11 ms·

I've spent most of my life with cycling as my primary mode of transportation, living in Minneapolis, Santa Fe, London and SF/Oakland. I ride fast and generally

I've spent most of my life with cycling as my primary mode of transportation, living in Minneapolis, Santa Fe, London and SF/Oakland. I ride fast and generally try to go with the flow to avoid inconveniencing drivers while also being considerate to pedestrians. I think this traffic cone thing is pretty cool, but I have a larger observation to make: Here's the thing about SF: everyone is way too fucking agro. Drivers freak out when they can't drive 50mph down a city street. The cyclists are banging u-locks on hoods because someone cut them off. Everyone is road raging like crazy. I lived in London for 3 years, with all the narrow streets and everything overcrowded to the bursting point. Central London is 10x as crowded as SF in every way, and yet somehow the pedestrians, cyclists and drivers all manage to co-exist. It's not a panacea for sure, it obviously can't compare to Amsterdam, but the whole Keep Calm and Carry On mentality definitely applies to transportation. You know what happens? Buses pass other buses by going into the oncoming traffic lane and oncoming traffic moves over to accommodate them. Pedestrians spill into the streets sometimes, and cars don't kill them. Vans and lorries sometimes drive up onto the pavement (ie. sidewalk) in order to get around an obstruction. Pedestrians pull off to the side of the walk way if they need to pay attention to their phone. Everyone implicitly acknowledges: hey, it's crowded, we have to cooperate to get where we're going. SF could use a lot more of that attitude. I thought the west coast was supposed to be chill.

