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Certainly part of the problem is the protocol of the highway system itself, and our expectation as consumers. Passengers can get by on 30kg ebikes we need a lan

Certainly part of the problem is the protocol of the highway system itself, and our expectation as consumers. Passengers can get by on 30kg ebikes we need a lane system for those on all roads, not just a 'take your own risks bike lane'. 1500kg passenger vehicle curb weight should not be the starting point for passenger vehicles. But no one takes this on because it's regulatory and a quagmire. Trucking is an unavoidable issue, but (at least in the US) there is plenty of space for combined solar/wind/battery sites on trucking corridors.

amirhirsch 4y ago
Whenever I see comments like this I gotta ask: do you have kids? Like I can’t fathom the car-rejectionist position coming from someone with multiple offspring.
- ericpauley 4y ago
  This random source on the Internet [1] suggests most car miles are single passenger. Just looking out my window (main street in average American town) this number looks about right. So for the vast majority of passenger transport the car is not the best choice. [1] https://thealternativedaily.com/why-ridesharing-matters/ https://thealternativedaily.com/why-ridesharing-matters/
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    Most, not all. If you ban cars, that also bans their uses for families with multiple kids or family members.
    - ericpauley 4y ago
      Yours is the first comment in this thread about a car ban. Nobody is arguing that cars don't have uses, but that also doesn't mean we should ignore their negative effects and skip investing in more efficient options.
      - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
        If you redo roads to only permit bikes instead of cars, it's an effective car ban. Sure, you can still have your car, but you can't take it anywhere because the roads only fit bikes now. Of course there's nuance to be had, but most discussions just devolve into "why would anyone need a car?"
        ericpauley 4y ago
        Again, I don’t think anyone is arguing for making regions of the US unreachable by car. But when there are 6+ car lanes and no separated bike infrastructure there are clearly regions unreachable by bike.
        ehnto 4y ago
        No one wants that. We want separated bike lanes. I also don't see why this angers drivers, you should want it too because now there's no cyclists on your car road. Everyone wins. Regarding the obvious tax comment someone will make, infrastructure budgets usually come from city and council taxes, it does not come from car registration or even fuel tax when you wring out the details. In other words cyclists have been paying their share of infra budget and getting nothing for it for a long time. If you can't picture what it actually looks like, look up the Not Just Bikes video on Stroads. It does a good job of describing the current situation, and why it's hard for people to imagine how bikes could fit with current road infra without impacting them.
        ThunderSizzle 4y ago
        > No one wants that. We want separated bike lanes. I also don't see why this angers drivers, you should want it too because now there's no cyclists on your car road. Everyone wins. You may want that, and indeed, I would highly prefer that, but most people who discuss this can only think about political punishments to affect behavior and go back to thinking that driving must absolutely suck in order for people to choose other options, rather than making alternatives even better than driving. You don't need to begin with the mindset of "too many car lanes, destroy them until people are forced to use the nonexistant bus". It should begin with "people prefer driving. How many we make something even better so they don't prefer driving anyone?" Sure, that will begin a competition between transportation modes, but when it comes from trying to make something even better, not out of wrath of driving/cars, then perhaps people will listen.
    - breuleux 4y ago
      "Ban cars" is a fringe position very few people actually hold. This being said. I mean. Cars have only been around for about a century, we've managed without them for millennia. Surely there is a way to reorganize many places so that their use can be slashed by 95%+, including by families. One key thing is that it depends on the place. I think that in a lot of big cities it would be possible (not politically, but theoretically) to e.g. ban all curbside parking, reserve all central lanes for high frequency buses, limit all (non-bus) car traffic to 10 km/h. Car traffic would vanish on its own and the QOL increase for residents would more than make up for the inconvenience (less noise, less eyesore, more trees, safe biking, jaywalk everywhere, play in the street, etc.) On the other hand, you can't really get cars out of hellscape car-centric suburbs (which mostly exist in the US, from my understanding) because they have been designed around the assumption that cars exist. You wouldn't get QOL improvements from slashing car traffic like you would in cities. So I would argue to leave all these places alone, but we should try to suppress cars in dense cities as much as possible. As someone who lives in one, I would particularly like curbside parking to be nuked, because cars are an eyesore, they block visibility, and they are wasting so much usable space.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Of course, the only reason you need a car for your family is because we built car centric cities that require it. We haven't had that for long, less than 100 years. I wouldn't suggest someone run a family without a car in a modern American city, but there are still places even in America that didn't get rebuilt around cars and of course plenty of places around the world where you can raise a family without a car.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    There is a reason why all of those people chose to spend large sums of money on those vehicles.
