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Totally agree and totally ignores the fact that people like the flexibility and freedom (in fact as well as psychologically) Unfortuetly this area and "green"

Totally agree and totally ignores the fact that people like the flexibility and freedom (in fact as well as psychologically) Unfortuetly this area and "green" in general does I am afraid does tend to attract "hobbyist" / "crank" activists. (I am using these terms in the political sense and not dising peoples hobbys Eg the green movement needs to concentrate on the present problem (runaway global heating) and not on pious things like banning plastic straws.

tremon 7y ago
Speaking as a Dutchman, I experience much more flexibility and freedom riding a bike than my car. That's probably a consequence of both the overcrowding of our roads, and the density of our infrastructure -- I rarely have to drive more than 15 minutes to reach any kind of shop, and by bike I can take shortcuts that my car can't follow, especially in inner cities. Ultimately, my car has been relegated to recreational purposes only -- everything else in my life (work, shopping, friends) I can do by bike or public transport. For me, it doesn't really feel like a conscious personal choice -- it feels more like the pragmatic consequence of our infrastructure design.
- vixen99 7y ago
  And it helps to live in a famously flat country.
  - bancars 7y ago
    We need to give this argument a rest. Cycling infrastructure has everything to do with availability and very little to do with hills. I don’t avoid biking to work because of the hills, I avoid it because it’s treacherous.
    - lostjohnny 7y ago
      Disclaimer: I don't like cars, I love driving, but as a sport, not in urban areas. Biking is like running, playing soccer, playing tennis, swimming, many people don't do it because they don't do any sport. Biking requires skills that normal people usually don't have, but that they believe they have. It is in fact more dangerous than driving (compared to the driver, not pedestrians) As soon as older people could not bike anymore, they started buying electric scooters and in Holland they have now more deaths caused by scooter accidents than cars. France is going to ban them because they are too dangerous. People than cannot drive anymore because of age or because they had their driving license revoked, started using less "law encumbered" vehicles and the number of accidents began to rise. People on bikes are less controlled,they are not forced to use safety measures, they are not inside a "secured box", they don't have anti intrusion bars, air bags, safety belts, etc. etc. Very few wear an helmet, many of them don't follow street rules, they bike on the sidewalk, very fast, they are very quiet and many pedestrian don't hear them coming. They pay a lot less taxes (and fines), taxes used to implement mobility politics. In Italy, for example, the money that cities earn from fines, cannot be used for anything else than mobility. City planning is complicated, you don't solve problems just by changing few rules, you have to carefully plan for them Changing a model that has been THE model for at least half a century and that have become so popular because freed people from the task of commuting or having to go somewhere, fast, without having to share the ride with other 150 people, just like the washing machine freed women from the task of washing clothes, it's not an easy task. EDIT I don't want to give the idea that cities are doomed, but biking is not the solution, biking is just like cars but with different problems, THE solution is walkability. Walkable cities are for everyone. Bikeable cities are just for bikers.
      - afiori 7y ago
        And I would add, public transport; even better if free for elderly and people with disabilities.
        lostjohnny 7y ago
        Exactly
        ThomPete 7y ago
        Public transportation is not free, someone has to pay for it which means its more expensive for everyone else.. The real problem though is what you do in less densly populated areas.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - tremon 7y ago
        Most of your argument is about motorized vehicles, not bicycles. I agree that motorized two-wheeled vehicles are inherently more dangerous than non-motorized forms of transportation, but that is multiple separate discussions, and your argument doesn't necessarily apply to bicycle-oriented vs car-oriented city design. Walkable cities are for everyone. This is trivially untrue. Cities with lots of steps or staircases are only accessible for pedestrians, but no one else. Bikeable cities are just for bikers. I guess it depends a lot on what you consider "bikers". When you think of bikers, do you think of image [1] or [2]? [1] https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/sightseeing/copenhagens-bike-culture https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/sightseeing/copen... [2] https://www.betteshanger-park.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/01/BCP-20160814-067.jpg https://www.betteshanger-park.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites...
