a water drain or a manhole.
| In addition you have quite busy rush hours in the mornings and
| evenings.
|
| I moved from Oxford to the Netherlands a couple years ago and
| let me tell you: cycling here is a bliss.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Is "a bliss" a typo or is that a (UK) English way of speech?
| I'm American and I've never seen someone say something is _a_
| bliss just that something is bliss (no indefinite article).
| jounker wrote:
| I'm an American, and i've heard both "is a bliss" and "is
| bliss" my whole life.
| Schroedingers2c wrote:
| Frankly, I have no idea. I'm not a native English speaker
| myself, just picked that phrase up.
| Grustaf wrote:
| A lot of bike paths here in Copenhagen are simply painted and
| it works fine, even for small kids.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Is there actual enforcement of people stopping their car or
| parking in those lanes? Doesn't happen for the most part in
| the US.
| Symbiote wrote:
| A painted bike line in Copenhagen is _huge_ compared to the
| lanes they paint in Britain.
|
| The British version is about half as wide, and often allows
| parking for large parts of the day (i.e. is only a lane for a
| couple of hours).
|
| I've never been to Oxford, but someone mentioned Abingdon
| Road [1]. Just some bike symbols painted on the road.
|
| Or a little further up [2] -- that thing on the left is a
| British cycle lane. If you go forward 3 clicks, you can see
| it ends almost immediately.
|
| You obviously wouldn't take small kids through crap like
| this: [3]. Unbelievably, this is "National Cycle Route 57"
| (the StreetView car is pointed the wrong way to see it, but
| if you search you can find the tiny blue "57" sign at the
| roundabout.)
|
| Other than the bridges, the only part of Central Copenhagen
| with painted lanes I can think of is Bernstorffsgade [4].
|
| I'm not really sure where you're thinking of for "lots" of
| bike paths. A little further out [5] is this, where at least
| the lanes go behind the parked cars, and are wider.
| https://osm.org/go/0NWvDIpQ-?layers=C shows solid lines for
| painted lanes, and there aren't many.
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7378951,-1.2521828,3a,70.
| 1y,...
|
| [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7471822,-1.2563676,3a,75y
| ,18...
|
| [3] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7504861,-1.2448391,3a,75y
| ,12...
|
| [4] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6698747,12.5700607,3a,75y
| ,31...
|
| [5] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6598222,12.6187002,3a,75y
| ,16...
| pmontra wrote:
| This is perhaps the most trafficked new bike path in Milan,
| going to the city center from North
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtBeEBgodCw
|
| It was built in Spring/Summer 2020. You may start from 1:00 if
| you're in hurry, you'll get the idea. They moved the parking
| area towards the center to make way for a protected bike path.
| The road is narrower for cars but it was stop and go anyway
| (mostly stop).
|
| Further North, on the way out from the city, they didn't move
| the parking area. They painted a line between the cars and the
| parking area.
| altacc wrote:
| I would be surprised if part of Milan's plan wasn't just to
| paint some bits of roads a different colour and call it a cycle
| path. These large initiatives tend to be a mix of solutions,
| from paint to dedicated cycle paths. This has happened pretty
| much anywhere a city has announced upgraded cycling
| infrastructure. Some cities ratio it better than others.
| n-i-m-a wrote:
| As they did last year... There was quite some adapting for
| the drivers then and still confusing for drivers not familiar
| with these streets. Newly painted lanes with width that would
| vary every 50-100 meters (or less), random taxi/bus stops and
| parking being interchanged with the bike lane... Not easy for
| the riders nor the drivers...
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Meanwhile our idiot city (Oxford, UK) is spending PS1.2m on
| "Quickways", which are painted lines on existing roads.._
|
| Jason of the _Not Just Bikes_ YT channel calls these bicycle
| gutters:
|
| * https://twitter.com/notjustbikes/status/1431260478303518724
| curtson wrote:
| They did a great way of encouraging biking and reducing total
| carbon emissions. I hope that other countries will start doing
| this like this and will create an overall effort to impact our
| environment positively.
| eecc wrote:
| Aaaah completion-date 2035. I see where that's going (although
| I'll be happy to be surprised)
| dougmwne wrote:
| Apparently the first new paths are opening this summer. If they
| have a regular cadence of opening new paths and prioritize
| connecting a network together, it won't matter if they only end
| up building half because the half they did manage to build
| could still be a huge improvement.
