We also have bad weather. Right now, where I live at least, a top 10 metro, it's around 90-95degF and 80-90% humidity or it's raining. Suppose I decide to ride to work. Google puts that at a 1 hour and 13 to 1 hour 23 minute ride depending on my route. It sucks but it's doable.
Now I arrive at work and I'm soaked either from sweat or rain. Now what? I can stink up the office with my B.O. all day while I desperately try to dry my clothes. Or I go through the indignity of getting to work, waiting an hour to cool-down and dry off, then trying to change out of my riding kit into some decent professional work clothes in a dirty stall in the men's room after giving myself a paper towel bath in the sink.
Then at the end of a long work-day, reverse this absurd course of events? Now instead of a 10 minute drive and 8.5 hours at the office followed by a 10 minute drive home (total time commitment under 9 hours), I've succeeded in turning my 9 hours of work time into a 10.5-11.5 hours of work time so I can put myself dangerously out in traffic, exposed to the elements and be uncomfortable the entire day and can't go anywhere else once I'm there?
Even if the stars aligned and I had door-to-door bike trails, I wouldn't partake in this uncivilized madness. I'd much rather just get home earlier, not smelling like exhaust fumes and body odor and go do a leisurely jog around my neighborhood park for a half hour or go to one of the 3 gyms next to my house where I can ride a stationary bike in a temperature controlled environment while watching TV.
Edit: for the record, I support dedicated bike lanes and infrastructure almost everywhere because of all the side benefits it brings. But I'm also not treating it as a religious issue, mindful of acute practicalities that explain the world better than assuming one of the most technologically sophisticated countries on the planet doesn't like to ride bikes to work because they're too stupid to do so.
Because in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo or Singapore the weather is amazing all the time - this must be a reason for all the bikers there...
You prefer comfort over bikes - we get it. But bicycling is not "uncivilized madness". Its common way of transportation in most of the world (with exception of majority of the US). Healthy as well (much more healthy than gym).
Living in France for a couple of years, and visiting London, Rome, and various other parts in that direction, I didn't see any more bicycle traffic than I see in the US. The one place where I have seen a lot of bicycles is Beijing, but that has completely disappeared in the past few years.
I wish we could discuss these things without turning it into a "the US is strange and stupid" whinefest.
It's perfectly valid to criticize the US based on how the US is. It's not valid to criticize it based on some notion that the US is unique in a way that it is not.
I have no problem with stuff like "the US should...." Where I have a problem is with "everybody else does it another way" when it's just not true.
Aside from adopting the metric system, I can't think of any legitimate criticism that fits that mold. Bicycles certainly don't seem to.
Yeah sure. Australia struck me as very "american" in feeling. Lots of the new Chinese development is specially car friendly. Same with new Russian development. I was surprised with how unfriendly Ireland was to anything but a car.
It's amazing when you get further out into the country in the Republic. There's almost no option to safely get down the road unless you are in a vehicle.
No, bike riding is incredibly uncommon the world over. Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect terrain.
Edit: keep down voting in spite of your own ignorance. I've been lots of places the world over, and not seen lots of bikes outside of very very few areas with near perfect conditions for them.
Driving is convenient when all variables are optimized: when there's lots of free parking, no traffic, no reckless/drunk drivers, good safe roads, gas is cheap, etc etc.
But as we all know, driving in major cities is no longer optimal.
Any city that chooses driving over all other modes of transportation has deliberately decided it is closed for further growth at some point. Once you reach that critical population point, car-dependent life just becomes hell.
100% agreed. I'm heartened that lots of new development is taking a mindful approach to smarter, mixed-use design centered around mass transit. It feels like, in the U.S. at least, we're on the cusp of a major transformation in some areas.
Unfortunately, for millions and millions of people, the city is viewed as a work location, not a living location. Building bike friendly infrastructure ends at the city limits and needs inter-government coordination and cooperation to achieve door-to-door biking. If you've ever dipped your toes in cross-county or other inter-government initiatives, you'll know that this is an extremely difficult proposition.