        lostjohnny 7y ago
        > Most of your argument is about motorized vehicles, not bicycles They are the same thing. Bicycles have wheels, they should be on the streets. > Cities with lots of steps or staircases are only accessible for pedestrians, but no one else. And that's good! BTW, you can walk the bike. Just like you do when you have to jump on a train or take the subway. If you're talking about accessibility in general, that's a whole other problem. Bike lanes on sidewalks aren't accessible either, there are deaf pedestrian, blind pedestrians, handicapped pedestrians, that are put at risk by sharing the same space with bikes. > I guess it depends a lot on what you consider "bikers" [1] is very young [2] is expert bikers, people that dresses for biking the percentage of the population that can bike regularly in a large city is quite small and Copenhagen is a very small city. The point is that you don't solve anything with bikes, just like you don't solve anything with skates, kick scooters and whatever you are thinking of You're over optimizing for a small percentage of the population. You solve a lot by removing cars from the streets (think about underground parking lots) and giving way more space to walking lanes, hardly separated from wheeled vehicles (cars, public transport, motorbikes, bycicles, whatever...) If you improve the walkability, you also improve the mobility: people can easily switch from bike, walking the bike for a bit on a sidewalk, take the public transport, get off, walk a bit more, jump on the bike again. If you cannot walk easily, safely and fast, you're packing pedestrian on very small areas, you're making their journey uncomfortable and leaving them at the mercy of wheeled vehicles, because they can be obviously faster and demand precedence. And those who use a vehicle are encouraged to leave it very close to where they are going, because walking, even a little bit, is painful. That's how we end up with cars parked in handicapped spots or on double lines or on the sidewalks or bikes chained to school gates or road signs or bus stops as you can see in cities like Milan [1] (where they use the bike a lot) Ironically the road sign in the picture says "bikes chained here will be removed" The majority of people in large cities walks, even if you don't notice it, even in cities terrible for walking like Rome, it's what people are good at. [1] https://i.imgur.com/iboqyTA.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iboqyTA.jpg
    - u801e 7y ago
      Another aspect of this are discriminatory laws that apply to cyclists. Most states in the US have laws that state that cyclists have the rights and duties of vehicles, but then state that they must keep as far right as practicable within the lane when going less than the normal speed of traffic (no such requirement applies to slower traffic in general). Some states also require cyclists to use the bike lane or other path when one is available.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    It helps, but is not necessary. Counterexample: Arhus, Denmark.
    - lostjohnny 7y ago
      > Counterexample: Arhus, Denmark. 91 km2 Counter-counterexample Rome, 1,285 km2 I'm from Rome Rome is particularly bad regarding cars (we are probably the western city with the highest number of cars per capita, 73 every 100 inhabitants, if I remember correctly), but it is also a very complicated city for biking. For two reasons - hills: they are not a problem for the majority of expert bikers, they are if the average age of the citizens is 45 years, most of them are not expert bikers and there are hills everywhere. Add to it the road surface which is less than optimal for biking in large areas of the city, including the city center (for many reasons, historical in primis, but also political, even more so lately that we have the worst major in the world). - distances: many people live very far from where they work, 1.5 million people everyday come to Rome for working, but live outside of it, most likely in the range 30-50 kms from the city, not counting the distances you have to cover when in the city (it's easily around 10kms, or 20kms total in a day). How many people can bike 100kms a day and make it alive? How long would it take?
  - oftenwrong 7y ago
    It helps, but there is much more to it. Florida is flat, but Floridian cities are almost entirely non-bicycle-friendly. San Francisco is hilly, and has many people riding bicycles.
    - briandear 7y ago
      Florida is also a very hot swamp. Riding a bike in the southern US during the non-winter is far different than riding a bike in Northern Europe.
      - oftenwrong 7y ago
        And San Diego has great weather, yet it is largely car-centric. On the other hand, New York has terrible weather, and has a high bicycle mode-share.
  - kaybe 7y ago
    You'd think, but it's also close to the sea and that gives you strong winds regularly. The effect on riding difficulty is about the same. Contrary to a slope the wind can also hinder you on the way there and on the way back (when you stayed long enough for the wind to turn). Yay.
    - mrob 7y ago
      Strong winds are worse than hills. If you don't cycle then you might not appreciate how much headwinds can slow you down. Most of a cyclist's energy goes to overcoming wind resistance, and wind resistance increases with the square of the velocity. And crosswinds can be dangerous by making the bike hard to control. But hills are always in the same place, so you just leave a little earlier and shift to a lower gear. It's slower, but no more difficult, and you have the downhill return journey to look forward to.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  You know in larger countries like the USA they consider a hundred miles a short distance and a hundred years a long time :-)
- dalbasal 7y ago
  Also a practical consequences of urban "design." In Amsterdam, Rotterdam or den haag, a 5km radius is a large area that captures a large chunk of the city. In Houston or LA, a 5km radius is a very small area.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    I felt the same way on my bike in Tokyo.
