5 ms·

But less than 1/10th as bad as cars, no?

jodrellblank 8y ago
Maybe. I'd rather breathe pedal bicycle air than internal combustion exhaust fumes, for sure. And I'd rather pay bike prices than car prices, sure. But, designing for not-cars feels like a choice of designing for humans or designing for bikes, not both. If things are close enough for walking then most people don't need bikes. If there's dense, regular, clean, affordable public transport, you can't really bring one bike per person onto it and you shouldn't need to. If things are far enough apart that everyone needs a bike, and everywhere you go has a wasteland of a few thousand bike parking spaces to cover everyone who might go there at once, then you've designed for individual vehicles not people, and cars would be more comfortable and faster. In that sense, I would think it just as much of a failure either way. Like, if you have poisonous plants, and you want edible fruits, but what you get is harmless inedible plants, in one way it's a lot better, but in another way it's no better at all.
- twoWhlsGud 8y ago
  Dense clean affordable public transport isn't, unfortunately. (At least in the US where we can barely keep our sparse, dirty, expensive PT running.) Bikes help bridge gaps in the transit network. That's one of the main reasons they're so heavily used even in the countries with the best transit. (Visit any Dutch train station...)
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Bicycle and pedestrian traffic mesh rather well with each other, and both mesh well with public transit. I submit Copenhagen as an example, you should come visit sometime :-) The problem with car traffic is that it only really meshes well with car traffic. Making it mesh with public transit requires a lot of parking, and cars take up way too much space on the streets compared to bikes, the density is way too low for the amount of people moved. Modern commuter bikes are simple, reliable and low maintenance, usually with hub gears and sometimes with belt drives that don't need lubrication. Even chains can be kept running for years and years with no maintenance at all. And you can absolutely bike in your normal clothes, people do it every single day here, summer or winter.
  - jodrellblank 8y ago
    I was on a train (in the UK) a few weeks ago. It was crowded, to the point of standing room only, maybe a hundred people in a few carriages I didn't count - and two people brought their bikes. One didn't fit in the bike space because of a high child carrier on it, a space which took up half a carriage couldn't take two bikes. And they took a lot longer to load and unload than the people took to step on and off, and everyone had to make room for them to unload, wait for them. There's no way it would have worked if even 10-20% of the people had brought bikes, let alone everyone. I Googled Copenhagen Bike Parking, and this was one of the top results: http://jtwonggg.com/2017/11/06/photo-diary-copenhagen-streets/ http://jtwonggg.com/2017/11/06/photo-diary-copenhagen-street... - those bike parks are not meshing nicely with a human world, they're big areas of nothing of any interest to living walking humans except for the individual bike owner, space taken up by matter storage that you have to walk further to get past, they're ugly, they're a greedy use of public space for "my personal transport", and that size of parking almost has to be replicated all over the place. Even if bike parks were underground, that's still prime city usable space which could be put to use by things of interest to more people. The picture with the outdoors clothes racks and Zara shop - lots of pedestrians. Imagine a cyclist trying to go fast down that street - they can't, there's too many people. This either means the pedestrians have to dive out of the way (maybe urged by a demand of a ringing bell) or that the cyclist has to go at walking speed - and in that case may as well be walking. And if there was a rush hour of cyclists, that street would become a much less pleasant place for people to walk. Bikes let you go further - ten miles is a fairly short bike trip but a long walk - but they do it by letting you go faster. You can't go faster in dense pedestrian traffic unless you prioritise the bike and make the pedestrians second class who have to watch out and make way, and that - each bike taking precedent over dozens of pedestrians - seems the wrong kind of tradeoff. but then, Copenhagen appears to be a city with car-streets, and in that situation, preferring a bike over a car in a place spread out for cars, is possibly the best compromise you're going to get.