Which part exactly doesn't make sense? Illuminate me why cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't? Because apparently everybody outside of the Northwest Coast of the U.S. and the Netherlands must be idiots and morons who are simply overlooking a hassle-free and convenient utopia because they've been tricked by the big car and oil companies to prefer to get most places in the faster, lower effort, climate controlled and more convenient alternative.
Oh I'm sorry, this is apparently a religious issue and faith with get me over all practical issues.
cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't
Nobody ever made this claim, so there's no way to illuminate you about it. Same goes for the part about the idiots and morons.
Which part exactly doesn't make sense
For instance the part where you say Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect. That is merely a generalized opinion.
Yup, absolutely no illumination provided. Within this thread, I've provided support for the idea as well as anecdotes and data as to why more bike lanes won't get the average person on a bike. I've been downvoted and refuted with no particular counter argument leading me to believe that this is a religious issue and not a factual one. Bikers believe everybody should bike, and people who give reasons why they don't are summarily dismissed.
The dogmatic downvoting here is disappointing (no alliteration intended). You seem to be right. Reason doesn't work. I know there are reasonable cyclists, but few are speaking up here.
Canberra has quite a lot, and very good coverage of bike paths + lanes. I commuted by bike by default for about 6 years there, and got the bus when it was raining.
Now that I live in Sydney I don't ride at all - I just don't feel safe.
I live in the third largest city in Australia. Much of it is ridiculously hilly, the weather is usually stinking hot (apart from a few weeks of 'winter'), but we have plenty of cyclists... Not as many as the average European country but definitely enough to be annoying when you're driving!
Amen. I work in the valley and live in Red Hill, which, as you can tell by the name, is crazily steep. Anyway, we still have stacks of cyclists around here (and Paddington). Personally I walk and get the bus.
Because discerning tone from ascii text is hard. How could you not have come across that fact before? There's even a law about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
Also because is followup reference to "all the bikers there" is straight-up true, there are loads of bikers in London, really, though it doesn't follow from the statement before. Is that an attempt at sarcasm that fails because of a failed attempt at a false statement? Who knows. Why can't
funkyy just say what they mean? Who knows.
In four total weeks in London, I can count on 1 hand the number of cyclists I saw.
Never been to Tokyo or Singapore, but if they're anything like Seoul, where I've spent months, riding a bike in the streets is both playing Russian Roulette and virtually impossible on account of the bad terrain (and for pretty much all the same reasons I brought up earlier). You also have almost no place to store them given the size of the average apartment. Outside of dedicated parks, I've almost never seen a person on a bike their either.
I've been to dozens of countries on almost every continent, and bikes are a very uncommon mode of transportation. That's why places like the Netherlands, where it is common, are so notable. If it was common, we wouldn't care.
Rather than being snarky, what's your suggestion for overcoming these practical and social issues?
Wow really? You spent 4 weeks in London and never saw a cyclist? Were you out in the suburbs? I spent a bunch of time in London and saw a TON of cyclists in central London. Many of them took the train out to where I was staying too (outside Brixton).
I also don't buy the "small apartments" thing. We live in a 650sq ft apartment and have 4 bikes hung up on our wall. Where there's a will, there's a way.
It was so strange that I even remember one of the few riders I saw because he was using the DLR to get near the tower. I was curious if you could bring bikes on it and that answered my question.
Electric cars are a very uncommon mode of transportation too. Should we therefor not care about promoting that method of transportation? No, because then the status quo would never change.
The article discussed in this thread brings up one suggestion for overcoming practical issues. There are many, many more (proven) solutions to choose from -- when you make bicycle transportation pleasant enough, people will start using it.
If the "social issues" you talk about are because there's a group of people who thinks transportation by bicycle is uncivilized, I think it is a matter of education and tolerance. Once using bikes is common in a country, you will see that the only social issues are about people having unjustified fears (about the implications of considering bicycles as a method of transportation during city planning) and there are no real social issues other than people being dicks.
In Osaka / Tokyo / other large Japanese cities people ride bikes on the footpath instead of the road. They also ride comparatively slowly and the terrain is largely flat so in the cooler months sweating is a non-issue. Additionally folding bicycles are very popular because, as you say, the apartments are often very small.