    - hk2001 7y ago
      Tokyo is hyperdense despite its massive size. I think the point is less "what percentage of the city can I reach easily on a bike" and more "how many places of interest can I reach easily on a bike". In metropolises in Europe or Japan, 5km contains a lot. In the lower density, sprawling cities of North America, there isn't nearly as much utility to the places you can travel to within 5km.
- ThomPete 7y ago
  That's because you don't live in a country as big as the US is and don't need to move around like we do in the US. I am from Denmark who also have plenty of bikes and it's a thing. The reality is however that thats fine as long as you live in the cities, it's not way to get around if you live in the suburbs and have to drive 30 miles to work and take care of your picking up the kids and drive 20 miles to the nearest grocery store etc. Biking is possible in small cities but you can't build infrastructure around a giant continent like the US on bikes and trucks.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    Of course you can. That's pretty much the whole point of the article. You live in a suburb and have to drive 30 minutes because America decided decades ago that sprawl was preferable to dense urban cores. American decided 3000sqft McMansions on 1/2 acre lots was preferable to 1000sqft flats in the city. And that spending billions on road infrastructure and subsidized parking was a fair trade-off for that personal space.
    - ThomPete 7y ago
      No "America" didn't decide that. The geography of America dictated how America evolved to become a car preferring nation of sprawling cities. The car is the perfect combination of flexibility, scale, speed, utility and so on. Sprawls are a byproduct of what the car made possible, they where not created to promote the car they where created because the car made it possible and gave a number of benefits for the individual families.
      - alistairSH 7y ago
        Yes, and we turned around and codified all of that so we can't easily do anything different. For example, as noted in the article, developers are REQUIRED to supply parking in most locations. Looking out my office window, there's a sea of surface parking. If that was legally mandated, the developer could in-fill with mixed-use and some of us could live literally right next door. Instead, the closest I can get to work is a bit over a mile down the road.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Speaking as a Texan, the Netherlands has about the same area as the state of Maryland and three times the population. I do love Amsterdam, but there's no way I could live there.
alistairSH 7y ago
people like the flexibility and freedom What freedom and flexibility? Being forced to drive everywhere is not flexibility. Being forced to subsidize massive parking lots and highways is not freedom.

tremon 7y ago

Speaking as a Dutchman, I experience much more flexibility and freedom riding a bike than my car. That's probably a consequence of both the overcrowding of our roads, and the density of our infrastructure -- I rarely have to drive more than 15 minutes to reach any kind of shop, and by bike I can take shortcuts that my car can't follow, especially in inner cities. Ultimately, my car has been relegated to recreational purposes only -- everything else in my life (work, shopping, friends) I can do by bike or public transport. For me, it doesn't really feel like a conscious personal choice -- it feels more like the pragmatic consequence of our infrastructure design.

vixen99 7y ago
And it helps to live in a famously flat country.
- bancars 7y ago
  We need to give this argument a rest. Cycling infrastructure has everything to do with availability and very little to do with hills. I don’t avoid biking to work because of the hills, I avoid it because it’s treacherous.
  - lostjohnny 7y ago
    Disclaimer: I don't like cars, I love driving, but as a sport, not in urban areas. Biking is like running, playing soccer, playing tennis, swimming, many people don't do it because they don't do any sport. Biking requires skills that normal people usually don't have, but that they believe they have. It is in fact more dangerous than driving (compared to the driver, not pedestrians) As soon as older people could not bike anymore, they started buying electric scooters and in Holland they have now more deaths caused by scooter accidents than cars. France is going to ban them because they are too dangerous. People than cannot drive anymore because of age or because they had their driving license revoked, started using less "law encumbered" vehicles and the number of accidents began to rise. People on bikes are less controlled,they are not forced to use safety measures, they are not inside a "secured box", they don't have anti intrusion bars, air bags, safety belts, etc. etc. Very few wear an helmet, many of them don't follow street rules, they bike on the sidewalk, very fast, they are very quiet and many pedestrian don't hear them coming. They pay a lot less taxes (and fines), taxes used to implement mobility politics. In Italy, for example, the money that cities earn from fines, cannot be used for anything else than mobility. City planning is complicated, you don't solve problems just by changing few rules, you have to carefully plan for them Changing a model that has been THE model for at least half a century and that have become so popular because freed people from the task of commuting or having to go somewhere, fast, without having to share the ride with other 150 people, just like the washing machine freed women from the task of washing clothes, it's not an easy task. EDIT I don't want to give the idea that cities are doomed, but biking is not the solution, biking is just like cars but with different problems, THE solution is walkability. Walkable cities are for everyone. Bikeable cities are just for bikers.
