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> Why does this ramp suck so much? For literally the exact same effort it took to build, it could have been built 10x better. Make the angle 20 degrees instead

> Why does this ramp suck so much? For literally the exact same effort it took to build, it could have been built 10x better. Make the angle 20 degrees instead of 70. Put the ramp just after the sign instead of just before it. Make the far curb face sloped instead of vertical. Put some visual indication the lane ends 50 feet uphill. Why wasn't this done? > Because the engineer who designed it and the managers at the department of transportation do not give a shit. No the reasons are likely wholly political. It's clear from the photo that doing the bike ramp better would require more space. It would require moving that street sign. It could require allocating less space to cars and more to sidewalk, pedestrians and cyclists. These are financial decisions and political decisions. Spending money on cyclists is a political lightning rod that special interest groups will fight at all costs to maintain the automobile oriented status quo. Spending money is aggressively fought at all costs in an effort to keep property taxes as low as possible. Engineers and policy people are not lazy they are constrained by aggressive political special interest groups. > These new lights objectively suck to anyone not driving. hint hint. It's almost as if the decisions are being made for car drivers and not pedestrians. This is a political choice driven by special interest groups that seek to preserve 1950s era thinking automobile dominated status quo. The author assumes that everything sucks because everyone is lazy and stupid but the reality is everything sucks because it's massively underfunded.

avalys 2y ago
Umm, in 99% of the US, cyclists and pedestrians are definitely the special interest group, and the vast majority of voters and especially taxpayers want to see the transportation infrastructure optimized for cars.
- EliBullockPapa 2y ago
  Well damn I guess I’m living in the 1% /s
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Karrot_Kream 2y ago
  Minority groups are not the same thing as special interest groups. Special interest groups usually have undue money, resources, or power given their size.
- grajaganDev 2y ago
  Many cyclist are also drivers.
- bccdee 2y ago
  Yeah, they shouldn't. Cars are a terrible mode of urban transit. They should all get bikes and bus passes, and then everyone would get everywhere quickly and cheaply and without deadly collisions. Everyone complains about traffic, but nobody realizes that traffic is just what it's like to drive in a city. Stop driving.
deeg 2y ago
I have a friend who sees what he thinks is a problem and starts off with "I don't know why they just didn't...", as if he could come up with a better solution in 2 minutes of thinking than experts in the field. The reality is that he just doesn't know all the competing interests and problems. The article feels the same way.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Knowing that there is a reason just boils down to the same thing. You can overcome the forced working against you if you care enough, but nobody does.
  - potatoman22 2y ago
    I see this fallacy a lot in the US. I think it's because of our individualism. Attention and hard-work can't overcome everything, we aren't all-powerful beings.
  - NoGravitas 2y ago
    You're more likely to burn out butting your head against the incentives working against you. If you're lucky, you may get a few successes before you burn out.
  - rcxdude 2y ago
    If you care enough and have the resources available. It's rare for someone to care only about one specific thing like a bicycle ramp to put in the resources to make a difference, though. (i.e. my experience is that people do, on the whole, care. But they generally care about different things, and especially have different priorities in terms of how they allocate their resources, especially time. This blog is a rant about people caring about things that the author cares about, a lot of which are reasonable, but are not the be-all end-all of priorities)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Earw0rm 2y ago
LouisSayers 2y ago
> the reality is everything sucks because it's massively underfunded This may be the case for many things, but I would add that a lot of things suck because of conflicting incentives. Whether it's laziness or even because they are actually getting paid MORE to do the sucky thing. As an example, where I live a running joke is about the number of road cones whenever work is being done. They don't need THAT many road cones, but they put them there... why? I have no evidence, but I suspect someone is getting paid to add extra road cones - OR potentially another incentive is at play. The biggest one that gets me is traffic lights within roundabouts... how anyone thinks that is a good idea.... arghh #sigh :(
montag 2y ago
It's not necessarily that complicated. My mom likes to complain that the person who designed her new stove never cooked in their life. I think the simpler explanation is that the person who designed that ramp arrangement didn't cycle very much and just wasn't empathetic to riders flying down the hill. In other words, they didn't care.
- bccdee 2y ago
  No, there are very specific regulations around infrastructure design, including what sorts of curves are safe in bike lanes at which speeds. The reason that angle is that "sharp" (I don't think it's very sharp tbh) is because cyclists are explicitly not supposed to zoom up onto the sidewalk at 20 miles per hour. That's how you kill someone. If you're going too fast to make a 30-degree turn and avoid crashing, you're going too fast to be on the sidewalk. It's like complaining that the tight curves on a residential street make it unsafe to drive down it at 60mph. Anyway, the influence of the auto lobby on urban infrastructure is really well-established: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dependency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dependency
handity 2y ago
> Person with headphones blocking the sidewalk. Any normal sidewalk would be wide enough that a single person could not conceivably block it, and wearing headphones while walking, especially noise canceling ones, is popular because US cities are largely unpleasant, deafeningly loud places full of fast-moving cars.