Finally, because the cities are so compact you rarely have to travel a large distance to get to where you're going.
So all and all, I agree with you, it's common in these places because the combination of these things makes riding very practical and they're noteworthy because of it.
-edit-
I forgot to mention that most apartment buildings will have stacked locking bike racks. This combined with the generally low rate of theft, easily available recycled (read: cheap) bicycles makes them very affordable and low risk.
You cool off for a bit and then take a quick shower before starting work proper. Most offices that I've been to have shower/changeroom facilities, and the people that cycle to work use them.
Of course if your ride is over an hour you may want to consider alternatives, such as catching a train for part of the journey. I have known plenty of people that have 30-50 minute rides, and also others where riding a bike takes exactly as long as being stuck in traffic.
I think there are really some morning people, and night people? I can barely muster the energy to get into my car
and point it towards work. If I camped, I would be the
first one eaten by a Sabertooth Tiger. I quit a job because
they required me there an hour earlier than other shops. Even if I have a playmate over--hands off until I wake up.
Sorry Miss Simms--it wasen't you, I was tired.
In 20 years, I've only worked in one place that had a shower. To me, for practical and obvious reasons, it sounds like no number of bike lanes will get people riding if that isn't solved.
I bet your have a gym within walking distance to your office. If you go to the gym when you get home, just shift your gym time to before work. You ride to your gym, take your shower, walk to work. Bam problem solved.
Answers like this are one of the problems inherent with this issue. One side bases its position on real problems. The other side responds with gross generalizations based on completely uninformed speculation. Then some politician tries to compromise. The average solution between real problem and imaginary solution is worse than the status quo, and everyone loses. The tyranny of the vocal minority brings us all down while everyone else was trying to get on with their lives. Way to go.
You already pay a monthly fee to have a crap drive to work in your car. If only you could be charged for the negative externalities of driving, the actual cost of maintaining the road, to park your car, to fill your gas tank...maybe you'd have a different opinion.
I wouldn't call a 10 minute car ride a 'crop drive'. That's a pretty good commute.
Cost incurred by one car of maintaining the road is essentially negligible. The majority of road damage comes from heavy vehicles or weather. Additionally it's interesting you want to 'charge for externalities' when it's actually the cyclists getting a free ride in this category. License fees and gasoline taxes contribute to road funding. Nothing related to cycling does.
I agree with parking, but only if it costs something. If the office already has it, you not using it will not likely save the company any money by refusing to use it.
The only externality you might not be paying enough for to drive to work is the gas filling (assuming non electric). However, the numbers regarding the impact of CO2 are mostly just made up from sums of imagined future or previous natural disasters that can't be directly linked to CO2 emissions.
You mean the car he can use to go to the store, to visit family, to go on vacation, to drive in bad weather? The car he pays property tax, fuel tax, insurance, license fees, registration fees, etc on? Yeah, all those unrealized externalities...
Give me a break. Gas taxes are suppose to pay for roads don't keep up with inflation. All the savings of deferred maintenance on our highway system could account for that, but maybe not.
When I lived in Berkeley, I used to longboard part of the way and take the BART the rest. This transit experience is unmatched. I had half an hour of guaranteed reading time every day, and another twenty minutes in one of my hobbies.
When I drive, I suddenly realize what a waste of time it is. And it's not really fun because of traffic either.
I actually miss public transport. I also imagine that cyclists do similar things. The trouble in this argument is that maybe the cyclists also enjoy cycling like I did skating. To most people who solely drive to commute, it's a thing they don't particularly enjoy.
No, I don't particularly enjoy driving. I try to go out of my way to avoid it most of the time. I'd much rather walk, public transport, bike to work, but the reality is that, for most of the world, local practical issues make those alternatives far more inconvenient than driving and no amount of bike lanes in the world will change those conditions.
It can be subtly simple things, like, working in a job where you have to go across town to a customer site 3 times a week during the middle of the work day and can't afford to take 2.5 hours out of your day to bike there and bike. Or living in a place with lots of hills, or having no place to clean up once you get to work.
