I don't think something like this would be that successful in the USA - it's not lack of parking that keeps most people from riding, it's lack of protected bike lanes (or other "safe" routes), and lack of cultural acceptance of biking.
Plus, open, street parking isn't that safe in a lot of cities, if I could ask for some specific parking infrastructure, I'd ask for lockable bike lockers... though I'd rather see bike lanes and other infrastructure that helps me get to work safely.
The lack of protected bike lanes is a direct consequence of the policy of providing free overnight car storage on both sides of every residential/commercial street. The days of “share the road” are over: cycling advocates need to advocate for 1/2 street parking on every street if we actually want change, because this is a zero-sum game where only one side continues to murder and maim the other because they think they have a right to get somewhere faster. Temporarily repurposing street parking is a great tactic to get people to realize how much public space is given to 1 person which could serve many. See https://www.fastcompany.com/90342223/the-newest-hot-coworkin....
Temporarily repurposing street parking is a great tactic to get people to realize how much public space is given to 1 person which could serve many
I think all it would do is enrage drivers that their parking space is being taken up by cyclists. To think that they'd finally recognize how much space is taken up by cars assumes that drivers are looking at this rationally.
My pet armchair theory is because driving a car is the one time a lot of human beings feel powerful. Where I live (provincial New Zealand) car traffic is slowed down just as much by tractors moving from farm to farm as it is by cyclists. Yet I never hear people tell me their elaborate fantasies about murdering tractor drivers. Why? Because it's not a realistic fantasy - the tractors are bigger than them.
If you work a menial job, or your family doesn't respect you, or you're looked down on by society - or maybe a combination - then your commute home is maybe the only time you have real power, protected by a big metal shell. So the anger at cyclists is more about 'how dare they slow me down when during the small pocket of time in my existence when I wield power?'.
I'm a long time cycle commuter relucantly turned auto-commuter. I thought I'd start hating cyclists too once I joined the herd but they're practically a non issue.
> I'm a long time cycle commuter relucantly turned auto-commuter.
I just made that transition last month after getting hit by someone driving a truck while I was on my way to the bike trail. In the report the police lied and said I changed lanes by crossing a broken white line. The motorist and I were in the same lane, and there isn't even a broken white line on the road. If I can't safely make it just half mile to the trail and if the cops are going to blame me after someone plows into me from behind, I guess I'd better put myself in a huge metal cage with crumple zones and airbags.
On the plus side, I'm finding that I kind of like jogging for exercise.
I ask this out of genuine curiosity, and with respect. I am a guy who has had several unpleasant dealings with police. But what could they gain by lying in their report?
They get to put it in the pile of completed cases and not have to start a long process of figuring out what's what. I have had similar experiences.
One time I even included in the report the full photo ID of the driver, the name and phone number of a witness, and I got a letter back saying "We're not investigating this case further for two reasons: 1. lack of evidence, 2. not knowing whether there's a traffic camera in the area." I called the witness and they had never been contacted by the police. And why is it ever a reason that they don't know whether there's a traffic camera in the area? Can't they at least just check that first and then say that there is no traffic camera in the area??
I think it might be as simple as a driver will not generalize about drivers, because they are one. They might generalize about categories of drivers, but not all drivers. A driver that is also never a cyclist is free to generalize about all cyclists without including themselves.
Once you manage to overtake a tractor once, it doesn’t ever re-overtake you and make you do that work again. On sections of road with large amounts of traffic and stoplights, I’ve had to wait behind and overtake the same bicycle 5 times before I finally got far enough ahead. Most bicycle encounters are non-issues, but it’s these extended ones where it seems to the driver that they’ll never be done with this one particular bicyclist that stick in the memory and cause long-term resentment.
I sympathize with this. And I, as a biker, don't really like being passed repeatedly either. But there are few good options: stopping in the bike lane but behind you defeats the purpose of the separate lane; I can join the car lane, and sometimes do if the flow is indeed slow enough, but then I risk being in the way if things do start moving faster, and/or pissing off a different driver who wonders why I'm not in my own lane, even though the average speed ends up being the same.
I'd suggest that the driver that is repeatedly getting ahead and then finding herself waiting at a stoplight might try driving slower between the lights, but that depends on the road conditions, and whether the lights are actually correctly timed. And on short blocks it risks causing jams. There's not really any way to apportion blame: it's a situation where it's hard for any of us to win. Maybe we just have to try to relax and get along as best we can.
If there’s a real bike lane, the overtaking shouldn’t be a problem as it should be safe for cars to pass in their own lane without needing to take any of the next lane over. Unfortunately, many “bike lanes” are too narrow and too poorly maintained and filled with parked cars. Then there’s the cyclists that think it’s appropriate to ride on the divider between the bike lane and the car lanes instead of in the lane itself.
>Maybe we just have to try and relax and get along as best we can.
That seems like the best plan, certainly. Once everybody can see each other as people instead of the enemy, there might be some chance of getting the infrastructure fixed.
