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No metro area is slowed down by bicycles. The longest a commute can be practical by bicycle (by practical I mean for the average, street/work clothes wearing p

by bbarn 10y ago

No metro area is slowed down by bicycles. The longest a commute can be practical by bicycle (by practical I mean for the average, street/work clothes wearing person riding nearly every day) is under ten miles. You're still in the heavily congested car travel radius of any metro at that distance anyway, and bicycle traffic does not impede motor traffic what so ever.

closeparen 10y ago
Bicycles don't slow drivers down. Removal of parking infrastructure, with the intention of getting people to switch from cars to bicycles, slows people down. I have a 6 mile/10 minute freeway haul to the last suburban train station on the way to work, then 20 minutes on the train. They've announced a plan to demolish the parking lot at that station and build offices, with the intention that people like me switch to bicycles. There are good reasons to do this, but I think it's absurd to suggest that we'll be equally happy with ~40 minutes added to our daily roundtrip. There are some good arguments. BART will make money from those offices, meaning it needs to ask for less from the taxpayer. There will be fewer traffic accidents near the station, and less polluted air (though the real air pollution problem there is urine). I merely argue that the happiness of the reluctant bicyclists isn't one of them.
- mbrookes 10y ago
  > meaning it needs to ask for less from the taxpayer Or they could align their charges to their costs, and have the users pay for the service.
  - chowells 10y ago
    Do things play out that way though? Every time you raise prices, fewer people use it, resulting in requiring another price increase. Demand for public transit is actually pretty price-sensitive. Look at what's currently going on with the New York subway system, for instance. Now, consider the case where the current prices could actually cover costs if utilization was high enough. (I don't know if that's true for BART, but it's certainly possible for a public transit system.) Wouldn't it make much more sense to increase ridership than prices? This strategy is hardly unique to publicly-funded projects. Lots of businesses sell a new product at a loss, expecting to grow their sales of it until they can use economies of scale to make the product profitable. A policy of naively basing prices solely on recent demand and current costs misses a lot of possibilities. It's very worth considering how increased demand changes economies and pricing with a long-term plan in mind.
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      > Wouldn't it make much more sense to increase ridership than prices? In peak hours, BART seems pretty close to capacity. My favorite is that while fewer people travel south of the city, rather than east, because of all the "back-trackers" looking for seats (but adding 10 minutes to their commute), even the other direction is pretty crowded.
    - ensignavenger 10y ago
      In order for it to work, they would have to eliminate subsidies to alternate forms of transportation, like private cars. Once all costs are properly aligned and not externalized, it should work fairly well.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  All the giant surface parking lots around BART and Caltrain stations are a ridiculous waste of prime real estate. If they got rid of the surface parking lots, narrowed nearby streets and eliminated most of the street parking, filled the 3-block radius with 3–6 story apartment buildings (ideally including a decent proportion of small studio and 1-bedroom apartments) with shops on the ground floor, and then let someone build a parking structure nearby, everyone would end up better off, especially “the taxpayer”. That would be by far the best way to make a dent in the Bay Area housing shortage.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    Agreed, but BART is no exception to the public's impassioned hatred of new market-rate housing construction. What's proposed for these sites is mostly commercial, with a little bit of lottery housing for homeless seniors, at-risk veterans, etc. Market rate housing, if proposed, stalls out (see MacArthur).
sandworm101 10y ago
Whether bikes slow down traffic is totally dependant on specifics. In a well-designed city they are no issue. But where they must share narrow lanes with cars, the cars must yield and that often means missed lights and slower speeds. Force a bike to ride up a bridge and everyone's commute then depends on that one biker's leg power. (Happened to me yesturday when roadworks closed the bridge sidewalks. City didnt provide the shuttle vans they normally do in such circumstances and one biker decided to make a point. Or, more likely, the vans were there but he didnt want to wait.)
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  Did you time the delay? Being in a car makes you feel like your drive gets 10x longer when stuff like this happens (whether it's a slow car or a slow bike), but the reality is that we're rarely stuck behind someone slow for more than a minute or two, and for that minute or two you're still only going maybe 30% slower at worst. In other words, it's mostly perception.
Godel_unicode 10y ago
> No metro area is slowed down by bicycles. Totally untrue. The DC area has plenty of two Lane roads whose speed limit is higher than the average bicyclist can maintain, with the predictable result that you'll have a line of cars being held up by a bicycle. It's especially bad on the Virginia side; many very pretty Virginia roads are virtually undrivable on nice days because of slow bikes.
tutufan 10y ago
Bicycles slow and impede pedestrian traffic, and more importantly, make it less safe.