Symbiote 10y ago
> to avoid inconveniencing drivers I used to cycle like that, in London. I moved to Copenhagen, and quickly had to change my behaviour. Drivers are firmly at the bottom of the heap here, and everyone knows it. It's inefficient and confusing to others to disrupt this.
- PeterSmit 10y ago
  And that is how it should be. Cars are great to go between cities fast, but inside cities they should behave like guests. Ironically, most drivers are guests to a city as well, coming from the suburbs. Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city, and should be honored as such. In most medium to big Dutch cities this is the case, although there is always room for improvement.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    "Cars are great to go between cities fast, but inside cities they should behave like guests" No, especially in north american cities where you can walk few places, cares are another form of transit, like anything else. Relatively few people actually ride bikes. "Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city" this is completely false in most situations, especially in North America. You cannot reasonably walk 5Km to work every day and back. The vast majority of people live far from work. Even with cities that have good public transit, it's not optimal in tons of cases. Cars - or things like them - are going to stay. They are not going away.
    - PeterSmit 10y ago
      You're talking specifically about North American cities, where everything is designed around automobile usage. And that is the problem the article talks about. It has been designed with this goal in mind so much, that it results in lots of pedestrian and cyclist deaths. Cities that are not designed like this are much compacter, so distances become smaller. Commuting 5km by bicycle is fine, takes roughly 20 mins if the roads are decent. Using a tram or bus that has a decent frequency it will take roughly the same time, even including a few minutes of walking. See example: https://www.google.nl/maps/dir/52.1136289,5.0897208/52.0860586,5.1080626/@52.1008013,5.0659812,21797m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!4m1!3e1?hl=en https://www.google.nl/maps/dir/52.1136289,5.0897208/52.08605...
  - pif 10y ago
    > Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city The more I think about it, the more I think this is a myth. Everybody say they are the most efficient, but with regards to which metric? The only important metric is door-to-door time. If I can walk a short distance to the bus stop, have a ride and then walk another short distance to my workplace, then I'm lucky and I don't even consider driving to work. But if I have to drive to the nearest bus/train station (actually, to the parking nearest the station), then ride to the city centre, then a bus to the suburbs, then a walk in the suburbs... sorry, the car will make much sense, even with the traffic jams.
pyb 10y ago
Agreed, but the funny thing about London is that cyclists tend to be more of a menace than cars. There is a noticeable minority who just don't want to stop for pedestrians.
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  Cycle couriers/deliveroos are the cycle equivalent of the white van man and the black cabbie - they drive for a living and time is money, so they try to kill you if you so much stand in their way. Luckily even if they crash into you, they are as likely to kill themselves a you - something that cannot be said of white van men...
  - pyb 10y ago
    Ok, but it's really lycra clad commuters I've had bad experiences with... some of them are just oblivious I don't find black cabs threatening. It's the Ubers who are usually really dangerous. Not sure if it's because they're new to their jobs (a high turnover occupation?), or half asleep.
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      If they're in lycra, they're very unlikely to be a commuter. They'll be a sports cyclist, not a utility cyclist. Utility cyclists wear normal clothes.
      - pyb 10y ago
        In London, it's quite common to see cycle commuters with sports clothing. They take a shower and change clothes at the office
    - sonthonax 10y ago
      > lycra clad commuters I've had bad experiences with... some of them are just oblivious Or perhaps it's because they're often faster than you, come out of nowhere with no audible warning, cut you off based on their expectation of your predictability, and then shake their asses at you.
ubernostrum 10y ago
Want some fun? Try being someone who commutes in the Bay area via a combination of walking and public transit. Cars give me very little trouble. Bicycles, though.. at least a couple times a week I nearly get killed by one. At crosswalks, typically I'm in a crowd of people and drivers know better than to try to make a turn through the crowd. Cyclists, though, will blow through, even just flat running a red light, and seem to have blind trust they'll be able to avoid hitting anyone even at high speed. One recent example: a guy on a bike, coming off a downhill stretch and towing something behind him, ran a red while I was in a crosswalk, close enough that I literally had to jump back. He was doing easily 30mph, and I'd be dead or seriously injured if he'd hit me, but did he care? Nope, he had places to be! Same thing happens with bikes zooming down the wheelchair ramps off the Caltrain platforms; there are signs telling cyclists to dismount and walk the bike, but they know nobody's going to enforce it on them. The one and only time I've seen anything done was about three months ago when a bike, stuck in traffic on the street, suddenly hopped onto the sidewalk and scattered a bunch of pedestrians in doing so. Lucky for them and unlucky for the cyclist, he did it right in front of a motorcycle cop who ran over, grabbed him, and gave him an earful and a citation. And don't even get me started on trying to get home the nights Critical Mass does its rides. I just leave early and hope to avoid them.
- igf 10y ago
  Bicycles are a tool for turning ordinary people into selfish jerks, jealously guarding their precious forward momentum. A pedestrian doesn't mind if they have to stop for a moment, it's no big deal. A driver doesn't mind stopping for a moment either, it's easy to get back up to speed again. But for a cyclist, having to stop is a minor disaster requiring a massive effort to get back up to speed, so they start behaving like desperate people, and desperate people have little regard for the rules or for the wellbeing of others. Combine that with the feeling of moral superiority which inflicts those of an environmentalist bent when they're doing something which they consider virtuous, and you've got a recipe for major jerkhood.
  - Thlom 10y ago
    I'm a pretty relaxed cyclist. I ride more or less upright, but the forward momentum is precious. It's no problem to stop while walking, it takes no more energy to start walking than to continue walking. Same goes for driving a car. On a bike on the other hand, starting to cycle requires much more energy than keeping momentum. That said, some "avid cyclists" are total jerks.
jrockway 10y ago
The thing we need in the United States are traffic tickets. A lot of people get tickets on freeways (where there is a dedicated highway patrol that exists only to write speeding tickets), but nobody gets ticketed on surface streets, no matter how badly they drive. I see garbage trucks barrelling through red lights at 45mph. I see taxis driving the wrong way down one-way streets. I see black cars driving 60mph down narrow residential streets. This has to be stopped, or people will keep dying in traffic. The city-wide speed limit in NYC is 25mph, unless marked down to 20mph in special areas. This law needs to be enforced aggressively. Drivers don't need a big fine; I bet people will adjust their behavior from just a stern talking-to and a $20 ticket or something. As it stands right now, people are needlessly dying for no reason. Driving in the city, all your time is sucked up by sitting at traffic lights. It doesn't matter how fast you get to the next traffic light, because if you're speeding, it's going to be red. (There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones. Tons of opposition. This makes me think what we really need to do is just start closing roads to private vehicles. People think they're entitled to run over children at 50mph, just because they fucking feel like it. Where did we go so wrong!?) Looking out my window on a small residential street in Brooklyn, I'm always amazed at the traffic snarl. It's basically a dead-end street. And yet someone is always double-parked, preventing fire trucks from going through. One time a fire truck got boxed in by someone double-parked, and an MTA service vehicle that double-parked behind it. Eventually the MTA vehicle got towed away, and the fire truck slowly backed out. Hope it wasn't an important building that was burning down.
- philbarr 10y ago
  If you're blocking an emergency vehicle in the UK by bad parking they have the right to smash your vehicle to get past - and it's your fault.
  - teh_klev 10y ago
    I'd like a citation for that, I don't think that's true. I imagine they can legally tow your vehicle away, but I reckon damaging the bodywork of your ambulance or fire appliance to move another vehicle out of the way is not standard operating procedure. There is however an act called the The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 [0] which makes it an offence to obstruct emergency vehicles. [0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-emergency-workers-obstruction-act-2006 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-emergency-wor...
Shinchy 10y ago
I would agree that London is a fast flowing city when it comes to cycling but it is also a pretty dangerous one. I've personally seen another cyclist killed while out on my bike and I know we have a bit of a problem with just how dangerous the roads can be while on a bike.
pjc50 10y ago
It's kind of strange to see the intensity of London driving described as "chill". I wonder if the huge difference in availability of public transport has something to do with it; most Londoners and many of the commuters into London simply don't drive on a daily basis and probably won't even own a car (where would you keep it?) So the traffic is much more likely to be commercial. The medieval street layout also makes it hard to get up speed in London.
- dasil003 10y ago
  To be clear, I never said London was chill, that's what I thought the west coast was supposed to be. London I would describe as just-get-on-with-it-then for the most part, which as I said is not perfect, and sure there is still a fair amount of road rage, but on balance it's more crowded, works better, and a couple notches less shrill by everyone involved.
aphextron 10y ago
>SF could use a lot more of that attitude. I thought the west coast was supposed to be chill. Doesn't London have one of the highest rates of pedestrian/cyclist deaths in the world? This is a traffic engineering problem, not an attitude issue.

