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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29569 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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Cyclist culture wars: reporting from the front lines

It's been a bad year for cyclists in Toronto. Five people have died so far this year, and a few dozen injured. Vibes in general are bad. There is a general feeling that drivers are getting more aggressive - construction has been very bad this summer and congestion is worse than ever. To add to that spaces meant for cyclists are now increasingly taken up by international students doing food deliver on e-bikes with very limited fidelity to traffic rules; very frequent to see e-bikes ridden on sidewalks or the wrong way down cycle lanes. Our new progressive mayor has been significantly less active on the cycling front then people had hoped - there was actually great progress made during the previous conservative mayor John Tory, especially during COVID - but only 100 km of new lanes are being added by 2027. And these are generally not the kind of physically-separated infrastructure cyclists prefer, but "painted" lanes that can still be quite dangerous.

Last month a woman was killed while cycling in one of these lanes when she was forced to merge out of it because a construction company had illegally put a dumpster in the middle of it; this sparked a widespread fury among Toronto cyclists. I remember the day after the accident biking to a friend's party and during the 20 minute ride overhearing three different groups of cyclists talking about it. It also launched a kind of guerrilla campaign reporting illegal blockages of bike lanes (example here). There is a sense of frustration that we are putting our lives at risk every time we go out. Personally I have become much more cautious and will take more time in order to keep to routes with better infrastructure. As the late Rob Ford said we are "swimming with the sharks" when we're out there and there is very low trust in the capabilities of drivers.

I'm writing this post now because last night NHL star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother were killed by a drunk driver while cycling in New Jersey. They were supposed to be groomsmen in their sister's wedding today. Johnny left behind two babies and a widowed wife. There's a lot of shock and anger in response, and frustration that many news agencies have characterized this as a "biking accident"; it appears the drunk driver attempted to pass them on the shoulder and instead rear-ended them, killing both instantly.

Bicycle lanes are the lowest of the low hanging fruit for many cities. They are cheap, simple, ways to reduce traffic congestion, promote healthy and active living, and protect the lives of cyclists. It is so incredibly frustrating how much of an uphill battle it is to get them built. I think there's this enduring perception from people who exclusively drive that bike lanes are something for hobbyists rather than a way for people to get where they need to go. Every attempt to get new lanes built is met with a torrent of backlash. I try to do my part by showing up in support at community meetings and the level of vitriol always astonishes me. Yes there are bad cyclists, it cannot be denied. But they are not in charge of two-ton death machines. Bad drivers never are perceived as a systemic issue. Recently a pregnant mother with two young kids was killed by a driver near me; no one gave thought to redesigning the road, or restricting licenses for the elderly, or treating it as anything other than an unavoidable tragedy.

I tell my friends that the first priority as a cyclist is to survive. Every now and then you get people who yell at you for no reason, or throw bottles at you, or almost turn into you, or door you, or whatever. Don't engage because it's not worth it. It's like bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. You have to make your efforts at the political level.

Something something competing access needs.

Many cogent observations already posted. I'll just add that 1) my only really adversarial encounters with drivers were in Glendale and the drivers in my ag-dominated rural home area seem remarkably polite in their overtaking, and 2) everyone seems a lot nicer when I run a bright blinking red taillight during the day.

Crazy that the maximum sentence is 10 years for killing 2 people by drunk driving.

Bicycle lanes are the lowest of the low hanging fruit for many cities. They are cheap, simple, ways to reduce traffic congestion, promote healthy and active living, and protect the lives of cyclists. It is so incredibly frustrating how much of an uphill battle it is to get them built. I think there's this enduring perception from people who exclusively drive that bike lanes are something for hobbyists rather than a way for people to get where they need to go. Every attempt to get new lanes built is met with a torrent of backlash.

Citation? Typically bike lanes in my city just end up cannibalizing real roadway and provide little, if any, protection to the few bikers who use them. "Building" bike lanes is, in my experience, a total misnomer, its just drawing extra lines. Its not like you can move the buildings 3 feet back on each side of the road.

That's because a bike lane is not just drawing a line. A perfect bike lane looks like this:

  • sidewalk
  • bike lane wide enough for passing
  • door opening lane, ideally raised to prevent illegal parking
  • car parking lane
  • another door opening lane
  • finally, a car driving lane

And the intersections have to be redesigned as well to prevent drivers from turning right into a bike in their blind spot.

So it indeed requires ripping up all the buildings in a city to have a good bike lane.

In case you're not being ostensibly obtuse: you can also just reduce the number of car lanes on multi-lane roads. Not all those strips replace one full-size lane each.

I worked in Shanghai for a bit. They had something like this in parts of the city. Pedestrian sidewalk, full sized lane just for bikes and scooters, low concrete barrier, lanes for cars. If I had a complaint it would be that the bike and scooter lanes were much too wide. I once was on a company bus whose driver decided to drive down one for a bit in order to skip traffic. Which felt like an act of insanity to me, but I understand that is a very American sort of opinion. Needs, but sadly lacks, proper entry barriers only wide enough for a scooter.

But in American cities I don't see how they would make these. We already have building, sidewalk, lane, lane, sidewalk, building. No room for extra-wide bike lanes with barriers on each side. And for the streets with four lanes, they can't sacrifice two lanes for bikes without causing an extreme car traffic problem and two mostly-unused bike-only lanes. That would be great misallocation of scarce shared resources.

But in American cities I don't see how they would make these. We already have building, sidewalk, lane, lane, sidewalk, building. No room for extra-wide bike lanes with barriers on each side.

It's: building, sidewalk, bike lane, narrow barrier (since there's no parking), 20mph lane (one way only), sidewalk, building. You even get to widen the sidewalks a bit. Since American cities are built on a grid, you can easily alternate the direction of one-way streets.

I do like one-way lanes in urban cores. But thinking about this, we don't need two barriers and two bike lanes if it is a one-way street.

We could instead have building, sidewalk, parking or one-way car lane, a second one-way car lane, barrier, one-way bike lane, side walk, building. That just doubled car capacity or puts street parking everywhere for free.

And 20mph max speed is way too slow for virtually all roads. Even driving by an elementary school during pick up or drop off time is faster than that.

20mph is perfect for city streets. In Europe, school zones are usually limited to 20kph, or about 12mph.

20mph is excessively slow. 12mph is comical.

I get I'm just voicing American opinions about this, but Europe sounds like it is in sorry state if they do this. Is around 20mph limits commonly implemented where you live, or is this very aspirational on your part? Are you some ultra-slow-driving contrarian going against the rest of society, or is this the norm where you live?

I see 20kph signs next to every school.

30kph zones are common in Germany, I want to see them in Russia on all urban streets that are two lanes wide or narrower.

I mean 20 mph is the typical school zone limit anywhere I've been -- do you live somewhere where you can zoom by schools doing 40 and the cops aren't camped out there all the time running up their numbers?

(This does seem quite slow, but kids are really dumb. Maybe it's a hangover from when kids actually walked/biked to school?)

More comments

Riding a bicycle is dangerous. If you spend much time on the road, you're competing with trucks and cars and buses. Speed is moderate and protection is low. Only motorcycles and helicopters are more dangerous.

Don't do it! Either walk or catch public transport or drive. I understand that North America sucks because the public transport system is full of drug-addled zombies and low-lifes. Fixing this should be the highest priority. It's not the 19th century anymore, engines are most efficient for travel and you can do something else at the same time, recouping some value. Even if it's just fantasizing or pondering, surely our time is worth more.

Riding a bicycle is dangerous. If you spend much time on the road, you're competing with trucks and cars and buses. Speed is moderate and protection is low. Only motorcycles and helicopters are more dangerous.

Don't do it!

For all the condemnation of "safetyism" I swear we have the highest concentration of safetyists I have ever seen anywhere.

Don't do it!

I biked practically everywhere ages 8 to early 20s. I got a driver's license age 16, but cars are expensive and I was working and saving, so I biked everywhere, not counting using parents' cars to do chores. I get biking is dangerous in some larger statistical sense, but if your local weather permits, it works great.

Later I got a motorcycle and that was even better. Wear your armor and go for it.

Riding a bicycle is dangerous. If you spend much time on the road, you're competing with trucks and cars and buses. Speed is moderate and protection is low. Only motorcycles and helicopters are more dangerous.

note that applies only in areas without real bicycle infrastructure

engines are most efficient for travel and you can do something else at the same time, recouping some value. Even if it's just fantasizing or pondering, surely our time is worth more.

note that some exercise is needed for humans for healthy life - and I consider silly to either end as a diabetic land whale or first spend time in bus/car and then again in gym

If something requires you to wear a helmet while you do it, then it's hardly safe.

Exercise is nice to have but unnecessary. Obesity is a dietary problem, not an exercise problem.

Exercise is an absolute must have for a quality life.

If something requires you to wear a helmet while you do it, then it's hardly safe.

Cycling does not require wearing helmet.

At least commuting cycling on cycleways and low-traffic roads. If you do MTB/downhill then yes, you should have helmet. And if you drive on road where you have trucks and buses and cars going more than 30 km/h then helmet will not help so much anyway in case of a collision.

Exercise is nice to have but unnecessary. Obesity is a dietary problem, not an exercise problem.

Zero exercise and eating little is better than zero exercise and eating enormous amounts. But zero exercise and sitting all day is not exactly health either.

Cycling does not require wearing helmet.

Cycling absolutely requires a helmet. Biking in a nice American suburban neighborhood as a child, I got flung off my bike and came down hard on the front of my head. I smashed the front of a helmet and blacked out for some indeterminate period of time. I regained consciousness with a firetruck and a few firemen around me.

No cars were involved in this crash. Just a kid getting some cloth wrapped up in his front wheel. That helmet saved my life. If you get catapulted over your front wheel, you'll be wearing a helmet, or you'll likely get your head smashed open.

Cycling absolutely requires a helmet.