    - afiori 7y ago
      And I would add, public transport; even better if free for elderly and people with disabilities.
      - lostjohnny 7y ago
        Exactly
      - ThomPete 7y ago
        Public transportation is not free, someone has to pay for it which means its more expensive for everyone else.. The real problem though is what you do in less densly populated areas.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - tremon 7y ago
      Most of your argument is about motorized vehicles, not bicycles. I agree that motorized two-wheeled vehicles are inherently more dangerous than non-motorized forms of transportation, but that is multiple separate discussions, and your argument doesn't necessarily apply to bicycle-oriented vs car-oriented city design. Walkable cities are for everyone. This is trivially untrue. Cities with lots of steps or staircases are only accessible for pedestrians, but no one else. Bikeable cities are just for bikers. I guess it depends a lot on what you consider "bikers". When you think of bikers, do you think of image [1] or [2]? [1] https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/sightseeing/copenhagens-bike-culture https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/sightseeing/copen... [2] https://www.betteshanger-park.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/01/BCP-20160814-067.jpg https://www.betteshanger-park.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites...
      - lostjohnny 7y ago
        > Most of your argument is about motorized vehicles, not bicycles They are the same thing. Bicycles have wheels, they should be on the streets. > Cities with lots of steps or staircases are only accessible for pedestrians, but no one else. And that's good! BTW, you can walk the bike. Just like you do when you have to jump on a train or take the subway. If you're talking about accessibility in general, that's a whole other problem. Bike lanes on sidewalks aren't accessible either, there are deaf pedestrian, blind pedestrians, handicapped pedestrians, that are put at risk by sharing the same space with bikes. > I guess it depends a lot on what you consider "bikers" [1] is very young [2] is expert bikers, people that dresses for biking the percentage of the population that can bike regularly in a large city is quite small and Copenhagen is a very small city. The point is that you don't solve anything with bikes, just like you don't solve anything with skates, kick scooters and whatever you are thinking of You're over optimizing for a small percentage of the population. You solve a lot by removing cars from the streets (think about underground parking lots) and giving way more space to walking lanes, hardly separated from wheeled vehicles (cars, public transport, motorbikes, bycicles, whatever...) If you improve the walkability, you also improve the mobility: people can easily switch from bike, walking the bike for a bit on a sidewalk, take the public transport, get off, walk a bit more, jump on the bike again. If you cannot walk easily, safely and fast, you're packing pedestrian on very small areas, you're making their journey uncomfortable and leaving them at the mercy of wheeled vehicles, because they can be obviously faster and demand precedence. And those who use a vehicle are encouraged to leave it very close to where they are going, because walking, even a little bit, is painful. That's how we end up with cars parked in handicapped spots or on double lines or on the sidewalks or bikes chained to school gates or road signs or bus stops as you can see in cities like Milan [1] (where they use the bike a lot) Ironically the road sign in the picture says "bikes chained here will be removed" The majority of people in large cities walks, even if you don't notice it, even in cities terrible for walking like Rome, it's what people are good at. [1] https://i.imgur.com/iboqyTA.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iboqyTA.jpg
  - u801e 7y ago
    Another aspect of this are discriminatory laws that apply to cyclists. Most states in the US have laws that state that cyclists have the rights and duties of vehicles, but then state that they must keep as far right as practicable within the lane when going less than the normal speed of traffic (no such requirement applies to slower traffic in general). Some states also require cyclists to use the bike lane or other path when one is available.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  It helps, but is not necessary. Counterexample: Arhus, Denmark.
