5 ms·

It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.

by wbl 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> not that expensive to put down a bike lane Scale-wise insufficient. We aren’t going to get to net zero with bike lanes.
- recursive 2y ago
  Who said net zero? Perfect is the enemy of good.
  - jimjimjim 2y ago
    Comments like these need to be included in almost any discussion about transport or in fact any discussion about any change. Most people (or both sides) dismiss ideas because they are not 100% perfect. And ignore the fact that nothing can be perfect
    - jujube3 2y ago
      If we only do a little bit, we'll only accomplish a little bit.
      - recursive 2y ago
        Yes, we'd better not do a little bit. Surely then, we'll accomplish a lot.
        jujube3 2y ago
        Perhaps we could spend the billions on electric cars rather than on unused bicycle lanes.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Who said net zero? OP is expressing dismay at EVs and suggesting building bike lanes instead. (Not in addition to.) The latter doesn’t solve the problem the former is being built to address. More bikes is nice. More EVs are necessary. Suggesting more bikes as an alternative to EVs isn’t perfect versus good, it’s fielding rubber ducks against battleships.
    - recursive 2y ago
      > Not in addition to Interesting. I didn't read that at all, but now this conversation makes a little more sense. But suggesting bike lanes, not positioned as an replacement to cars, is a great idea.
robocat 2y ago
It is outrageously expensive. "Building 101km of cycleways across Christchurch to cost $301m", population 405000, So that is $750 per person, which is about 1% of median earnings for a year. That is paid for mostly by car owners (via petrol tax and car tax) and a bit by home owners. And the new infrastructure is visibly under-utilised - at best a few % of traffic. You could force people to bike using laws and economics I guess... I would be interested to see a per-trip cost analysis for cyclists. There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes everywhere - bikes are great for some trips and some demographics. Can you point me to a report that has a cost/benefit analysis of adding bike lanes for a city? A city that isn't "ideal" for cyclists...
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  > There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes everywhere Roads pre-date cars. Cars muscled in and took over, forced humans off the roads onto sidewalks. Now car drivers say it cannot be economically justified for people to move around outside cars? This is "car-brain" thinking. If the cars were banned, people could walk and cycle and wheelchair and skate on the roads their taxes are already paying for. They aren't "car roads", they are just roads - cycles are allowed on them. Car drivers don't want to share, don't want to slow down, keep hitting and killing people, can't control their vehicles safely, so demand cyclists be moved somewhere else - then complain about the cost of doing that! People say cars have taken over, they want somewhere safe from the dangers of cars, car drivers say no it's too expensive to make yourself safe from me commuting through the places you live and work! It's crazy land. As if the only reason Christchurch exists at all is for cars to drive through. Can you point to a report that has a cost/beneift analysis of each individual road in Christchurch? Because when Urban3 set out to find out that kind of thing in USA and Canadian cities[2] they found that the dense urban centers ("poor") were the parts of a city with enough tax revenue to cover their infrastructure costs, and the sparse suburbs ("rich") were being subsidised by them. The people in city center apartments, possibly without cars, possibly transit riders, pay for the sprawling suburbs which need long roads and infrastructure serving relatively few houses and businesses, which don't generate enough revenue to pay for those roads, sewers, water pipes, storm drains, electricity supply, etc. New Zealand $301M is about £139M in UK pounds. Wikipedia has a list of road projects in the UK[1],including: - Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet. 16 km, £507 million. - Morpeth and Felton, 12.9Km, £260M. (Morpeth population: 14k) - M54 to M6 motorway link road, 2.5km, £200M. - Shrewsbury North West Relief Road, 6km, estimated £120M (population: 77k). - Arundel bypass, cost £320M (population: 3.5k). - Newark-upon-Trent bypass, 6.5Km, cost £400-£500M (population: 30k). Building more roads doesn't reduce traffic. It makes driving easier, quicker, more convenient, which increases the temptation to drive, increases the number of journeys, incentivises and encourages driving, makes traffic worse. Can you point me to a cost/benefit analysis of spending half a billion pounds on one of these road schemes to "reduce traffic" by doing something that doesn't reduce traffic, something that makes traffic worse? Spending 2-10x the cost of rail per km, while moving 1/20th the amount of people compared to rail, polluting more than rail? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_projects_in_the_UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_projects_in_the_U... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Bike lanes and bikes aren't alternatives to most of what motorized transport is providing.
- wbl 2y ago
  Most car trips are very short, and commuting to a CBD is easily served by transit.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    That still doesn't solve last mile supply of stores and offices, nor does it solve construction, policing, emergency services, etc. Each of those likely has possible alternatives to motorized transport, but they're all different alternatives. Meanwhile, today, they all share the same road network with regular civilian commute, sharing costs and mutually improving efficiency. Put differently: instead of imagining all passenger cars replaced by bikes, imagine all roads replaced by bike lanes, then extrapolate from that.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Most middle-class people, especially parents of small children, aren't going straight back and forth between home and work. They're making other stops for day care, school, shopping, after-school activities, gym, etc. Often there are tight time constraints which make public transit unusable. Like it would be impossible to use transit to pick my daughter up from school and get her to practice on time. It's a constant juggle and the childless young urbanites who dominate HN seem to be ignorant of how regular people live.
    - RugnirViking 2y ago
      I find it so weird that people constantly speak as though public transport is this hypothetical maybe like a moon base or something. I use exclusively public transport, bikes, and walking. My whole family (with children) does. It's just not a problem. Children walk or cycle to and from school. By themselves. When they're very young their parents did go and pick them up sure, but then its a small school within walking distance. We rented a car and a trailer for a couple hours recently to move a double bed. It posed no problem, and was dramatically cheaper than owning a car for a month would be even if the car itself was free. I got a nice cabinet for my friend recently. We are going to take the drawers out and move it to his place on a bus. I don't think it would fit in your car.
at_compile_time 2y ago
The problem with car-dependent cities is that they are very spread out. Why does public transit suck and why don't many people use the bike lanes? Because everything is far away. We've built our cities this way. Our tax system encourages it (by not taxing land value directly and exempting development from taxation), and our zoning requires it (my city is almost entirely zoned exclusively for single-family detached housing). Bike lanes are nice, but they don't make a 25-km ride through endless suburbia any shorter. You can't just copy the superficial traits of bikeable European cities and hope to get the same results. We need to fundamentally rethink the way our cities are allowed and encouraged to grow.
- nradov 2y ago
  I don't use the bike lanes because most of the places I go don't have secure bike parking. I'm worried my bike will be stolen, and the local police don't take bike theft seriously. Some of the local dedicated bike trails have been essentially taken over as homeless camps, which are ironically full of stolen bike parts.
  - aziaziazi 2y ago
    Your concern of theft is a dominent reason cited for not using bikes in wester countries. Interestingly, bike theft per capita is higher in bike paradise like NL and Copenhagen while ranking in the least concerns of those users.
    - kelipso 2y ago
      That’s the x thing is higher in higher population areas problem. You have to calculate the probability of your bike being stolen if you have a bike. So not bike thefts per capita but bike thefts per bike owner.

