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Absolutely not, this is such a US centric view. The bicycle is clearly the most egalitarian form of transportation since walking. It requires much less mainten

Absolutely not, this is such a US centric view. The bicycle is clearly the most egalitarian form of transportation since walking. It requires much less maintenance overhead, no license at all to drive, and you can technically take it cross country if you want. Its fuel and thereby range is not determined by your financial status, only your health.

voidfunc 4y ago
> Its fuel and thereby range is not determined by your financial status, only your health. Big assumption that health is more easily procured than gas or electricity. The quest for good health is expensive in time and money too and for many people is limited by genetics or bad luck. You can't trade labor for health either and health declines with age limiting mobility.
- acdha 4y ago
  This hits cars harder: both because almost all of us will reach a point where we can’t drive safely and because cars are one of the leading causes of poor health both due to the hundreds of thousands of severe injuries caused annually, significant air pollution, and the negative health impacts of sitting immobile and training their users that any exposure to the weather or walk longer than a driveway is to be avoided.
- tokai 4y ago
  Weirdly the good health needed for biking is procured easily by biking.
  - voidfunc 4y ago
    It must be nice to stay 25 forever.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Bicyclists do tend to stay in much better shape than drivers, it’s true, but I’m reminded that I know more adults who can’t drive safely than bike and several of them were in good health prior to being in some kind of car crash. The status quo in the US is 40k deaths due to driving and hundreds of thousands of life-altering injuries every year so there’s considerable room for improvement here.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    That is not universally true. Health conditions aside age has a big impact here on everything from distance to duration, frequency and speed.
zqfuz 4y ago
Too old, fat, physically disabled people, etc. can have a job and turn that job into petrol to feed their cars. OTOH they can't drive a bicycle. That's not very egalitarian.
- barnabee 4y ago
  There are electric "micromobility" options including bikes and things more suitable to physically disabled people though. Micromobility overall is more egalitarian than the car will ever be, and better in lots of other ways too.
- gpvos 4y ago
  There are also people who can't drive a car for medical reasons, and I guess there are more of those. You'd have to come with actual numbers to convince me.
- yread 4y ago
  But women in Saudi Arabia can cycle on their own
- montebicyclelo 4y ago
  There's less traffic on the road for those who _need_ to drive. Plus, in places like the Netherlands you see a lot of elderly/disabled people riding around on the bike lanes on mobility scooters [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=mobility+scooter https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=mobility+scooter
- oblio 4y ago
  > Too old 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/hycbb0/olivia_de_havilland_rides_a_bike_from_1937_and_on/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/hycbb0/olivi... > fat 2. See 1, up to a point. For morbidly obese people, see 1. so you don't become morbidly obese. > physically disabled people See 1. For serious disability, most of those people can't drive, either. More than that, cars still have their uses, so I agree. Let's promote cars PRIMARILY for seriously disabled people. Abled bodied people, public transit, bikes, foot/electric scooters. > OTOH they can't drive a bicycle. That's not very egalitarian. Entire countries can. China was initially built on bikes. As was Vietnam. As is the Netherlands. Countries which are some of the most egalitarian in the world. Let's not pretend cars are not the middle and upper class comfortable transportation devices. Cars are very, very convenient. Convenience is amazing, but it's also a slow poison. You can't really be morbidly obese, for example, if you don't have access to a car. I mean, you probably can, but the odds of that happening are so low it's not worth taking about that scenario.
closewith 4y ago
> Its fuel and thereby range is not determined by your financial status, only your health. While I generally agree with you, surely this is not an egalitarian property of cycling.
- INTPenis 4y ago
  Keep in mind we're comparing to cars here. Where the fuel is under control by oil corporations and government taxes. Next to cars, bicycles are miles more egalitarian. Don't blame bicycles for the poor health of Americans. Round where I'm from you see everyone from 7 to 70 cycling. And some very old people get three wheeled bikes so they don't have to worry about losing balance.
kybernetyk 4y ago
So no mobility for old, frail and sick people? Truly egalitarian in the sense of the new left.
- reallydontask 4y ago
  You might want to familiarize yourself with e-bikes. I guess this is the same old ignorance of the right. I can also throw meaningless insults, sigh...
- INTPenis 4y ago
  Not true. Come to Malmö, Copenhagen or Amsterdam and see who rides bikes. Some get three wheeled bikes if they have balance problems.
Mildlypolite 4y ago