  - lostjohnny 7y ago
    > Counterexample: Arhus, Denmark. 91 km2 Counter-counterexample Rome, 1,285 km2 I'm from Rome Rome is particularly bad regarding cars (we are probably the western city with the highest number of cars per capita, 73 every 100 inhabitants, if I remember correctly), but it is also a very complicated city for biking. For two reasons - hills: they are not a problem for the majority of expert bikers, they are if the average age of the citizens is 45 years, most of them are not expert bikers and there are hills everywhere. Add to it the road surface which is less than optimal for biking in large areas of the city, including the city center (for many reasons, historical in primis, but also political, even more so lately that we have the worst major in the world). - distances: many people live very far from where they work, 1.5 million people everyday come to Rome for working, but live outside of it, most likely in the range 30-50 kms from the city, not counting the distances you have to cover when in the city (it's easily around 10kms, or 20kms total in a day). How many people can bike 100kms a day and make it alive? How long would it take?
- oftenwrong 7y ago
  It helps, but there is much more to it. Florida is flat, but Floridian cities are almost entirely non-bicycle-friendly. San Francisco is hilly, and has many people riding bicycles.
  - briandear 7y ago
    Florida is also a very hot swamp. Riding a bike in the southern US during the non-winter is far different than riding a bike in Northern Europe.
    - oftenwrong 7y ago
      And San Diego has great weather, yet it is largely car-centric. On the other hand, New York has terrible weather, and has a high bicycle mode-share.
- kaybe 7y ago
  You'd think, but it's also close to the sea and that gives you strong winds regularly. The effect on riding difficulty is about the same. Contrary to a slope the wind can also hinder you on the way there and on the way back (when you stayed long enough for the wind to turn). Yay.
  - mrob 7y ago
    Strong winds are worse than hills. If you don't cycle then you might not appreciate how much headwinds can slow you down. Most of a cyclist's energy goes to overcoming wind resistance, and wind resistance increases with the square of the velocity. And crosswinds can be dangerous by making the bike hard to control. But hills are always in the same place, so you just leave a little earlier and shift to a lower gear. It's slower, but no more difficult, and you have the downhill return journey to look forward to.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
You know in larger countries like the USA they consider a hundred miles a short distance and a hundred years a long time :-)
dalbasal 7y ago
Also a practical consequences of urban "design." In Amsterdam, Rotterdam or den haag, a 5km radius is a large area that captures a large chunk of the city. In Houston or LA, a 5km radius is a very small area.
- adrianN 7y ago
  I felt the same way on my bike in Tokyo.
  - hk2001 7y ago
    Tokyo is hyperdense despite its massive size. I think the point is less "what percentage of the city can I reach easily on a bike" and more "how many places of interest can I reach easily on a bike". In metropolises in Europe or Japan, 5km contains a lot. In the lower density, sprawling cities of North America, there isn't nearly as much utility to the places you can travel to within 5km.
ThomPete 7y ago
That's because you don't live in a country as big as the US is and don't need to move around like we do in the US. I am from Denmark who also have plenty of bikes and it's a thing. The reality is however that thats fine as long as you live in the cities, it's not way to get around if you live in the suburbs and have to drive 30 miles to work and take care of your picking up the kids and drive 20 miles to the nearest grocery store etc. Biking is possible in small cities but you can't build infrastructure around a giant continent like the US on bikes and trucks.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  Of course you can. That's pretty much the whole point of the article. You live in a suburb and have to drive 30 minutes because America decided decades ago that sprawl was preferable to dense urban cores. American decided 3000sqft McMansions on 1/2 acre lots was preferable to 1000sqft flats in the city. And that spending billions on road infrastructure and subsidized parking was a fair trade-off for that personal space.
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    No "America" didn't decide that. The geography of America dictated how America evolved to become a car preferring nation of sprawling cities. The car is the perfect combination of flexibility, scale, speed, utility and so on. Sprawls are a byproduct of what the car made possible, they where not created to promote the car they where created because the car made it possible and gave a number of benefits for the individual families.
    - alistairSH 7y ago
      Yes, and we turned around and codified all of that so we can't easily do anything different. For example, as noted in the article, developers are REQUIRED to supply parking in most locations. Looking out my office window, there's a sea of surface parking. If that was legally mandated, the developer could in-fill with mixed-use and some of us could live literally right next door. Instead, the closest I can get to work is a bit over a mile down the road.
mcguire 7y ago
Speaking as a Texan, the Netherlands has about the same area as the state of Maryland and three times the population. I do love Amsterdam, but there's no way I could live there.

alistairSH 7y ago

people like the flexibility and freedom What freedom and flexibility? Being forced to drive everywhere is not flexibility. Being forced to subsidize massive parking lots and highways is not freedom.