Symbiote 10y ago

> to avoid inconveniencing drivers I used to cycle like that, in London. I moved to Copenhagen, and quickly had to change my behaviour. Drivers are firmly at the bottom of the heap here, and everyone knows it. It's inefficient and confusing to others to disrupt this.

PeterSmit 10y ago
And that is how it should be. Cars are great to go between cities fast, but inside cities they should behave like guests. Ironically, most drivers are guests to a city as well, coming from the suburbs. Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city, and should be honored as such. In most medium to big Dutch cities this is the case, although there is always room for improvement.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Cars are great to go between cities fast, but inside cities they should behave like guests" No, especially in north american cities where you can walk few places, cares are another form of transit, like anything else. Relatively few people actually ride bikes. "Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city" this is completely false in most situations, especially in North America. You cannot reasonably walk 5Km to work every day and back. The vast majority of people live far from work. Even with cities that have good public transit, it's not optimal in tons of cases. Cars - or things like them - are going to stay. They are not going away.
  - PeterSmit 10y ago
    You're talking specifically about North American cities, where everything is designed around automobile usage. And that is the problem the article talks about. It has been designed with this goal in mind so much, that it results in lots of pedestrian and cyclist deaths. Cities that are not designed like this are much compacter, so distances become smaller. Commuting 5km by bicycle is fine, takes roughly 20 mins if the roads are decent. Using a tram or bus that has a decent frequency it will take roughly the same time, even including a few minutes of walking. See example: https://www.google.nl/maps/dir/52.1136289,5.0897208/52.0860586,5.1080626/@52.1008013,5.0659812,21797m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!4m1!3e1?hl=en https://www.google.nl/maps/dir/52.1136289,5.0897208/52.08605...
- pif 10y ago
  > Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city The more I think about it, the more I think this is a myth. Everybody say they are the most efficient, but with regards to which metric? The only important metric is door-to-door time. If I can walk a short distance to the bus stop, have a ride and then walk another short distance to my workplace, then I'm lucky and I don't even consider driving to work. But if I have to drive to the nearest bus/train station (actually, to the parking nearest the station), then ride to the city centre, then a bus to the suburbs, then a walk in the suburbs... sorry, the car will make much sense, even with the traffic jams.

pyb 10y ago

Agreed, but the funny thing about London is that cyclists tend to be more of a menace than cars. There is a noticeable minority who just don't want to stop for pedestrians.

MagnumOpus 10y ago
Cycle couriers/deliveroos are the cycle equivalent of the white van man and the black cabbie - they drive for a living and time is money, so they try to kill you if you so much stand in their way. Luckily even if they crash into you, they are as likely to kill themselves a you - something that cannot be said of white van men...
- pyb 10y ago
  Ok, but it's really lycra clad commuters I've had bad experiences with... some of them are just oblivious I don't find black cabs threatening. It's the Ubers who are usually really dangerous. Not sure if it's because they're new to their jobs (a high turnover occupation?), or half asleep.
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    If they're in lycra, they're very unlikely to be a commuter. They'll be a sports cyclist, not a utility cyclist. Utility cyclists wear normal clothes.
    - pyb 10y ago
      In London, it's quite common to see cycle commuters with sports clothing. They take a shower and change clothes at the office
  - sonthonax 10y ago
    > lycra clad commuters I've had bad experiences with... some of them are just oblivious Or perhaps it's because they're often faster than you, come out of nowhere with no audible warning, cut you off based on their expectation of your predictability, and then shake their asses at you.

