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Denmark just worked out it stopped 55,000 sick days and where able to persuade 34% of car drivers that tried an eBike to switch to an eBike. https://cyclingindu

• closeparen 9y ago
  Basically every middle-class American child grew up riding a bicycle while sharing space with cars on his suburban streets. Bike lanes may be a hard requirement for you, but the quintessential American childhood experience says that's not exactly widespread. We go through the rite of passage of transitioning from bikes to cars at age 16 because they increase our time-efficiency and decrease physical exertion. EDIT: A cursory Google puts the rate of cycling among children at 70%. Would you care to explain your disagreement?
  • danbolt 9y ago
    What's your take on urban density and neighbourhood? I can visualize a child getting around the suburbs well, but a busy city street or highway sound less pleasant for a daily commute.
    • analog31 9y ago
      I have a rule of thumb, to designate "busy" streets as having 2+ lanes going in each direction. That's when traffic gets faster, and more dense, so that drivers are no longer in complete control of their cars. This is just convenient in order to have a definition. I avoid those streets if possible. I also don't like fast traffic and parked cars on the side. That's just me. Safety aside, calm streets are more pleasant. In my locale, there are enough slow side streets interspersed with the higher density neighborhoods, that I can generally avoid fast streets. In some places, a bike path along an old rail line solves the problem. There's a sort of "Jane Jacobs utopia" neighborhood on the other side of town, where cars drive on one street and bikes / buses on the next street over. If it's dense enough, then people can walk. The odd thing is that the suburbs aren't necessarily great. They might not have sidewalks -- an issue for pedestrians and the smallest kids -- and everything is great until you have to get past a high speed road or intersection. Plus, due to lower density, distances are longer. I live in a moderately dense urban area. My friends who live in suburbs are the ones who drive everywhere.
      • closeparen 9y ago
        Yep, it's like this in Berkeley. There are certainly streets I don't like as a cyclist, but I can go 1-2 blocks over and find one that's perfectly pleasant. Still open to cars, so local residents can go about their lives, but there aren't many around.
      • II2II 9y ago
        I actually prefer busy streets for cycling. A big reason for that are the wider lanes and multiple lanes. This makes it much easier for vehicles to pass. There are also fewer intersections, a greater tendency to ensure that the lines of sight are clear of obstructions, and better lighting at night, all of which have huge benefits to safety. Quiet streets may reduce the amount of interaction with motor vehicles, yet the interaction seems to be much more risky on side streets.
    • awjr 9y ago
      Public Highways England released IAN 195 www.standardsforhighways.co.uk/ha/standards/ians/pdfs/ian195.pdf This gives a speed profile/volume of traffic recommended infrastructure matrix from sharing (20mph < 2500 cars per day) through to hard segregation with a verge (60mph). National standards are key. The US NACTO also released a phenomenal free design guide https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-design-guide/ https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-...
  • jlg23 9y ago
    Suburbs are one thing. Cities or regular roads between settlements are a completely different thing. In suburbs you have to watch out for kids playing on the street anyway, most drivers live in those suburbs and they know their neighbors. In my experience, drivers in suburbs are much more attentive and friendly than drivers in big cities. Last but not least, kids tend not to ride their big on big roads that cut through suburbs, they are on small side streets that don't see much traffic anyway. When you ride a bike in SF from Sunset to SoMa you'll notice the difference.
    • closeparen 9y ago
      Ah. Yes, more should be done to corral urban drivers onto major roads so that urban neighborhood streets feel more like suburbs. Chicago is pretty good at this with strategic placement of businesses, stop signs, one-ways, and forced turns, so I didn't really think about it. I guess even the neighborhood streets in SF are still pretty scary. It would be great to have bike lanes on those busier thoroughfares, or friendlier streets parallel to those thoroughfares. But I maintain that we shouldn't need 100% coverage of bike lanes between all points.
    • prawn 9y ago
      We used to ride on our street when I was young but no one does now. The street is full of cars. People who had a single car 20-30 years ago in their driveway, now have 2-3 and the extras are often parked on the street. This reduces access to play (we played ball sports and rode bikes/skateboards) and makes visibility problematic.
  • awjr 9y ago
    I think you're looking at this oddly. Lot's of kids cycle, but how many cycle to school? In Bath UK, a city that can be cycled end to end in 25 minutes, it's 1%. What this is about is giving people travel choices. You should have good options to walk/cycle/drive/use public transport to get to school/work/shops. I note much of the rhetoric around "war on cars" is done within the context to have the freedom to choose to use your car as you wish. The problem with that argument is that it stands to reason that people should have the freedom to choose to walk and cycle safely but that really is never recognised as equally important as driving. More interesting is the call for a paradigm shift within urban transport policies to recognise the need for healthy efficient roads and to provide good space for walking, cycling, and driving. At the end of the day, the private vehicle is hugely inefficient use of space. That's not to say it should be banned, but people should be able to have the choice not to drive. That is what is lacking.
