My car gets parked across the street from my apartment building.
Doesn't get stolen and doesn't care about rain.
My bike spent a single winter out on my balcony after we needed the space inside the apartment for baby stuff.
It's now rusty in multiple spots.
My previous bike, I left on the small back yard of my last apartment, locked up. It got stolen a few months after I started doing that.
So again, this is not feasible for a lot of people, myself included, and it's very privileged to think that everyone has access to a garage next to their home.
> My car gets parked across the street from my apartment building.
Offtopic, but this has to end. I do not understand how it is socially acceptable to put huge pieces of your private property on the public streets. You cannot just put your washing machine on the street because you have nowhere else to put it! Why can you do that with a car?
I am complaining about the assignment for that intended usage. Why do we allow this usage? It takes most of the usable surface of the city for the storage of ugly, static objects. I would rather assign those spaces for other uses, like wider walkways, kids playgrounds, flowers, whatever.
I like this argument. The government is effectively subsidizing a huge amount of real estate (to a huge cost, with the taxes collected from everyone), for the usage of free parking. I would prefer if all that money went instead to free housing, or free healthcare.
> You cannot just put your washing machine on the street because you have nowhere else to put it!
You actually can in the US, that's legal in many places as long as it isn't kept there permanently. (I.e, you leave it on a trailer). We even put our trash bins onto the street almost every week. But that's beside the point.
> how it is socially acceptable to put huge pieces of your private property on the public streets.
Because that's what public transporation is, and the value it imparts.
We dedicated public streets to the public, because the value of public transportation is much higher than the small temporary cost of having any one person occupy it. Cars and roads are the most efficient form of public transportation ever invented so far (in terms of travel time, distance traveled, safety, and equability). That's not to imply they are perfect on any/all of these things, just better than the alternatives available today.
Yes, in a perfect world, everyone would have a beautiful light rail train at their front door, that takes them everywhere and anywhere they ever need to go. But that level of infrastructure is insanely expensive, and the cost of that expense is pushed into the housing nearby that infrastructure. Paradoxically, the act of building alternative public transportation like this prices out most of the public you tried to transport, because the value of that infrastructure gets captured in rent, which gets passed onto residents.
If you look at light rail, and say, "how can we get most of the benefits of light rail, but in a package cheap enough that most people could afford" or "what would a light rail train look like, if it could arrive at everyone's door, take them directly where they need to go, have the lowest construction cost to every possible location so as to have the lowest impact on land value and have the lowest possible detriment to housing prices" -- if you follow that line of thinking, you reinvent zero-emission EV cars and public freeways, which is why they are everywhere in the first place.
It's a good point. Parking should be allowed only on privately-owned land. Look at how it's done in Japan: you're actually not allowed to buy a car if you can't prove you have a place to park it.
Because I pay taxes for those spaces — often I even pay for the parking space itself. I pay gasoline taxes to pay for those roads. What gasoline taxes are bikes paying to use the roads? Are bikes paying registration fees? Tolls? Are they getting mandatory inspections each year?
> What gasoline taxes are bikes paying to use the roads?
Bikes can't pay taxes, neither can cars. People that own them can, and most cyclists I know also own a car. So if you're attempting to stipulate that people that ride bikes don't pay taxes on the infrastructure that they use, you're wrong- at least in my experience.
In any case, bicycles cause far, far less damage - maybe even 0 damage - to the roads used by motorists. So, if a side effect of motorists paying taxes to build and maintain roads is that cyclists also get to use them for free, a sensible person would be okay with that.
> Tolls?
I can't think of a single toll road that I have ever been on in the US that was not a highway. Cyclists don't ride on highways unless absolutely necessary. In most cases this probably isn't even legal for the cyclist to ride on the toll road.
> Are they getting mandatory inspections each year?
Can you find even one example of a poorly maintained bicycle causing someone other than the rider's death/injury?
Anyway, I don't even suspect that you read the article. Instead you just came in here to rant about how anti-cycling you are, which is not a great look, but suit yourself.
> bicycles cause far less damage... to the roads used by motorists
This only holds true as long as bicycles are a small amount of traffic added on. It's like the SMS bands with telcos: a small bit of auxiliary slack being used for something else. If bicycles become a large part of the traffic, there will still be an impact. Even if the bikes don't tear the roads up much, elements and natural wear make up a fair part of that. If bikes take half the road rather than the break-down lane, they will need to start paying for it (even if not necessarily the same amount, dollar-for-dollar.)
This argument is also relevant to electric cars. They tear up the roads, but are not taxed like normal cars are. Registration fees are also still relevant; at least some of that goes to administering a road network, which has to be done for cars or bikes.
> Can you find even one example of a poorly-maintained bicycle causing someone other than the rider's death/injury?
This is a silly standard to set, given present conditions. The people who use bicycles today are enthusiasts, fairly well-trained, and very likely to take care of equipment. If, however, it becomes commoditized, this will doubtless change. Cars didn't need much regulation at first, either; that changed at scale.
> Anyway, I don't even suspect that you read the article. Instead you just came in here to rant about how anti-cycling you are, which is not a great look, but suit yourself.
This is a poor attempt to dismiss someone's arguments out-of-hand. The point that he pays for certain amenities (even if they are subsidized more than they ought to be) is still valid.