| oriettaxx wrote:
| ah, me too
|
| public work in Italy very seldom respect deadlines;
|
| "scheduled to be ready" .... you can imagine
| jhoelzel wrote:
| Here in Berlin you can easily get with the bike through the
| entire city. If you survive that is a different topic, but you
| could if you wanted!
|
| IMHO the future lies somewhere between bikes, elon musk and the
| city tram. What we actually need is a vehicle that fullfills all
| criteria in some form.
|
| For instance: getting out of your apartment and onto one of those
| scooters to the next subway station where you either connect
| directly to the railroad or will be able to reach you destination
| unil the "last mile" where another scooter waits for you.... But
| we know how that goes and nobody actually will care about the
| scooter enough to return or take care of it.
|
| So what do we do? Uber-Tesla-Subway pods. I call it by phone, it
| shows up to my house, either transfers me or lets me dock with
| the subway and then brings me the last mile just to leave me
| there for the next thing it has to do.
|
| Self driving will mean the end of individual driving at that
| might not be as bad as we think it will be.
| mcntsh wrote:
| > Here in Berlin you can easily get with the bike through the
| entire city. If you survive that is a different topic, but you
| could if you wanted!
|
| I live and bike through the city year-round. I think the only
| part of the city where I have to share the road with cars is
| Mitte. But like any sane person I'm never there
| the_french wrote:
| > But we know how that goes and nobody actually will care about
| the scooter enough to return or take care of it.
|
| Looking at countries like the Netherlands this is not true.
| Train stations have rentable bikes which are always available
| in sufficient quantities.
|
| > So what do we do? Uber-Tesla-Subway pods. I call it by phone,
| it shows up to my house, either transfers me or lets me dock
| with the subway and then brings me the last mile just to leave
| me there for the next thing it has to do.
|
| Individual 'pods' will just never be a sufficiently scalable &
| ecologically friendly solution for any real city. There's just
| no way that having several hundred kilos of metal & plastic per
| individual, along with the space requirements (esp for safety)
| works.
|
| On the other hand, autonomous & shared 'cars' could replace
| individual vehicles for hauling / transporting as peak usage
| would be much lower than for transit.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| > Looking at countries like the Netherlands this is not true.
| Train stations have rentable bikes
|
| Only for residents of NL, I believe (which in no way
| invalidates your point and I agree with everything you
| wrote).
| jhoelzel wrote:
| well its not neccesairly a pod per person but more a pod the
| city owns that is shared when i need it. Here in Berlin we do
| have bikes and scooters the like but its the same with car
| sharing. Sometimes you still will have to walk 15 minutes to
| your car (and thats the problem i mostly see with the
| scooters)
| mcnesium wrote:
| for the majority of people it should also be fine to walk (yes,
| walk!) from their appartment to the next bus/tram/subway
| station around the corner.
| analog31 wrote:
| One idea is to put a deposit fee on the scooter, like Michigan
| has for bottles and cans. Therefore, the choice of whether to
| dump the scooter or return it is just based on your willingness
| to pay. Meanwhile, collecting and returning scooters could be a
| source of some cash income for folks who are otherwise hard to
| employ.
|
| I believe the main reason for the dumped scooters in cities
| that had them, was that the scooters were an investment
| boondoggle. It was easier to create fake growth by converting
| investment money into new scooters, than to actually figure out
| how to make it work.
|
| I live in a mid sized city (about 250k in US midwest) and a
| network of bike routes evolved largely on its own, with a bit
| of help from the city and county. Cars prefer the fast roads,
| bikes take the slow roads. The speed limit (35 mph ~ 60 kph) is
| high enough to make up for time lost at stoplights, but of no
| benefit to cyclists. Instead, we find our way through the
| narrower neighborhood streets that have relatively little
| traffic.
|
| That works everywhere except some peculiar intersections, and
| the dense central district. In those places, the city is
| creating separated bike lanes when they have to rebuild the
| roadway anyway. And a number of old rail lines have been turned
| into bike paths -- too bad for trains but great for bikes.
| Destruction of roads by the freeze-thaw cycle gives us a chance
| to renew our urban planning ideas every few years!
| jounker wrote:
| I do bike through the city quite regularly. The city also has
| wonderful public transit. I'm not sure what more we actually
| need here, except 24/7 service on weekdays.