    • closeparen 9y ago
      I didn't say anything about freedom or choices. I only suggest that the lack of dedicated roadway isn't a very interesting or significant factor holding back bicycling. Particularly, if cycling on shared streets is so dangerous, then why do we accept that risk for our kids but not ourselves? (And we absolutely do accept it for our kids). I reject your implicit claim that a lack of green paint on the road inhibits anyone's freedom to ride a bike. Do it anyway! I certainly do. I think the factors holding people back from cycling are time efficiency, physical exertion, and weather exposure. The preponderance of children bicycling makes the safety argument not very credible, to me anyway. Naturally worsening traffic is tipping the balance in favor of bicycling for time efficiency, at least during peak hours. Also the ability to use trains as "bicycle freeways." If the average speed for cars on a road is <15mph, then a rational person will bike. If it's >25mph, the road might be highly frustrating as a driver, but it's still adding value relative to biking. Electric bikes are cutting down the physical exertion required, which is exciting. On the other hand, electric bikes are just slow motorcycles, so it's not clear why the pent-up demand for ebikes hasn't picked up Vespas. Weather exposure is a matter of wearing the right gear. Cold cities might get more new cyclists by handing out Under Armor than by painting more bike lanes. I don't know anything about Baath. I do know that in my childhood suburb, at least half of students would ride their bikes to school on any day with decent weather. It was a relatively compact suburb, though; bicycling was just a faster alternative to walking and distances were 2-3 miles at worst. No buses. Getting people where they're going without wasting too much of their time or making them too uncomfortable is an entirely appropriate use of space. A great public transit system could do it with less, and I'll happily vote for one. What I won't support is lowering overall utility by i.e. torpedoing driving without building a credible alternative. I don't think dedicated lanes will make that credible alternative materialize. Ebikes might.
  • Mikeb85 9y ago
    Try commuting on your bike without dedicated lanes. It's dangerous as hell, car drivers are the worst. It's also super pleasant when you do have your own space, as it's nearly as quick as driving, but you get great exercise and it's pretty fun too.
    • closeparen 9y ago
      If it's pleasant, you aren't exercising. 15mph is not "nearly as quick" as 60mph by any twist of the imagination. I ride regularly without dedicated lanes and feel far safer than I do at urban public transit stations. In other words, I don't think I can agree with anything in your post, other than that it's fun.
      • jmknoll 9y ago
        Light exercise can certainly be enjoyable. "Nearly as quick" certainly doesn't apply to all situations, If you're doing long distances on the highway where you're averaging 60mph, then its definitely not an ideal use-case for a bicycle. But if you're driving in the city during rush hour, you might realistically be averaging closer to 10mph. For an example, my morning commute in Shanghai takes about 30 minutes by bicycle, 35 by car, or 40 by subway. Traffic lanes are congested, bicycle lanes aren't. As to riding without dedicated lanes, I can't really speak to that. We have enough bike lanes here that I usually avoid roads without them, but it seems like it would be bad for both cyclists and drivers.
      • awjr 9y ago
        I'm beginning to recognise that you are a Vehicular Cyclist and probably fight against protected cycle lanes as this 'forces' you to use them. I've seen this argument a lot and only seems to be prevalent within the USA. Most of the EU has recognised that this is a failed approach that only results in less people cycling.
    • u801e 9y ago
      > Try commuting on your bike without dedicated lanes. It's dangerous as hell I've been doing it for over a decade. I take the lane and the vast majority of cars switch to the adjacent lane to pass me. It's not dangerous at all if you ride in a predictable manner.
  • Johnny555 9y ago
    I was one of those suburban kids that grew up cycling on suburban streets without bike lanes (or even sidewalks). But I had a hard perimeter beyond which I was not permitted to cross -- I was not allowed to leave my small neighborhood streets and use one of the larger roads that would have taken me somewhere useful. The only way to go to school was to take a bus (or be driven there by my parents) even though my elementary school was less than a mile away, and my high school was less than 3 miles away. With no sidewalks or bike paths, I can see why my parents wouldn't allow me to do either. With no safe way to bike across the small town (which was only around 8 miles from end to end), a car was the only viable option. But 15 years after leaving my bike behind in that small town, I discovered cycling as recreation and lived in a city that had enough cyclists and bike paths to make cycling safer and viable as transportation. I haven't looked back and now ride my bike for commuting and for general transportation - it's very convenient to ride downtown and not have to worry about parking (and since I can cut through a train station and a city park on my bike, it's faster than driving would be). When I was a teenager I thought that "reducing physical exertion" was a good thing, now that I'm almost 4 decades older, I welcome the chance to increase my physical exertion by commuting by bike.