>Then there’s the cyclists that think it’s appropriate to ride on the divider between the bike lane and the car lanes instead of in the lane itself.
People don't want to get doored. That's the main reason why I do this and deem this necessary. There are well traveled bike lanes out where where you do need to ride on the margin of the lane because it wasn't built parking protected and there was no space buffer set aside for car doors.
So your problem isn't with the cyclist, its with having so many cars on the roads that you can't drive faster than biking speed?
What do you expect would happen if those riders weren't on bikes? When I'm not on my bike, I'm driving (if transit worked for me, I wouldn't be on my bike)
The problem-cyclists everyone has at one time or the other, encountered have this air of entitlement - not dissimilar to Prius drivers who are known to be some of the worst drivers on the road [1][2] - that their chosen mode of conveyance is morally superior to other modes and so they're owed certain privileges like being not held to the same degree of responsibility for flouting traffic rules.
[1]
The aggressive driving antics of some Prius drivers have been attributed to a lack of engine noise in the Prius and thus absence of revs found in an ICE vehicle
[2]
Science Confirms That BMW And Prius Drivers Are The Worst
In my jurisdiction, cyclists are not held to the same degree of responsibility for flouting traffic rules as drivers are (for instance, the fines are halved). This makes sense, because the consequences of cyclists disregarding the rules are not as dangerous to other road users.
I don't think these opinions are mutually exclusive. I have certainly observed both. Entitled cyclists are very common around the urban area I live, but when I ride to the outer suburbs there's more of a car culture where they people invest heavily into the self-image that their vehicle supports. Their need to rev engines as they pass suggests that the power play is important to them.
The problem-cyclists everyone has at one time or the other, encountered have this air of entitlement
You betray yourself by the language you use - 'entitlement'. They are entitled to use the road, etc, just like any other user. I see many dangerous road users (all vehicles), but I never think of them as entitled - as if they shouldn't be there. Just sloppy/dangerous/ignorant.
It bothers people more because they know they could kill them with their car. The same way you might call out a smaller person acting rudely, but not a large, fit looking person.
An air of entitlement not to the road, they feel entitled to flouting the rules & to not be penalized or reprimanded for doing so -- like not stopping at signals or intersections as if its beneath them.
Cycling is morally superior to driving a car alone as an able bodied person. Cars pollute a lot and they and their infrastructure take up a lot of valuable space in cities.
As someone who is concerned about climate change and enjoys cycling, I'm still going to have to strongly disagree with this one. There are plenty of reasons why one might choose to drive over bike; calling one strictly morally superior to the other is extreme. Morality isn't that simple.
Please take off your selection bias glasses and start observing the behavior of all motorists through the same lens that you use to view cyclists. I think you will find that the proportion of bad behavior is not meaningfully different.
I don't like that the article implies cyclists are breaking the rules, but then they list behaviors that are legal in most places and make sense:
> overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.
It also blames bikes for both moving too fast and too slow, and ignores that drivers'd be way more pissed if bikes took the entire lane (like they're entitled to in most places).
The article is explaining why many drivers dislike cyclists. This accurately describes some of the complaints I've heard from non-cyclists:
Then along come cyclists, innocently following what they see are the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren't allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.
Whether or not the cyclists are actually following the law is irrelevant, there's still the perception that they are not. I've had a motorist pull up beside me at a stop sign and yell at me to get off the road and ride on the sidewalk -- I pointed out the bike stencil on the bike lane I was in and pointed to the "No bicycles on sidewalks" sign, and he still told me to get off the road. Laws (even with clear evidence that I was following them) didn't matter to him.
We usually say that the only thing that angers motorists more than cyclists breaking the rules of the road is cyclists following the rules of the road :)
The implication is that while they get angered by cyclists running reds, doing illegal turns, or lane splitting (assuming it's illegal), they also get angered if by following the rules the cyclists slow them down.
I am a daily cyclist and I started strictly following the rules after being scared by an accident I had. I realized eventually that I don't feel safer by following the rules. In fact there are a lot of days when I feel even more in danger than before (namely: rain days and friday nights).
I used to think that was because of the shock from the accident.
I'd like some material on that if you happen to know about it.
I'm a four season bike commuter too (boosted board when it's hot out). I'm done following the rules of the road just because— I'll do what's safest for me. If the police want people outside of cars to follow the rules "for our safety", they need to make the first move and actually enforce the car-side rules that would help make us safer as well.
The big one in Ontario is yielding to crosswalks. As of September last year, failing to yield to a crosswalk is supposed to be $1000 (!) fine. But as far as I know, there hasn't been one single instance of that ticket being handed out in my city, yet I witness pedestrians cut off by vehicles literally daily. I've even posted helmet cam videos of it happening to Facebook and YouTube and tagged my local politicians. Nothing happens.
The "Idaho stop" [1] is the best example I know of, with some studies showing that it's safer than the alternative. It's where cyclists are allowed to treat stop signs as yields (as opposed to coming to a full stop at each one).