It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.

by wbl 2y ago

It's not that expensive to put down a bike lane.

> not that expensive to put down a bike lane Scale-wise insufficient. We aren’t going to get to net zero with bike lanes.

recursive 2y ago
Who said net zero? Perfect is the enemy of good.
- jimjimjim 2y ago
  Comments like these need to be included in almost any discussion about transport or in fact any discussion about any change. Most people (or both sides) dismiss ideas because they are not 100% perfect. And ignore the fact that nothing can be perfect
  - jujube3 2y ago
    If we only do a little bit, we'll only accomplish a little bit.
    - recursive 2y ago
      Yes, we'd better not do a little bit. Surely then, we'll accomplish a lot.
      - jujube3 2y ago
        Perhaps we could spend the billions on electric cars rather than on unused bicycle lanes.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Who said net zero? OP is expressing dismay at EVs and suggesting building bike lanes instead. (Not in addition to.) The latter doesn’t solve the problem the former is being built to address. More bikes is nice. More EVs are necessary. Suggesting more bikes as an alternative to EVs isn’t perfect versus good, it’s fielding rubber ducks against battleships.
  - recursive 2y ago
    > Not in addition to Interesting. I didn't read that at all, but now this conversation makes a little more sense. But suggesting bike lanes, not positioned as an replacement to cars, is a great idea.

robocat 2y ago

It is outrageously expensive. "Building 101km of cycleways across Christchurch to cost $301m", population 405000, So that is $750 per person, which is about 1% of median earnings for a year. That is paid for mostly by car owners (via petrol tax and car tax) and a bit by home owners. And the new infrastructure is visibly under-utilised - at best a few % of traffic. You could force people to bike using laws and economics I guess... I would be interested to see a per-trip cost analysis for cyclists. There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes everywhere - bikes are great for some trips and some demographics. Can you point me to a report that has a cost/benefit analysis of adding bike lanes for a city? A city that isn't "ideal" for cyclists...

