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> 1) Most people prefer to drive.. You don’t know that. You would have to run the experiment - spend equal amount of money on infrastructure for bikes and for

> 1) Most people prefer to drive.. You don’t know that. You would have to run the experiment - spend equal amount of money on infrastructure for bikes and for cars. Then see. Most British cities are tiny, you can cross most of them on an e-bike in like 15 to 30 minutes. Except London of course. But there is usually no safe way to cross them. When I ask people in London, why are your not cycling, 95% say they are afraid of getting hit by a car. They are wrong - they will be killed by a truck. Most cyclists in London due to 4 axle construction trucks. I have seen one of the bastards illegally drive into a cycle lane, then onto a pavement where women walk with kids, and drive on that pavement to get around traffic. I have seen a BMW stuck on a bend in a segregated cycle way at Tower of London. I’ve seen a wolksvagen in a cycle lane upside down. Go to a rich and cycling safe are of London like hackney, there are plenty of bikes. Go to an area with dangerous roads, like Surrey, no bikes We spend insane amount of money on car infra. We just built a new tonnes in east London, the only way to cross the river for miles, and you can only cross in a car.

sershe 3y ago
Here's a great link: "Vehicle ownership starts to grow quickly when countries reach income of about 2,500 per capita in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms. Rapid growth continues until income per capita reaches about 10,000. Saturation level is at about 850 vehicles per 1,000 people." The limiting factor for having tons of cars is income. https://www.imf.org/-/media/Websites/IMF/imported-flagship-issues/external/pubs/ft/weo/2005/01/chp4pdf/_fig47pdf.ashx https://www.imf.org/-/media/Websites/IMF/imported-flagship-i... [pdf with per-country history]
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  I fail to see how this accounts for difference in car vs bike infrastructure.
  - sershe 3y ago
    Countries at "income of about 2,500 per capita" are not exactly known for their car infrastructure. Moreover, by necessity with low car ownership they cannot have car-centric cities - most people don't have cars. I mean have you been to Hanoi or Belize City, or some place similar? Yet, despite crappy roads, short distances and chaotic traffic (and good climate, in many cases), people get cars as soon as they can afford them - instead of staying on bikes and mopeds that they are already otherwise using. Until, if IMF is to be believed, they reach 0.85 cars per person.
    - doix 3y ago
      Those places are freaking deathtraps. It's basically what the article is talking about! Those cities are _extremely_ anti-pedestrian. They may not be car-centric, but they are definitely moped centric. There are usually no sidewalks, or the sidewalks are full of parked mopeds or you'll be walking along and the sidewalk will just end abruptly. You are usually forced to walk along the road. Nobody will stop when you're crossing the road, they just weave. A quick Google search shows that Vietnam has 29.81 per 100,000 of population deaths from traffic accidents. These places are awful examples of safe bike/pedestrian cites. Of course people prefer cars there, it's much safer!
      - sershe 3y ago
        Well they don't have much car infrastructure either, and operating a car there is much less convenient than a moped or a bicycle, not to mention extremely expensive relative to income. Plus the car is not necessary by definition since most people don't have one. So it's not really massive spending on car infrastructure, or distances created by car-centric lifestyle that's driving the adoption. It really feels like moving the goalposts, these cities are more convenient for bikes and mopeds than cars by any standard (faster, much cheaper, easier to park etc.). I don't think safety is a primary driver either... Or you can also just take middle-income cities, like Moscow. It wasn't built with many cars in mind, and there's severe lack of parking in particular. People used to have fistfights over public parking spots when I was a kid :) Yet, they still buy cars until traffic becomes completely unreasonable, it used to be that transit across the city (where I was going) tool ~1 hour, and my co-worker who drove a similar route would take 2 hours thru traffic, and he would still drive. Obviously so did all those other suckers stuck in traffic, that's how much they wanted to drive :)
- doix 3y ago
  But you're assuming that people want to own cars to make short journeys. When I lived in Edinburgh, I had a car but I would never use it within the city or anywhere that I could get to on a train/bus. This attitude was pretty common among my entire social circle. Reading all your comments in this thread felt surreal to me. I guess I'm in an anti-car bubble, because I've never met anyone with your opinion before.
  - sershe 3y ago
    How short is short? Edinburgh looks pretty small. I just plotted a route from a random point in the center to a place called Bonaly that looks like a residential area, 5 miles away. Two observations is that traffic is pretty bad (red), so it looks like people drive even though transit is available, probably confirming my prior observation that people will choose to drive until driving capacity is used up or over-used then switch to other modes. 2nd is that transit will take 43 minutes vs 25mins of driving (and that doesn't account for waiting time, nobody has exactly perfect timing), so driving is still faster :) As for cars it's actually one of the biggest things I changed my mind on in my life. I used to be anti-car and always lived in walkable areas till my mid/late twenties. Then I actually tried driving and living in non walkable areas and I couldn't believe how wrong I was :) Especially when I go back to visit walkable areas and it's annoying and getting anywhere takes forever, something I never noticed when I lived there because it was the default.