Yes I've heard of that through the Paris experiment cited in this article. Although when I talked about it with Parisian friends :
* Cyclists have not heard of it and keep getting insulted daily for behaviors allowed by this experiment
* Motorist had the typical knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "This is crazy! Cyclists are madmen! Actual dangers to pedestrians and to themselves, ..." yadda yadda
Of course I don't assume that every cyclist I talked with is respectful of the actual crossroads where this is enforced so my little biased survey is worth nothing.
But I guess if it's not backed up with proper propaganda this kind of new road rules are doomed to create new tensions between cyclists and motorist.
Or just give cyclists proper protected bike lanes, like there have in the Netherlands. But I kind of have lost hope on the French Government and Community Governments for that.
The reason these behaviors are frustrating to drivers is that bicycles are hard to overtake. They’re unpredictable and fragile compared to a car, and so the driver has to give them a wide berth, often having to wait behind them for a long time until there’s a break in oncoming traffic to get around them.
That’s not so much of a problem, as that’s the same with every slow-moving vehicle. Bicycles, however, are the only ones that will re-overtake while the car is standing in a queue, forcing the driver to do all of that work again instead of just relaxing into the normal flow of traffic.
When they overtake a standing queue, Bicyclists, from the point of view of drivers, are acting against the common interest of smoothly flowing traffic for their own gain and taking advantage of a temporary situation to screw up the natural order of faster vehicles at the front of the line and slower ones at the back.
The obvious solution here is separate infrastructure for cars and bicycles as they have such different acceleration profiles that there will inevitably be problems putting them in the same space. But as long as bicyclists don’t extend the common courtesy of remaining overtaken in shared situations, they will be viewed as more worthy of punishment than appeasement.
> When they overtake a standing queue, Bicyclists, from the point of view of drivers, are acting against the common interest of smoothly flowing traffic for their own gain and taking advantage of a temporary situation to screw up the natural order of faster vehicles at the front of the line and slower ones at the back.
Now compare that behaviour with motorists, who are acting against the common interest of society and the environment by using a 2 tonne metal box to move around, leaving air and noise pollution, death, destruction and congestion in their wake.
I realize you're only explaining the behaviours, but we've built a society that chooses convenience at the cost of over a million road deaths per year, envelops cities in smog, and is responsible for a huge chunk of CO₂ emissions.
So, queue jumping is a moral act as long as the people you’re jumping in front of are bad people? Even if so, they’re most of the population and making someone angry is rarely a good tactic to convince them to help you.
It’s possible to disagree with everything someone stands for and still treat them with civility. Many people on both sides of this debate that are concerned primarily with their own convenience, and this should be a rational policy discussion instead of a holy war.
> So, queue jumping is a moral act as long as the people you’re jumping in front of are bad people?
I see it as more like a "10 items or less" queue: if you're taking up less (checkout/road) space then you get to go in a shorter queue that moves faster than the queues of the people who are taking up more space. That's fair, isn't it?
That would be fair, if the infrastructure reflected that. It doesn’t, however: often there’s only one lane downstream from the traffic light that can’t be effectively shared, so there’s only one resource to queue for. That’s why we should get some proper bicycle infrastructure built already, but bicyclists angering drivers with their behavior isn’t going to help.
In my experience whether there's a painted bicycle lane or not makes little difference to how angry drivers get about it. Filtering past them is still the safest course of action either way; I'm not going to compromise that for the sake of their unreasonable anger.
> The reason these behaviors are frustrating to drivers is that bicycles are hard to overtake.
It's a lot easier to see around a bicycle compared to other slower vehicles with bigger profiles. Also, since you're driving at a lower speed before and during the overtake, you're going to require less distance overall to complete the maneuver.
> They’re unpredictable
If they're following the rules of the road, then they're not unpredictable.
> and fragile compared to a car,
So are motorcyclists, for example.
> so the driver has to give them a wide berth
Four (or more) wheeled vehicles, by their nature, make it difficult to judge their precise extent from the driver's seat (the passenger side going more difficult compared to the driver's side). Roads typically have lines that help drivers laterally position their vehicles such that they have sufficient distance between the edge of the road and other vehicles traveling in the same direction.
Commonly, when overtaking another vehicle, one will completely change lanes before doing so (regardless of the vehicle type). The same rule should also apply to overtaking a cyclist.
> Bicycles, however, are the only ones that will re-overtake while the car is standing in a queue
I've seen people on motorcycles and other motor driven two wheel vehicles do the same.
> The obvious solution here is separate infrastructure for cars and bicycles as they have such different acceleration profiles that there will inevitably be problems putting them in the same space.
The same could argued for HGVs, but we do drive on the same roads they do without any issues despite the fact that their acceleration is much less compared to a typical car.
Unless the separate infrastructure is truly separate (i.e. grade separated), then these types of facilities cause more problems at intersections where they put cyclists on the wrong side of turning vehicles or even on the wrong side of the road relative to the direction of traffic).
Hi, I am from The Netherlands. Based on my experience in my country I have the following to add.