All those issues have to be solved long before bike lanes becomes part of the discussion for biking to become a practical choice. A few people who are really into biking, crazy spandex outfits and all, might be willing to ignore those practical considerations, but if you want to get the average citizen up on a bike like in the Netherlands, you have to solve the rest of the issues.
I'm surprised a 10 minute drive translates to a potentially 1:20 minute ride. I feel like one of these numbers is exaggerated.
Regardless, if it's not right for you it is right for someone on your approximate route. So if you can't be convinced to ride in but they can that's win-win. They have an easier ride into work on a bike and you have a less congested drive in because the biker is one less driver.
So how much kilometers is it then? (both for the car trip and the bike trip, depending on the area they can vary).
Btw I don't know where you get the 10mph figure, but assuming it applies to you without trying it is starting off on the wrong foot. Depending on age, fitness etc that can easily be 15mph, including hills.
How fast can you travel through town by bike and car?
The average travelling speed in Copenhagen is 15.5 km/h for cyclists and 27 km/hour for cars. In places with green wave for cyclist the average speed is 20.72 km/h.
Sure. We can't have one-kind-fits-all solutions. Which is appropriate in the context of a discussion about adding bike lanes to dense urban environments mostly designed for cars.
Ha! I'm even of the opinion that most urban environments should actively work to dissuade automobiles except for delivery vehicles and taxis. They should be walkable, public transport and biking meccas. So I sympathize that they aren't. But the discussion is also about "why don't more people bike to work" and the consensus seems to be "we need more bike lanes!" and I'm simply pointing out that that won't solve the issue.
> the consensus seems to be "we need more bike lanes!" and I'm simply pointing out that that won't solve the issue.
I really don't think that adding more bike lanes would get everyone biking or "solve the issue" entirely. That isn't a reasonable position. But nonetheless, we need more bike lanes. We need more separated, safe bike lanes. We need them in every city, except maybe for those who have got there already - i.e. Amsterdam, Copenhagen and very few others.
Survey after survey where I am shows that the main thing preventing higher (not universal, just higher) uptake of cycling to work is not the distance, or the weather, it's the fear factor, i.e the lack of safe facilities like bike lanes.
I don't disagree that we need more bike lanes. I'm a big supporter of more bike lanes because it usually comes attached to other efforts that make environments more livable for everybody.
But I've yet to see a discussion that talks about the "rest of the ride." Even with bike lanes, biking isn't feasible for most people for a wide variety of reasons. I've attempted to provide those reasons here, and I'm fortunate enough to have buckets of karma to shed because as you can see, nobody wants to concern themselves with prerequisite issues that are probably more important to biking (i.e. if they aren't solved, no amount of bike lanes will make a substantial difference).
The HN community suffers from a religious myopia at times that the living conditions and lifestyle of a single 20-something males in Silicon Valley represents the accumulated averages for the rest of the world and should be the model for everybody else. The community is shocked and disgusted when dissenting voices try to provide insight as to why most people are not single 20-something males in Silicon Valley. TBH, I don't think a discussion about bike lanes belongs on HN except that it brings up this demographic discussion. As you can see, the HN hive-mind is not receptive to people of different demographic groups, even if those groups might be better representative of the rest of the country or world.
I don't doubt the community myopia, but better bike lanes are relevant to not just "single 20-something males in Silicon Valley", but rather HN readers 20-50, any gender or relationship status, in New York, London, Berlin, etc. It's not everyone but it's not that narrow either.
I can't help but think of how simple things like injuries and aging affect everyone and how driving practically solves these problems.
You want to ride, go ahead. He wants to drive, that's fine. Neither one is more right or wrong than the other. Stop acting like driving is morally wrong (if you're not, many are).
Six months of near perfect bike riding temperature with moderate precipitation and unusually warm winters that far north.
In fact, the record high ever for the city isn't even within 10 degrees of the temperature I've had where I live over the past two weeks. Our all time average, not average high, is about the same as Copenhagen's record high.
