6 ms·

Having lived in Copenhagen I can only attest the surge in living quality when a city adopts a no-compromise bicycle strategy. Back in car-loving Munich I feel s

by l4u532 7y ago

Having lived in Copenhagen I can only attest the surge in living quality when a city adopts a no-compromise bicycle strategy. Back in car-loving Munich I feel set back a century. With city council members putting forward arguments like that bike lanes will “destroy retail businesses”. It’s frustrating. Ps: here’s the short film the article talks about. Shows the fantastic transformation of Utrecht. https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E

ranko 7y ago
There's a lot of wrong-headed antipathy towards improving cycling infrastructure, which is really frustrating, given that it's a low-cost way of making a big difference to quality of life. I recently read a nice article laying out some of the misconceptions: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/03/ten-common-myths-about-bike-lanes-and-why-theyre-wrong https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/0...
IshKebab 7y ago
Yeah the business destruction argument is the most perplexing. It's like shop owners thing that people prefer shopping on noisy dirty streets to quiet pedestrian areas. I don't know how you can come to that conclusion.
- dfgdghdf 7y ago
  I think the argument is that shops won't be able to get stock in without lots of road access for delivery trucks etc.
  - dep_b 7y ago
    Living dead center in Utrecht it's actually quite easy to do so. In the mornings you can simply drive through the pedestrian zone at a walking pace as long as you have business there like unloading or going to your house. Outside of the pedestrian zone of the centre you can still drive your car, but it's just not something a lot of people do. Given the medieval street pattern it's still pretty convenient. The real hard thing is that Google & Co don't mark every street as reachable by car or truck and you also need to drive over a bus / taxi lane to get there. So people that are used to just set up Google Maps and drive will never get there as the roads are not accessible according to the map they use. Which is a huge pain in the ass anything larger than a parcel needs to be delivered to my house.
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    Unfortunately, usually it’s more about the (unfounded) assumption that car users are proper money-spending shoppers and cyclists and pedestrians are unemployed hippie communists.
    - Sharlin 7y ago
      You hear this argument all the time so I’m not sure whence the downvotes. Whatever the exact phrasing, the gist of the argument is that car users are assumed to have more purchasing power and should thus be given priority.
- Tijdreiziger 7y ago
  Besides, on a bicycle it's easier to stop and park your bike if you see an interesting shop. When driving there is much more friction as you need to find a parking spot and park there first.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Is it though? Bikes are stolen far more often than cars and you can't carry as much on a bicycle either. Furthermore, you can't really go shopping with the family as a group unless you have specific gear to allow you to do that, because kids aren't going to travel these distances. I like bicycles, but actually going to a store with a bike is an annoying experience. One that I wish could be improved.
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      I don't know where you live, but a lot of time this argument is given by people who live in car-centric cities or neighbourhoods. If you live in a walking/biking friendly neighbourhood (like I did for a few years), then the grocery store/community center/other family centric shops are within a 15 minute walk for everyone living in the neighbourhood, a distance pretty much any healthy person age 6-60 can cover via walking/biking. Whether you are walking or biking you can take a rolling cart with you, which is easy to push (walking or in front/behind your bike) and which will hold as much grocery as you need for a family. Like you have to understand that a city designed from scratch for cars and one designed for walking/biking look very very different. Biking in one is hard and driving in the other is just as hard.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        But sometimes you want to go shopping with the family to shops that you normally don't/can't visit. Everything that's within 15 minutes walking distance isn't going to be those shops. Regardless how you design a city, most shops even in a small city are going to be outside of that 15 minute walking distance too. The main problem I think is that there isn't always somewhere to put your bike safely when you go into the shops.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  I don't know if it's generic, but in my town (Eindhoven, also NL), the argument is that a less car friendly city centre makes the shops harder to reach, encouraging people from neighbouring towns to go elsewhere where it's faster to get to and cheaper to park. It's a reasonable argument that the city is now trying to address by making free parking on the city border plus a free bus into town.

by l4u532 7y ago

ranko 7y ago

There's a lot of wrong-headed antipathy towards improving cycling infrastructure, which is really frustrating, given that it's a low-cost way of making a big difference to quality of life. I recently read a nice article laying out some of the misconceptions: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/03/ten-common-myths-about-bike-lanes-and-why-theyre-wrong https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/0...

IshKebab 7y ago

Yeah the business destruction argument is the most perplexing. It's like shop owners thing that people prefer shopping on noisy dirty streets to quiet pedestrian areas. I don't know how you can come to that conclusion.

dfgdghdf 7y ago
I think the argument is that shops won't be able to get stock in without lots of road access for delivery trucks etc.
- dep_b 7y ago
  Living dead center in Utrecht it's actually quite easy to do so. In the mornings you can simply drive through the pedestrian zone at a walking pace as long as you have business there like unloading or going to your house. Outside of the pedestrian zone of the centre you can still drive your car, but it's just not something a lot of people do. Given the medieval street pattern it's still pretty convenient. The real hard thing is that Google & Co don't mark every street as reachable by car or truck and you also need to drive over a bus / taxi lane to get there. So people that are used to just set up Google Maps and drive will never get there as the roads are not accessible according to the map they use. Which is a huge pain in the ass anything larger than a parcel needs to be delivered to my house.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  Unfortunately, usually it’s more about the (unfounded) assumption that car users are proper money-spending shoppers and cyclists and pedestrians are unemployed hippie communists.
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    You hear this argument all the time so I’m not sure whence the downvotes. Whatever the exact phrasing, the gist of the argument is that car users are assumed to have more purchasing power and should thus be given priority.
Tijdreiziger 7y ago
Besides, on a bicycle it's easier to stop and park your bike if you see an interesting shop. When driving there is much more friction as you need to find a parking spot and park there first.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Is it though? Bikes are stolen far more often than cars and you can't carry as much on a bicycle either. Furthermore, you can't really go shopping with the family as a group unless you have specific gear to allow you to do that, because kids aren't going to travel these distances. I like bicycles, but actually going to a store with a bike is an annoying experience. One that I wish could be improved.
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    I don't know where you live, but a lot of time this argument is given by people who live in car-centric cities or neighbourhoods. If you live in a walking/biking friendly neighbourhood (like I did for a few years), then the grocery store/community center/other family centric shops are within a 15 minute walk for everyone living in the neighbourhood, a distance pretty much any healthy person age 6-60 can cover via walking/biking. Whether you are walking or biking you can take a rolling cart with you, which is easy to push (walking or in front/behind your bike) and which will hold as much grocery as you need for a family. Like you have to understand that a city designed from scratch for cars and one designed for walking/biking look very very different. Biking in one is hard and driving in the other is just as hard.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      But sometimes you want to go shopping with the family to shops that you normally don't/can't visit. Everything that's within 15 minutes walking distance isn't going to be those shops. Regardless how you design a city, most shops even in a small city are going to be outside of that 15 minute walking distance too. The main problem I think is that there isn't always somewhere to put your bike safely when you go into the shops.
skrebbel 7y ago
I don't know if it's generic, but in my town (Eindhoven, also NL), the argument is that a less car friendly city centre makes the shops harder to reach, encouraging people from neighbouring towns to go elsewhere where it's faster to get to and cheaper to park. It's a reasonable argument that the city is now trying to address by making free parking on the city border plus a free bus into town.