6 ms·

Because in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo or Singapore the weather is amazing all the time - this must be a reason for all the bikers there... You prefer comfort ove

by funkyy 12y ago

Because in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo or Singapore the weather is amazing all the time - this must be a reason for all the bikers there... You prefer comfort over bikes - we get it. But bicycling is not "uncivilized madness". Its common way of transportation in most of the world (with exception of majority of the US). Healthy as well (much more healthy than gym).

mikeash 12y ago
Is it really "most of the world"? Living in France for a couple of years, and visiting London, Rome, and various other parts in that direction, I didn't see any more bicycle traffic than I see in the US. The one place where I have seen a lot of bicycles is Beijing, but that has completely disappeared in the past few years. I wish we could discuss these things without turning it into a "the US is strange and stupid" whinefest.
- bane 12y ago
  No, bike riding is incredibly uncommon the world over. Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect terrain. Edit: keep down voting in spite of your own ignorance. I've been lots of places the world over, and not seen lots of bikes outside of very very few areas with near perfect conditions for them.
  - stinos 12y ago
    It's not our ignorance that downvotes you, rather the opposite: the knowledge you are not making sense.
    - alphapapa 12y ago
      Everything he said is simple truth. Your comment is the equivalent of, "Lalala I can't hear you." You can do better than argument by assertion.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
        > Everything he said is simple truth. ...You can do better than argument by assertion. Why change now? It's assertions all the way down.
    - bane 12y ago
      Which part exactly doesn't make sense? Illuminate me why cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't? Because apparently everybody outside of the Northwest Coast of the U.S. and the Netherlands must be idiots and morons who are simply overlooking a hassle-free and convenient utopia because they've been tricked by the big car and oil companies to prefer to get most places in the faster, lower effort, climate controlled and more convenient alternative. Oh I'm sorry, this is apparently a religious issue and faith with get me over all practical issues.
      - stinos 12y ago
        cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't Nobody ever made this claim, so there's no way to illuminate you about it. Same goes for the part about the idiots and morons. Which part exactly doesn't make sense For instance the part where you say Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect. That is merely a generalized opinion.
        bane 12y ago
        Yup, absolutely no illumination provided. Within this thread, I've provided support for the idea as well as anecdotes and data as to why more bike lanes won't get the average person on a bike. I've been downvoted and refuted with no particular counter argument leading me to believe that this is a religious issue and not a factual one. Bikers believe everybody should bike, and people who give reasons why they don't are summarily dismissed. I'm sorry if I offended your religion.
        alphapapa 12y ago
        The dogmatic downvoting here is disappointing (no alliteration intended). You seem to be right. Reason doesn't work. I know there are reasonable cyclists, but few are speaking up here.
  - cylinder 12y ago
    Driving is convenient when all variables are optimized: when there's lots of free parking, no traffic, no reckless/drunk drivers, good safe roads, gas is cheap, etc etc. But as we all know, driving in major cities is no longer optimal. Any city that chooses driving over all other modes of transportation has deliberately decided it is closed for further growth at some point. Once you reach that critical population point, car-dependent life just becomes hell.
    - bane 12y ago
      100% agreed. I'm heartened that lots of new development is taking a mindful approach to smarter, mixed-use design centered around mass transit. It feels like, in the U.S. at least, we're on the cusp of a major transformation in some areas. Unfortunately, for millions and millions of people, the city is viewed as a work location, not a living location. Building bike friendly infrastructure ends at the city limits and needs inter-government coordination and cooperation to achieve door-to-door biking. If you've ever dipped your toes in cross-county or other inter-government initiatives, you'll know that this is an extremely difficult proposition.
- sleepyhead 12y ago
  Is there any other country that is built for individual automobile transportation the way the US is? I haven't been to France but have you been to Amsterdam, Berlin or Copenhagen? It is perfectly valid to criticize US without it being "the US is strange and stupid"