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      Getting squeezed on trains is something that happens everywhere, especially during rush hour. Bikes or no bikes. It seems to be that the train you took wasn't adequately furnished to handle bikes. Is there an additional fee to bring a bike on the train? If not, the train should be better furnished to meet the demands. The Danish train network is the one I have most experience with, especially around the Copenhagen area. The local S-trains have open areas in the middle part, with bike racks that pack in the bikes pretty well, and there's room for people standing with bikes to approximately double the capacity. There is also smaller compartments at either end of every trainset. During rush hour, at least two trainsets run coupled together, and there's a train every 10 minutes (every 5 minutes on the busiest routes). It has only ever been tight for space to the level of having to wait for the next train once or twice in my experience. The bike parking in the picture you linked is at Nørreport station, the second-busiest station on the network, that area supports thousands of commuters every day, both by public transit and by bike. It's the only station on the network that has restrictions against getting on and off the trains with a bike during rush hour, due to it being a very busy underground station. A picture is not going to give you an adequate perspective of the space available, take a look at Google Maps' satellite view or even better Street View. The area is very spacious and open, with plenty of room for pedestrians, yet it still supports parking for hundreds and hundreds of bikes, packed rather densely for efficiency. If each of the people riding those bikes had been in cars, the parking space demands would be insane. Pedestrians are humans, cyclists are humans, we don't look at it like "us versus them". Good bike parking facilities are in everyone's interest. Public transit is a great backbone, but it cannot serve everyone perfectly, so bicycles fill in the gaps for a lot of people. For some of us, it often becomes the primary mode of transport, because it's small, unobtrusive, agile, affordable and healthy. The other pic you mention is Strøget, which is a pedestrian street; No vehicles allowed other than deliveries outside of normal business hours. It's specifically made as a walking shopping street, not a transport street, and literally no one in Copenhagen would dream of commuting through there in the busiest seasons, as it can be literally packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists. As all experience shows here in Copenhagen, if you down-prioritize cars, there is absolutely oodles of space for both pedestrians and cyclists, it really brings a perspective on how much space cars take up for no good reason. I would love for the inner city to be completely car-free, only allowing buses and a delivery driver here and there. It would free up so much space that your concerns about cyclists taking up space would be thoroughly disproven. As one of the bike-heaviest cities in the world, there is still plenty of space for both cyclists and pedestrians.

Maybe. I'd rather breathe pedal bicycle air than internal combustion exhaust fumes, for sure. And I'd rather pay bike prices than car prices, sure. But, designing for not-cars feels like a choice of designing for humans or designing for bikes, not both. If things are close enough for walking then most people don't need bikes. If there's dense, regular, clean, affordable public transport, you can't really bring one bike per person onto it and you shouldn't need to. If things are far enough apart that everyone needs a bike, and everywhere you go has a wasteland of a few thousand bike parking spaces to cover everyone who might go there at once, then you've designed for individual vehicles not people, and cars would be more comfortable and faster. In that sense, I would think it just as much of a failure either way. Like, if you have poisonous plants, and you want edible fruits, but what you get is harmless inedible plants, in one way it's a lot better, but in another way it's no better at all.

twoWhlsGud 8y ago
Dense clean affordable public transport isn't, unfortunately. (At least in the US where we can barely keep our sparse, dirty, expensive PT running.) Bikes help bridge gaps in the transit network. That's one of the main reasons they're so heavily used even in the countries with the best transit. (Visit any Dutch train station...)
KozmoNau7 8y ago
Bicycle and pedestrian traffic mesh rather well with each other, and both mesh well with public transit. I submit Copenhagen as an example, you should come visit sometime :-) The problem with car traffic is that it only really meshes well with car traffic. Making it mesh with public transit requires a lot of parking, and cars take up way too much space on the streets compared to bikes, the density is way too low for the amount of people moved. Modern commuter bikes are simple, reliable and low maintenance, usually with hub gears and sometimes with belt drives that don't need lubrication. Even chains can be kept running for years and years with no maintenance at all. And you can absolutely bike in your normal clothes, people do it every single day here, summer or winter.
