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That would work really well here in Texas. My job takes me nearly an hour to reach by car. You can basically fit all of Europe in Texas with a little rearrangem

That would work really well here in Texas. My job takes me nearly an hour to reach by car. You can basically fit all of Europe in Texas with a little rearrangement. Scale matters.

maxerickson 13y ago
Does the scale matter? I can see the availability of space putting pressure on such projects, because lower property costs will take precedence over something that is considered a fringe lifestyle, but I thought the usual reason it is impossible to bike in Texas was the weather. With less snide, I don't see why a bike friendly neighborhood would cause any extra problems for a Texan.
- bane 13y ago
  Supposing weather wasn't a factor, yes scale matters a lot. The metro area I live and work covers something like over 10,000 square miles (>25,000 square km or about 12.5 times the area of the Amsterdam metro area or more than half of all of the area of the Netherlands) and almost 10 million people. Jobs and living locations rarely intersect for more than a year or two at a time, plus my wife has her own career and work locations. I do not live near even a top-20 U.S. city. The job I work today has multiple work locations right now, 10.5 miles, 35 miles and 60 miles from my home. The 10.5 mile site, while possible for biking distance-wise, is also the site of my customer's management. Showing up in a sweaty suit from an 17 km ride on a bike simply won't work and it's not like there's a shower and changing area for me there. My previous job had two locations, 5 miles and 15 miles away from my home, but in completely different directions than this one. My next job might have completely different work locations 20 or 30 miles in any different direction. I can't simply pick up my entire family and move a reasonable bike ride away from my work site. Or the contracts I perform work on might change and my work sites will change drastically even with the current job. My wife also works and has her own location dynamics, 12 miles, and 25 miles away. If I were to move close to one of my work sites, it would drastically increase hers.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Right. So do you think living in a bike friendly neighborhood would make owning a car more difficult, or the existence of a bike friendly neighborhood would have a huge impact on a car necessary suburb? I do understand that people react to the 'way forward' tone of such articles.
    - bane 13y ago
      > living in a bike friendly neighborhood I don't think it would matter. (to put it into perspective, the average U.S. commute is about the equivalent of Rotterdam to Amsterdam, about a 3 and a half hour bike ride). I actually live in a pretty bike friendly suburb right now. We have something like 10-12 miles of trails in my neighborhood and nearby links to a very nice and flat 35 mile dedicated bike trail right now -- we even have a very nice bike shop I can comfortably walk to. You see people biking around on weekends and nice weather evenings. But for what I need to do to live here (hold down a job) biking to work is so far from a possibility that even thinking of it seems absurd. On that days I telecommute, I don't need to bike, and when I'm not telecommuting a 40-120 mile round trip on hard high speed highway with cars moving at over 60mph is a suicide mission. The infrastructure is simply not there and I'd estimate it would take hundreds of billions of dollars to reform even small high density parts of the metro area to accommodate mass biking in any sort impactful numbers. In one of the major city centers here, there is a big bike movement, but my friends who live there describe it as "dodging bullets in Iraq or NYC bike courier" in terms of rider safety. So if I had a shower and a changing area at the closest work site, I'd still need about 11 miles of dedicated