Also, the bicycle is much less costly for the society, indeed its positive effects on our health actually contribute to less expenses for the NHS, this effects would be huge if adopted massively. The car instead has a negative effect on our health and the infrastructure is much more costly and require much more maintenance, the pollution it creates has negative effects on our health too.
ergonaught 4y ago
It is certainly USA-centric, and some of its assertions do not hold for some of us in the USA (ex: I contribute a wildly disproportionate amount to road upkeep relative to my usage of same compared to average), but I think you (and others) are missing the article's point regarding "egalitarian", since they're referring to economic opportunities rather than merely transportation. I can drift back in time just 20 years and point out that an automobile is the only reason I was able to pursue the career opportunities I did at that time. A bicycle is not fast enough to cover the distances. Mass transit didn't exist or was not available in times that matched those opportunities. Walking didn't work. Etc.
- acdha 4y ago
  It’s more complicated than that, however: cars are one of the most expensive options and that costs many people jobs (poor people get fired if their cars break down more than once in a while) and a large fraction of household income at lower tiers goes to cars for that reason. We’d need to consider that as well. The other big thing to examine is the degree to which the lack of transit is a policy choice. If we took the billions of dollars spent subsidizing private car ownership and spent it on transit, the results would look a lot more like Europe, Asia, South America, or our own country a century ago. There’d be trade offs, of course, but those are important to consider as possibilities as we head into an era where climate change is going to cause many large problems and cars are around a quarter of our total emissions and EVs cut that number in half at best.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    This is full of misdirection and half truths. It is true that transit policy is a choice but it is one largely driven by economics. There is also an element of personal preference. Public transit is not pleasant or flexible. Believing that the US would become eurplope or Asia if not for transportation policy is simply untrue. There are some regions that could adapt but the ones most likely to benefit from and use mass transit already have it and barely use it. The simple truth is our cities and geographies are different. The tradeoffs you gloss over are likely to be much lore significant. They start with the tremendous investment required to add these where they don't exist and end with the mix of economic and quality or life impacts inherent in this type of travel. EV do not drop total emissions out of the gate. Most start with a higher carbon footprint (and environmental impact) than ice vehicles and do not break even until more than half way through the expected life cycle. You do get some gains after break even but those benefits are mostly on relocation rather than reduction and are reset when the car hits battery replacement. I like EV's but they aren't the panacea they're presented as and come with their own problems. The bottom line is that the automobile for all of its flaws represents complete freedom of movement not offered by any other means available to the average citizen. And you want to do away with it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mfer 4y ago
This touches on how we organize as a society. I know many who travel 20 miles (32 km) or more for work each day. That doesn’t work on a bicycle. Especially during the cold months. It’s larger than a transportation issue
- Tade0 4y ago
  My relative only recently understood the extent of their spouse's leg issues when they visited us and had to walk places. The spouse normally drives everywhere.
- tokai 4y ago
  I won't pretend like its a option for everyone, but 32km daily bike commute is definitely doable. And not just for the lycra guys, my aunt did about that distance for years on a commuter bike. Even in the winter months its just a matter of clothing, mentality, and living a place that keeps the roads usable. Depending rush hour queues it can even end up being almost a fast as a car.
jcarrano 4y ago
You argue in qualitative terms, while the article supports its point on quantitative data. > you can technically take it cross country And "technically" anyone could take mass transit, yet he shows that (at least in the US) they do not. In the end what matters for public policy is what people and up actually doing, not what they theoretically could do.
willnonya 4y ago
Some parts of the world do require licensing. You 'could' take it cross country but that depends on your health and financial status...which means you won't because it's incredibly impractical for the vast majority of people.
AuthorizedCust 4y ago
> this is such a US centric view The lived experience of the vast majority of US citizens is an illegitimate viewpoint? Whose viewpoints deserve a seat at the table?
agumonkey 4y ago
femto nitpick, health is a subtle point and a big IF, if your health plummet, no more bike transportation and sudden reliance on public transportation and/or car (or maybe short flat trips in sweet weather) a car, as bad and costly as it is, shields you from that. end of femto nitpick

voidfunc 4y ago

> Its fuel and thereby range is not determined by your financial status, only your health. Big assumption that health is more easily procured than gas or electricity. The quest for good health is expensive in time and money too and for many people is limited by genetics or bad luck. You can't trade labor for health either and health declines with age limiting mobility.