- aBioGuy 4y ago
  Depending on where you live, you can cargo bike with your kids. If you check out the cargo bike forums there are always posts on how to attach baby seats to a bakfiets and such. I've got two kids and my ecargo-bike replaces about 20 car drives a week.
- connorproctor 4y ago
  It can actually be easier to raise children in places with good bike infrastructure, because you don’t have to be their chauffeur. They can bike themselves around. And for smaller children, in cities like Amsterdam, it’s common to see a mom riding with multiple kids sitting in a cargo bike.
  - baq 4y ago
    Netherlands are flat as a pancake, yes e-bikes are somewhat of a solution to where it is a problem, but snow and sleet are something else… I’ve got kids and an e-cargo bike and it isn’t fun (braking downhill on ice with kids in the trunk… let’s just say I revert to the car in this weather.)
    - orhmeh09 4y ago
      It’s fine if you accept that you’re living a wasteful lifestyle that was completely unnecessary for hundreds of thousands of years.
    - closeparen 4y ago
      The Midwest is flat as a pancake.
      - mgerdts 4y ago
        Yep, 100% of it. Please ignore the hill down the street from my house that two wheel drive cars often can't climb when snowy. It only has about 90 feet of elevation gain over about 2000 feet of distance. The steepest section is about 10% grade over 600 feet. No problem for a typical person riding a cargo bike without electric assist. Note that the maximum grade for a wheelchair ramp is 8.3%.
        orwin 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure 10% was what i had in Limberg. Can we agree that both midwset and netherland are generally flat, and while there are hills in both places, this isn't San Francisco? By the way, i visited Chicago, Michigan and Colombus, Ohio: I might now have seen everywhere, but those are closer in elevation difference to Amsterdam than Paris and Lisbon are
- mint2 4y ago
  They weren’t saying “everyone must do it thusly”. They were making the point we should have options. Right now the only option that infrastructure is actually built for is using a car for everything, even for the single person to run an errand 3 miles away. It’s possible they can be an unintended user of the car oriented roads, but it is much riskier. it would be nice if the people going on solo trips could take bikes without worrying about their dependents becoming orphans. That way when doing something that actually requires a car highways would be less congested too! Win-win.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
  I have three kids and cycle with a cargo bike to school and kindergarten every day. Prefer it over the car for our situation greatly.
- tompagenet2 4y ago
  Replying in good faith: yes! Two! And having them has made me all the more committed to not owning a car as I try to minimise how much I destroy their future.
- closeparen 4y ago
  Have you been to The Netherlands? I was a tourist for 3 weeks, and it was quite a common sight to see a family with young kids coming out their apartment stairway, babies loading on to carriers on mom and dad’s bikes and small children riding their own. Seeing as how children are at extreme risk from cars yet can’t use them themselves, and chauffeuring your kids around because it’s not safe for them to walk or bike themselves is almost the central time sink of parenthood, it is weird to see parents as the primary advocates of car primacy.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Not everybody can live in the Netherlands though. The Netherlands has just the right weather, just the right geography, just the right urban planning, and just the right social climate. For a parent, it doesn’t matter how much you advocate, your kid will have their drivers license long before you can change any of the above situations.
    - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
      There are about 190 countries in the world, but I'm pretty sure there's only 1 where a car is required for having a child. (The USA.) Maybe geography isn't the central issue.
    - closeparen 4y ago
      The social climate and the urban planning are no more and no less than how people in your community conduct themselves behind the wheel and at the microphone in the community hearings. Incremental bike infrastructure improvements can take a few years in very dysfunctional polities, but 16 would be an outlier, and they can also be done very quickly in healthy ones.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        My area has people who have been fighting for better infrastructure for decades. I have voted for the issue as well for decades. The social component is important. When commuters lose a lane on popular roads, they responded by voting the people out of office who were responsible for it. I know you think it’s simple, but I know from experience that it’s not. Deep car-centric cultures demand more of the same. Maybe where you’re from these attitudes seem like outliers, but in middle America, it’s really not. It’s not an awareness issue, an insignificant number of people here resent the idea. There’s no convincing them. Also, planning is definitely important. If the lanes don’t go between differently zoned areas, they’re useless for primary transport. What little success we’ve had is used against us as evidence that “nobody wants bike lanes”.
- ehnto 4y ago
  Part of why you feel that way I assume is because of how where you live is set up, it probably is unfathomable to operate a family without a car, and you shouldn't be worried about that changing any time soon. But proponents for bike infrastructure are not suggesting you put your kids in a bike trailer and ride 40 miles to school, and they aren't suggesting we remove the highways taking you from suburbia into the city. They are usually suggesting that we need more bike or walk friendly neighborhoods. But we also can't all live in the city, so bike friendly infrastructure is also necessary between suburbia and the necessities like work and shopping.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
The only reason you need an SUV to keep your kids safe is all the other SUVs on the road. It's become a weapons race of ever bigger tanks. This really has to stop sooner or later.