bike lane to get there instead of riding on a very dangerous shoulder and my trip would take about twice to three times as long. Looking at how expensive it is to get minor road widenings done around here, I'd estimate the infrastructure cost of just that one short leg to be in the $100-200 million dollar range. The differences in the U.S. to accommodate Netherlands style biking are unbelievably vast. Painting some bike lane markers is not really even remotely a solution. The principal problem is that fundamentally people don't really live where they work. There's lots of reasons for this, but that's where we're at. Average commute distance and time in the U.S. is tremendous. It seems insane, and in many ways it is. But that's just how the society developed. To really solve the problem will require vast sociological shifts in very big parts of the country. Having very few pre-car cities is another. There's hope, one of the high density commercial areas is currently being redeveloped due to 4 new subway stops to better accommodate walkability and biking. The plan will take about 40 years. Nobody knows how much it will cost, but the current estimate just for some of the transport infrastructure is around $9 billion. The area has a population of under 20,000 people. The work will allow for 80,000 more residents to live there. If anybody wants to get a good look at what it takes to reform even a small part of a modern American area, they should give the comprehensive plan a good read through. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpz/comprehensiveplan/area2/tysons1.pdf http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpz/comprehensiveplan/area2/tys... Another nearby center is also very walkable/bikeable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_VA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_VA Eventually both of those two centers will be linked by the same subway system and then, just possibly, we might have one of the better bikeable areas in the U.S. But it's a very long way off still.
arethuza 13y ago
"You can basically fit all of Europe in Texas with a little rearrangement." That's a bit puzzling as Europe has a larger area (10,180,000 km2) than the United States (9,826,675 km2). Did you mean the EU - which still has an area (4,381,376 km2) that is way larger than Texas (696,241 km2). Even if you restrict yourself to Western European countries (whatever that means, it's pretty much a relic of the long dead Cold War): Texas ~= France + Greece, leaving quite a lot left over...
mjn 13y ago
Even places of similar scale and population density in the U.S. fare poorly. New Jersey is half the size of The Netherlands, with a similar population density, but is very car-oriented anyway.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Shh, you're interfering with their wimpy excuses that they use to conceal the fact that they just really don't like cycling.
Segmentation 13y ago
"My job takes me nearly an hour to reach by car." I read this a lot but I think, in order for the U.S. to transition to bicycle friendly towns, you long-distance commuters are going to be initially excluded. Most people are not commuting your distance. Most people live in a town, and work in the town. Most people commute at most 16 KM (10 miles) or less. We need to focus on bike infrastructure in each town first, and then think about building bike highways to connect towns. (My idea has always been put protected bike lanes parallel freeways/highways)
URSpider94 13y ago
People do this in the Netherlands, but not as many. They cycle to the train station, take the train, and then cycle to work at the other end. Long-distance trains move along pretty well -- it takes two hours to drive from Eindhoven to Amsterdam (assuming you don't hit one of the notorious traffic jams), but only 1:20 by train. As I mentioned in another comment, people either keep a bike at both stations, or they buy a folding bike and carry it on the train with them.