  - bane 12y ago
    Yeah sure. Australia struck me as very "american" in feeling. Lots of the new Chinese development is specially car friendly. Same with new Russian development. I was surprised with how unfriendly Ireland was to anything but a car.
    - hessenwolf 12y ago
      It's amazing when you get further out into the country in the Republic. There's almost no option to safely get down the road unless you are in a vehicle.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    It's perfectly valid to criticize the US based on how the US is. It's not valid to criticize it based on some notion that the US is unique in a way that it is not. I have no problem with stuff like "the US should...." Where I have a problem is with "everybody else does it another way" when it's just not true. Aside from adopting the metric system, I can't think of any legitimate criticism that fits that mold. Bicycles certainly don't seem to.
bane 12y ago
In four total weeks in London, I can count on 1 hand the number of cyclists I saw. Never been to Tokyo or Singapore, but if they're anything like Seoul, where I've spent months, riding a bike in the streets is both playing Russian Roulette and virtually impossible on account of the bad terrain (and for pretty much all the same reasons I brought up earlier). You also have almost no place to store them given the size of the average apartment. Outside of dedicated parks, I've almost never seen a person on a bike their either. I've been to dozens of countries on almost every continent, and bikes are a very uncommon mode of transportation. That's why places like the Netherlands, where it is common, are so notable. If it was common, we wouldn't care. Rather than being snarky, what's your suggestion for overcoming these practical and social issues?
- stingraycharles 12y ago
  Electric cars are a very uncommon mode of transportation too. Should we therefor not care about promoting that method of transportation? No, because then the status quo would never change. The article discussed in this thread brings up one suggestion for overcoming practical issues. There are many, many more (proven) solutions to choose from -- when you make bicycle transportation pleasant enough, people will start using it. If the "social issues" you talk about are because there's a group of people who thinks transportation by bicycle is uncivilized, I think it is a matter of education and tolerance. Once using bikes is common in a country, you will see that the only social issues are about people having unjustified fears (about the implications of considering bicycles as a method of transportation during city planning) and there are no real social issues other than people being dicks.
  - bane 12y ago
    I don't have to rebuild every major piece of transport infrastructure to support electric cars. Social issues refer to body odor my bike riding colleagues carry around with them all day because our workplace doesn't have a shower.
    - andrewliebchen 12y ago
megablast 12y ago
And Australia, which has amazing weather for cycling, mostly flat cities, wide roads, has hardly any cyclists. Because it is so cheap to drive.
- stonith 12y ago
  Canberra has quite a lot, and very good coverage of bike paths + lanes. I commuted by bike by default for about 6 years there, and got the bus when it was raining. Now that I live in Sydney I don't ride at all - I just don't feel safe.
- stephen_g 12y ago
  That's a bit of a big generalisation... I live in the third largest city in Australia. Much of it is ridiculously hilly, the weather is usually stinking hot (apart from a few weeks of 'winter'), but we have plenty of cyclists... Not as many as the average European country but definitely enough to be annoying when you're driving!
  - girvo 12y ago
    Amen. I work in the valley and live in Red Hill, which, as you can tell by the name, is crazily steep. Anyway, we still have stacks of cyclists around here (and Paddington). Personally I walk and get the bus.
SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
> Because in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo or Singapore the weather is amazing all the time Either you're being sarcastic or you have never spent time in London.
- cylinder 12y ago
  How could you not understand that was sarcastic?
  - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
    Because discerning tone from ascii text is hard. How could you not have come across that fact before? There's even a law about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law Also because is followup reference to "all the bikers there" is straight-up true, there are loads of bikers in London, really, though it doesn't follow from the statement before. Is that an attempt at sarcasm that fails because of a failed attempt at a false statement? Who knows. Why can't funkyy just say what they mean? Who knows.