Yes, that's why there are no people who cycle without a helmet for their entire life and live. Oh wait.

That helmet saved my life.

It's impossible to say whether that is the case, since depending on the quality and design on the helmet, and how you landed, the helmet could have reduced the energy transferred to your head anywhere between almost zero to a significant amount. And even if you had been worse off, that doesn't mean you would have died.

You really should improve your reasoning ability, because the statement you made is closer to religion than to fact.

Nah. I'm rock solid correct. Some people are just terrible at judging risks. Europeans on bicycles especially.

That is extreme outlier and car driving also has such outliers.

Most of the country lacks “real infrastructure” for bikes. At best the state will paint a few lines on existing roads and call the rightmost lane a bike lane with no real barriers against traffic. At worst, they paint a bicycle lane symbol on a road with a 35mph speed limit and stick up a “share the road” sign or two. It gives the state prestige “we’re supporting green infrastructure!” And cash from the Feds. But it’s not a safe way to ride.

And exercise is pretty easy to get if you do a little while watching TV in the evening.

Most of the country lacks “real infrastructure” for bikes

I guess you mean Canada? Still, it would be "Riding a bicycle in Canada is dangerous" not "Riding a bicycle is dangerous" and is fixable relatively easily with some competence and effort.

In the same declaring "walking alone in city center during night is inherently dangerous and cannot be safe" is not true.

they paint a bicycle lane symbol on a road with a 35mph speed limit and stick up a “share the road” sign or two

that is not a bicycle infrastructure, that is just pure incompetence

I’m in the Midwest actually. And I drive on one of these “bike routes” daily. The speed limit is 35 MPH, cars regularly hit 40-45 because the speed isn’t enforced. Not only is there no shoulder on the road, but there’s a revine right at the edge of the road. But yes, after the mayor hit a biker, they painted the bike path symbols on the road and stuck up a few signs. But they did get a grant from DC for having bike lanes.

I bike for 1 hour a day to work, the car ride would be 30 minutes. (Lights really eat up time)

during the 1 hour bike ride I get roughly 45 minutes of good cardio exercise. This lets me go to work, Lift 3x a week and still get all the exercise I need in a week in a relatively cheap package.

What exactly am I gaining by switching to driving? Cars are expensive my bike is roughly 500/year in upkeep costs from tire changes ect. What are you doing while driving other than paying attention to the road making sure you don't crash (which is also ~ 100% of my focus when riding a bike it's just that when riding a bike I'm also exercising at the same time)

You're reducing your risk of death and lowering stress. You're saving a little time.

I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, neither of which require much attention.

When I was bike commuting, I had a pretty safe path to work. I'm not actually sure what the numbers would be on risk of death/lowering stress, but I could see it being either a small factor or maybe even going either way. Exercise definitely has a inherent reduction-of-stress effect that would need to be overcome.

Commuting by car did not, however, save me time. I was in a kinda similar situation; 20min drive, 40min ride. The gym was right on the way to work. I could treat the ride as a warm-up/cool-down and not have to do those things in the gym. I could ride hard and just have it be a full cardio workout. I did spin class sometimes for cardio, so substituting riding to work for spin class was a pure time savings of the time I would have spent sitting in the car doing nothing. Public transport was very not available for my commute, for, uh, reasons.

the previous conservative mayor John Tory

Sometimes, nominative determinism just becomes unbelievably on the nose.

All those Never kissed a Tory T-shirts take on a wholly different meaning. Poor guy.

I tell my friends that the first priority as a cyclist is to survive

This is my primary motto as a cyclist. Taking over footpaths, taking the full lane, using industrial parking lots, driving in the wrong direction on a residential street, rather than the right way on the main road.....what have you. If it is illegal, go sue me. My life matters more. I love grade separated bike lanes as much as the next guy. When the system enables it, I am every bit a law abiding (non) citizen. But drawing some ink to separate me and massive cars is not enough. In such a case, I'm going to do what I must to survive.

Half-assed efforts towards bike lanes are more dangerous than not having them. It creates a false sense of security. The scariest are right turns where the bike lane abruptly ends and turns into a lane for cars. I also dislike fake bollards, which are merely cosmetic. If you're going to erect a pole, I want it to be solid metal. This is my experience in SF. Lots of bike lanes, but too exposed to multi-lane traffic. Narrow single lane 25 mph streets are my favorite. Don't need a bike lane. I'll do my normal 12-15 mph and the cars can follow behind. Traffic calming measures work better than bike lanes or helmets.

killed by a drunk driver

More than lack of bikes, this is North America's biggest problem.

Bikers, public transit & pedestrians all suffer equally, as US & Canada coddle car drivers beyond every reasonable limit. Drunk driving is still the best way to kill someone in the US. No punishment. Blind old people get licenses. 17% of the US has substance abuse issues, and all of them are driving 24x7. The US has no way for drunk people to get home other than spend $50 taking an uber back. So instead, people roll the dice.

Speed limits are 65 mph, but family cars can accelerate to in 4 seconds. Why? You can cross 200 mph in family cars. Why ? It's the only country in the world where motor vehicle deaths are going up, even as cars get overwhelmingly safer. Why ? Pedestrian death numbers look like a genocide is going on. WTF ?

The government tries to hide the 2 types of deaths they're most ashamed of (drug abuse and car crashes) into 1 category : "Unintentional injuries". A category that covers more deaths than almost all the other categories COMBINED.

The US spends $400b/yr on heart disease & cancer treatment, just to increase the lifespan of geriatrics by a few years. But, the majority of accidental deaths (I consider drug related deaths to be self inflicted) among the not-old (under age 50) are caused by cars. By far, cars steal the most years of anyone's lives in the US. More than cancer or heart disease, combined.

Now, you could eliminate 50% of those deaths, by just doing a half-as-good job as Europe. Yeah, that's how much safer Europe is than the US.

How much would you need to spend ? Let's start with a sensible number. How about as much as we spend on the next 2 diseases : heart disease and cancer : about $200b/yr. Sounds like a large number. But, you could literally stop treating heart disease and spend all that money on reducing car related deaths.....and more Americans would be alive at the end of the year.

But, before we even spend a single dollar on road safety, can we start with the low hanging fruit ? Things we can get for free. I have 3 suggestions:

Qualifier - My suggestions will make some pure blooded Americans angry, but none of these are in violation of the constitution, so there is that.

Speeding - speeding was a factor in 29% of motor vehicle crash deaths

Why can you drive faster than the speed limit ? You have google auto / car play. They know the speed limit. So does the car. Why allow the person to go faster ? Sure, there might be an emergency that warrants it. But if you don't wear your seatbelt, a loud alarm goes off. Let's start there. If you go above the speed limit, then a massive alarm start blaring. Yeah, if your wife is in labor or gangs are chasing you, you can go faster. Surely, the blaring alarm is the least of your worries in this situation.

Same for the upper limit. The national speed limit is 75 mph. Why allow a car to go faster than 90 mph, ever ?

In 2022, 3,308 people lost their lives in crashes involving distracted drivers, and nearly 290,000 people were injured. NHTSA estimates that in 2017, 91,000 police-reported crashes involved drowsy drivers. These crashes led to an estimated 50,000 people injured and nearly 800 deaths.

Gaze tracking is trivial to implement. Why do we allow distracted driving at all ? A simple gaze tracker than tell when a person has zoned out, is using their phone or almost asleep.

About 32% of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involve drunk drivers (with BACs of .08 g/dL or higher). In 2022, there were 13,524 people killed in these preventable crashes. In fact, on average over the 10-year period from 2013-2022, about 11,000 people died every year in drunk-driving crashes.

I leave the best for last. Drunk drivers are the biggest nuisance, but they have zero repercussions. Why not take away their driving license for a very long time (~5 years) unless they install expensive tracking. "They are poor and can't afford this. They wouldn't be able to work without a car.".....well, that's better than them killing a person. Let's start with getting their cars installed with a permanent dashcam and breathalyzer. Car doesn't start unless you breathe into it and register sober. A simple dashcam is good enough to make it hard to game.

That's it. With these 3 changes, American roads would already be a lot safer. Not just for cyclists, but also pedestrians, other cars and the drunk drivers themselves.

Bicycle lanes are the lowest of the low hanging fruit for many cities. They are cheap, simple, ways to reduce traffic congestion, promote healthy and active living, and protect the lives of cyclists. It is so incredibly frustrating how much of an uphill battle it is to get them built.

I am fully black (orange?) pilled on the matter. Decent public transit, bike infrastructure & pedestrian safety should be table stakes for a functioning urban society. If the government can't make progress on these amenities, then it is a sign of an unserious society.

sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

To me, that's the US traffic agencies right now.

Zoning out a little bit, the rethinking of urban infrastructure is going to be unifying issue for this generation. NIMBYism and cars will be the 2 sacred goats that the youth will try to slay.

Personally, I welcome it. I hate car brained urban Americans and I hate NIMBYs.

Yes, I mean it as a blanket statement with no qualification.

Pedestrian death numbers look like a genocide is going on. WTF ?

Deaths per million scaling. Mostly in the single digits, spiking to the mid-10s for nighttime biking enthusiasts. I don't want to be callous, but the rhetoric is not matching the death rates here.

What I'm learning here is that Americans can ride bikes during the day with a collective 0.00000005% chance of dying (not clearly shown in the image but presumably per year). I'll take that deal. Yes please.

Narrow single lane 25 mph streets are my favorite. Don't need a bike lane. I'll do my normal 12-15 mph and the cars can follow behind.

I don't know what life is like in San Francisco, but in my entire life I've never seen someone dare such a thing. I'd deadass be on my horn every single second until you got the hell out of the way, and you'd likely find yourself run over or beaten in the street within the month. Everyone would agree that it was unfortunate but that you sort of asked for it by being an asshole.