The main issue you have is a chicken egg (network effect esque) lack of bicycle drivers.
Once there are enough you can defend their rights (safety and accessibility) easier. Safety is first for bicyclists in The Netherlands. Hence no helm necessary. E-bike go pretty fast though and with elder people preferring these, amount of bikes may increase.
There are several solutions to this problem you described each with their drawbacks.
You can speed limit. For example to 30 km/hour. Aldo increases safety for playing kids.
You can disallow parking. Variations are one side or both sides, time based parking allowed (e.g. at night OK), allowed to stop with engine running, and possibly others.
You can repurpose the road to a one way street. There are two variations on this: with allowing bicycles one way and with allowing bicycles two way. Another variation is not allowing bicycles at all but I cover that later.
You can broaden the road. Not always viable, especially in city, but you be able to combine it with repurposing the housing.
You can make the road for bicyclists only. Do this too much and car drivers will complain about accessibility.
You can disallow cars in your city with too high Co2 emissions.
You can disallow bicycles. Useful at highways, near highways, or at choke points.
> the policy of providing free overnight car storage on both sides of every residential/commercial street
You make it sound like there is some sort of federal policy covering every road in the US. Not only is there not, but your statement is far from the truth. There are many, many streets in the US where parking is restricted or paid
That is not the policy in a large chunk of Manhattan. It was not the policy on major (more than two-lane) or downtown roads in Dallas (and its two independent enclaves prohibited overnight street parking entirely). It's not the policy on the vast majority of streets in Miami or the surrounding cities.
Seattle (along with other cities like) does road diets to see if reducing lanes will change habits - I'm generally for this though it can sometimes get some criticism (e.g. Cliff Mass https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/04/fixing-seattles-traff... ). Perhaps the method of informing & preparing commuters in advance of road diets could be improved, alongside making sure there's plans in place to ensure transit frustrations (e.g. crowded busses, bus bunching, last-mile problems) don't occur.
>it's lack of protected bike lanes (or other "safe" routes), and lack of cultural acceptance of biking.
In my opinion, it's because most people live too far away from the places they need to go in order to bike there. I wouldn't want to ride a bike 20 miles a day, regardless of bike lanes or bike parking.
Public transit handles long distances rather neatly, but there's a chicken-and-egg issue where (support for) its development is in part stymied by the last-mile problem: covering 20 miles rapidly isn't useful if you have no good options for the last 2. Biking fills a very important slot in a healthy transit infrastructure.
Unfortunately, we're pretty horrible as a society at reasoning about issues that involve more than one step, exacerbated by the fact that the pro-car bloc is probably the single most selfish-or-irrational voting bloc that I can think of, in terms of scale, intransigence, and magnitude of damage done.
The car bloc is 95% of the population and is completely rational. It makes no sense to take entire lanes out of service for the tiny minority of people who can integrate biking into their daily commute. And for most people in the US, public transit is not an option because you have a last mile problem at both the starting point and ending point.
Consider, as an ironic example, the new development around DC’s New Carrolton metro station, where WMATA, DC’s subway operator, will have a major office. Although it is a metro stop, it’s not practically commutable by metro. Almost all of the housing in the area is outside walking distance from the station, and it would make no sense to live in the city (where the rent is very expensive and the schools are bad) and take metro when you could live in the surrounding suburbs and drive 15 minutes to work instead. This is a problem endemic to the US—because we put large employment centers in the suburbs (like Silicon Valley) we end up with suburb-suburb commutes with last mile problems at both ends. It kills transit and biking as viable options.
Public transit is viable when your cities look like New York or Chicago. You put a little train station in a walkable/bikeable suburb, and then put all the jobs downtown. Most post-WWII cities don’t look anything like that. In those cities, it’s entirely rational to cater primarily to cars, because most people couldn’t use public transit and biking even if they wanted to.
Small folding e-bikes solve that “last mile” problem for lots of people.
They allow people to quickly reach mass transit hubs when none are near by, fold up and hop on. What’s missing is normalisation and support from transit providers.
I’d add, that it would be nice if Google/Apple would add multi-mode transit routing for maps so that you could tell when it’s quicker to cycle direct and when it’s quicker to cycle to a station and catch a train or bus.
Hold on, metro/subway capacity isn't the issue being addressed by the parent comment.
You raised the problem of metro stations being further than a walkable distance on either end of the commute.
If a subway or train service is at standing room only capacity right now even before you help new people to get to it then it's kind of a moot point anyway; you need more capacity before you can add more people.
The economics of train routes are dictated by how many paying customers you can move per hour. If everyone carried a portable bike, you would increase the potential user base of the routes, but decrease the customers/hour. (When trains are near full, and to be economically viable, they need to be, loading/unloading becomes a major bottleneck and everyone carting around a portable bike would really slow that down.) Even if you build new routes for those people, the amortized cost per user you can fit in the train is going to go way up.
Who said anything about everyone using a foldable bike (all bikes are portable)?