by bbarn 10y ago

closeparen 10y ago

Bicycles don't slow drivers down. Removal of parking infrastructure, with the intention of getting people to switch from cars to bicycles, slows people down. I have a 6 mile/10 minute freeway haul to the last suburban train station on the way to work, then 20 minutes on the train. They've announced a plan to demolish the parking lot at that station and build offices, with the intention that people like me switch to bicycles. There are good reasons to do this, but I think it's absurd to suggest that we'll be equally happy with ~40 minutes added to our daily roundtrip. There are some good arguments. BART will make money from those offices, meaning it needs to ask for less from the taxpayer. There will be fewer traffic accidents near the station, and less polluted air (though the real air pollution problem there is urine). I merely argue that the happiness of the reluctant bicyclists isn't one of them.

mbrookes 10y ago
> meaning it needs to ask for less from the taxpayer Or they could align their charges to their costs, and have the users pay for the service.
- chowells 10y ago
  Do things play out that way though? Every time you raise prices, fewer people use it, resulting in requiring another price increase. Demand for public transit is actually pretty price-sensitive. Look at what's currently going on with the New York subway system, for instance. Now, consider the case where the current prices could actually cover costs if utilization was high enough. (I don't know if that's true for BART, but it's certainly possible for a public transit system.) Wouldn't it make much more sense to increase ridership than prices? This strategy is hardly unique to publicly-funded projects. Lots of businesses sell a new product at a loss, expecting to grow their sales of it until they can use economies of scale to make the product profitable. A policy of naively basing prices solely on recent demand and current costs misses a lot of possibilities. It's very worth considering how increased demand changes economies and pricing with a long-term plan in mind.
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    > Wouldn't it make much more sense to increase ridership than prices? In peak hours, BART seems pretty close to capacity. My favorite is that while fewer people travel south of the city, rather than east, because of all the "back-trackers" looking for seats (but adding 10 minutes to their commute), even the other direction is pretty crowded.
  - ensignavenger 10y ago
    In order for it to work, they would have to eliminate subsidies to alternate forms of transportation, like private cars. Once all costs are properly aligned and not externalized, it should work fairly well.
jacobolus 10y ago
All the giant surface parking lots around BART and Caltrain stations are a ridiculous waste of prime real estate. If they got rid of the surface parking lots, narrowed nearby streets and eliminated most of the street parking, filled the 3-block radius with 3–6 story apartment buildings (ideally including a decent proportion of small studio and 1-bedroom apartments) with shops on the ground floor, and then let someone build a parking structure nearby, everyone would end up better off, especially “the taxpayer”. That would be by far the best way to make a dent in the Bay Area housing shortage.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Agreed, but BART is no exception to the public's impassioned hatred of new market-rate housing construction. What's proposed for these sites is mostly commercial, with a little bit of lottery housing for homeless seniors, at-risk veterans, etc. Market rate housing, if proposed, stalls out (see MacArthur).

sandworm101 10y ago

Whether bikes slow down traffic is totally dependant on specifics. In a well-designed city they are no issue. But where they must share narrow lanes with cars, the cars must yield and that often means missed lights and slower speeds. Force a bike to ride up a bridge and everyone's commute then depends on that one biker's leg power. (Happened to me yesturday when roadworks closed the bridge sidewalks. City didnt provide the shuttle vans they normally do in such circumstances and one biker decided to make a point. Or, more likely, the vans were there but he didnt want to wait.)

saosebastiao 10y ago
Did you time the delay? Being in a car makes you feel like your drive gets 10x longer when stuff like this happens (whether it's a slow car or a slow bike), but the reality is that we're rarely stuck behind someone slow for more than a minute or two, and for that minute or two you're still only going maybe 30% slower at worst. In other words, it's mostly perception.

Godel_unicode 10y ago

> No metro area is slowed down by bicycles. Totally untrue. The DC area has plenty of two Lane roads whose speed limit is higher than the average bicyclist can maintain, with the predictable result that you'll have a line of cars being held up by a bicycle. It's especially bad on the Virginia side; many very pretty Virginia roads are virtually undrivable on nice days because of slow bikes.

tutufan 10y ago

Bicycles slow and impede pedestrian traffic, and more importantly, make it less safe.