That would work really well here in Texas. My job takes me nearly an hour to reach by car. You can basically fit all of Europe in Texas with a little rearrangement. Scale matters.

maxerickson 13y ago

Does the scale matter? I can see the availability of space putting pressure on such projects, because lower property costs will take precedence over something that is considered a fringe lifestyle, but I thought the usual reason it is impossible to bike in Texas was the weather. With less snide, I don't see why a bike friendly neighborhood would cause any extra problems for a Texan.

bane 13y ago
Supposing weather wasn't a factor, yes scale matters a lot. The metro area I live and work covers something like over 10,000 square miles (>25,000 square km or about 12.5 times the area of the Amsterdam metro area or more than half of all of the area of the Netherlands) and almost 10 million people. Jobs and living locations rarely intersect for more than a year or two at a time, plus my wife has her own career and work locations. I do not live near even a top-20 U.S. city. The job I work today has multiple work locations right now, 10.5 miles, 35 miles and 60 miles from my home. The 10.5 mile site, while possible for biking distance-wise, is also the site of my customer's management. Showing up in a sweaty suit from an 17 km ride on a bike simply won't work and it's not like there's a shower and changing area for me there. My previous job had two locations, 5 miles and 15 miles away from my home, but in completely different directions than this one. My next job might have completely different work locations 20 or 30 miles in any different direction. I can't simply pick up my entire family and move a reasonable bike ride away from my work site. Or the contracts I perform work on might change and my work sites will change drastically even with the current job. My wife also works and has her own location dynamics, 12 miles, and 25 miles away. If I were to move close to one of my work sites, it would drastically increase hers.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Right. So do you think living in a bike friendly neighborhood would make owning a car more difficult, or the existence of a bike friendly neighborhood would have a huge impact on a car necessary suburb? I do understand that people react to the 'way forward' tone of such articles.
  - bane 13y ago
    > living in a bike friendly neighborhood I don't think it would matter. (to put it into perspective, the average U.S. commute is about the equivalent of Rotterdam to Amsterdam, about a 3 and a half hour bike ride). I actually live in a pretty bike friendly suburb right now. We have something like 10-12 miles of trails in my neighborhood and nearby links to a very nice and flat 35 mile dedicated bike trail right now -- we even have a very nice bike shop I can comfortably walk to. You see people biking around on weekends and nice weather evenings. But for what I need to do to live here (hold down a job) biking to work is so far from a possibility that even thinking of it seems absurd. On that days I telecommute, I don't need to bike, and when I'm not telecommuting a 40-120 mile round trip on hard high speed highway with cars moving at over 60mph is a suicide mission. The infrastructure is simply not there and I'd estimate it would take hundreds of billions of dollars to reform even small high density parts of the metro area to accommodate mass biking in any sort impactful numbers. In one of the major city centers here, there is a big bike movement, but my friends who live there describe it as "dodging bullets in Iraq or NYC bike courier" in terms of rider safety. So if I had a shower and a changing area at the closest work site, I'd still need about 11 miles of dedicated bike lane to get there instead of riding on a very dangerous shoulder and my trip would take about twice to three times as long. Looking at how expensive it is to get minor road widenings done around here, I'd estimate the infrastructure cost of just that one short leg to be in the $100-200 million dollar range. The differences in the U.S. to accommodate Netherlands style biking are unbelievably vast. Painting some bike lane markers is not really even remotely a solution. The principal problem is that fundamentally people don't really live where they work. There's lots of reasons for this, but that's where we're at. Average commute distance and time in the U.S. is tremendous. It seems insane, and in many ways it is. But that's just how the society developed. To really solve the problem will require vast sociological shifts in very big parts of the country. Having very few pre-car cities is another. There's hope, one of the high density commercial areas is currently being redeveloped due to 4 new subway stops to better accommodate walkability and biking. The plan will take about 40 years. Nobody knows how much it will cost, but the current estimate just for some of the transport infrastructure is around $9 billion. The area has a population of under 20,000 people. The work will allow for 80,000 more residents to live there. If anybody wants to get a good look at what it takes to reform even a small part of a modern American area, they should give the comprehensive plan a good read through. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpz/comprehensiveplan/area2/tysons1.pdf http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpz/comprehensiveplan/area2/tys... Another nearby center is also very walkable/bikeable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_VA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_VA Eventually both of those two centers will be linked by the same subway system and then, just possibly, we might have one of the better bikeable areas in the U.S. But it's a very long way off still.

arethuza 13y ago

"You can basically fit all of Europe in Texas with a little rearrangement." That's a bit puzzling as Europe has a larger area (10,180,000 km2) than the United States (9,826,675 km2). Did you mean the EU - which still has an area (4,381,376 km2) that is way larger than Texas (696,241 km2). Even if you restrict yourself to Western European countries (whatever that means, it's pretty much a relic of the long dead Cold War): Texas ~= France + Greece, leaving quite a lot left over...

mjn 13y ago

Even places of similar scale and population density in the U.S. fare poorly. New Jersey is half the size of The Netherlands, with a similar population density, but is very car-oriented anyway.

Pxtl 13y ago
Shh, you're interfering with their wimpy excuses that they use to conceal the fact that they just really don't like cycling.

Segmentation 13y ago

"My job takes me nearly an hour to reach by car." I read this a lot but I think, in order for the U.S. to transition to bicycle friendly towns, you long-distance commuters are going to be initially excluded. Most people are not commuting your distance. Most people live in a town, and work in the town. Most people commute at most 16 KM (10 miles) or less. We need to focus on bike infrastructure in each town first, and then think about building bike highways to connect towns. (My idea has always been put protected bike lanes parallel freeways/highways)

URSpider94 13y ago

People do this in the Netherlands, but not as many. They cycle to the train station, take the train, and then cycle to work at the other end. Long-distance trains move along pretty well -- it takes two hours to drive from Eindhoven to Amsterdam (assuming you don't hit one of the notorious traffic jams), but only 1:20 by train. As I mentioned in another comment, people either keep a bike at both stations, or they buy a folding bike and carry it on the train with them.