by funkyy 12y ago

mikeash 12y ago

Is it really "most of the world"? Living in France for a couple of years, and visiting London, Rome, and various other parts in that direction, I didn't see any more bicycle traffic than I see in the US. The one place where I have seen a lot of bicycles is Beijing, but that has completely disappeared in the past few years. I wish we could discuss these things without turning it into a "the US is strange and stupid" whinefest.

bane 12y ago
No, bike riding is incredibly uncommon the world over. Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect terrain. Edit: keep down voting in spite of your own ignorance. I've been lots of places the world over, and not seen lots of bikes outside of very very few areas with near perfect conditions for them.
- stinos 12y ago
  It's not our ignorance that downvotes you, rather the opposite: the knowledge you are not making sense.
  - alphapapa 12y ago
    Everything he said is simple truth. Your comment is the equivalent of, "Lalala I can't hear you." You can do better than argument by assertion.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
      > Everything he said is simple truth. ...You can do better than argument by assertion. Why change now? It's assertions all the way down.
  - bane 12y ago
    Which part exactly doesn't make sense? Illuminate me why cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't? Because apparently everybody outside of the Northwest Coast of the U.S. and the Netherlands must be idiots and morons who are simply overlooking a hassle-free and convenient utopia because they've been tricked by the big car and oil companies to prefer to get most places in the faster, lower effort, climate controlled and more convenient alternative. Oh I'm sorry, this is apparently a religious issue and faith with get me over all practical issues.
    - stinos 12y ago
      cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't Nobody ever made this claim, so there's no way to illuminate you about it. Same goes for the part about the idiots and morons. Which part exactly doesn't make sense For instance the part where you say Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect. That is merely a generalized opinion.
      - bane 12y ago
        Yup, absolutely no illumination provided. Within this thread, I've provided support for the idea as well as anecdotes and data as to why more bike lanes won't get the average person on a bike. I've been downvoted and refuted with no particular counter argument leading me to believe that this is a religious issue and not a factual one. Bikers believe everybody should bike, and people who give reasons why they don't are summarily dismissed. I'm sorry if I offended your religion.
        alphapapa 12y ago
        The dogmatic downvoting here is disappointing (no alliteration intended). You seem to be right. Reason doesn't work. I know there are reasonable cyclists, but few are speaking up here.
- cylinder 12y ago
  Driving is convenient when all variables are optimized: when there's lots of free parking, no traffic, no reckless/drunk drivers, good safe roads, gas is cheap, etc etc. But as we all know, driving in major cities is no longer optimal. Any city that chooses driving over all other modes of transportation has deliberately decided it is closed for further growth at some point. Once you reach that critical population point, car-dependent life just becomes hell.
  - bane 12y ago
    100% agreed. I'm heartened that lots of new development is taking a mindful approach to smarter, mixed-use design centered around mass transit. It feels like, in the U.S. at least, we're on the cusp of a major transformation in some areas. Unfortunately, for millions and millions of people, the city is viewed as a work location, not a living location. Building bike friendly infrastructure ends at the city limits and needs inter-government coordination and cooperation to achieve door-to-door biking. If you've ever dipped your toes in cross-county or other inter-government initiatives, you'll know that this is an extremely difficult proposition.
sleepyhead 12y ago
Is there any other country that is built for individual automobile transportation the way the US is? I haven't been to France but have you been to Amsterdam, Berlin or Copenhagen? It is perfectly valid to criticize US without it being "the US is strange and stupid"
- bane 12y ago
  Yeah sure. Australia struck me as very "american" in feeling. Lots of the new Chinese development is specially car friendly. Same with new Russian development. I was surprised with how unfriendly Ireland was to anything but a car.
  - hessenwolf 12y ago
    It's amazing when you get further out into the country in the Republic. There's almost no option to safely get down the road unless you are in a vehicle.
- mikeash 12y ago
  It's perfectly valid to criticize the US based on how the US is. It's not valid to criticize it based on some notion that the US is unique in a way that it is not. I have no problem with stuff like "the US should...." Where I have a problem is with "everybody else does it another way" when it's just not true. Aside from adopting the metric system, I can't think of any legitimate criticism that fits that mold. Bicycles certainly don't seem to.

bane 12y ago

In four total weeks in London, I can count on 1 hand the number of cyclists I saw. Never been to Tokyo or Singapore, but if they're anything like Seoul, where I've spent months, riding a bike in the streets is both playing Russian Roulette and virtually impossible on account of the bad terrain (and for pretty much all the same reasons I brought up earlier). You also have almost no place to store them given the size of the average apartment. Outside of dedicated parks, I've almost never seen a person on a bike their either. I've been to dozens of countries on almost every continent, and bikes are a very uncommon mode of transportation. That's why places like the Netherlands, where it is common, are so notable. If it was common, we wouldn't care. Rather than being snarky, what's your suggestion for overcoming these practical and social issues?

stingraycharles 12y ago
Electric cars are a very uncommon mode of transportation too. Should we therefor not care about promoting that method of transportation? No, because then the status quo would never change. The article discussed in this thread brings up one suggestion for overcoming practical issues. There are many, many more (proven) solutions to choose from -- when you make bicycle transportation pleasant enough, people will start using it. If the "social issues" you talk about are because there's a group of people who thinks transportation by bicycle is uncivilized, I think it is a matter of education and tolerance. Once using bikes is common in a country, you will see that the only social issues are about people having unjustified fears (about the implications of considering bicycles as a method of transportation during city planning) and there are no real social issues other than people being dicks.
- bane 12y ago
  I don't have to rebuild every major piece of transport infrastructure to support electric cars. Social issues refer to body odor my bike riding colleagues carry around with them all day because our workplace doesn't have a shower.
  - andrewliebchen 12y ago

megablast 12y ago

And Australia, which has amazing weather for cycling, mostly flat cities, wide roads, has hardly any cyclists. Because it is so cheap to drive.

stonith 12y ago
Canberra has quite a lot, and very good coverage of bike paths + lanes. I commuted by bike by default for about 6 years there, and got the bus when it was raining. Now that I live in Sydney I don't ride at all - I just don't feel safe.
stephen_g 12y ago
That's a bit of a big generalisation... I live in the third largest city in Australia. Much of it is ridiculously hilly, the weather is usually stinking hot (apart from a few weeks of 'winter'), but we have plenty of cyclists... Not as many as the average European country but definitely enough to be annoying when you're driving!
- girvo 12y ago
  Amen. I work in the valley and live in Red Hill, which, as you can tell by the name, is crazily steep. Anyway, we still have stacks of cyclists around here (and Paddington). Personally I walk and get the bus.

SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago

> Because in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo or Singapore the weather is amazing all the time Either you're being sarcastic or you have never spent time in London.

cylinder 12y ago
How could you not understand that was sarcastic?
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
  Because discerning tone from ascii text is hard. How could you not have come across that fact before? There's even a law about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law Also because is followup reference to "all the bikers there" is straight-up true, there are loads of bikers in London, really, though it doesn't follow from the statement before. Is that an attempt at sarcasm that fails because of a failed attempt at a false statement? Who knows. Why can't funkyy just say what they mean? Who knows.