jodrellblank 2y ago
> There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes everywhere Roads pre-date cars. Cars muscled in and took over, forced humans off the roads onto sidewalks. Now car drivers say it cannot be economically justified for people to move around outside cars? This is "car-brain" thinking. If the cars were banned, people could walk and cycle and wheelchair and skate on the roads their taxes are already paying for. They aren't "car roads", they are just roads - cycles are allowed on them. Car drivers don't want to share, don't want to slow down, keep hitting and killing people, can't control their vehicles safely, so demand cyclists be moved somewhere else - then complain about the cost of doing that! People say cars have taken over, they want somewhere safe from the dangers of cars, car drivers say no it's too expensive to make yourself safe from me commuting through the places you live and work! It's crazy land. As if the only reason Christchurch exists at all is for cars to drive through. Can you point to a report that has a cost/beneift analysis of each individual road in Christchurch? Because when Urban3 set out to find out that kind of thing in USA and Canadian cities[2] they found that the dense urban centers ("poor") were the parts of a city with enough tax revenue to cover their infrastructure costs, and the sparse suburbs ("rich") were being subsidised by them. The people in city center apartments, possibly without cars, possibly transit riders, pay for the sprawling suburbs which need long roads and infrastructure serving relatively few houses and businesses, which don't generate enough revenue to pay for those roads, sewers, water pipes, storm drains, electricity supply, etc. New Zealand $301M is about £139M in UK pounds. Wikipedia has a list of road projects in the UK[1],including: - Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet. 16 km, £507 million. - Morpeth and Felton, 12.9Km, £260M. (Morpeth population: 14k) - M54 to M6 motorway link road, 2.5km, £200M. - Shrewsbury North West Relief Road, 6km, estimated £120M (population: 77k). - Arundel bypass, cost £320M (population: 3.5k). - Newark-upon-Trent bypass, 6.5Km, cost £400-£500M (population: 30k). Building more roads doesn't reduce traffic. It makes driving easier, quicker, more convenient, which increases the temptation to drive, increases the number of journeys, incentivises and encourages driving, makes traffic worse. Can you point me to a cost/benefit analysis of spending half a billion pounds on one of these road schemes to "reduce traffic" by doing something that doesn't reduce traffic, something that makes traffic worse? Spending 2-10x the cost of rail per km, while moving 1/20th the amount of people compared to rail, polluting more than rail? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_projects_in_the_UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_projects_in_the_U... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

TeMPOraL 2y ago

Bike lanes and bikes aren't alternatives to most of what motorized transport is providing.

wbl 2y ago
Most car trips are very short, and commuting to a CBD is easily served by transit.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  That still doesn't solve last mile supply of stores and offices, nor does it solve construction, policing, emergency services, etc. Each of those likely has possible alternatives to motorized transport, but they're all different alternatives. Meanwhile, today, they all share the same road network with regular civilian commute, sharing costs and mutually improving efficiency. Put differently: instead of imagining all passenger cars replaced by bikes, imagine all roads replaced by bike lanes, then extrapolate from that.
- nradov 2y ago
  Most middle-class people, especially parents of small children, aren't going straight back and forth between home and work. They're making other stops for day care, school, shopping, after-school activities, gym, etc. Often there are tight time constraints which make public transit unusable. Like it would be impossible to use transit to pick my daughter up from school and get her to practice on time. It's a constant juggle and the childless young urbanites who dominate HN seem to be ignorant of how regular people live.
  - RugnirViking 2y ago
    I find it so weird that people constantly speak as though public transport is this hypothetical maybe like a moon base or something. I use exclusively public transport, bikes, and walking. My whole family (with children) does. It's just not a problem. Children walk or cycle to and from school. By themselves. When they're very young their parents did go and pick them up sure, but then its a small school within walking distance. We rented a car and a trailer for a couple hours recently to move a double bed. It posed no problem, and was dramatically cheaper than owning a car for a month would be even if the car itself was free. I got a nice cabinet for my friend recently. We are going to take the drawers out and move it to his place on a bus. I don't think it would fit in your car.

at_compile_time 2y ago

The problem with car-dependent cities is that they are very spread out. Why does public transit suck and why don't many people use the bike lanes? Because everything is far away. We've built our cities this way. Our tax system encourages it (by not taxing land value directly and exempting development from taxation), and our zoning requires it (my city is almost entirely zoned exclusively for single-family detached housing). Bike lanes are nice, but they don't make a 25-km ride through endless suburbia any shorter. You can't just copy the superficial traits of bikeable European cities and hope to get the same results. We need to fundamentally rethink the way our cities are allowed and encouraged to grow.

nradov 2y ago
I don't use the bike lanes because most of the places I go don't have secure bike parking. I'm worried my bike will be stolen, and the local police don't take bike theft seriously. Some of the local dedicated bike trails have been essentially taken over as homeless camps, which are ironically full of stolen bike parts.
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  Your concern of theft is a dominent reason cited for not using bikes in wester countries. Interestingly, bike theft per capita is higher in bike paradise like NL and Copenhagen while ranking in the least concerns of those users.
  - kelipso 2y ago
    That’s the x thing is higher in higher population areas problem. You have to calculate the probability of your bike being stolen if you have a bike. So not bike thefts per capita but bike thefts per bike owner.