acdha 4y ago
This hits cars harder: both because almost all of us will reach a point where we can’t drive safely and because cars are one of the leading causes of poor health both due to the hundreds of thousands of severe injuries caused annually, significant air pollution, and the negative health impacts of sitting immobile and training their users that any exposure to the weather or walk longer than a driveway is to be avoided.
tokai 4y ago
Weirdly the good health needed for biking is procured easily by biking.
- voidfunc 4y ago
  It must be nice to stay 25 forever.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Bicyclists do tend to stay in much better shape than drivers, it’s true, but I’m reminded that I know more adults who can’t drive safely than bike and several of them were in good health prior to being in some kind of car crash. The status quo in the US is 40k deaths due to driving and hundreds of thousands of life-altering injuries every year so there’s considerable room for improvement here.
- willnonya 4y ago
  That is not universally true. Health conditions aside age has a big impact here on everything from distance to duration, frequency and speed.

zqfuz 4y ago

Too old, fat, physically disabled people, etc. can have a job and turn that job into petrol to feed their cars. OTOH they can't drive a bicycle. That's not very egalitarian.

barnabee 4y ago
There are electric "micromobility" options including bikes and things more suitable to physically disabled people though. Micromobility overall is more egalitarian than the car will ever be, and better in lots of other ways too.
gpvos 4y ago
There are also people who can't drive a car for medical reasons, and I guess there are more of those. You'd have to come with actual numbers to convince me.
yread 4y ago
But women in Saudi Arabia can cycle on their own
montebicyclelo 4y ago
There's less traffic on the road for those who _need_ to drive. Plus, in places like the Netherlands you see a lot of elderly/disabled people riding around on the bike lanes on mobility scooters [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=mobility+scooter https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=mobility+scooter
oblio 4y ago
> Too old 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/hycbb0/olivia_de_havilland_rides_a_bike_from_1937_and_on/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/hycbb0/olivi... > fat 2. See 1, up to a point. For morbidly obese people, see 1. so you don't become morbidly obese. > physically disabled people See 1. For serious disability, most of those people can't drive, either. More than that, cars still have their uses, so I agree. Let's promote cars PRIMARILY for seriously disabled people. Abled bodied people, public transit, bikes, foot/electric scooters. > OTOH they can't drive a bicycle. That's not very egalitarian. Entire countries can. China was initially built on bikes. As was Vietnam. As is the Netherlands. Countries which are some of the most egalitarian in the world. Let's not pretend cars are not the middle and upper class comfortable transportation devices. Cars are very, very convenient. Convenience is amazing, but it's also a slow poison. You can't really be morbidly obese, for example, if you don't have access to a car. I mean, you probably can, but the odds of that happening are so low it's not worth taking about that scenario.

closewith 4y ago

> Its fuel and thereby range is not determined by your financial status, only your health. While I generally agree with you, surely this is not an egalitarian property of cycling.

INTPenis 4y ago
Keep in mind we're comparing to cars here. Where the fuel is under control by oil corporations and government taxes. Next to cars, bicycles are miles more egalitarian. Don't blame bicycles for the poor health of Americans. Round where I'm from you see everyone from 7 to 70 cycling. And some very old people get three wheeled bikes so they don't have to worry about losing balance.

kybernetyk 4y ago

So no mobility for old, frail and sick people? Truly egalitarian in the sense of the new left.

reallydontask 4y ago
You might want to familiarize yourself with e-bikes. I guess this is the same old ignorance of the right. I can also throw meaningless insults, sigh...
INTPenis 4y ago
Not true. Come to Malmö, Copenhagen or Amsterdam and see who rides bikes. Some get three wheeled bikes if they have balance problems.