amirhirsch 4y ago

Whenever I see comments like this I gotta ask: do you have kids? Like I can’t fathom the car-rejectionist position coming from someone with multiple offspring.

ericpauley 4y ago
This random source on the Internet [1] suggests most car miles are single passenger. Just looking out my window (main street in average American town) this number looks about right. So for the vast majority of passenger transport the car is not the best choice. [1] https://thealternativedaily.com/why-ridesharing-matters/ https://thealternativedaily.com/why-ridesharing-matters/
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  Most, not all. If you ban cars, that also bans their uses for families with multiple kids or family members.
  - ericpauley 4y ago
    Yours is the first comment in this thread about a car ban. Nobody is arguing that cars don't have uses, but that also doesn't mean we should ignore their negative effects and skip investing in more efficient options.
    - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
      If you redo roads to only permit bikes instead of cars, it's an effective car ban. Sure, you can still have your car, but you can't take it anywhere because the roads only fit bikes now. Of course there's nuance to be had, but most discussions just devolve into "why would anyone need a car?"
      - ericpauley 4y ago
        Again, I don’t think anyone is arguing for making regions of the US unreachable by car. But when there are 6+ car lanes and no separated bike infrastructure there are clearly regions unreachable by bike.
      - ehnto 4y ago
        No one wants that. We want separated bike lanes. I also don't see why this angers drivers, you should want it too because now there's no cyclists on your car road. Everyone wins. Regarding the obvious tax comment someone will make, infrastructure budgets usually come from city and council taxes, it does not come from car registration or even fuel tax when you wring out the details. In other words cyclists have been paying their share of infra budget and getting nothing for it for a long time. If you can't picture what it actually looks like, look up the Not Just Bikes video on Stroads. It does a good job of describing the current situation, and why it's hard for people to imagine how bikes could fit with current road infra without impacting them.
        ThunderSizzle 4y ago
        > No one wants that. We want separated bike lanes. I also don't see why this angers drivers, you should want it too because now there's no cyclists on your car road. Everyone wins. You may want that, and indeed, I would highly prefer that, but most people who discuss this can only think about political punishments to affect behavior and go back to thinking that driving must absolutely suck in order for people to choose other options, rather than making alternatives even better than driving. You don't need to begin with the mindset of "too many car lanes, destroy them until people are forced to use the nonexistant bus". It should begin with "people prefer driving. How many we make something even better so they don't prefer driving anyone?" Sure, that will begin a competition between transportation modes, but when it comes from trying to make something even better, not out of wrath of driving/cars, then perhaps people will listen.
  - breuleux 4y ago
    "Ban cars" is a fringe position very few people actually hold. This being said. I mean. Cars have only been around for about a century, we've managed without them for millennia. Surely there is a way to reorganize many places so that their use can be slashed by 95%+, including by families. One key thing is that it depends on the place. I think that in a lot of big cities it would be possible (not politically, but theoretically) to e.g. ban all curbside parking, reserve all central lanes for high frequency buses, limit all (non-bus) car traffic to 10 km/h. Car traffic would vanish on its own and the QOL increase for residents would more than make up for the inconvenience (less noise, less eyesore, more trees, safe biking, jaywalk everywhere, play in the street, etc.) On the other hand, you can't really get cars out of hellscape car-centric suburbs (which mostly exist in the US, from my understanding) because they have been designed around the assumption that cars exist. You wouldn't get QOL improvements from slashing car traffic like you would in cities. So I would argue to leave all these places alone, but we should try to suppress cars in dense cities as much as possible. As someone who lives in one, I would particularly like curbside parking to be nuked, because cars are an eyesore, they block visibility, and they are wasting so much usable space.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Of course, the only reason you need a car for your family is because we built car centric cities that require it. We haven't had that for long, less than 100 years. I wouldn't suggest someone run a family without a car in a modern American city, but there are still places even in America that didn't get rebuilt around cars and of course plenty of places around the world where you can raise a family without a car.
- kube-system 4y ago
  There is a reason why all of those people chose to spend large sums of money on those vehicles.
aBioGuy 4y ago
Depending on where you live, you can cargo bike with your kids. If you check out the cargo bike forums there are always posts on how to attach baby seats to a bakfiets and such. I've got two kids and my ecargo-bike replaces about 20 car drives a week.
connorproctor 4y ago
It can actually be easier to raise children in places with good bike infrastructure, because you don’t have to be their chauffeur. They can bike themselves around. And for smaller children, in cities like Amsterdam, it’s common to see a mom riding with multiple kids sitting in a cargo bike.
