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One reason of probably many: a lot of Europe has been mapped by cyclists. Much of Europe has distances that are relatively small enough that people can often g

One reason of probably many: a lot of Europe has been mapped by cyclists. Much of Europe has distances that are relatively small enough that people can often go on some pretty productive mapping expeditions from a city. In the US there is less leisure cycling culture (people who do get out on bikes are often aiming for speed and exercise, not quietly spending a whole day out doing something), and the distances are much vaster so one cannot get to some places from the city and return in the same day. If you notice, even in Europe the completeness and up-to-dateness of OSM data starts to break down in areas (e.g. Lapland) where distances and remoteness approach that of North America.

Aachen 6y ago
Nah, cycling is virtually nonexistent outside of the Netherlands and Denmark. E.g. Finland sees it as a hobby more than a transportation method, Germany doesn't see it at all. A train station just across the border in a town where most people work in the next city over (namely where that train goes) has three loops as their main bike parking and on a regular working day there is an average 0.5 bikes making use of it. From what I see and hear about being your kids' taxi until they get a driver's license (at 16yo already), I'd assume the difference is pedestrians. I'm nearly 30 and never owned a car, coming from a village and living in a town. Shops are walking distance, I take the bus to work (non-covid times) for environmental reasons, and I think a small majority of people I know do the same (most of my friends/acquaintances are in NL). Germany is already quite car-centric by my standards, yet they have the most contributors. There's still a lot of pedestrian traffic for the short distances inside of towns and cities, just no medium-distance cycling traffic. So why do they have the most contributors? Living in Germany, the mentality is different. I have been trying unsuccessfully for three years to find a good definition or concise explanation. There's something that drives use of Threema (paid), PGP and Linux (relatively hard to use), and OpenStreetMap (when sugar daddy Google gives you free maps already). Certainly Google's map here is worse than in their home market, but it's not bad either. Everyone in Germany will tell you that by the end of secondary education, they're just so done with the whole hitler thing. It's a huge topic throughout the educational system. So I guess morals and things like why privacy matters gets ingrained as well? But that doesn't hold for other European countries, in NL the Linux/Threema/OSM/PGP usage is similar to what I hear on HN. So a combination of factors, with as biggest common denominator probably pedestrians, plus the mindset in Germany, and maybe a tiny fraction the cyclists (which is literally everyone in NL, by the way, it's not a subgroup but a state of being, or at least I learned that "cyclists" is a laden term in North America from someone who is from there and moved here, but anyway OSM contributorship in NL isn't that huge).
- rpadovani 6y ago
  What? This is far from my experience! People in Bayern are crazy for bikes, they do long rides on the weekend to lakes and pre-Alps: there are a lot of bike shops, and possibilities for any kind of budget. People go by bike also in these days, while the temperature is way below 0. Also in Italy there is quite a culture, especially outside the big cities. All the Alps area has amazing tracks, also cross countries
  - Aachen 6y ago
    Yeah, see, cycling on tracks in the Alps or going cycling for a weekend is kind of my point: then it's a hobby, like I saw it was in Finland, and not a common mode of transportation. There will be a minority of people that enjoy it in the first place, and of that minority, not everyone does it every day. You'll find very few people actually owning usable bikes for daily city trips (fenders, generator-powered lights, chain and skirt guards, sitting upright... the stuff that makes cycling practical and not a special thing you dress for). Where I'm from, a third of people say that cycling is their most common mode of transport (according to Wikipedia). That's different from taking your bike out, even if you'd do it every evening, to go ride in the (indeed very beautiful) Alps. It might seem "huge" to you, but check a nearby bus or train station. If there's not even a few percent of people arriving there by bicycle, which for a typical bus or train station is at least a hundred bikes¹, then practically nobody cycles. Now take a slightly busier-seeming station near where I live today (don't have stats handy), in Germany, and there's zero to one bikes there. Or the main bus station, hundreds or thousands of people travel on my line alone (most buses are filled and they go every 15 minutes), but the number of bikes parked there can be counted on one hand. And this is just across the border, there is Dutch vla, stroopwafels, kroketten, all available in a regular supermarket, sporting Dutch flags (but tasting slightly different, clearly made for this market :p). The influence is clear, but cycling is near zero. We won't have the highest cycling stats I'm sure, but I do think it's representative of Germany. ¹ On the quietest train station I know of in the Netherlands, Diemen (typically I'd see a handful of people on the platform), stats say that in 2019, 3300 people enter or exit there daily, so even if only one in twenty people would get there by bike, that's 165 bikes that should be parked there.
- 6y ago