I did read the article, and it still leaves the biggest issue un-answered. Namely, _"micro-mobility", as it is therein-termed, only works on a micro scale_. Many cities aren't built this way, and it is only practical if you live in a tiny urban bubble. I've lived places where I drove forty-five miles each way for a commute. Why did I put up with this? Because I didn't want to live in the expensive, yuppie parts of town. For all that money, I'd have gotten a small apartment, built no land equity, and had very little space. I don't like it much in cities for this reason: everything is small, little green space, trash, crime, etc. The other option is the hippie neighborhood with seven-dollar-a-cup coffee shops on every corner; when those pop up, people instead complain gentrification is pricing out the poor.
The reason I don't like the whole bike thing is because it's emblematic of a culture and a vision I don't like: everyone living densely-packed into the stereotypical SF or Seattle city. This isn't often argued, but it's part of the larger "culture war." I know on which side most people on HN fall, but most people on the other side like their culture the way it is. Telling them to just import the dutch bike culture isn't a good solution, and will work just about as well as any other time people have told another group to just import their culture.
Road damage is proportional to the 4th power of the weight of the vehicle.[1] The average bike's weight is about 1/100 that of the average car (unscientific method of searching "weight of average bike" and "weight of average car"). So you'd need approximately 100 bikes to cause the same impact as 1 car! And 100 bikes can transport 25x more people than 1 car.
> everyone living densely-packed into the stereotypical SF or Seattle city.
I don't think you need that much density to encourage biking. Even a city with a lot of townhouses, 3-4 story apartment buildings (for the yuppies), and no parking minimums for businesses ought to be dense enough.
> Road damage is proportional to the 4th power of the weight of the vehicle
Right, which is why I also wrote this:
>> Even if the bikes don't tear the roads up much, elements and natural wear make up a fair part of that.
Roads degrade on their own, and the people who use them should still pay for them. I also specified that this need not be dollar-for-dollar, but it is not costless.
> I don't think you need that much density to encourage biking. Even a city with a lot of townhouses, 3-4 story apartment buildings (for the yuppies), and no parking minimums for businesses ought to be dense enough.
Would you please provide a citation for this? I'm guessing your source is only accounting for being able to pack required amenities into a hypothetical biking range. This wouldn't take into account that many people work across town , have to go there to see people and do things, etc. Without a source, however, I can't accurately respond to this.
I saw another commenter raise the point that if you want comparable convenience, you often end up with EVs. What is the objection to those? Assuming carbon-neutral electricity, that is. I'd hazard a guess that producing the energy required to move people via nuclear electricity is more efficient than producing it via consuming food.
I'm also curious if you'd be open to biking in, say, Texas where summer temps are easily above 100 degrees and above 110 in some places. I have trouble seeing how you could convince people to do this; most hesitate to step outside unless necessary in such weather. How would you mitigate this?
> Roads degrade on their own, and the people who use them should still pay for them
How much do roads degrade on their own vs due to usage? In dry places like California or the southwest, I can't imagine it's a lot. In places with harsh winters or heavy rain it's probably more.
But if roads are designed to maximize bike throughput rather than car throughput, they'd probably be built differently too. They wouldn't need to be as wide or support speeds as high. This would reduce maintenance costs by a bit.
> many people work across town
If towns are denser "across town" isn't as far anymore. Not to mention if driving across town is no longer as fast, people will live closer to work. In any case, on an electric bike a distance of 10 miles is trivially bikeable in under an hour, which is also the length of an average car trip.[1] Implying half of all car trips could be done on an electric bike.
> comparable convenience
Cars are convenient when there aren't many other cars around. As the number of car drivers goes up, I don't really see convenience. Traffic, pollution, fatal accidents, needing to find parking.
> What is the objection to [EVs]?
They take up just as much space on the road and cause accidents at similar rates. Particles from tires and braking are still a health hazard. EVs are awesome and we should all move to them because they're lightyears beyond ICE vehicles but I don't think they should play the exact same role.
> I'd hazard a guess that producing the energy required to move people via nuclear electricity is more efficient than producing it via consuming food.
Maybe. But I'd hazard you have to produce less energy overall because a cyclist is moving 100 times less weight than a driver. Also there are second- and third-order effects of less energy spent on road maintenance (less wear and tear) or healthcare (everyone's getting more exercise). And the cyclist has to eat anyway - biking may add maybe 500 kcal/day to their diet at the high end.
> if you'd be open to biking in, say, Texas where summer temps are easily above 100 degrees and above 110 in some places
It depends. If I'm going to work and can change and/or shower at the office sure. If I'm riding an electric bike and have to go less than 10 miles, sure.
> I have trouble seeing how you could convince people to do this; most hesitate to step outside unless necessary in such weather. How would you mitigate this?
These are all fair points. Most people value convenience. Ultimately everyone needs to decide what they want. Endless traffic, noise, pollution, sprawl, risking death (car accidents are the number one killer of children in the US) seem like a pretty high price to pay for convenience to me.
> The reason I don't like the whole bike thing is because it's emblematic of a culture and a vision I don't like: everyone living densely-packed into the stereotypical SF or Seattle city. This isn't often argued, but it's part of the larger "culture war." I know on which side most people on HN fall, but most people on the other side like their culture the way it is. Telling them to just import the dutch bike culture isn't a good solution, and will work just about as well as any other time people have told another group to just import their culture.
Ah, well, there it is. It's hard to argue in good faith with one who assumes that all things related to cycling are a part of a culture war being waged. I'm out.