ubernostrum 10y ago

Want some fun? Try being someone who commutes in the Bay area via a combination of walking and public transit. Cars give me very little trouble. Bicycles, though.. at least a couple times a week I nearly get killed by one. At crosswalks, typically I'm in a crowd of people and drivers know better than to try to make a turn through the crowd. Cyclists, though, will blow through, even just flat running a red light, and seem to have blind trust they'll be able to avoid hitting anyone even at high speed. One recent example: a guy on a bike, coming off a downhill stretch and towing something behind him, ran a red while I was in a crosswalk, close enough that I literally had to jump back. He was doing easily 30mph, and I'd be dead or seriously injured if he'd hit me, but did he care? Nope, he had places to be! Same thing happens with bikes zooming down the wheelchair ramps off the Caltrain platforms; there are signs telling cyclists to dismount and walk the bike, but they know nobody's going to enforce it on them. The one and only time I've seen anything done was about three months ago when a bike, stuck in traffic on the street, suddenly hopped onto the sidewalk and scattered a bunch of pedestrians in doing so. Lucky for them and unlucky for the cyclist, he did it right in front of a motorcycle cop who ran over, grabbed him, and gave him an earful and a citation. And don't even get me started on trying to get home the nights Critical Mass does its rides. I just leave early and hope to avoid them.

igf 10y ago
Bicycles are a tool for turning ordinary people into selfish jerks, jealously guarding their precious forward momentum. A pedestrian doesn't mind if they have to stop for a moment, it's no big deal. A driver doesn't mind stopping for a moment either, it's easy to get back up to speed again. But for a cyclist, having to stop is a minor disaster requiring a massive effort to get back up to speed, so they start behaving like desperate people, and desperate people have little regard for the rules or for the wellbeing of others. Combine that with the feeling of moral superiority which inflicts those of an environmentalist bent when they're doing something which they consider virtuous, and you've got a recipe for major jerkhood.
- Thlom 10y ago
  I'm a pretty relaxed cyclist. I ride more or less upright, but the forward momentum is precious. It's no problem to stop while walking, it takes no more energy to start walking than to continue walking. Same goes for driving a car. On a bike on the other hand, starting to cycle requires much more energy than keeping momentum. That said, some "avid cyclists" are total jerks.

jrockway 10y ago

The thing we need in the United States are traffic tickets. A lot of people get tickets on freeways (where there is a dedicated highway patrol that exists only to write speeding tickets), but nobody gets ticketed on surface streets, no matter how badly they drive. I see garbage trucks barrelling through red lights at 45mph. I see taxis driving the wrong way down one-way streets. I see black cars driving 60mph down narrow residential streets. This has to be stopped, or people will keep dying in traffic. The city-wide speed limit in NYC is 25mph, unless marked down to 20mph in special areas. This law needs to be enforced aggressively. Drivers don't need a big fine; I bet people will adjust their behavior from just a stern talking-to and a $20 ticket or something. As it stands right now, people are needlessly dying for no reason. Driving in the city, all your time is sucked up by sitting at traffic lights. It doesn't matter how fast you get to the next traffic light, because if you're speeding, it's going to be red. (There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones. Tons of opposition. This makes me think what we really need to do is just start closing roads to private vehicles. People think they're entitled to run over children at 50mph, just because they fucking feel like it. Where did we go so wrong!?) Looking out my window on a small residential street in Brooklyn, I'm always amazed at the traffic snarl. It's basically a dead-end street. And yet someone is always double-parked, preventing fire trucks from going through. One time a fire truck got boxed in by someone double-parked, and an MTA service vehicle that double-parked behind it. Eventually the MTA vehicle got towed away, and the fire truck slowly backed out. Hope it wasn't an important building that was burning down.

philbarr 10y ago
If you're blocking an emergency vehicle in the UK by bad parking they have the right to smash your vehicle to get past - and it's your fault.
- teh_klev 10y ago
  I'd like a citation for that, I don't think that's true. I imagine they can legally tow your vehicle away, but I reckon damaging the bodywork of your ambulance or fire appliance to move another vehicle out of the way is not standard operating procedure. There is however an act called the The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 [0] which makes it an offence to obstruct emergency vehicles. [0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-emergency-workers-obstruction-act-2006 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-emergency-wor...

Shinchy 10y ago

I would agree that London is a fast flowing city when it comes to cycling but it is also a pretty dangerous one. I've personally seen another cyclist killed while out on my bike and I know we have a bit of a problem with just how dangerous the roads can be while on a bike.

pjc50 10y ago

It's kind of strange to see the intensity of London driving described as "chill". I wonder if the huge difference in availability of public transport has something to do with it; most Londoners and many of the commuters into London simply don't drive on a daily basis and probably won't even own a car (where would you keep it?) So the traffic is much more likely to be commercial. The medieval street layout also makes it hard to get up speed in London.

dasil003 10y ago
To be clear, I never said London was chill, that's what I thought the west coast was supposed to be. London I would describe as just-get-on-with-it-then for the most part, which as I said is not perfect, and sure there is still a fair amount of road rage, but on balance it's more crowded, works better, and a couple notches less shrill by everyone involved.

aphextron 10y ago

>SF could use a lot more of that attitude. I thought the west coast was supposed to be chill. Doesn't London have one of the highest rates of pedestrian/cyclist deaths in the world? This is a traffic engineering problem, not an attitude issue.