4 ms·

Really cool product. Though I wonder if it might result in actually less infrastructure dedicated to bikes. If you look at the charts, there are more cars in a

Really cool product. Though I wonder if it might result in actually less infrastructure dedicated to bikes. If you look at the charts, there are more cars in a 5 minute period than pedestrians or bicycles all weekend.

jeffbee 4y ago
You build bike infrastructure in the places where you want more of them, not the places where you have more of them. Or as we say in the active transportation advocacy business, they didn’t count swimmers to decide to build the Golden Gate Bridge.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >You build bike infrastructure in the places where you want more of them, not the places where you have more of them. Or as we say in the active transportation advocacy business, they didn’t count swimmers to decide to build the Golden Gate Bridge. These sorts of statements are analogous to the median vs mean slight of hand (aka lying) that people routinely employ to intentionally mislead. At the very best it's "not the whole truth". To just build stuff and have it be used to a useful degree you need latent demand for transportation of all forms. These assumptions are generally questionably optimistic or untrue outside of urban areas (like real ones, not the census definition). A bike lane to a strip mall off the highway that has nothing else immediately around it does nobody any good. Slap up a bus stop. Even if the bus service is crappy it will still benefit somebody.
  - dang 4y ago
    We've banned this account for continuing to break the site guidelines after many requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    First of all if you are going to say that my remark is "analogous" to a lie, and that I "intentionally" mislead people in the course of bicycle infrastructure advocacy, then my reply is that you are analogous to a guy who needs to intentionally fuck off. Where the hell do you get off saying something like that about me? Secondly, there is a massive latent demand for cycling infrastructure in highly populated places that are suitable for cycling. That there are other places unsuitable for cycling is irrelevant. Another thing we often say on this topic is there are no transportation solutions to land use problems. But in America even when the development pattern is reasonable the infrastructure for cycling still doesn't exist. The dangerous, unpleasant, and inconvenient scattered bike lanes that we have in most American cities are acceptable to < 1% of potential cyclists, which is why the bicycle mode share in most American cities is << 1%.
    - dang 4y ago
      You broke the site guidelines badly here. I realized you were provoked, but users need to follow the rules regardless of what other commenters are doing. I'm not going to ban you right now because, after skimming through your recent history, it looks to me like you've been making a good-faith effort to stick to the rules, which I appreciate. But if you keep resorting to aggressive/abusive posting, we're eventually going to have to. We've cut you a ton of slack over the years, but it's not infinite! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34537078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34537078 (Jan 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33914274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33914274 (Dec 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33311881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33311881 (Oct 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30890360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30890360 (April 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26628758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26628758 (March 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26307811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26307811 (March 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25561372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25561372 (Dec 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24724281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24724281 (Oct 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24458954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24458954 (Sept 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380545 (Sept 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170477 (May 2020)
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  This is short sighted though, and the Golden Gate Bridge analogy, while cute, is flawed. You build a bridge to enable people to travel somewhere they want to go but currently cannot. When you're building a bike lane you're trying to get people to switch from driving a car to cycling. Driving is more convenient for most people. It's faster, it's easier, it's safer, and they are already used to it. Simply plopping in a bike lane is not, ever, going to convince the majority to start cycling. All it will accomplish is pissing most of them off because a road lane that used to be a useful piece of public infrastructure for them is now a bike lane dedicated to some small fraction of people who cycle, and it negatively impacts their commutes and therefore their lives.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Nobody wants to convince the majority of anything. Most cities would be happy to raise the share of bikes by a few percentage points.

jeffbee 4y ago

You build bike infrastructure in the places where you want more of them, not the places where you have more of them. Or as we say in the active transportation advocacy business, they didn’t count swimmers to decide to build the Golden Gate Bridge.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>You build bike infrastructure in the places where you want more of them, not the places where you have more of them. Or as we say in the active transportation advocacy business, they didn’t count swimmers to decide to build the Golden Gate Bridge. These sorts of statements are analogous to the median vs mean slight of hand (aka lying) that people routinely employ to intentionally mislead. At the very best it's "not the whole truth". To just build stuff and have it be used to a useful degree you need latent demand for transportation of all forms. These assumptions are generally questionably optimistic or untrue outside of urban areas (like real ones, not the census definition). A bike lane to a strip mall off the highway that has nothing else immediately around it does nobody any good. Slap up a bus stop. Even if the bus service is crappy it will still benefit somebody.
- dang 4y ago
  We've banned this account for continuing to break the site guidelines after many requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  First of all if you are going to say that my remark is "analogous" to a lie, and that I "intentionally" mislead people in the course of bicycle infrastructure advocacy, then my reply is that you are analogous to a guy who needs to intentionally fuck off. Where the hell do you get off saying something like that about me? Secondly, there is a massive latent demand for cycling infrastructure in highly populated places that are suitable for cycling. That there are other places unsuitable for cycling is irrelevant. Another thing we often say on this topic is there are no transportation solutions to land use problems. But in America even when the development pattern is reasonable the infrastructure for cycling still doesn't exist. The dangerous, unpleasant, and inconvenient scattered bike lanes that we have in most American cities are acceptable to < 1% of potential cyclists, which is why the bicycle mode share in most American cities is << 1%.
  - dang 4y ago
    You broke the site guidelines badly here. I realized you were provoked, but users need to follow the rules regardless of what other commenters are doing. I'm not going to ban you right now because, after skimming through your recent history, it looks to me like you've been making a good-faith effort to stick to the rules, which I appreciate. But if you keep resorting to aggressive/abusive posting, we're eventually going to have to. We've cut you a ton of slack over the years, but it's not infinite! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34537078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34537078 (Jan 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33914274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33914274 (Dec 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33311881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33311881 (Oct 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30890360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30890360 (April 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26628758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26628758 (March 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26307811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26307811 (March 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25561372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25561372 (Dec 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24724281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24724281 (Oct 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24458954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24458954 (Sept 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380545 (Sept 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170477 (May 2020)
bluefirebrand 4y ago
This is short sighted though, and the Golden Gate Bridge analogy, while cute, is flawed. You build a bridge to enable people to travel somewhere they want to go but currently cannot. When you're building a bike lane you're trying to get people to switch from driving a car to cycling. Driving is more convenient for most people. It's faster, it's easier, it's safer, and they are already used to it. Simply plopping in a bike lane is not, ever, going to convince the majority to start cycling. All it will accomplish is pissing most of them off because a road lane that used to be a useful piece of public infrastructure for them is now a bike lane dedicated to some small fraction of people who cycle, and it negatively impacts their commutes and therefore their lives.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Nobody wants to convince the majority of anything. Most cities would be happy to raise the share of bikes by a few percentage points.