If I'm picturing the streets he's describing correctly they're the kind of one way parking on both sides narrow ass streets that a car would struggle to keep up with a cyclist on because going faster than 10 puts you at serious risk of clipping a mirror.

SF is nicer, but yes, I only attempt this in places where I'm surrounded by softer liberals. Well, I wouldn't live in places with aggressive bastards in the first place......so I self-select.

You take on a risk and want to restrict others to deal with it?

Sounds like fascism, to me.

I leave the best for last. Drunk drivers are the biggest nuisance, but they have zero repercussions. Why not take away their driving license for a very long time (~5 years) unless they install expensive tracking. "They are poor and can't afford this. They wouldn't be able to work without a car.".....well, that's better than them killing a person. Let's start with getting their cars installed with a permanent dashcam and breathalyzer. Car doesn't start unless you breathe into it and register sober. A simple dashcam is good enough to make it hard to game.

The US also has a high drunk driving limit- .08%. Europe generally has .05%.

That being said, drunk driving is or had recently been slowly improving. What’s getting worse is high driving- marijuana. To a certain extent, worrying overmuch on drunk driving is barking up the wrong tree.

I think the DUI thing is one of many crimes that people would be down for way much punishment for if put to a direct vote. I believe that if you put it to a national vote that the third or fourth time someone got pulled over and blew drunk they were just shot like a dog in the street it would pass with a majority or come very close to passing. I could be totally wrong about that but its just an impression I got people just seem to hate drunk drivers universally regardless of politics.

The problem with hate campaigns against DUI is they always take more than is offered. For instance, in Canada, they took advantage of one such moral panic to make drinking AFTER driving illegal.

its just an impression I got people just seem to hate drunk drivers universally regardless of politics.

~75M people are planning to vote for one for Vice President.

(To be fair, that doesn't prove they don't hate him; not a lot of great options these days.)

Yeah, I'd put them all together as 'impaired' driving. It sucks that it isn't easy to instantly detect how high someone is.

Still think an eye tracker will help with catching pot smokers.

Why can you drive faster than the speed limit ?

Passing, for one.

If you A) don't tailgate or cut someone off, and B) don't speed, then you can't pass anyone going >=70% of the speed limit in many designated passing zones, even assuming instant acceleration and good luck with oncoming traffic.

Narrow single lane 25 mph streets are my favorite. Don't need a bike lane. I'll do my normal 12-15 mph and the cars can follow behind.

And that sort of thing is why a lot of motorists hate bicyclists. They're trying to get somewhere, and they're blocked by someone doing half the speed limit in a place where they can't be passed.

Same for the upper limit. The national speed limit is 75 mph. Why allow a car to go faster than 90 mph, ever ?

There is no national speed limit any more. As for speeding, the purpose of a car is to get from point A, to point B, quickly and in comfort. It is a national disgrace that we don't have routine travel speeds north of 100mph, though I admit there are many on the New Jersey Turnpike who are attempting to rectify that.

And that sort of thing is why a lot of motorists hate bicyclists. They're trying to get somewhere, and they're blocked by someone doing half the speed limit in a place where they can't be passed.

25 mph is a residential side street. You are getting blocked by signals and stop signs more than you're by a cyclist. I see car drivers zoom past past me everyday, only to have to stop by the immediate next stop sign or signal 1 block after.

On any arterial or multi-lane street, you and I both would rather have the bike be in its own lane.

As for speeding, the purpose of a car is to get from point A, to point B, quickly and in comfort.

Is it? Has it ever succeeded? Can you give me 1 reason why the 'just 1 more lane bro' (fixed link) meme is not valid criticism of car infrastructure ?

It is a national disgrace that we don't have routine travel speeds north of 100mph

You're saying that a country with the highest per-capita road deaths in the developed world ? You think people are responsible enough for that ?

just 1 more lane bro

"Why build infrastructure if people have a great desire to use it?" That's a popular anti-road-NIMBY argument. But it seems almost perfectly backwards to me.

Can you give me 1 reason why the 'just 1 more lane bro' meme is not valid criticism of car infrastructure ?

Assuming you're talking about the unquenchable thirst for more lanes, that doesn't seem like a criticism at all. It's a ringing endorsement of car infrastructure: people cannot get enough convenient mobility.

The most miserable cities to get around are also the ones with the most car infrastructure (LA, Houston, Atlanta).

This isn't rocket science. Transit is a win-win for car lovers and transit lovers alike.

Cities have finite amount of people. These people have to get to places. Cars occupy the most space per person and transit is more compact. If those people use bikes, buses, trains and footpaths, then they occupy less space. So yes, when car lanes are converted to transit/bike corridors, traffic still goes down. No one benefits from transit as much as those who 'need' to use cars. We have the numbers to prove it. The bike-pilled Dutch happen to have a great driving experience.

Now, transit & biking in most American cities sucks balls. If that's your experience with it, I can understand why it feels horrible.

But, isn't it even a little bit curious that North America is the place where this car-only idea has any uptake ? Everyone else agrees that transit and bikes are good.

I agree there are many places where driving is a miserable experience (often enough, at least).

Yet people still choose to drive.

Congestion is a highly visible issue, but that's because it's the problem that's left over after cars solved all the important ones.

Cycling, walking, and transit all have advantages, but cars blow them away for the vast majority of people's normal use-cases. Cars:

  • Run on your schedule.
  • Allow you to haul more than any other modes of transportation. Not just more, but also more cumbersome things. I cannot bicycle my amplifier to an ad-hoc show at a local block party.
  • Collapse space, allowing you to live near work and the beach/mountains/trails/relatives/friends/ultimate frisbee league/your band's rehearsal space/etc./etc. This cuts in multiple directions, working for other people at the same time, putting you in reach of a critical mass of people that share your interests and satisfy your needs.
  • Are weather-independent. I salute the hardy souls that commute via bicycle in New England, but there's no timeline where a significant portion of the population follows their lead.
  • Allow pets.

And that's just the big, widely-applicable ones. I haven't mentioned comfort, the ability to socialize, or benefits for people with disabilities. I also didn't include the benefits they offer families with kids, which is a massive blindspot for a lot of Marohn-pilled types. You can see it when someone says things like "cars only save you 20 minutes on your commute" ... as a parent, there are days when 20 extra minutes would quadruple my free time.

I'm in favor of transit in principle: a first-rate transit system gets close enough to cars on those points that its other benefits net out. But no one has figured out how to bootstrap a first-rate transit system in a US city from scratch in the twenty-first century.

Edit: fussy formatting. Also, I regret that I did not at least mention pollution, another problem left over after cars solve the others, even though it wasn't at issue in context.

The most miserable cities to get around are also the ones with the most car infrastructure (LA, Houston, Atlanta).

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2012/04/20/cities-with-the-most-highway-miles-a-whos-who-of-decay

Los Angeles actually is in the list of cities with the LEAST number of lane miles per capita, not the most.

Transit is no good for drivers because it wastes good gas tax money subsidizing 3 people on a 70 person bus. Very few lines actually get people off the roads because most potential lines don't have many potential customers. I make a trip to our in-laws very often. There is no direct line. Its a 3 transfer trip. And even two of those 3 legs rarely have more than 10 people on a bus or traincar.

Atlanta?

Atlanta is easily one of the most walkable major cities in North America.

Is it? Has it ever succeeded? Can you give me 1 reason why the 'just 1 more lane bro' meme is not valid criticism of car infrastructure ?

Can you point to a single country in which cars are not the strong revealed preference? Everywhere in the world people drive when they can afford it.

“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation,”

Japan & Western Europe would be the obvious answers.

From the cities I've visited, it applies to - Paris, Geneva, Barcelona, Madrid & Zurich.

Manhattan, Brooklyn & Boston (before MBTA crumbled) do pretty well too.

Just like America, as soon as you get outside large metros, everyone in Japan owns a car. And even in Tokyo, once you get to the "outer" wards (e.g. Adachi, Suginami, Setagaya, Katsushika, Nerima, etc) many people own cars. I live in a medium side city in a rural prefecture, and every functioning adult I know owns and regularly drives a car. The city does have bus lines, but the few times I've taken them there are only tourists or the very elderly aboard.

Paris

LOL, I once took a little rest by the circle around the Arc de Triumph, watching the car accidents. People in Paris love their cars.

As for Manhattan, no, mere millionaires do indeed use public transportation. But in Manhattan, they're not rich.

As for Manhattan, no, mere millionaires do indeed use public transportation. But in Manhattan, they're not rich.

There are a lot of people in Manhattan who could afford to replace their transit usage with Ubers who don’t do so.

If your argument is that having a chauffeur is preferable to taking the subway, I’m not sure what the point is. Revealed preference is that many people prefer to take public transport (particularly trains and also long haul rail in countries that have fast trains) rather than drive even when (a) they own a car, (b) gas costs are cheaper than public transportation and (c) the road infrastructure for the trip exists.

You can drive from London to Paris or Munich to Amsterdam easily on clean and well-maintained roads. Yet the revealed preference of the public is, in many cases, public transport. US cities only break this system because of zoning rules that forced or strongly encouraged the construction of huge amounts of above-ground parking space that was economically perverse.

We just had an entire subthread about how the Japanese restrict car ownership to the wealthy while the plebs use public transit

I didn't see the thread, but car ownership in Japan doesn't save time by getting you to a place quickly. It saves time by allowing the wealthy attend to their chores in the 'back seat' of a car. Because the wealthy don't drive their own cars. They have drivers.

If you don't have to drive, walk to parking, find your own parking or maintain the car......then yes, car ownership is cheap.

You prove my point. There isn't a revealed preference for cars. There is a revealed preference for being chauffeured. It is a revealed preference for having a Butler.

No, the vast majority of people in Japan drive themselves, it's just that being able to do so marks them as upper middle class. Because they can only make the poor use public transit by restricting them from having cars

The Tokyo subway shuts down at 11:30 and doesn't reopen until morning. Nobody crowing about how Japan is a public transit success asks the night janitors if they care about walking home.