Your first argument was that people couldn’t use public transport because of the last mile issue. That only affects a subset of passengers and is answered by folding bikes.
Your second argument is that it would impossible to operate a subway if passengers were allowed to bring a second cabin sized carry on bag on (that’s roughly how big a folded Brompton is).
Well there’s already plenty of examples where operators are already doing this successfully.
The London Underground for example operates just fine allowing folding bikes to be taken on at all times of the day.
>It makes no sense to take entire lanes out of service for the tiny minority of people who can integrate biking into their daily commute.
Cart meet horse. I believe we have to "build it and they will come." It's a 'tiny minority' (well, minority) due largely to lack of infrastructure (bike lanes, sharrowed roads with modest speed limits, &c.).
Then, you hit upon the other issue...
>And for most people in the US, public transit is not an option because you have a last mile problem at both the starting point and ending point.
America needs more transit everywhere, and maybe more importantly, we need to dissolve the notion that mass transit is not just how low-income people solve transportation.
I love meeting New Yorkers and Chicagoans and their ilk because they are already on board with transit, they just don't continue use in newCity because the coverage is inadequate.
Playing devil's advocate for the car culture we do face the fact that the USA is huge and our cities have sprawled as a result. This makes cycling end to end take way more effort and often dictates that there be some powered locomotion to cover the bulk of the distance. And that's where transport fits perfectly.
Tl;dr. There's a symbiosis that needs to happen between bikes and transit to achieve critical mass and this wider adoption in urban centers. If we find strategies that get us to that tipping point then I think wider change is possible.
(me: currently commute by bike-bus-bike and previously did bike only (26 miles/day. I'll admit, the LA climate is a big help with this, no doubt.)
> America needs more transit everywhere, and maybe more importantly, we need to dissolve the notion that mass transit is not just how low-income people solve transportation.
Transit is completely impractical in almost all the places where most Americans live and work. We’re talking about a commute that starts in a suburban cul-de-sac and ends in a suburban office park. Where would you put the transit lines? There is also the issue of speed. If you have enough lines and stop to actually cover most people (it would have to be bus service, anything else would be completely unfeasible economically), the commutes would be dog slow. America has among the shortest commutes in the OECD, because our whole country is built around point-to-point car trips.
There is a saying: you won’t excel if you constantly beat your head against your weaknesses. Our country is structurally not set up for transit, and our political systems are incapable of the coordinated effort necessary to make transit work. Atlanta is never going to be walkable like Paris, any more than Paris is ever going to get an orderly street grid like Chicago. And even if you tore down Atlanta and rebuilt it as a walkable city you’ll never convince Americans to walk or bike long distances in 90 degree weather/90 percent humidity. Trying to make it so is a fool’s errand. Focus on the things America can do: electric vehicles, etc.
> Transit is completely impractical in almost all the places where most Americans live and work. We’re talking about a commute that starts in a suburban cul-de-sac and ends in a suburban office park. Where would you put the transit lines?
Again, chicken and egg. You need density to get to a point where non-car commutes are practical, and you won't get that as long as you build car-first.
It wouldn't be practical to turn the whole country into Manhattan overnight. But at every level there are steps that localities can take to make things marginally better: permitting higher density housing, permitting housing and offices to be built close together, reducing or eliminating street parking.
And the various bits of better cycling or transit infrastructure add up: add secure bike parking to the office park and a few hardy souls will start cycling, then you'll gain more value from adding bike lanes, which in turn will get more people switching and then more extensive infrastructure becomes more affordable. Start giving buses priority at lights and more people take the bus, then it becomes more practical to build rail lines along the busiest corridors, and so on.
> our political systems are incapable of the coordinated effort necessary to make transit work.
Political systems are made up of people, and as the newer generation takes over the system responds to their wants. Many people want denser neighbourhoods and better transit and they are - slowly but surely - starting to get them.
> And even if you tore down Atlanta and rebuilt it as a walkable city you’ll never convince Americans to walk or bike long distances in 90 degree weather/90 percent humidity.
Sounds like a similar climate to Hong Kong, which is famously low-car.
No doubt many parts of the US will not have great transit for centuries. But that's not a reason to avoid building it in the places where it will work. If you look at many places that are now famously low-car, there was a similar level of skepticism when they first started introducing bike lanes etc..
> Again, chicken and egg. You need density to get to a point where non-car commutes are practical, and you won't get that as long as you build car-first.
The simple fact that you're missing is that the country is already built.
Every day parts of it get rebuilt. To continue to be successful a country needs to be willing to change and evolve, and that might occasionally involve a little bit of planning and creating forward-looking infrastructure that will become gradually more useful over time.
Yes, and people used to dump sewage in the streets before we developed sewage systems. The whole point I'm making is that "status quo" is a terrible excuse for something.
I know that voters are generally a pretty toxic cocktail of stupid and self-interested[1], but what I was describing is that IME pro-car issues tend to be a whole nother level, where the fig leaf of pretending to care about the tradeoffs of the costs to society of one's actions is entirely dropped.
