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Instead of constructing your life around a bike you construct it around a car. You can't commute to work any other way, if it breaks down you are bound to mostl

by zanny 7y ago

Instead of constructing your life around a bike you construct it around a car. You can't commute to work any other way, if it breaks down you are bound to mostly Uber as a backup strategy to get anywhere. Except those car-centric environments you live and work in are a more effective gate to keep the poor out than the grandest gated community. Almost no where else on the planet is the idea of a city being a tiny urban core surrounded by hundreds of miles of single family houses in spiraling one lane streets of sprawl the norm. Its a purely American fixation on centering all human activity around cars. And for your benefit, even - the world would be alight in a raging inferno if we ever tried to globally house everyone in quarter acre single family houses with 4 hour single-occupancy car commutes every day.

baggy_trough 7y ago
It's more accurate to say that life has been optimized for convenience and net happiness, and that ain't a bike.
ColanR 7y ago
> construct it around a car I don't, actually - it's that a car is far more useful than a bike. I drive 25 minutes to work; I haul (5 bike-ride-loads of) groceries several miles to my house; I visit friends anywhere from 1-5 hours away; I casually drive into the city and back. Even if I felt like riding 10 miles each way, rain or shine, or using public transit, it takes so much less time to drive my car, and I have to either find multiple clever solutions to each of the other activities I use the car for, or just go without. My car gives me freedom from limitations; bicycle dependency only adds to them. To use a bike instead of a car, I have to fundamentally adjust my life, in every way for the worse.
- esoterica 7y ago
  You don’t seem to able to wrap your ahead around the fact that driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city that was designed around cars, not because cars are inherently faster or more convenient. The convenience of the car is an artifact of city planning decisions, not a universal truth. Example: do you realize how preposterous the idea of driving several miles to get groceries is to someone who lives in a real city? If I want to get groceries I walk to the grocery store two blocks away. If I don’t like that grocery store I walk to the other one four blocks away. Or the other other one five blocks away. It takes me less time to walk to the grocery store than it takes you to drive to yours. The counterfactual to a 10 mile drive is not a 10 mile public transit ride, because without car-induced sprawl everything would be much closer and you would have to travel much shorter distances to have access to the same amenities and see your friends. Public transit is also not slower than driving in a city with proper transit. I don’t own a car and almost every single journey I take is either short enough to walk, or faster on transit than in a car. It takes me 10 minutes to get to work on the train, the same drive would take half an hour due to traffic.
  - jmpman 7y ago
    A car enables cities in less hospitable environments to be inexpensively populated. Where I live it’s regularly above 110. You’re not cycling in that. Population density is too low for light rail, and only the mentally deranged and hopelessly poor ride the bus, making a greater disincentive for anyone else who wants to bear a 15 minute wait in 110 degrees. For actual numbers, my commute is 20min by car, 2.5hr by public transportation, or 1.2hr by bike. Public transportation would need to be no more than 40min for me to consider it, and I’d only consider it because I wouldn’t have to drive. Once self driving cars arrive, I’d never consider public transit, even if driving were twice as long.
  - ColanR 7y ago
    > driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city I don't live in a city, just like half the population of the US. You assumed that, and now the rest of what you wrote is irrelevant.
    - justincormack 7y ago
      80% of the US population lives in a city.
      - UncleMeat 7y ago
        That is nowhere close to true, unless you are counting suburbs as cities.
  - baggy_trough 7y ago
    Many, probably most, people don't want to live in density as high as that. They value greenery or simply the space to not have a neighbor breathing down their neck. What you consider preposterous is a tradeoff with other goals in mind.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      The ongoing urbanization of the world seems to be a counterargument to that. Also, density is what enables greenery. Endless rows of detached single story houses with a lawn is what kills natural landscapes.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  Just because you design a city in a bike-friendly way does not mean you have to get rid of cars. Amsterdam is a perfect example of this: cars have not been completely eliminated, just de-emphasized. Making cars a nice to have instead of a need to have.
majormajor 7y ago
The detached home is much more the centerpiece than the car. The car is the currently most convenient way of enabling the detached home, but I think you'd have an easier fight of providing transportation alternativers there than of convincing everyone to give up the yard and privacy and everything else there. It's not the only possible way, and most vehicle trips are still relatively short (https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips) so I sure hope we can do it with last mile + transit vs self-driving cars.

by zanny 7y ago

baggy_trough 7y ago

It's more accurate to say that life has been optimized for convenience and net happiness, and that ain't a bike.