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25 mph is a residential side street. You are getting blocked by signals and stop signs more than you're by a cyclist.

Obviously not, since OP said the cars could follow behind. The residential side streets in my area are wider and in fact have higher speed limits than that.

As for speeding, the purpose of a car is to get from point A, to point B, quickly and in comfort.

Is it? Has it ever succeeded?

Yes, and yes. For instance recently I made it from Northern New Jersey to the Ithaca, NY area, a distance of over 220 miles, in less than 4 hours, in air conditioned comfort.

Can you give me 1 reason why the 'just 1 more lane bro' meme is not valid criticism of car infrastructure ?

I think you mean this, not the nice hat. I think they're going to need several more lanes.

The residential side streets in my area are wider and in fact have higher speed limits than that.

Yes, and yes. For instance recently I made it from Northern New Jersey to the Ithaca, NY area, a distance of over 220 miles, in less than 4 hours, in air conditioned comfort.

I don't think anyone here is against cars for long distance travel.

I am not against car ownership. Mostly just use of cars for urban transport. I have done that drive too; Niagara falls to NYC.

I think they're going to need several more lanes

yeah............sigh. You know that's what they thought when they had 20 lanes right ?

I don't think anyone here is against cars for long distance travel.

Cars are good for a lot more than "long distance travel". They're good for everything longer than a short walk, and if you need to carry anything they're good for shorter things. Even in areas with heavy traffic they're usually faster than mass transit, unless there's a direct single-seat mass transit route between the two.

yeah............sigh. You know that's what they thought when they had 20 lanes right ?

There's no inherent limit. It's like razor blades, you can always add one more.

Many people oppose car culture on aesthetic grounds. Endless stretches of ugly black asphalt violate the natural landscape to a much greater degree than a stone path or railroad tracks. Cars are ugly and the US’ increasingly lower IQ population can’t be trusted to drive them without hurting other people. I don’t see why there need to be any other arguments against cars (although there are many). They look ugly, highways look ugly, drivers can’t be trusted to drive them, and I don’t care if people have to suffer a little more to live in a more aesthetically pleasing society. This shit is fucking ugly, that fat Walmart fans might no longer get to the drive-thru Wendy’s to stuff their piggy faces as fast doesn’t concern me.

“Cars are more efficient”. So what? Drinking Soylent is more efficient than cooking real food. Doing intensive cardio by yourself is more efficient than playing sports. Talking to your family on FaceTime is more efficient than going to visit them. Wearing the same vest and sweat pants every day is more efficient than putting effort into one’s appearance. Car opponents dislike the aesthetics of cars and car infrastructure above else. It is ugly and it is ugly everywhere in the world.

I see lots of people downvoted you, but I'm right there with you. At least in spirit, although I'd to see a longer effort-post acknowledging the pros and cons of this. I hate how so much of our American society is engineered towards convenience, and people treat aeshetics as if it doesn't matter at all. I think that's part of the reason so many tourists fly to Europe or Japan, is just so they can bask in the aesthetics of walking around a low-car city that looks nice.

Why do you think either cars or highways are ugly, as opposed to railroad tracks and trains? Why is a parking lot uglier than a railway station? Do you want to cram a low-IQ population into mass transit?

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It is ugly and it is ugly everywhere in the world.

It's less ugly in most places; my understanding is that "stroads" are much more common in the US and Canada than they are elsewhere. The big roads in Australia are largely freeways (i.e. no normal intersections, increasing safe speeds), and they're either hoisted into the sky or sunk into trenches (for noise reduction, I believe), which means you're rarely looking at huge stretches of asphalt (they also have massive green areas around and in the middle of them for safety).

Many people oppose car culture on aesthetic grounds.

These aesthetes should find an ivory tower to live in, high above the plebians in the cars. We'll try not to let you know how the food gets there.

The commercial area at Breezewood, PA is ugly, sure. So is the Port of Los Angeles. So is the Bingham Canyon Mine. Or any number of undistinguished sewage treatment facilities. These are the things that make the world work, regardless of whether aesthetes think they're pretty or not.

This shit is fucking ugly

Obligatory reminder that the reality of that photograph is significantly less objectionable

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I don't have any strong political/culture war opinion, so I just want to convey a personal opinion.

I used to live in an area where many of the roads had nice big shoulders. In addition, there were some great hills nearby, but also some flat routes if preferred. It was glorious. I loved getting out, getting some fresh air, getting some cardio in. For a while during COVID, it was basically my only allowable means of recreation/exercise (I personally hate running). I even commuted to work by bike for a while, as my father did before me (in yet a different area).

I have since moved. This area is not lacking in land, but it is lacking in snow, and I think that's a big reason why there aren't shoulders anywhere. They don't use the extra land for bike lanes, either. To boot, there aren't any good hills nearby, either. It's horrible. I've mostly given up on riding as being too scary/dangerous. I'm not quite resigned enough to sell my bike, and I'm clinging on to a few low-frequency use cases. My cardio has definitely taken a hit.

I really don't have a political angle to this. I know that different areas have different geography, different populations, different population preferences, different commute times, etc. There's even that city in Georgia that has a golf cart network. I hope they're satisfied with their local solution. There's no real global optimum that can be rolled out everywhere. Some people could sneer that I'm just a hobbyist with a children's toy, while others could sneer that I'm not doing enough to support the cause which could improve things for people in whichever local situation. Whatever. I'm not agitating for change here; I'm fine with the tradeoffs "they"ve made, and I'll live with them. (At least they're getting housing policy mostly right.) I'm just sad that that's something I used to enjoy but can't really anymore.

Children's toys honestly have no place on the roads. My hometown has a completely separate network of cycle paths that don't interact with the roads at all except at crossings, and it's honestly much better. Keeps them out of the way and out of danger. I realise you can't exactly retrofit cities for this though.

I am resentful every time a road lane gets removed to be turned into an abandoned bike lane. Stopping people from using their overwhelmingly preferred mode of transportation in order to give space over to an unpopular one for... what I can only assume are idealistic political reasons instead of practical ones, strikes me as foolish at best. The approach to trying to make people take up cycling seems to be to just make everything else worse; but it's not going to counteract the fact that most people just don't want to arrive at their destination sweaty and/or weather-beaten with helmet hair.

This is why drivers are resentful of cyclists, at any rate. They're the favoured children at the moment.

This is why drivers are resentful of cyclists, at any rate. They're the favoured children at the moment.

Sigh. This is 101 golden-child behavior. If cyclists got 1% of the attention that cars do, you'd have the utopia meme in real life.

separate network of cycle paths

I agree. This + single lane neighborhood streets are the best.

that most people just don't want to arrive at their destination sweaty and/or weather-beaten with helmet hair.

Given the rates of car accidents, helmets are more useful if you're driving than on a bike. I maintain my anti-helmet stance on bikes. Good for kids and long weekend bike-athons. disqualifying for commuting.

want to arrive at their destination sweaty

I bike for a leisurely 5 miles to work everyday. It is no more sweaty than a 1 mile walk. You don't get sweaty unless you live in a swamp. Biking for commutes is interspersed with transit. Even in biking utopias, the majority never bikes more than 5 miles per trip. And I'm not even fit.

This is why drivers are resentful of cyclists, at any rate

Good. I've tried to make drivers see the total win-win that transit + bikes are for drivers and bikers alike. But I'm spent. Our lot are officially at war.

may thy knife differential chip and shatter

Rather cars have no place in cities, they take up a tonne of space and make the area around them worse for everyone. Walking and cycling are the natural way of moving around a city and cities should be built around walking first and cycling secondly. Obese people in multi-tonne vehicles isn't practicle, cycling is. That cycling is impractical where you live is caused by cars making every mode of transport impractical including driving.

It's not a surprise that people don't ride bikes anywhere when you have to share the road with people who essentially have carte blanche to kill you with impunity The lack of consequences for killing or injuring bikers casts serious doubt on the claim that cyclists are the "favoured children".

If you cause a fatal crash, have a valid license, aren't drunk or on drugs, and don't leave the scene, the chances of you going down for vehicular homicide are extremely low, regardless of the means of transportation of the victim. Cyclist-activists crying about this when it happens to cyclists is special pleading.

Now, now, even if you are drunk and unlicensed and have 19 moving violations you might get away with probation after not even being arrested before a media circus starts up. If you have a license, your fatal booze cruise will probably just end up with a slap on the wrist.

It's not really special pleading because drivers are much better protected against other drivers than cyclists are. Pedestrians are similarly unprotected, but they usually are not directly on the road at least.

Now, now, even if you are drunk and unlicensed and have 19 moving violations you might get away with probation after not even being arrested before a media circus starts up.

I cannot find any indication alcohol was involved in this incident. But it's not any different with drivers who kill other people in cars.

It's not really special pleading because drivers are much better protected against other drivers than cyclists are.

That's exactly special pleading, due to being more vulnerable. You want drivers to be held to a higher standard when they kill cyclists as opposed to killing people in cars.

SEP

More to the point might be a worry about special pleading. This is different from backsliding, because the special pleader is the person who makes exceptions in their own favour. It would not be right for most people to do what I propose to do, but I am special; so I am left off the moral hook that others are caught by.

IEP

Special pleading is a form of inconsistency in which the reasoner doesn’t apply his or her principles consistently. It is the fallacy of applying a general principle to various situations but not applying it to a special situation that interests the arguer even though the general principle properly applies to that special situation, too.

An argument about special pleading won't get resolved without showing the supposed principles are inconsistently applied.

What is the standard sentencing for car drivers who kill other people in cars? Is it different if they kill pedestrians? If The_Nybbler is right, the driver gets probation for both, and the principle is consistent. (Consistently callous.) One could raise the sentencing waterline for all kinds of vehicle-caused deaths, too.

I cannot find any indication alcohol was involved in this incident.