- baq 4y ago
  Netherlands are flat as a pancake, yes e-bikes are somewhat of a solution to where it is a problem, but snow and sleet are something else… I’ve got kids and an e-cargo bike and it isn’t fun (braking downhill on ice with kids in the trunk… let’s just say I revert to the car in this weather.)
  - orhmeh09 4y ago
    It’s fine if you accept that you’re living a wasteful lifestyle that was completely unnecessary for hundreds of thousands of years.
  - closeparen 4y ago
    The Midwest is flat as a pancake.
    - mgerdts 4y ago
      Yep, 100% of it. Please ignore the hill down the street from my house that two wheel drive cars often can't climb when snowy. It only has about 90 feet of elevation gain over about 2000 feet of distance. The steepest section is about 10% grade over 600 feet. No problem for a typical person riding a cargo bike without electric assist. Note that the maximum grade for a wheelchair ramp is 8.3%.
      - orwin 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure 10% was what i had in Limberg. Can we agree that both midwset and netherland are generally flat, and while there are hills in both places, this isn't San Francisco? By the way, i visited Chicago, Michigan and Colombus, Ohio: I might now have seen everywhere, but those are closer in elevation difference to Amsterdam than Paris and Lisbon are
mint2 4y ago
They weren’t saying “everyone must do it thusly”. They were making the point we should have options. Right now the only option that infrastructure is actually built for is using a car for everything, even for the single person to run an errand 3 miles away. It’s possible they can be an unintended user of the car oriented roads, but it is much riskier. it would be nice if the people going on solo trips could take bikes without worrying about their dependents becoming orphans. That way when doing something that actually requires a car highways would be less congested too! Win-win.
the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
I have three kids and cycle with a cargo bike to school and kindergarten every day. Prefer it over the car for our situation greatly.
tompagenet2 4y ago
Replying in good faith: yes! Two! And having them has made me all the more committed to not owning a car as I try to minimise how much I destroy their future.
closeparen 4y ago
Have you been to The Netherlands? I was a tourist for 3 weeks, and it was quite a common sight to see a family with young kids coming out their apartment stairway, babies loading on to carriers on mom and dad’s bikes and small children riding their own. Seeing as how children are at extreme risk from cars yet can’t use them themselves, and chauffeuring your kids around because it’s not safe for them to walk or bike themselves is almost the central time sink of parenthood, it is weird to see parents as the primary advocates of car primacy.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Not everybody can live in the Netherlands though. The Netherlands has just the right weather, just the right geography, just the right urban planning, and just the right social climate. For a parent, it doesn’t matter how much you advocate, your kid will have their drivers license long before you can change any of the above situations.
  - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
    There are about 190 countries in the world, but I'm pretty sure there's only 1 where a car is required for having a child. (The USA.) Maybe geography isn't the central issue.
  - closeparen 4y ago
    The social climate and the urban planning are no more and no less than how people in your community conduct themselves behind the wheel and at the microphone in the community hearings. Incremental bike infrastructure improvements can take a few years in very dysfunctional polities, but 16 would be an outlier, and they can also be done very quickly in healthy ones.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      My area has people who have been fighting for better infrastructure for decades. I have voted for the issue as well for decades. The social component is important. When commuters lose a lane on popular roads, they responded by voting the people out of office who were responsible for it. I know you think it’s simple, but I know from experience that it’s not. Deep car-centric cultures demand more of the same. Maybe where you’re from these attitudes seem like outliers, but in middle America, it’s really not. It’s not an awareness issue, an insignificant number of people here resent the idea. There’s no convincing them. Also, planning is definitely important. If the lanes don’t go between differently zoned areas, they’re useless for primary transport. What little success we’ve had is used against us as evidence that “nobody wants bike lanes”.
ehnto 4y ago
Part of why you feel that way I assume is because of how where you live is set up, it probably is unfathomable to operate a family without a car, and you shouldn't be worried about that changing any time soon. But proponents for bike infrastructure are not suggesting you put your kids in a bike trailer and ride 40 miles to school, and they aren't suggesting we remove the highways taking you from suburbia into the city. They are usually suggesting that we need more bike or walk friendly neighborhoods. But we also can't all live in the city, so bike friendly infrastructure is also necessary between suburbia and the necessities like work and shopping.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

The only reason you need an SUV to keep your kids safe is all the other SUVs on the road. It's become a weapons race of ever bigger tanks. This really has to stop sooner or later.