| lbriner wrote:
| There is an issue that needs consideration, if you compare to
| Japan which has enormous cycle usage. Although it is good for air
| pollution, you end up seeing whole seas of cycles everywhere
| which is not nice in terms of the aesthetic nvironment. Go to a
| normal suburban train station and there might be 500+ bikes all
| in a massive area.
|
| Better than a large car park but we don't get many large station
| car parks in the UK. At least with mass transit like buses and
| trains, the vehicle isn't parked anywhere for any length of time
| whereas most cycles have very low utilisation in terms of hours
| per day.
|
| It is impossible without registration to know how many bikes are
| abandoned. Not sure if the authorities in Japan already have a
| system for dealing with that.
| Zigurd wrote:
| You should see China. Big sheds crammed with rusting bikes were
| a commonplace sight, though that was 10 years ago now. You
| could tell the Americans by their helmets and going 2X faster
| on fully inflated tires.
|
| Thing is, it doesn't matter. It is a bit of a rubbish problem,
| but there is no health hazard. If it gets people to ride bikes,
| that's far better than cars cramming every road everywhere.
| kfarr wrote:
| Just curious why aren't the locals riding on fully inflated
| tires?
| Zigurd wrote:
| They ride pretty slow, and don't lavishly maintain their
| bikes in general. You see people smoking while riding a
| bike in the city. This applies to the typical bike on the
| street. I understand there is a road bike culture in China
| now but that's a whole other thing.
|
| I didn't get much chance to talk to people on the street in
| China since I only know a few words of Mandarin. Most of
| the software developers I was interacting with had better
| means of getting around. But I did walk past some working
| class housing, which is where you see these really large
| bike sheds. I suppose it's a hassle to carry oil and a tire
| pump down from one's apartment and back up.
| pmontra wrote:
| Bicycles locked wherever is possible are not nice to look at
| but to be fair the seas of parked cars along the streets are
| also not aesthetically nice and cars move maybe 2 or 3 hours
| per day, then most of them loot the streets. Abandoned cycle
| shares bicycles are definitely sad to look at and should be
| removed as soon as possible especially when they belong to a
| failed company. Disclaimer: I drive much more than I cycle.
| kubb wrote:
| In an area where you store 1 car, you could instead store 20
| bicycles (more with better storage infrastructure). If 20% of
| people switch from driving to biking, you can save 19% of the
| storage space, which will be reclaimed by the city. The
| decluttering of the public spaces has a positive aesthetic
| effect on the urban environment, which is clearly visible in
| Dutch cities.
| woah wrote:
| You can easily fit 10 bicycles in the space of one car.
| bjackman wrote:
| In my city there is a team that goes around the bike racks
| marking tyres with chalk. If they find chalk still on the tyre
| next time they tie a note to the bike saying you need to move
| it. If they find the note still there next time they remove the
| bike.
|
| Simple solution for a simple problem.
| roars wrote:
| Abandoned bikes are a problem here in Denmark as well, but not
| an insurmountable one. City workers regularly put tags on the
| wheels of bikes parked at , fx. the train station. If the tags
| are not disturbed in a month or so, the bikes are removed.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| BTW the next problem we have to solve after bike paths lacking in
| a city are showers lacking in office buildings.
| kawsper wrote:
| I bike to work in -2 to ~30 degrees celcius, as long as you
| don't go really fast you don't really sweat that much in the
| climate of Denmark, it's mostly about pacing and not wearing
| too many layers.
|
| I leave the fastpaced action for the trip home, just bring
| spare clothes in case of rain :-)
| blamazon wrote:
| E-bikes help with this. No need to be sweaty if an electric
| motor is doing most of the work.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Say what you want about leed certifications one very nice
| aspect of them is they require bike storage & showers in
| addition to all the green energy requirements.
| [deleted]
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Glad to see they're making an attempt, and I hope it works out
| well, but there is a big difference between talking about
| something that will (might, we hope) get done in the future, VS
| something that has already been accomplished that one can feel
| proud of. I look forward to seeing if this can make the
| transition from the former to the latter.
|
| Also, major yellow flag: "The paths will also feature state-of-
| the-art infrastructure, including low-impact motion-sensor
| lighting, digital displays, and a network of fibre optic cables,
| ..." Sounds like exactly the kind of over-engineering and over-
| specing that plagues these kinds of projects.
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