You're right, I misread it.

You want drivers to be held to a higher standard when they kill cyclists as opposed to killing people in cars.

Wow, that's what I want? I'm sure you won't have trouble quoting the part where I said that, then.

Wow, that's what I want? I'm sure you won't have trouble quoting the part where I said that, then.

Sure:

It's not really special pleading because drivers are much better protected against other drivers than cyclists are.

The non-bulverist reading of my comment is:

A minor fuckup or lapse of attention (which are unlikely to be punished in any real way) on the part of a driver may result in cosmetic damage to a car or a fatality for a cyclist. It is much less likely to result in the death of a motorist. Therefore, cyclists are much more likely to encounter situations where they are killed and drivers face no consequences than a motorist. Therefore, cyclists being concerned about this is not special pleading.

I think it's pretty obvious that I was not, in fact, arguing for stricter punishment for killing a cyclist than for killing a motorist. That's a motivated reading if I ever saw one.

To make it completely obvious - if you kill someone while driving, there should be consequences.

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My experience having to do daily deliveries in a small American town that had setup a bike trail that intersected with downtown roads is that cyclists are suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards and that most of them are far too stupid and/or arrogant to be allowed on the road. Ever.

I'm saw multiple instances where they'd blow through four-way stops, weave in and out of the road and sidewalk, and one marvelous instance where he blew threw a four-way stop by going on the pedestrian cross-walk only to immediately weave back into traffic. Occasions where if I - in control of a rather large transportation van - had not been driving extremely defensively, people would be dead.

The only time - the only time - I ever saw one of them obey the laws as required was when I dealt with a cyclist actually signaling she was going to turn. I signaled as well to allow her to pull in first, and I went behind her gently to park. She actually came up afterwards to thank me for that, which I thought weird, given that she was the one actually doing her due dillagance and doing what needed to be done.

I don't have much sympathy for cyclists.

that cyclists are suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards and that most of them are far too stupid and/or arrogant to be allowed on the road. Ever.

do you think it would be better for them to use cars?

cyclists are suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards and that most of them are far too stupid and/or arrogant to be allowed on the road. Ever.

This is overly antagonistic. Don't do this.

How is it antagonistic to describe the activity I've seen with my own two eyes?

If you have better terms to describe it, I'm all ears.

"I believe you are stupid" has never been an ok thing to say on this forum. Even if it is entirely true and you definitely believe it. The first bullet point on the rules sidebar is "Courtesy" that ordering is intentional.

If you are asking how to be discourteous to people you don't like and follow the rules around here it is quite simple:

  1. Close themotte tab in your browser.
  2. Open X, facebook, or some other social media account
  3. Be as discourteous as you want over there.

cyclists are suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards and that most of them are far too stupid and/or arrogant to be allowed on the road. Ever.

In small town America, 100% of adult cyclists have car licenses. What you're observing is that most people are 'suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards'.

Only in the case of cyclists, they can't use this 'stupidity' to kill a dozen people with simple twist of their arms.

In small town America, 100% of adult cyclists have car licenses. What you're observing is that most people are 'suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards'.

Weird that many of these people's neighbors can successfully own a cache of firearms for their entire adult life without brandishing it against themselves or another innocent human. Only target dummies, deer, and turkey need be afraid of these allegedly "suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards."

What you're observing is that most people are 'suicidal, law-breaking, moving hazards'.

I don’t think this is true, and let me give an analogy. I have been several times to a sportsmen’s show in a small city, with classes, vendors hawking their wares, guides pitching services, that kind of thing. The level of firearm proficiency among attendees is pretty high, and the level of firearms safety is very high. At an event like this, you could pull random people out of the crowd on a busy show floor and hand them loaded rifles without causing me any concern at all. Obviously there was no reason to do this and no one did it, but the odds of an incident would be low.

One year there was a booth selling stun guns, and people did some pretty irresponsible things with them – things they would never have done with firearms. The people were the same, but their behavior was very different. To everyone there guns were serious and required respect, but to many stun guns were toys, and they treated them like toys.

The US has a high rate of vehicular deaths but it isn’t that high. I wonder how motorcyclists and cyclists stack up in deaths per road mile traveled? Assuming similar behavior you’d think motorcyclists die at a higher rate because of higher speed.

Motorcycle deaths per 100 million VMT is far higher than cars -- about 26.2, compared to 1.20 for passenger cars. This is probably largely because a motorcycle provides almost no protection to the occupant in a crash (though behavior probably also plays a role). Cyclist fatalities per mile aren't really known because miles traveled isn't really known.

This, unfortunately, matches my experience in semi-rural, suburban, and light urban in a moderately-sized American city and surrounds. Nearly to a person, cyclists that I encounter on non-neighborhood roads want all the benefits of being considered a "real vehicle" when it suits them, and also all the benefits of being a "fragile human being" when it suits them. Even to the point of having no sense of self-preservation or common sense - for example, there is a twisty back road near my house which is posted at 45mph, has approximately 3" of shoulder (and a drop-off into the ditch), and many twisty bends such that a bicyclist riding not on the shoulder will not be visible to a car until VERY late in the game, and a driver not being very defensive and careful would have a hard time avoiding them...

And yet, constantly, I see bicyclists do this, including getting upset when I refuse to go around them when I can't see far enough beyond where they are to know that moving out into the actual other lane of traffic (which their road position will make me do) would be actually safe.

The reason for bicycling on non-neighborhood roads is they are the ones which go places. Same reasons the drivers use them. I'm not sure what else you'd expect.

The comment was more directed at why pick a road which has (1) a speed limit which even doped-up Lance Armstrong could not approach or sustain, (2) that has no escape routes either for the bike or for a car which encounters a bike, and (3) highly restricted sightlines that make bikes much more of a rolling roadblock than under other circumstances. The area is not lacking in bike trails, and based on the attire selected, approximately 0 of the bikes I see doing this are doing it just to get from point A to point B.

(1) A speed limit is not a minimum. (2) You are supposed to be able to stop even for stopped traffic, not depend on magic escape routes to get you out of trouble. (3) You are supposed to drive in a way that is suitable for the circumstances.

And bike trails can be quite short, unsuitable for a racing bike, not linked to other nice roads that one might use, etc.

My small US town put bike lanes on some roads, but lots of cyclists understandably ride on the sidewalk. The bike lanes I pass on my commute to work seem optimized to kill cyclists as they literally cut across the path cars take at one point, although fortunately I never see cyclists on this part of their path.

The cyclists I personally hate are the ones who pull recycling material in carts behind their bikes. These cyclists are hard to pass, and I'm certain the amount of extra gas cars use to slow down for them more than makes up for any environmental gains of them using bikes rather than trucks to transport recycling material.

Uh, I’ve seen these people and I’m pretty sure they’re methheads, not hippies.

I'll still ride with friends on occasion, but the level of risk has just gotten to be too high for me to be a cycling hobbyist as I've aged and gotten more sensitive to risk. I'm more of a runner than a cyclist anyway and I can get the fitness benefits from using a trainer on Zwift, so this isn't a huge sacrifice for me, but it is unfortunate that even living in a pretty bike friendly city, I just don't feel like it's worth it. Most motorists are basically fine and give you plenty of space, but it doesn't really matter if most people are fine, it only takes one moron staring at a phone, one drunk like the scum that killed Gaudreau, or one malicious prick that just think it's funny to antagonize cyclists.

It remains amazing to me what a polarizing issue this is. I'm kind of struggling to write anything meaningful about the topic that isn't absolutely filled with vitriol. The absolute entitlement I see from motorists in comment sections is just incredibly over the top. Almost uniformly, these are people that have absolutely zero experience with cycling, as where cyclists almost always have plenty of experience driving. Personally, I have hundreds of thousands of miles driving, tens of thousands running, and tens of thousands on my bike. The number of genuinely dangerous incidents I have encountered that are caused by motorists across all of these is high, so high that it was enough to make me decide I just don't want to bike on roads at all. Despite that, you'd think that the most dangerous thing anyone had ever seen was a cyclist rolling an all-way stop sign if you read comment sections.

If I ever returned to significant road cycling, it would either mean that something changed quite a bit.

I guess my risk sensitivity is just much lower. Or maybe it's that I do suburban bicycling; maybe even a "bicycle friendly" city is worse than dense New Jersey suburbs. I've biked in Manhattan (which despite bike lanes, no one is going to confuse with "bicycle-friendly") and going down 7th avenue is another level of insane, but it's not like I expected anything else. (and driving in Manhattan is also another level of insane, even if it involves less personal danger per mile)

I'll cop to just basically being pretty soft about it. I don't think the objective risk level is all that high. People get killed around here occasionally, but it's usually either their fault or at least substantially avoidable. The risk-tolerance is less as an objective matter (I wouldn't be down for road trips in the car if I was really that concerned) and more feeling a personal sense of vulnerability on the bike that I just don't like.

I've had a couple incidents that freaked me out where I realized I'd have very little control over living or dying, which I think might have put that seed in my head; on a rural road, guy takes a left turn at the T in front of me unreasonably fast, comes across my lane at a short angle doing about 50 MPH head-on, I was lucky to bail to the side of the road in time. A big dude on a Harley pulled up at the stop sign next to me after seeing it to check and make sure I wasn't too rattled by it. I know these things are low probability, but I can't get it out of my head.

Don't get me wrong, if someone wants to grab the bikes to head over to trivia night a couple miles away, that's cool, I'm not paranoid about something relaxed and easy. If some buddies want to do a little lake loop ride (~12 miles), I'm down. It's the combination of speed and open roads for long rides that just kind of gets in my head.