Your experience is not universal. I live in a large, crowded city, and I know from repeated experience that in my case, in rush hour, cycling to work takes 30 minutes, public transport takes 40-60 minutes and driving in my own vehicle takes mental insanity and a parking space, which nobody has.
Cycling is not only the fastest method, it has the least time variance, and is cheapest.
What would drive me insane is being exposed to hundreds of multi-ton hunks of steel zooming around that could squash me like a bug if either I or they make a tiny mistake.
If there were zero cars, there would be more injuries, but they'd be less serious.
If there were zero cyclists, there'd be fewer injuries, and they'd be less serious. (Talking about crowded city traffic, not high speeds.)
When there are cars, and enough cyclists to cause problems, there are more injuries, and they're more serious. Cars and fleshbags--I mean, bikes--do not mix.
My experience may not be universal, but I bet it's statistically normal, or even slightly better for cycling than most places. Yet it's still a terrible alternative. The mystery of why more people don't cycle is pretty simple, it's not really viable in most of the world.
I don't know what "statistically normal" means, but I'd estimate that 20-50% of my colleagues are in the same position as me and so would benefit from better cycle infrastructure.
The average commute in miles for Americans is 16 miles and 26 minutes for one way. That's 32 miles and 52 minutes for a round trip every day.
Let's assume we decide we want to get the "Average" American biking to work instead. We have to figure out how we can convince people who spend an hour on the road everyday to spend 8 hours on the road biking instead, or give up their houses and pay more for smaller accommodations closer to their work to shorten the distance.
The average speed of a bike commuter is under 10 mph. 32 miles thus takes more than 3.2 hours, * 2 = 6.4 hours per day biking the same distance as the average American commuter currently drives in 1/3 the time. Toss in a couple hills and you could easily hit 8 hours total biking time.
I doubt that commuting by car is 8 times faster than cycling, even if you live way out in the suburbs (which exist because of the assumption that everyone drives a car). My commute in city traffic takes 10 minutes by car, or 15 minutes by bike.
But can you average 60 miles per hour in your commute? Maybe if you're going 30 miles on the freeway and only a few blocks on surface streets, but for going short distances within cities, bikes can be comparable or even faster than cars (see: Bike messengers)
To be honest, I probably average more like 50. 3 blocks from my house to the road, then high speed almost all the way and 1 block off the main road to work. It's an easy drive.
You're right, the average American commute favors cars much more strongly. At 10 miles I'm remarkably close to my work and have a favorable biking environment most of the route. Yet it still is a bad alternative and in 7 years I have yet to see a single person bike along that route.
The question of "why don't Americans bike to work more" is not going to be solved with any number of bike routes (which I support the building more of BTW) until it can be solved for frankly trivial cases like mine. It suggests that local environmental conditions are probably more important to favoring biking than any number of infrastructure initiatives. Simple things like "bad weather" and "showers at places of employment" and "places to store bikes so they won't get stolen during the day" probably have to solved en masse long before bike lanes become part of the discussion.
All the unused empty bike lanes in the world aren't going to kick start a biking revolution.
Actually, at 10 miles, you're about median for distance. It's what's in between your home and your work that's abnormal.
Most employed Americans live, work, or both inside highly urbanized environments where parts of their commute involve roads that you can't reliably do 20mph on, much less 60. Crowded roads and stoplights put a real crimp on speeds, and it can take 5-10 minutes to cover a mile -- if you're lucky.
"How fast can you travel through town by bike and car?
The average travelling speed in Copenhagen is 15.5 km/h for cyclists and 27 km/hour for cars. In places with green wave for cyclist the average speed is 20.72 km/h."
It seems like Copenhagen is an especially unfriendly car environment.
Another advantage for cyclists is "right on red". Even though it's illegal, a lot of people does it. Sometimes the car lane to turn right is packed and you have to wait several intervals for you to turn right, and the cyclists just pass by.
The roads are small, especially compared to the US. And there're just too many cars!
Just because it isn't your personal preference doesn't mean no one should think about cyclists. There are many pro- and con-cyclist arguments, all of which are irrelevant to this discussion.
Yeah, but you don't shy away from setting up straw men you can knock down in service of your "I don't think its feasible to bike to work, so we shouldn't bother making it easier for anyone else" argument.