sershe 3y ago

Here's a great link: "Vehicle ownership starts to grow quickly when countries reach income of about 2,500 per capita in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms. Rapid growth continues until income per capita reaches about 10,000. Saturation level is at about 850 vehicles per 1,000 people." The limiting factor for having tons of cars is income. https://www.imf.org/-/media/Websites/IMF/imported-flagship-issues/external/pubs/ft/weo/2005/01/chp4pdf/_fig47pdf.ashx https://www.imf.org/-/media/Websites/IMF/imported-flagship-i... [pdf with per-country history]

xboxnolifes 3y ago
I fail to see how this accounts for difference in car vs bike infrastructure.
- sershe 3y ago
  Countries at "income of about 2,500 per capita" are not exactly known for their car infrastructure. Moreover, by necessity with low car ownership they cannot have car-centric cities - most people don't have cars. I mean have you been to Hanoi or Belize City, or some place similar? Yet, despite crappy roads, short distances and chaotic traffic (and good climate, in many cases), people get cars as soon as they can afford them - instead of staying on bikes and mopeds that they are already otherwise using. Until, if IMF is to be believed, they reach 0.85 cars per person.
  - doix 3y ago
    Those places are freaking deathtraps. It's basically what the article is talking about! Those cities are _extremely_ anti-pedestrian. They may not be car-centric, but they are definitely moped centric. There are usually no sidewalks, or the sidewalks are full of parked mopeds or you'll be walking along and the sidewalk will just end abruptly. You are usually forced to walk along the road. Nobody will stop when you're crossing the road, they just weave. A quick Google search shows that Vietnam has 29.81 per 100,000 of population deaths from traffic accidents. These places are awful examples of safe bike/pedestrian cites. Of course people prefer cars there, it's much safer!
    - sershe 3y ago
      Well they don't have much car infrastructure either, and operating a car there is much less convenient than a moped or a bicycle, not to mention extremely expensive relative to income. Plus the car is not necessary by definition since most people don't have one. So it's not really massive spending on car infrastructure, or distances created by car-centric lifestyle that's driving the adoption. It really feels like moving the goalposts, these cities are more convenient for bikes and mopeds than cars by any standard (faster, much cheaper, easier to park etc.). I don't think safety is a primary driver either... Or you can also just take middle-income cities, like Moscow. It wasn't built with many cars in mind, and there's severe lack of parking in particular. People used to have fistfights over public parking spots when I was a kid :) Yet, they still buy cars until traffic becomes completely unreasonable, it used to be that transit across the city (where I was going) tool ~1 hour, and my co-worker who drove a similar route would take 2 hours thru traffic, and he would still drive. Obviously so did all those other suckers stuck in traffic, that's how much they wanted to drive :)
doix 3y ago
But you're assuming that people want to own cars to make short journeys. When I lived in Edinburgh, I had a car but I would never use it within the city or anywhere that I could get to on a train/bus. This attitude was pretty common among my entire social circle. Reading all your comments in this thread felt surreal to me. I guess I'm in an anti-car bubble, because I've never met anyone with your opinion before.
- sershe 3y ago
  How short is short? Edinburgh looks pretty small. I just plotted a route from a random point in the center to a place called Bonaly that looks like a residential area, 5 miles away. Two observations is that traffic is pretty bad (red), so it looks like people drive even though transit is available, probably confirming my prior observation that people will choose to drive until driving capacity is used up or over-used then switch to other modes. 2nd is that transit will take 43 minutes vs 25mins of driving (and that doesn't account for waiting time, nobody has exactly perfect timing), so driving is still faster :) As for cars it's actually one of the biggest things I changed my mind on in my life. I used to be anti-car and always lived in walkable areas till my mid/late twenties. Then I actually tried driving and living in non walkable areas and I couldn't believe how wrong I was :) Especially when I go back to visit walkable areas and it's annoying and getting anywhere takes forever, something I never noticed when I lived there because it was the default.