avalys 2y ago

Umm, in 99% of the US, cyclists and pedestrians are definitely the special interest group, and the vast majority of voters and especially taxpayers want to see the transportation infrastructure optimized for cars.

EliBullockPapa 2y ago
Well damn I guess I’m living in the 1% /s
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Karrot_Kream 2y ago
Minority groups are not the same thing as special interest groups. Special interest groups usually have undue money, resources, or power given their size.
grajaganDev 2y ago
Many cyclist are also drivers.
bccdee 2y ago
Yeah, they shouldn't. Cars are a terrible mode of urban transit. They should all get bikes and bus passes, and then everyone would get everywhere quickly and cheaply and without deadly collisions. Everyone complains about traffic, but nobody realizes that traffic is just what it's like to drive in a city. Stop driving.

deeg 2y ago

I have a friend who sees what he thinks is a problem and starts off with "I don't know why they just didn't...", as if he could come up with a better solution in 2 minutes of thinking than experts in the field. The reality is that he just doesn't know all the competing interests and problems. The article feels the same way.

Aeolun 2y ago
Knowing that there is a reason just boils down to the same thing. You can overcome the forced working against you if you care enough, but nobody does.
- potatoman22 2y ago
  I see this fallacy a lot in the US. I think it's because of our individualism. Attention and hard-work can't overcome everything, we aren't all-powerful beings.
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  You're more likely to burn out butting your head against the incentives working against you. If you're lucky, you may get a few successes before you burn out.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  If you care enough and have the resources available. It's rare for someone to care only about one specific thing like a bicycle ramp to put in the resources to make a difference, though. (i.e. my experience is that people do, on the whole, care. But they generally care about different things, and especially have different priorities in terms of how they allocate their resources, especially time. This blog is a rant about people caring about things that the author cares about, a lot of which are reasonable, but are not the be-all end-all of priorities)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Earw0rm 2y ago

LouisSayers 2y ago

> the reality is everything sucks because it's massively underfunded This may be the case for many things, but I would add that a lot of things suck because of conflicting incentives. Whether it's laziness or even because they are actually getting paid MORE to do the sucky thing. As an example, where I live a running joke is about the number of road cones whenever work is being done. They don't need THAT many road cones, but they put them there... why? I have no evidence, but I suspect someone is getting paid to add extra road cones - OR potentially another incentive is at play. The biggest one that gets me is traffic lights within roundabouts... how anyone thinks that is a good idea.... arghh #sigh :(

montag 2y ago

It's not necessarily that complicated. My mom likes to complain that the person who designed her new stove never cooked in their life. I think the simpler explanation is that the person who designed that ramp arrangement didn't cycle very much and just wasn't empathetic to riders flying down the hill. In other words, they didn't care.

bccdee 2y ago
No, there are very specific regulations around infrastructure design, including what sorts of curves are safe in bike lanes at which speeds. The reason that angle is that "sharp" (I don't think it's very sharp tbh) is because cyclists are explicitly not supposed to zoom up onto the sidewalk at 20 miles per hour. That's how you kill someone. If you're going too fast to make a 30-degree turn and avoid crashing, you're going too fast to be on the sidewalk. It's like complaining that the tight curves on a residential street make it unsafe to drive down it at 60mph. Anyway, the influence of the auto lobby on urban infrastructure is really well-established: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dependency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dependency

handity 2y ago

> Person with headphones blocking the sidewalk. Any normal sidewalk would be wide enough that a single person could not conceivably block it, and wearing headphones while walking, especially noise canceling ones, is popular because US cities are largely unpleasant, deafeningly loud places full of fast-moving cars.