You've made ~10% of the comments for this article and you are dismissing things other people say by accusing them of caring too much about the issue. I'm also not sure repeatedly dismissing the same minor points does much for the conversation (of course repeatedly raising them doesn't do much good either).
I think you are probably right that bike lanes alone aren't going to get a lot of people biking, but I think you are wrong that they don't matter. It's a situation where each piece of the puzzle needs to exist, so safe routes probably matter just as much as sensible city planning and shower availability and so on. The existence of safe routes could even impact planning some (because if there is significant interest in using them to commute, it should show up in housing decisions).
"You've made ~10% of the comments for this article and you are dismissing things other people say by accusing them of caring too much about the issue. "
You say that like it's a bad thing. At least I'm engaged on the issue and am actually trying to solve it rather than just paint lane markings all over creation and expect people to start hoping on bikes.
The claim being made, and the source of all my karma shedding on this is that adding more bike lanes will get more people to ride bikes. The "Field of Dreams" argument.
My counter argument is that bike lanes, while important, are not sufficient. Much more important, larger and prerequisite issues need to be attended to before bike lanes become part of the discussion. But I'm arguing against people who have a vested interest in biking, and really don't give two rats asses that biking is a horrible inconvenience most everywhere and would rather shoot derision and scorn and the car driving masses. Weather, environment, convenience, terrain, distance, time, hygiene etc. be damned; clearly most people are simply too fat and stupid to enjoy the glories and obvious benefits of riding bikes everywhere. Everywhere is exactly like the Netherlands right?
I'm actually a strong supporter of bike lanes for lots of reasons beyond biking. But I'm also not deluding myself and understand that the central claim is flat out wrong.
But this is a self-serving religious issue, no amount of reason can penetrate that.
This is one of the topics that really pulls out in front the inadequacies of the demographic that tends to be HN readers. It's pretty disappointing to be honest.
I don't understand what issue you are saying you are engaged with.
I do think the people replying to you saying "You can so bike" are engaging in relatively pointless activism (for one thing, 10 miles really is plenty far to try to build into every day). But that also isn't really the issue at hand.
All the article really says is that 1 designer thinks that bike lanes that 'feel safe' will get more people using them (and then a few characteristics are explored). I sort of think that shouldn't be a controversy.
This article is about adding setbacks and curbs and bike specific signals and you are engaging in 'paint lane markings all over creation'.
Where is The claim being made, and the source of all my karma shedding on this is that adding more bike lanes will get more people to ride bikes. The "Field of Dreams" argument.
The comment you link agrees with you. There's not much glassy eyed pontificating about the wonders of bike lanes in the rest of the tree either.
Now I arrive at work and I'm soaked either from sweat or rain. Now what? I can stink up the office with my B.O. all day while I desperately try to dry my clothes. Or I go through the indignity of getting to work, waiting an hour to cool-down and dry off, then trying to change out of my riding kit into some decent professional work clothes in a dirty stall in the men's room after giving myself a paper towel bath in the sink.
Then at the end of a long work-day, reverse this absurd course of events? Now instead of a 10 minute drive and 8.5 hours at the office followed by a 10 minute drive home (total time commitment under 9 hours), I've succeeded in turning my 9 hours of work time into a 10.5-11.5 hours of work time so I can put myself dangerously out in traffic, exposed to the elements and be uncomfortable the entire day and can't go anywhere else once I'm there?
Even if the stars aligned and I had door-to-door bike trails, I wouldn't partake in this uncivilized madness. I'd much rather just get home earlier, not smelling like exhaust fumes and body odor and go do a leisurely jog around my neighborhood park for a half hour or go to one of the 3 gyms next to my house where I can ride a stationary bike in a temperature controlled environment while watching TV.
Edit: for the record, I support dedicated bike lanes and infrastructure almost everywhere because of all the side benefits it brings. But I'm also not treating it as a religious issue, mindful of acute practicalities that explain the world better than assuming one of the most technologically sophisticated countries on the planet doesn't like to ride bikes to work because they're too stupid to do so.