In my area, bike lanes are a joke. Regularly on the single lane of a two lane road, no shoulder to speak of, and where traffic speed is set (for cars obviously) at 35-40 mph and in some cases curvy roads at that. You’d have to have a death wish to even think about using “bike lanes” like that. And to be honest, I think bike lanes and traffic don’t mix simply because of the speed differential involved. A fast biker can ride at 10-15 mph. A slow car riding the breaks goes 20-25. There’s just no way you can have a roadway set up for both without a physical Barrier to protect bikers from traffic. If we were taking about building bike lanes away from cars — dedicated lanes where there’s no roads connected to it, I think the perception would be better. As it stands, from the POV of car drivers, bikers are basically a road hazard to them — they have to brake hard suddenly with cars behind them going 40 mph putting them at substantial risk of being in a wreck themselves for trying to not hit a biker in the road. It simply doesn’t work from a design standpoint to try to fit a vehicle that moves less than 20 mph into a space where other vehicles are going anywhere from 30-60 mph.

And the barriers don’t seem to happen mostly from a money standpoint. The barriers cost money, then you need more money to redesign intersections to accommodate your barriers and bike lanes, you need better traffic control. None of that is cheap. To do bike paths alongside the actual road with protective barriers, updated traffic control, signage and parking costs millions and the majority of road users will never get use from it.

Last month a woman was killed while cycling in one of these lanes when she was forced to merge out of it because a construction company had illegally put a dumpster in the middle of it

Is there a diagram of the incident somewhere? Why was stopping, walking the bike around the dumpster, and then getting back on not an option?

Less rhetorically, I can’t tell from the information provided whether this is a reasonable law, or if it’s just entitled “not-in-my-bike-lane”ism that would jack the cost of construction and services to astronomical levels if strongly enforced. Where would you have put the dumpster?

Why was stopping, walking the bike around the dumpster, and then getting back on not an option? The picture is posted below, and clearly this was an option, and would have been the safest option in this situation.

However, blockages in bike lanes, whether due to construction, parking violations, or poorly maintained lanes means that cyclists encounter obstacles like this extremely frequently. Getting on and off a bicycle, losing all momentum is enough of a pain in the ass that basically nobody does it, preferring to take the small, yet significant risk of merging into traffic to save time and effort. It's similar to the risk that basically all drivers take on when they speed slightly, or roll through stop signs.

The difference is that in the cyclists case, the risk is almost entirely taken on personally, as bikes are fragile. When motorists take on those risks, it often disproportionally endangers the pedestrians and cyclists nearby.

Maybe the cyclist made a mistake, maybe they didn't. But everybody on the road makes mistakes, and road design should take this into account. Cycling advocates want to improve road design so that mistakes are much less deadly for cyclists, and in many cases these design changes don't significantly impact motorized vehicle traffic.

As for "where does this dumpster go":

  • the dumpster was there illegally already - the company ended up being fined (a trivial amount, but still it was illegal)
  • the sidewalk perhaps, slowing pedestrian traffic
  • the current location, but with temporary barriers protecting the bike lane
  • the current location, but with signs instructing cyclists to merge, and motorists to "share the lane" (common practice in Toronto)

the dumpster was there illegally already - the company ended up being fined (a trivial amount, but still it was illegal)

Ok, so the dumpster was brought to the site by the construction company? This makes more sense given what I see in the picture. Looks like they needed to get a street occupation permit.

My opinion on who is in the wrong here depends both on the details of the nature and urgency of the construction work being done, and on whether to permitting authority is capable of processing applications in a timely and reasonable manner.

I don't see how the permit makes any difference in the bicycle fatality. It was an enormous dumpster, clearly visible and marked with cones. If there had been a permit, the bicyclist would have had to go around it just the same.

Maybe there are more details we are missing about the incident, but on the face of it, the uproar about it makes me less sympathetic to activist bikers. Drivers deal with unexpected construction obstacles all the time, and I don't understand why a biker would expect to have right of way when merging into the main lane to avoid an obstacle.

Here's the dumpster in question. It doesn't seem to be in a bike lane at all, rather the right turn lane, which is probably worse. Looks like enough space to put it on the sidewalk, if that was an option.

Also plenty of room for a competent cyclist to pass inside the cones -- not to speak ill of the dead, but a lot of the cycling discourse seems to vaccilate between "Bikes are Vehicles; I'm taking the lane if I damn well please" and "Bikes are Fragile -- motorists need to yield to them as though they were pedestrians".

If you are driving your car up to some roadwork and need to merge into the adjacent lane, it's 100% on you to make sure nobody crashes into you -- including drunks and people watching tiktok. If you ride a bike on a city street (which I used to do a lot) you have even more incentive to get good navigating this -- but the moralistic aspect seems to encourage dodging the blame when you fuck it up.

a lot of the cycling discourse seems to vaccilate between "Bikes are Vehicles; I'm taking the lane if I damn well please" and "Bikes are Fragile -- motorists need to yield to them as though they were pedestrians".

But... both of those are true. There's more than one type of vehicle, you can't just force classify everything as "a car" or "not a car." Race cars, tanks, motorcycles, garbage trucks, school busses, scooters, skateboards, and bikes are all "vehicles" but they handle vastly differently and therefore have different rules. A bike is naturally faster than a perrson walking but slower and more vulnerable than a car, that's just how it is, it's pointless to get mad at them for not following some imaginary speed binary of "you must go either 3 MPH or 30, nothing in between."

Also plenty of room for a competent cyclist to pass inside the cones -- not to speak ill of the dead, but a lot of the cycling discourse seems to vaccilate between "Bikes are Vehicles; I'm taking the lane if I damn well please" and "Bikes are Fragile -- motorists need to yield to them as though they were pedestrians".

Yeah, those are the activists I can't stand. I wouldn't pass inside those cones, looks kinda tight with the dumpster overhanging. But obstacles like that are just regular city trouble for all vehicles, happens all the time.

Bicycle lanes are in no way the lowest of low hanging fruit for many cities. The last time I reluctantly went to Washington DC to take my child to the zoo, literally every square inch of asphalt was in use for some purpose, not always it's intended. You had two lanes and street parking (with myriad confusing signage about when and how it can be used) to make deliveries, do construction, go straight, turn left or right from a single lane, bike, be a taxi/uber picking up passengers, and more. And with this myriad array of mixed uses, all of which are 100% necessary, and everyone fighting for space, you want what effectively amounts to 1/3 of it reserved exclusively for bikes.

Yeah, I get if you are a bicyclist that doesn't sound too hard. Be literally anybody else in the city however...

all of which are 100% necessary

Street parking, especially free street parking, is not as necessary as it's often treated as by people that want to park for free on the street.

Who said anything about free? I didn't say anything about free. I don't think I've ever seen free parking in DC.

It’s basically never free.

Adding more bike lanes might be a bit of a Jevon's Paradox.

If you make it easier to bike, more people will bike, which will cause more bikers to be hit by cars since you can't totally segregate car and bike traffic. Obviously, at the limit, if everyone bikes it gets super safe. But that's clearly not going to happen. Even in Amsterdam, bikes get hit by cars.

And although I can understand how frustrating it can be to be a cyclist, bikes are part of the problem too. They are just fundamentally difficult to interact with as a motorist. They are small, often poorly lit, and moving fast (sometimes the opposite direction of traffic). They don't stop at stop signs, they zoom around pedestrians, they pass stopped cars and then turn in front of them. As a driver, when I cross an intersection in Seattle, I have to look out for other cars, pedestrians, bikes, and electric scooters, all traveling at different speeds and in different directions. It's like playing Frogger.

And, as @WhiningCoil pointed out, adding more bike lanes might also not be cost effective. In a place like Toronto or Seattle where the climate and geography are not suitable for bikes, less than 5% of person miles will be done by bike. I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 1%. Dedicated bike lanes shouldn't take up more asphalt than their share of traffic. Certainly, in Seattle, adding more bike lanes has made traffic worse, not better. As for myself I sold my bike a long time ago. Biking in the city is just no fun and unsafe no matter how many lanes they build.

since you can't totally segregate car and bike traffic

Is that true ? If a large number of people start cycling, fewer people will use cars. So you can add traffic calming measures to make cars go slowly.

Grade separated bike lanes keep cars and humans separate everywhere except intersections. At intersections, they're no different than pedestrians.

Bikes and cars are only substitute goods in a small percentage of use cases.

The Netherlands disagrees.

I have always felt that roads should exclusively be for motorized vehicles. And sidewalks should exclusively be for human powered means of locomotion (including cycles).

The benefits are:

  1. Sidewalk infrastructure is already pretty ubiquitous and does not require new investments or changes to traffic patterns.
  2. Crashes between cyclists and pedestrians are at slower speeds and less likely to result in deaths.
  3. Roadways are made safer. Drivers can expect other motorized vehicles and nothing else.

The common complaints I hear and my rejoinders:

  1. Sidewalks are not as comfortable to ride on. - tough luck, or suggest changes to sidewalks to make them better for you.
  2. Cyclists and pedestrians would get into accidents. - the accidents would not be as bad as cyclists and vehicles
  3. Pedestrians are slow and annoying to deal with for cyclists. - this mirrors the complaint that drivers have against cyclists. It is universally annoying to deal with much slower entities in a travel situation. Cars : Road Cyclists :: Sidewalk Cyclists : Pedestrians.

I think if the political will of cyclists had been spent on just making sidewalks legal for them then everyone would be much better off.

I have always felt that roads should exclusively be for motorized vehicles. On this you and most cycling advocates agree

And sidewalks should exclusively be for human powered means of locomotion (including cycles). You realize cyclists can travel 30km/hr+ right? That's actually quite dangerous to pedestrians, even if collisions wouldn't usually be fatal.

Why limit ourselves to roads or sidewalks, nothing in-between? Bike lanes/cycle tracks are that in-between, suitable for bicycles or low powered electric vehicles (scooters, e-bikes, etc). Sure, sometimes they're not suitable or worth the expense, but in many situations, like dense urban cores where motorized vehicular traffic already moves very slowly, and sidewalks are congested, having some space dedicated for bicycles works out great.