> Public transit is viable when your cities look like New York or Chicago. You put a little train station in a walkable/bikeable suburb, and then put all the jobs downtown. Most post-WWII cities don’t look anything like that. In those cities, it’s entirely rational to cater primarily to cars, because most people couldn’t use public transit and biking even if they wanted to.
Absolutely agree that cars have an important place in any transportation system; I'm not some pro-transit zealot that wants to ban cars and make everyone in the suburbs take buses[2].
But if you've paid any attention to any transportation policy discussions anywhere in the country, it'd be clear that that's not what I'm talking about: the fetish for cars rears its head all along the spectrum of density, including in the densest, most transit-suited parts of the country. We're a million miles away from a level-headed analysis of the costs, benefits, and feasibility of different transportation systems, and that's largely driven by the collective idiocy/selfishness of pro-car voters. Look at any transpo discussion in public or in private, and the status quo bias means that people systematically downplay and ignore the costs of car- and parking-centric policy while systematically exaggerating those of transit, bike lanes etc. (this isn't even close to balanced out by the horrific mismanagement of our big transit project boondoggles).
[1] To be clear, self-interest is a normal and important part of democratic decision-making; what I'm describing here is the subjective point past which we as a society consider the damage done to society from individual self-interest to be unusually selfish.
[2] though you're mistaken about the binary of requiring high density for transit to be useful: the Northeast is a perfect example of lower levels of density than NYC/Chicago making good use of things like commuter rail, often in concert with cars)
There are buses, trains, etc. That can take you most of the way. It is super handy to be able to bike to a well served direct bus route, take the bike on the bus, and bike to the destination without having to have to change from/to an underserved indirect lane.
That is a solved problem. The only reason you can’t bring your bike on the bus/train is because of a policy that prevents your local transit system from investing in the necessary equipment. Why are they enacting this policy I don’t know. But I think it has to do with the larger problem of city transportation policies that generally cater only to private car users at the expense of every other forms of transportation.
So perhaps you should be angry at your local policy makers from preventing you from being able to bike part of your commute.
The bike rack on the bus is helpful but they have limited capacity. A local bus route where I used to live would often pass up cyclists because the rack in front was already full.
I'm posing having two bikes (one a cheapo one) as a solution to not being able to take your bike on the bus/train - solving the the first AND last mile problem.
Fair point. Though if the "last mile" commute from the bus stop/train station isn't too far, and in a relatively urban area, you can get an Uber trip in the worst case scenario of the bike breaking and taking the bike to a repair shop the next day.
It will likely still be more cost effective than driving all the time because you are unwilling/unable to take a bike on the bus/train.
I'm familiar with those, and I have considered it. I could not fit that in the bus I would use (I can barely fit my backpack). The train is a dicey proposition; the car config I am on this morning barely has enough space for people plus a small-ish bag. I'd be taking up a second seat if I had a folding bike. Other consists have better luggage space, though even they are optimized for moving the maximum number of people possible.
Not as helpful as bike lanes that let you bike there safely.
To get to my previous employer, I had to bike across a freeway overpass with exits/entrances and high speed traffic, and then ride along a two lane road (35mph posted speed, 45-55mph actual speed) with no shoulder. Despite being an avid biker and living only 4 or 5 miles away, I only biked there a handful of times, dealing with traffic was too scary.
There was a rarely used bike rack by the front door.
Obviously it's important to get a way to bike to places, but if you want to use them for commuting or any other activity that involves leaving your bike alone for more than 3 minutes you pretty much need to have decent bike parking.
Otherwise you're just risking your bike being stolen and there being no recourse for it every single day. Because the police sure don't give a shit about bike theft, even if your bike is fancy enough for it to technically count as grand larceny. Let alone if it's not.
The basic idea of “experimentation is good” holds for bike lanes as well — before making a permanent strategy decision for an entire city they could try painting bike lanes in a neighborhood or for one commute where people are willing to try biking. When it works out, it’s easier to convince car people that they’re better off when there are fewer cars on the road even if the road is smaller.
Bike lanes in neighborhoods aren't as necessary as the traffic is slow and there isn't much in neighborhoods to bike to - grocery stores, jobs, and so on. This is pretty much a recipe for failure.
Instead, we need major corridors to have safe bike lanes. The major route between residential and business areas is a good place to start since the scariest traffic is there.
True, in the example I gave above, the first part of the commute was on quiet neighborhood streets, that part was pleasant even with no bike lanes (the neighborhood even had speed bumps to keep traffic speed down), it was the last 1.5 miles where I had to cross the freeway and ride on an a narrow road with fast traffic where it became unpleasant.
If there's no shops or jobs in the places people live, maybe that needs to be fixed first? Putting the jobs close to the people sounds like it would solve a lot of these transit issues by needing less of it.
I generally agree with you. Having a grocery store within walking distance and safe walking has been one of the joys of moving to Norway from the states. Not having a car is very freeing and puts some room in finances. The closest I've come to this sort of safe walk was living in a small town, and even it paled to the town of 180k I'm living in now: I didn't have house-to-job sidewalks in the small town and couldn't have done this living just a little out of town.