ColanR 7y ago

> construct it around a car I don't, actually - it's that a car is far more useful than a bike. I drive 25 minutes to work; I haul (5 bike-ride-loads of) groceries several miles to my house; I visit friends anywhere from 1-5 hours away; I casually drive into the city and back. Even if I felt like riding 10 miles each way, rain or shine, or using public transit, it takes so much less time to drive my car, and I have to either find multiple clever solutions to each of the other activities I use the car for, or just go without. My car gives me freedom from limitations; bicycle dependency only adds to them. To use a bike instead of a car, I have to fundamentally adjust my life, in every way for the worse.

esoterica 7y ago
You don’t seem to able to wrap your ahead around the fact that driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city that was designed around cars, not because cars are inherently faster or more convenient. The convenience of the car is an artifact of city planning decisions, not a universal truth. Example: do you realize how preposterous the idea of driving several miles to get groceries is to someone who lives in a real city? If I want to get groceries I walk to the grocery store two blocks away. If I don’t like that grocery store I walk to the other one four blocks away. Or the other other one five blocks away. It takes me less time to walk to the grocery store than it takes you to drive to yours. The counterfactual to a 10 mile drive is not a 10 mile public transit ride, because without car-induced sprawl everything would be much closer and you would have to travel much shorter distances to have access to the same amenities and see your friends. Public transit is also not slower than driving in a city with proper transit. I don’t own a car and almost every single journey I take is either short enough to walk, or faster on transit than in a car. It takes me 10 minutes to get to work on the train, the same drive would take half an hour due to traffic.
- jmpman 7y ago
  A car enables cities in less hospitable environments to be inexpensively populated. Where I live it’s regularly above 110. You’re not cycling in that. Population density is too low for light rail, and only the mentally deranged and hopelessly poor ride the bus, making a greater disincentive for anyone else who wants to bear a 15 minute wait in 110 degrees. For actual numbers, my commute is 20min by car, 2.5hr by public transportation, or 1.2hr by bike. Public transportation would need to be no more than 40min for me to consider it, and I’d only consider it because I wouldn’t have to drive. Once self driving cars arrive, I’d never consider public transit, even if driving were twice as long.
- ColanR 7y ago
  > driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city I don't live in a city, just like half the population of the US. You assumed that, and now the rest of what you wrote is irrelevant.
  - justincormack 7y ago
    80% of the US population lives in a city.
    - UncleMeat 7y ago
      That is nowhere close to true, unless you are counting suburbs as cities.
- baggy_trough 7y ago
  Many, probably most, people don't want to live in density as high as that. They value greenery or simply the space to not have a neighbor breathing down their neck. What you consider preposterous is a tradeoff with other goals in mind.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    The ongoing urbanization of the world seems to be a counterargument to that. Also, density is what enables greenery. Endless rows of detached single story houses with a lawn is what kills natural landscapes.
throw0101a 7y ago
Just because you design a city in a bike-friendly way does not mean you have to get rid of cars. Amsterdam is a perfect example of this: cars have not been completely eliminated, just de-emphasized. Making cars a nice to have instead of a need to have.

majormajor 7y ago

The detached home is much more the centerpiece than the car. The car is the currently most convenient way of enabling the detached home, but I think you'd have an easier fight of providing transportation alternativers there than of convincing everyone to give up the yard and privacy and everything else there. It's not the only possible way, and most vehicle trips are still relatively short (https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips) so I sure hope we can do it with last mile + transit vs self-driving cars.