I think having something in between would be good. There are still some determinations that need to be made.

Are you gonna take street space or sidewalk space to make the in-between area?

What kind of general rules are they going to follow when they cross or interact with the streets or sidewalks?

I think they should generally be place in the sidewalk side of things, because the capabilities of these light vehicles is closer to pedestrians than it is to cars and trucks.

It is certainly going to be slower for the cyclists, scooters, e-bikes etc. But in a crowded city I don't see why anyone gets the right to complain they can't go as fast as they'd like. If they are currently getting in a lot of collisions at speeds that cause injuries to them, then that suggests slowing them down would have safety benefits.

This only really has a chance of working if sidewalks are set up like roads, where you have dedicated directional lanes of traffic and no arbitrary stopping. Sidewalks aren't like this; people walk where they want to, stop to chat with friends, loiter, look at restaurant menus, etc. Plus they can be filled with lots of other obstacles like garbage cans, mailboxes, outdoor seating, benches, grocer's displays, etc. There's also the problem that the traffic imbalance is reversed. On roads there's a lot of high speed traffic (cars) and a small amount of low speed traffic (bicycles). High speed operators may have to occasionally accommodate bikes, but it's a relatively small amount of time. On sidewalks you have little high speed traffic (bikes) but a lot of low speed traffic (pedestrians). Every cyclist would be constantly swerving or slowing to accommodate pedestrians. Riding on the sidewalk isn't bad in areas with low pedestrian traffic, but in business districts it's a nightmare.

I think the solution for most (nearly all?) of these scenarios is for the cyclists to go slower.

If you are a car in a crowded city you should not expect to be able to travel very fast, and certainly no where near the maximum capabilities of your vehicle and personal reaction times. Some cyclists seems to have this expectation.

I rode a bicycle on a university campus for 3 semesters until it got stolen. Its basically nothing but super crowded sidewalks constantly, with occasional glimpses of open space where you can go a little faster. I never hit anyone during this time. I also wasn't trying to go ~18mph.

If cyclists want safety they should go slower and stay on sidewalks. Safety is what I want when I'm on a bicycle so that is what I do.

If cyclists want speed they can go on the road, but they need to accept that what they are doing is incredibly dangerous and they are risking life and limb every time.

It probably won't be their fault if they get hurt. But the world sucks, and you sometimes need to treat it like its out to get you.

I think the solution for most (nearly all?) of these scenarios is for the cyclists to go slower.

If you are a car in a crowded city you should not expect to be able to travel very fast, and certainly no where near the maximum capabilities of your vehicle and personal reaction times. Some cyclists seems to have this expectation.

That's because the speeds that cyclists expect to go are still not as fast as drivers expect to go in the city. Cars do not have the right to go faster in the city just because they are completely overbuilt for that environment.

I rode a bicycle on a university campus for 3 semesters until it got stolen. Its basically nothing but super crowded sidewalks constantly, with occasional glimpses of open space where you can go a little faster. I never hit anyone during this time. I also wasn't trying to go ~18mph.

Having mixed use like this is a way in which infrastructure can be designed, as can prevent accidents due to a sense of entitlement. But it only really works in certain situations, mainly involving 'last mile' traffic close to people's destination. Long haul routes cannot be designed this way.

Resurrecting an old discussion?

I think I said all that is necessary at the time.

Drivers can expect other motorized vehicles and nothing else.

"Honey, the car is making that weird screeching noise again; I told you not to take the route with all the crosswalks!"

Cyclist-pedestrian accidents might not be as bad as cyclist/car, but they'd be a lot more frequent. Frequent enough that biking just wouldn't be worth it, and if bicyclists persisted would just get banned (as they are in NYC). Cyclists (especially individual cyclists, or small groups in single file) are not a major problem for drivers if they don't want to be, and one of my problems with bike activists is they often want to be (e.g. they object to cars passing them without giving them a full lane. My ass isn't 8 feet wide, you don't need to give me a full lane, just don't pass so close the breeze threatens to knock me over)

Do you think the total damage to life and limb would go up or down? I strongly believe it would go down.

In areas where the slowest transport method has enough political power they can just ban all other transport methods in their space. And they are likely to want to ban faster transport methods first. Imagine if cyclists outnumbered cars ten to one. They'd probably just lobby to ban cars.

If some space must be carved out of somewhere for the sake of cyclists, I think sidewalk space should be carved out before street space. And that cyclists should be held to sidewalk rules rather than street rules, since they can more easily follow sidewalk rules.

If some space must be carved out of somewhere for the sake of cyclists, I think sidewalk space should be carved out before street space.

In the Netherlands, there are a lot of non-urban bicycle paths which are also used by pedestrians, runners, etc. This is generally fine (although pedestrians behave more poorly than cyclists), since the paths are suitable for cycling speeds and nicely flat.

And that cyclists should be held to sidewalk rules rather than street rules, since they can more easily follow sidewalk rules.

I think that sidewalk rules are worse to cyclists than a 10-20 mph zone is to drivers. At least the drivers get decent roads in that case.

Bicycles are far more efficient than cars

By moving people from cars to bikes saves a tonne of space. One of the main problems in cities is that too much space is taken by cars which makes the city spread out and hostile to walking and cycling. This also makes public transit hard as people don't want to walk to it. When everything is spread out walking, cycling and public transit doesn't work well.

I'm fine with motorcycles being on the road. They would share most of the efficiency gains of size with bicycles, without as much of the discrepancy in capabilities.

I've also been to cities in India. As insane as they are about safety I still didn't really see human powered bicycles on the road all that much.

They were generally far denser than western cities. And the cities were not originally created with cars in mind. They still had plenty of cars.

The reason is pretty straightforward: cars are a clearly superior product in terms of travel comfort and safety.

Do you think the total damage to life and limb would go up or down? I strongly believe it would go down.

It would go down (if enforced) because there wouldn't be any significant amount of biking any more. Which makes it a really dumb idea from the viewpoint of a bicyclist.

I just don't believe that cyclists are such huge divas that they will take a slightly worse experience for a significant improvement in personal safety. If they feel that way why do any of them wear helmets? That is also a comfort vs safety tradeoff, and everyone has seemingly been fine with that mandated tradeoff. Why not this one?

Riding on the sidewalk is not a "slightly worse experience". It's a plain awful experience.

Where I live it is an objectively better experience than being on the roads if you care at all about personal safety.

What are your specific objections to sidewalks? And could either of those objections be solved by:

  1. Money spent on bike lanes instead being spent on sidewalk maintenance.
  2. Driving slower on the bicycle.

Until someone else pointed it out I had no idea just how fast cyclists expected to be able to go on their preferred pathway. I'll admit I have little tolerance for this complaint since they would happily have all drivers significantly slow down to accommodate them.

Where I live it is an objectively better experience than being on the roads if you care at all about personal safety.

Unless your roads are unpaved, I do not believe that.

Until someone else pointed it out I had no idea just how fast cyclists expected to be able to go on their preferred pathway.

Yes, one of the whole points of a bicycle is to go significantly faster than walking. Last week I was out on my bicycle (on the roads) and averaged 16mph, with a top speed of over 40mph (downhill). Even 16mph is considerably faster than is practical on a sidewalk. When I was going slow, cars mostly passed me with no issues ("mostly" because there's often someone timid who will hang back when there's plenty of room to pass safely). When I was going down that hill, the cars were hung up behind a slow truck so I was actually going faster.

I'll admit I have little tolerance for this complaint since they would happily have all drivers significantly slow down to accommodate them.

As I've said elsewhere in the thread, I would not, and I object to the bicyclist-activists when they make these demands. If you want to go out on the road and have your bicycle be a vehicle, you have to accept the ordinary risks of doing so.

At least where I live, sidewalks are designed to move people at a walking pace. Even running is sometimes a bit hard! They have sharp corners, frequent low hanging branches, sometimes steps, and nobody bothers to fix discontinuities of a few inches. It works on a bike if you're going real slowly, but part of the general complaint here is that "bike speed" is pretty varied between kids with training wheels and spandex-clad roadies that are closer to car speeds.

Yes, speed is exactly the problem.

If the posted speed limit is higher than a vehicle's maximum speed than it is dangerous for that vehicle to be there. Most vehicles in most circumstances travel much slower than their maximum speed.

I think bicycles should be expected to slow down on dangerous areas of a sidewalk, just like cars are expected to slow down in dangerous areas or when the speed limit is reduced.

Speed limit signs on sidewalks would be much cheaper to implement than bike lanes.

My ass isn't 8 feet wide, you don't need to give me a full lane, just don't pass so close the breeze threatens to knock me over.

According to the AASHTO Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities: A bicyclist has actual width of 2.5 feet, minimum operating width of 4 feet, and preferred operating width of 5 feet. A shoulderless lane needs to be at least 14 feet wide for a motor vehicle to pass a cyclist with an "adequate and comfortable clearance" of 3 feet, without encroaching into the next lane.

According to the AASHTO Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets: Passenger cars are 7 feet wide, and trucks are 8 to 8.5 feet wide. The standard lane width is 12 feet, going down to a minimum of 9 feet on lower-volume roads.

There just isn't enough room.

There's plenty of room. First of all, AASHTO is overly conservative; one must deal in reality, not ideals. Second of all, encroaching into the next lane is usually acceptable too.

The danger is stupid drivers who think that there is room when there isn't, and when they have a choice between hitting a car (low chance of injury) or the cyclist, they plow into the cyclist.

Sidewalks are legal to ride on in most municipalities. They're terrible to ride on. I don't know why you believe relegating cyclists to sidewalks would prevent accidents with vehicles - sidewalks cross intersections with less visibility than roadways and most accidents are at intersections.

If you just want cyclists to stop their stupid hobby, you should say that rather than proposing a solution that's obviously unworkable and that you've apparently been told is unworkable by cyclists.