- jodrellblank 8y ago
  I was on a train (in the UK) a few weeks ago. It was crowded, to the point of standing room only, maybe a hundred people in a few carriages I didn't count - and two people brought their bikes. One didn't fit in the bike space because of a high child carrier on it, a space which took up half a carriage couldn't take two bikes. And they took a lot longer to load and unload than the people took to step on and off, and everyone had to make room for them to unload, wait for them. There's no way it would have worked if even 10-20% of the people had brought bikes, let alone everyone. I Googled Copenhagen Bike Parking, and this was one of the top results: http://jtwonggg.com/2017/11/06/photo-diary-copenhagen-streets/ http://jtwonggg.com/2017/11/06/photo-diary-copenhagen-street... - those bike parks are not meshing nicely with a human world, they're big areas of nothing of any interest to living walking humans except for the individual bike owner, space taken up by matter storage that you have to walk further to get past, they're ugly, they're a greedy use of public space for "my personal transport", and that size of parking almost has to be replicated all over the place. Even if bike parks were underground, that's still prime city usable space which could be put to use by things of interest to more people. The picture with the outdoors clothes racks and Zara shop - lots of pedestrians. Imagine a cyclist trying to go fast down that street - they can't, there's too many people. This either means the pedestrians have to dive out of the way (maybe urged by a demand of a ringing bell) or that the cyclist has to go at walking speed - and in that case may as well be walking. And if there was a rush hour of cyclists, that street would become a much less pleasant place for people to walk. Bikes let you go further - ten miles is a fairly short bike trip but a long walk - but they do it by letting you go faster. You can't go faster in dense pedestrian traffic unless you prioritise the bike and make the pedestrians second class who have to watch out and make way, and that - each bike taking precedent over dozens of pedestrians - seems the wrong kind of tradeoff. but then, Copenhagen appears to be a city with car-streets, and in that situation, preferring a bike over a car in a place spread out for cars, is possibly the best compromise you're going to get.
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    Getting squeezed on trains is something that happens everywhere, especially during rush hour. Bikes or no bikes. It seems to be that the train you took wasn't adequately furnished to handle bikes. Is there an additional fee to bring a bike on the train? If not, the train should be better furnished to meet the demands. The Danish train network is the one I have most experience with, especially around the Copenhagen area. The local S-trains have open areas in the middle part, with bike racks that pack in the bikes pretty well, and there's room for people standing with bikes to approximately double the capacity. There is also smaller compartments at either end of every trainset. During rush hour, at least two trainsets run coupled together, and there's a train every 10 minutes (every 5 minutes on the busiest routes). It has only ever been tight for space to the level of having to wait for the next train once or twice in my experience. The bike parking in the picture you linked is at Nørreport station, the second-busiest station on the network, that area supports thousands of commuters every day, both by public transit and by bike. It's the only station on the network that has restrictions against getting on and off the trains with a bike during rush hour, due to it being a very busy underground station. A picture is not going to give you an adequate perspective of the space available, take a look at Google Maps' satellite view or even better Street View. The area is very spacious and open, with plenty of room for pedestrians, yet it still supports parking for hundreds and hundreds of bikes, packed rather densely for efficiency. If each of the people riding those bikes had been in cars, the parking space demands would be insane. Pedestrians are humans, cyclists are humans, we don't look at it like "us versus them". Good bike parking facilities are in everyone's interest. Public transit is a great backbone, but it cannot serve everyone perfectly, so bicycles fill in the gaps for a lot of people. For some of us, it often becomes the primary mode of transport, because it's small, unobtrusive, agile, affordable and healthy. The other pic you mention is Strøget, which is a pedestrian street; No vehicles allowed other than deliveries outside of normal business hours. It's specifically made as a walking shopping street, not a transport street, and literally no one in Copenhagen would dream of commuting through there in the busiest seasons, as it can be literally packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists. As all experience shows here in Copenhagen, if you down-prioritize cars, there is absolutely oodles of space for both pedestrians and cyclists, it really brings a perspective on how much space cars take up for no good reason. I would love for the inner city to be completely car-free, only allowing buses and a delivery driver here and there. It would free up so much space that your concerns about cyclists taking up space would be thoroughly disproven. As one of the bike-heaviest cities in the world, there is still plenty of space for both cyclists and pedestrians.