Mildlypolite 4y ago

Also, the bicycle is much less costly for the society, indeed its positive effects on our health actually contribute to less expenses for the NHS, this effects would be huge if adopted massively. The car instead has a negative effect on our health and the infrastructure is much more costly and require much more maintenance, the pollution it creates has negative effects on our health too.

ergonaught 4y ago

It is certainly USA-centric, and some of its assertions do not hold for some of us in the USA (ex: I contribute a wildly disproportionate amount to road upkeep relative to my usage of same compared to average), but I think you (and others) are missing the article's point regarding "egalitarian", since they're referring to economic opportunities rather than merely transportation. I can drift back in time just 20 years and point out that an automobile is the only reason I was able to pursue the career opportunities I did at that time. A bicycle is not fast enough to cover the distances. Mass transit didn't exist or was not available in times that matched those opportunities. Walking didn't work. Etc.

acdha 4y ago
It’s more complicated than that, however: cars are one of the most expensive options and that costs many people jobs (poor people get fired if their cars break down more than once in a while) and a large fraction of household income at lower tiers goes to cars for that reason. We’d need to consider that as well. The other big thing to examine is the degree to which the lack of transit is a policy choice. If we took the billions of dollars spent subsidizing private car ownership and spent it on transit, the results would look a lot more like Europe, Asia, South America, or our own country a century ago. There’d be trade offs, of course, but those are important to consider as possibilities as we head into an era where climate change is going to cause many large problems and cars are around a quarter of our total emissions and EVs cut that number in half at best.
- willnonya 4y ago
  This is full of misdirection and half truths. It is true that transit policy is a choice but it is one largely driven by economics. There is also an element of personal preference. Public transit is not pleasant or flexible. Believing that the US would become eurplope or Asia if not for transportation policy is simply untrue. There are some regions that could adapt but the ones most likely to benefit from and use mass transit already have it and barely use it. The simple truth is our cities and geographies are different. The tradeoffs you gloss over are likely to be much lore significant. They start with the tremendous investment required to add these where they don't exist and end with the mix of economic and quality or life impacts inherent in this type of travel. EV do not drop total emissions out of the gate. Most start with a higher carbon footprint (and environmental impact) than ice vehicles and do not break even until more than half way through the expected life cycle. You do get some gains after break even but those benefits are mostly on relocation rather than reduction and are reset when the car hits battery replacement. I like EV's but they aren't the panacea they're presented as and come with their own problems. The bottom line is that the automobile for all of its flaws represents complete freedom of movement not offered by any other means available to the average citizen. And you want to do away with it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mfer 4y ago

This touches on how we organize as a society. I know many who travel 20 miles (32 km) or more for work each day. That doesn’t work on a bicycle. Especially during the cold months. It’s larger than a transportation issue

Tade0 4y ago
My relative only recently understood the extent of their spouse's leg issues when they visited us and had to walk places. The spouse normally drives everywhere.
tokai 4y ago
I won't pretend like its a option for everyone, but 32km daily bike commute is definitely doable. And not just for the lycra guys, my aunt did about that distance for years on a commuter bike. Even in the winter months its just a matter of clothing, mentality, and living a place that keeps the roads usable. Depending rush hour queues it can even end up being almost a fast as a car.

jcarrano 4y ago

You argue in qualitative terms, while the article supports its point on quantitative data. > you can technically take it cross country And "technically" anyone could take mass transit, yet he shows that (at least in the US) they do not. In the end what matters for public policy is what people and up actually doing, not what they theoretically could do.

willnonya 4y ago

Some parts of the world do require licensing. You 'could' take it cross country but that depends on your health and financial status...which means you won't because it's incredibly impractical for the vast majority of people.

AuthorizedCust 4y ago

> this is such a US centric view The lived experience of the vast majority of US citizens is an illegitimate viewpoint? Whose viewpoints deserve a seat at the table?

agumonkey 4y ago

femto nitpick, health is a subtle point and a big IF, if your health plummet, no more bike transportation and sudden reliance on public transportation and/or car (or maybe short flat trips in sweet weather) a car, as bad and costly as it is, shields you from that. end of femto nitpick