  • stordoff 9y ago
    > suburban streets That, I imagine, is a fairly key difference. A child cycling suburban streets isn't likely to be building up any significant speed (due to lack of training, intersections, not being in a rush, surrounding traffic being slow etc.), whereas an adult commuting likely will. Having seen the aftermath of a ~40MPH collision (car turned into the path of the bike, car was written off due to the extent of the damage), I'd be extremely reluctant to commute at speed on mixed-use roads.
• vacri 9y ago
  It's always from Denmark and the Netherlands, these studies. Super-flat places with compact cities. Cycling to work isn't so casual when you have hills around or a 'new-world' spread-out city.
  • doug1001 9y ago
    this is a core use case for e-bikes--at least for those deterred by hills in their route. Others (because of, for instance, geared drive trains) are ok with elevation gain/loss, and still others actually prefer hills (like my colleague training for a triathalon). Having showers at work is nice as well
    • s0rce 9y ago
      I have a standard 21 speed, my commute home (SF East Bay) has a 15% grade for part of the 300ft gain, even with the gears its still fairly intense. I don't mind too much since its on my way home but I'm definitely tired when I get home. I can see a lot of people not wanting to deal with this, especially if they have other commitments after work.
      • wdb 9y ago
        I am also tired even when it's flat after my 40km bike ride back from work to home.
  • jmknoll 9y ago
    Speaking from my experience in the Northeast US, most cities are still pretty flat. Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston could all be very cycle-able with the right infrastructure in place. A bit cold in the winter, but nothing unbearable. Suburbs are a bit hillier, as are cities on the West Coast, but even just by selecting for the flattest/most temperate places in the US and building up solid cycling infrastructure, you're still talking about something thats affecting potentially 10's of millions of people.
  • wjnc 9y ago
    TBH, there's a significant part of people cycling longer commutes as well (30k seems to be a natural limit). You work out two hours and hardly miss any work since you skip traffic jams. Most offices of larger firms have locker rooms and showers for those commuters making it easy to plan a bike day. With ebikes, hilly terrain should be conquered. It's all about mindset and making safety a priority. People will adapt if the benefits are clear.
• julian_t 9y ago
  > but you absolutely cannot 'share space'. Absolutely key to segregate That is indeed key, and I'd love to see more of it in the UK, where cycle lanes aren't usually segregated, and tend to disappear as soon as the road narrows. Or is interrupted by a parking space, or any other number of daft things. If you're in London, try going to Richmond Park on any Sunday when the weather is halfway reasonable. Narrow roads, hordes of lycra-clad cyclists and a 20mph limit for cars doesn't make for a safe environment... I'm surprised more cyclists haven't been injured or killed there!
• walterstucco 9y ago
  > Cycling can reduce risk of death by 41%, death by cancer 45% and death from heart disease by 46% I hope someday we'll start using absolute numbers when we talk about risk increase/decrease 45% decrease of the risk of heart deseases is not so great The same results can be achieved by swimming a couple of hours a week Consider that smokers are 20 times more likely to develop lung cancer AKA 2000% Biking is not a panacea, I dare you to come biking in Rome from June to September, with temperatures well above 40 degrees Celsius It's so dangerous for the health that in the news they advice to not go out, not even for a walk. Imagine biking for 20 km, up and down Roman hills... And please, death risk cannot be decreased, death is inevitable
  • awjr 9y ago
    The study looked at modes of everyday travel to work and was looking specifically at which mode had health benefits. Cycling was the only one that gave significant benefits. Your argument about not cycling in high summer is the same one people use for not cycling when it has snowed 1-2m outside. It's a bit silly. Just because there are 1-2 months of the year where cycling is difficult, does not mean the other 10-11 months of the year should also not be considered.
    • lkbm 9y ago
      In fairness, one of the biggest advantages I get from biking is that I don't need to own a car at all. In the US, this is an average savings of around $8500/year[0]. (I could throw away my bike and buy a new one every time I got a flat or it needed maintenanced and I'd still come out ahead.) I'm not sure the best way to go about having a car for 1-2 months of the year. Granted, I can take the bus, but for some people, that's not an option. (The year I got my bike (2011) was the year we had 90 days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Today the high is a nice, cool 90 degrees.) [0] https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/total-cost-owning-car/ https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/total-cost-owning-car/