Aachen 6y ago

Nah, cycling is virtually nonexistent outside of the Netherlands and Denmark. E.g. Finland sees it as a hobby more than a transportation method, Germany doesn't see it at all. A train station just across the border in a town where most people work in the next city over (namely where that train goes) has three loops as their main bike parking and on a regular working day there is an average 0.5 bikes making use of it. From what I see and hear about being your kids' taxi until they get a driver's license (at 16yo already), I'd assume the difference is pedestrians. I'm nearly 30 and never owned a car, coming from a village and living in a town. Shops are walking distance, I take the bus to work (non-covid times) for environmental reasons, and I think a small majority of people I know do the same (most of my friends/acquaintances are in NL). Germany is already quite car-centric by my standards, yet they have the most contributors. There's still a lot of pedestrian traffic for the short distances inside of towns and cities, just no medium-distance cycling traffic. So why do they have the most contributors? Living in Germany, the mentality is different. I have been trying unsuccessfully for three years to find a good definition or concise explanation. There's something that drives use of Threema (paid), PGP and Linux (relatively hard to use), and OpenStreetMap (when sugar daddy Google gives you free maps already). Certainly Google's map here is worse than in their home market, but it's not bad either. Everyone in Germany will tell you that by the end of secondary education, they're just so done with the whole hitler thing. It's a huge topic throughout the educational system. So I guess morals and things like why privacy matters gets ingrained as well? But that doesn't hold for other European countries, in NL the Linux/Threema/OSM/PGP usage is similar to what I hear on HN. So a combination of factors, with as biggest common denominator probably pedestrians, plus the mindset in Germany, and maybe a tiny fraction the cyclists (which is literally everyone in NL, by the way, it's not a subgroup but a state of being, or at least I learned that "cyclists" is a laden term in North America from someone who is from there and moved here, but anyway OSM contributorship in NL isn't that huge).

rpadovani 6y ago
What? This is far from my experience! People in Bayern are crazy for bikes, they do long rides on the weekend to lakes and pre-Alps: there are a lot of bike shops, and possibilities for any kind of budget. People go by bike also in these days, while the temperature is way below 0. Also in Italy there is quite a culture, especially outside the big cities. All the Alps area has amazing tracks, also cross countries
- Aachen 6y ago
  Yeah, see, cycling on tracks in the Alps or going cycling for a weekend is kind of my point: then it's a hobby, like I saw it was in Finland, and not a common mode of transportation. There will be a minority of people that enjoy it in the first place, and of that minority, not everyone does it every day. You'll find very few people actually owning usable bikes for daily city trips (fenders, generator-powered lights, chain and skirt guards, sitting upright... the stuff that makes cycling practical and not a special thing you dress for). Where I'm from, a third of people say that cycling is their most common mode of transport (according to Wikipedia). That's different from taking your bike out, even if you'd do it every evening, to go ride in the (indeed very beautiful) Alps. It might seem "huge" to you, but check a nearby bus or train station. If there's not even a few percent of people arriving there by bicycle, which for a typical bus or train station is at least a hundred bikes¹, then practically nobody cycles. Now take a slightly busier-seeming station near where I live today (don't have stats handy), in Germany, and there's zero to one bikes there. Or the main bus station, hundreds or thousands of people travel on my line alone (most buses are filled and they go every 15 minutes), but the number of bikes parked there can be counted on one hand. And this is just across the border, there is Dutch vla, stroopwafels, kroketten, all available in a regular supermarket, sporting Dutch flags (but tasting slightly different, clearly made for this market :p). The influence is clear, but cycling is near zero. We won't have the highest cycling stats I'm sure, but I do think it's representative of Germany. ¹ On the quietest train station I know of in the Netherlands, Diemen (typically I'd see a handful of people on the platform), stats say that in 2019, 3300 people enter or exit there daily, so even if only one in twenty people would get there by bike, that's 165 bikes that should be parked there.
6y ago