I also think that getting jobs and places close to residential areas is a separate issue as we still need the bike lanes on the most unsafe areas. The two main things I think of are:
1. The folks working at major employers need bike access as well. Factories, call centers, distribution centers and large offices. Some of these places just aren't suited for neighborhoods, though they can be close by. It is much easier to get proper use of bike lanes if some or many of the big places have such access.
2. It actually takes more work to get the places closer, at least in the states. This is in no small part because of zoning and red tape. I don't really want to downplay that it'd take a slight difference in society as well - along with the likely need to subsidise som of the places.
Wrong. A painted bike lane provides no sense of security, and is for the most part completely ignored by car drivers. You can use temporary solid barriers, concrete or those water fillable plastic ones, or bolted posts instead. Anything that atleast damages a car on impact really. However, a switch to cycling needs to be systemic and can take a fairly long time, so I'm not sure how a limited and 'one street' experiment would fit unless you are just incrementing on an already well established cycle lane network.
> A painted bike lane provides no sense of security, and is for the most part completely ignored by car drivers.
If car drivers completely ignore a painted bike lane, that needs to be followed up by the police. So they need to be part of the experiment :) I agree that solid barriers are often better, esp. on roads with high speeds, but where I live painted bike lanes work in many cases.
> a switch to cycling needs to be systemic
I think there's room for experimentation before the systemic shift - e.g. find one residential area and one commercial that many travel between, make good, temporary bike lanes and paths between them, let those that want borrow bicycles for the duration of the experiment and see what happens. If it works, make it permanent and move on to new places.
("one area" can obviously be "a few areas", and the commute can be to a school/university/whatever, and there could be a grocery store on the way, and...)
> A painted bike lane provides no sense of security, and is for the most part completely ignored by car drivers. You can use temporary solid barriers, concrete or those water fillable plastic ones, or bolted posts instead. Anything that atleast damages a car on impact really.
These cause problems because then the bike lane cannot be cleaned and also, these barriers cannot extend through intersections where the majority of collisions happen.
Around here we have quite a few of these types of protected bike lanes, and I can assure you there is no problem cleaning them. The same equipment used to clean sidewalks works just fine.
Is the problem with open parking stealing bikes, stealing parts or breaking bikes?
The obvious safety strategy is to have a bike of lesser value with better locks than what's available nearby. But I also ponder what it would be like to own a really valuable bike. Do people steal handlebars or something, because that would make sense to me? Or is vandalism the bigger issue?
And break seatposts when they are angry they couldn’t steal anything.
I had a not too fancy bike that uses Pinhead locks to secure every removable component. And a sturdy U lock. There were multiple attempts to steal various components including an angry thief breaking the seat post for no good reason - the saddle is worthless. Only finally to be stolen from a secure parking garage using an electric saw in full view of the CCTV camera. Police did nothing - not that I expected them to - enough other crimes for them to deal with.
Insurance paid for it. I used it to buy a nicer bike that I only ride on weekends. I’m back to taking public transit and supplanting that with bike share and walking.
One of the attempts included a bike next to me that was stolen from a really popular tourist area with a cafe seating opposite the rack.
When I see the way bikes are parked in Amsterdam it makes me jealous. I want to move there just for that freedom. I enjoy biking.
I have heard London is worse. Solutions are emerging. There’s a crowdfunded tracker that claims to solve the radio communication problem from inside a metal body. If true, it can track the bike with a tracker located inside the frame.
I'm not jealous about Amsterdam at all. People use beat-up bikes to avoid theft but still they get stolen. And finding a parking spot for your bike is horrible. Of course the city is very nice to ride in, with all the bike lanes and bike-respecting traffic culture and the flatness of the city.
But I personally prefer Helsinki (where I live) after seeing Amsterdam a couple of months ago. Never had a problem with theft on an average bike properly locked; parking a bike is easy; bike lanes and paths exist but aren't usually too crowded; motorists only rarely kill cyclists; and riding in the snow makes you feel like you're greater than you are. :)
Cars tend to require tools by default, but a lot of bike parts can be removed just with your hands. They’re also a lot lighter and smaller, so they’re easier to carry and hide. To take the wheels off a car, for instance, you need to jack the whole car off the ground - with a bike you can just hold it in place.
The ratio between profit and police attention would be terrible for the "innovator". But it happens nonetheless, just like roof tile theft, wire theft and so on.
That seems expected but somehow it doesn't happen here in Helsinki.
A set of stem, handlebar and brifters should come off with an allen key and a snip of the brake and gear cables, and would cost over $300 new even for a modest road bike. OTOH the scene for used parts is tiny around here, so a high risk of getting caught unless selling abroad.
I've even heard of cases where a carbon bike frame (itself worth thousands) was cut so the parts could be stolen. But you're right, the solution is a beater bike with a big lock, and if you have a nice bike, keep it indoors and never leave it unattended for more than an hour.
Even a beater bike is no solution, I parked my old beater (a rusty old department store bike) at the train station, and still had the seat stolen. It was bolted on (no quick release), so whoever took it apparently had tools.
So I stopped riding to the station until I got a bike locker.
Bike lockers are pricy in cost and space (compared to nothing, not compares to parking garages) but the only meaningful solution. Perhaps bike rooms with human attendants could work, and solve the job loss of creeping automation too!
In Denmark, every year or two someone will put a tag around all the bicycles parked somewhere overnight. After a month or so, the still-tagged bicycles will be removed.
The local council do this in public areas, and the owners of buildings etc for private areas.
In Japan the cyclists ride on the sidewalk, and use little bells that the entire pedestrian population is conditioned to understand means "move over please, I'm coming through". I've found bike usage surprisingly high in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto compared to my experience living in/near numerous US cities (Philadelphia, Miami, St. Louis, to name a few).
Why the emphasis on bike lanes in US cities? Putting unarmored people on unpowered vehicles on the same transit medium as multi-ton high-powered enclosed vehicles with reduced visibility seems like a recipe for disaster. Hell, I rode a motorcycle for a little while here in Japan and stopped because I wasn't comfortable commuting to work and sharing the road with kei cars, let alone Cadillac Escalades or F-150s like in America.
While riding on scooters in Hanoi with my Vietnamese friends, I learned the "ways of the road" there: small things yield to big things. Dump trucks and other large commercial vehicles drive however they please. Cars get outta their way. Then cars drive however they please, and all the mopeds kinda swarm around them and move over as necessary. Smaller vehicles are more nimble and generally have better situational awareness, so they can react more easily. Operators of smaller vehicles take it upon themselves to avoid death at the hands of the larger vehicles. In a city where people on two wheels are like 95% of all street traffic....big vehicles have traffic priority. As an aside, ALL motorists strike me as hyper-alert and competent compared to the typical American. Vietnamese on Vespas avoid collisions at the last second with lightning-quick reflexes and maneuvers that tough-guy American biker dudes I know could never pull off. It's pretty amazing.
But cyclists in the States....they seem to argue "everything bigger than me on the road must adjust to accommodate me", even though they are the physically-smallest vehicles on the road, and the smallest minority of commuters. It all seems ass-backwards to me.
- what works in Japan may not work in other countries because of culture difference. Case in point, while on the bike lane (in Paris), the kind that is at the same level as the sidewalk, just next to it, even after ringing my bell like a madman, some pedestrians just won't move off of it. They just can't grasp the fact that they are on the bike lane AND that they should move out of the way.
- the "ways of the road" you talk about is a wonderful myth that everything work correctly. When you look at the stats, countries where it's more a free for all tend to have higher road death/injuries.
- cyclist everywhere wants infrastructure that protects them against 2-tons metal boxes as much as possible, and laws that respect the fact that they are NOT 2-tons metal boxes with an engine. Absent that, only a tiny minority of people will dare take a bicycle anywhere.
Unfortunately, I doubt even the Vietnamese government has accurate accident metrics per capita/per km driven to compare to other countries.
But there is no real way to "just stay out of it". The public transportation infrastructure in Hanoi is pretty damn limited. There is a subway but I've never used it. I was told the government is hesitant to expand it as heroin junkies use it to shoot up. Your best chance is with taxis/Uber/Grab, so if the car hits someone at least you aren't the person responsible.
Anecdata: there was one probably life-threatening/ending accident when I was in Hanoi around Chinese New Years (dump truck vs moped). My Vietnamese buddy said that accidents were rare, but when they occur they are almost always gruesome. This isn't counting moped-on-moped scrapes that probably just result in a few bruises. I did witness some totally reckless teens basically crash through the traffic in front of them, knocking at least one woman off of her scooter....those 2 guys promptly got their asses beat by the nearest traffic cop.
My sense was that bike transpo culture was much more robust in Osaka and Kyoto compared to Tokyo. If memory serves, there was TONS of sidewalk parking so no issues there(the subject of this post just seems inflammatory TBH) but also the sidewalks were quite a bit wider than what I'm used to in cities I've been to in the USA(like SF). Also, you don't really worry about your bike getting stolen on Osaka.
EDIT: Tokyo is ginormous though and I haven't really been on the ground in more than like 5 or so of the special wards :|
I notice this, in general, American way of life are more centered around power and freedom. Rarely I see a problem solved by the Americans as elegant. Though nothing wrong with not being elegant. Just my observation,
It seems that transport is the only area of society where we put with “might is right” over leg due legal process.
Stopping people from killing or maiming with a larger vehicle those we take a momentary dislike to is one reason why presumed liability for drivers should be a thing everywhere.
Plus, open, street parking isn't that safe in a lot of cities, if I could ask for some specific parking infrastructure, I'd ask for lockable bike lockers... though I'd rather see bike lanes and other infrastructure that helps me get to work safely.