It’s not a stupid hobby, however it’s stupid to think that you can ride a vehicle that goes 15 mph on public roads without being at risk. At least with a sidewalk or a separate path, you’re not blocking cars.

At least with a sidewalk or a separate path, you’re not blocking cars.

Why would a cyclist care about that? This is like trying to convince a Democrat to emigrate, so Republicans can govern the US as they want.

And cars block other cars quite a lot, so by your reasoning, people should stop driving and walk instead (which has the minimum amount of blockage).

I don't find sidewalks to be that terrible to ride on. It is certainly far less scary than riding on the road worrying about cars that might come kill me. And intersections are currently very dangerous because cyclist are on the road, not on the sidewalks.

If you just want cyclists to stop their stupid hobby, you should say that rather than proposing a solution that's obviously unworkable and that you've apparently been told is unworkable by cyclists.

This is bad discussion.

And intersections are currently very dangerous because cyclist are on the road, not on the sidewalks.

No, they're dangerous because you're not easily visible when cars are turning. This is true even at running speeds and would be dramatically worse at cycling speed.

It's just very difficult to believe that you have any meaningful cycling experience to draw from here.

They are far more visible than pedestrians that can effectively disappear behind street light poles.

The world is not gonna be perfectly safe in any circumstances, I don't believe I claimed that anywhere. I'll repeat what I asked Nybler: do you think the total cost to life and limb would be lower or higher? I strongly believe it would be lower.

It's just very difficult to believe that you have any meaningful cycling experience to draw from here.

Again, bad discussion. What exactly do you think happens if we go down this dick measuring contest path?

I say I have X experience. You say "I don't believe it". I say what experience do you have. You say XYZ experience. I say "I don't believe it". One of us doxes ourselves to provide evidence and win an internet argument?

And is this a general principle you support or are you just pulling it out to win this specific argument? Do you think white people shouldn't say much on this forum when some black person complains about racism?

Experience is a form of appeal to authority. Authority requires identity. There is little real life identity on this forum. Calling for someone to have some specific experience and then questioning it when they say they have the experience is either you having terrible debate hygiene and low awareness of how this forum works. Or its trolling, since it seems perfectly designed to antagonize.

I say that it's hard to believe you have meaningful cycling experience not to "win" but because I simply cannot imagine that someone that has that has put in significant mileage at any reasonably decent pace could come to the belief that being on the sidewalk is a good idea for cyclists. If I'm wrong, OK, it is what it is, I guess, that is a bit of a showstopper.

Drawing from personal experience is relevant in this context because the suggestion is something that anyone could easily go try out for themselves. Try it out! Go out, head over to the sidewalk, crank it up to ~18 MPH, and see if it doesn't seem like absolutely deranged behavior that's going to end with a broken wrist or collarbone in short order. Sidewalks aren't smooth, they aren't wide, pedestrians are frequent and not attentive, road-crossing have low visibility for turning vehicles, and so on. On surface streets in cities, the speed of a bike is closer to cars than pedestrians by a pretty significant margin.

I'm going to abandon this one because the topic is genuinely infuriating to me for whatever reason. I find it hard to not be insulting and that's just not great.

Well, obviously biking at high speeds is deranged behavior for the sidewalk. Biking at those same speeds is also deranged behavior on a road where cars are easily doubling your speed.

Unless you are just banning cars and making the streets for bikes (ive been to a Greek Island that does this) they just exist as an oddity that is discordant with the rest of traffic around them. They are a menace for the same reason your mother in law that insists on going 55 in the left lane on the highway because its the limit is a menace, just orders of magnitude more, particularly to themselves.

Different speeds of vehicles should not be on the same road, whether it is called a road or a sidewalk or a grocery store aisle (slow walkers should have to finish before 9AM).

I don't live in a dense urban area. There are dedicated bike and pedestrian paths in my area. When traveling between the pedestrian paths I'm generally taking it slow on sidewalks that are mostly unused by pedestrians, because the area is otherwise dominated by cars. The few pedestrians around are often the homeless.

My other main experience with cycling is on a university campus. Which is full of people and obstacles.

I'm not a super cyclist, and I've never done it as a commute, but my experience is not zero.

Complaining that you can't go over 15mph is like people complaining they can't drive 40mph in a neighborhood. The solution is to drive slower and more cautiously.

In general there are going to be tradeoffs with various solutions. I have a personal strong preference for safety in all parts of my life. If I was forced to ride a bicycle everywhere I'd generally choose to ride slowly on the sidewalk.

Since I'm not forced to do that I instead drive in a car, and I will never ride a motorcycle.

Two wheeled vehicles are just inherently dangerous, and I sometimes think it's insane that any of them are allowed on roadways with how much the government and culture profess to value safety over peoples personal preferences.

I used to cycle on a university campus too. I cycled on the campus roads, mostly, taking to the paths (much slower, obviously, or walking it in many cases because pedestrian traffic was heavy) only when the roads didn't go to the building entrance (often there was no road path to an entrance open for students). If I'd had to stick to the paths the whole time, there would have been no point in cycling, because it would have been too slow (and it was a big campus).

Complaining that you can't go over 15mph is like people complaining they can't drive 40mph in a neighborhood.

People in cars do 40mph in neighborhoods all the time. Including neighborhood residents who whine about others doing it.

I’ll put myself out there, I think somewhere around on this forum I’m on record for having been a bike commuter for five years. I only stopped because it was no longer feasible due to a job change.

My typical route was always a mixture of road / bike lane / sidewalk. The last 30% of my commute was sidewalk, I could have rode on the roads but it was much more efficient in terms of time / energy to go sidewalk because of the specific circumstances of my commute.

I rode to work rain or shine, even in the snow and ice. Where I live is all four seasons, so inclement weather took all forms for me. I sometimes worked odd hours so I’d often be riding home in the dead of night.

Riding on the sidewalk was perfectly fine, to me it was not any less pleasant than riding on the road.

A few caveats;

1.) I rode a mountain bike. An entry level one from a good company, so not expensive but not super cheap either.

2.) The area I lived in was technically urban due to density but you would like conceive it as a “dense suburb”.

3.) The sidewalks were mostly well maintained. Some were wide, some we’re narrow.

4.) Pedestrian traffic was modest.

I think these caveats boost rather than detract the pro-sidewalk argument, however; wide, well maintained sidewalks are perfectly fine to ride on as long as you don’t have a bike literally only designed to ride on motorways.

I'm going to abandon this one because the topic is genuinely infuriating to me for whatever reason. I find it hard to not be insulting and that's just not great.

It takes great patience and forbearance in trying to be a pro-cycling activist because my natural urge is to call everyone who opposes me fat. In my experience of real-life community meetings about bike lanes it is almost always the case that the concerned party is some flavour of overweight if not obese.

I think the main argument against this is that it transfers the risk from the cyclists to the pedestrians. Bikes on the road have to be careful to avoid being hit by cars. Put the bikes on sidewalks, and it's mostly pedestrians who have to be careful to avoid being hit by bikes. (Collisions with pedestrians can also hurt the cyclist, but the main danger is to the pedestrians.) And pedestrians would include children, old people, handicapped people, etc.

Realistically, cyclists on sidewalks would probably be at least as, if not more, contemptuous of pedestrian safety as drivers are of cyclist safety.

Entities travelling at variable speeds is going to cause someone some risk somewhere.

I don't pretend that the risk goes away.

Still, I think the best way to split up travelling entities is based on the existence of a motor.

Motors generally behave the same. They are good for constant speed. They can quickly and repeatedly reach their maximum speed. They perform at the same level until they are out fuel.

Human powered transport generally behaves the same. Momentum is important, so stopping is bad. They cannot quickly and repeatedly reach a maximum speed from a stopped position (unless they are world class athletes). They are not good at maintaining a constant speed, except very very low speed.

I don't think it is hard for bikes and pedestrians to share space. There is a paved nature trail near my house it's commonly just bikes and people walking/running. They get along fine. I've been both a walker and bike rider on the trail. Neither have been a problem. Even when it gets pretty crowded.

My experience with Bikers on hiking trails hasn't been pleasant. The bikers "claimed" a hiking route in a park near me (ie they put up a handmade sign indiciating that one of the parallel paths were for bikers only). This was in spite of signage placed at the entrance to the park indicating the paths were shared and that bikers had to yield to hikers.

I ran into one on the "bikers" path and I thought we were going to have a fist fight when he got uppity about me being in his way. He was threatening and stated it was for my own good that I stay off this route.

New law: A bicyclist is permitted to ride on sidewalks, but must dismount whenever a pedestrian is within a certain distance in front of him. (I don't know what a good distance would be. Maybe twenty feet (six meters).)

A bicyclist is permitted to ride on sidewalks

At least under current Austin law, "Riding a bicycle or micromobility device on a sidewalk is allowed, in a reasonable and prudent manner", so long as it does "not impede or obstruct pedestrian traffic on sidewalk paths."

This is fairly critical in a city with some nice bike paths that can in some cases be only accessed via 45mph roads, because too many car drivers can't be trusted with safety.

but must dismount whenever a pedestrian is within a certain distance in front of him.

This sounds like it would be a great law, except that too many bicycle riders can't be trusted with safety (particularly the ones who you'd need to follow the law), and enforcement wouldn't fix that because too many police departments can't be trusted with safety.

I walk everywhere I can, and have gotten by without owning a car for the last several years. In the last four years, I've lived in both a spread-out suburb and a denser, quasi-urban area. In my experience as a dedicated pedestrian, the majority of motorists I encounter are very deferential and mindful, stopping when they don't need to or waiting much longer than is required at a stop sign when I am approaching a crossing in order to let me through. Almost every cyclist I encounter is the exact opposite, refusing to slow or turn for anyone. It's on you to get out of the way or have the cyclist shoot you a death glare for not showing them sufficient deference. They are a massive hazard and nuisance on the sidewalks. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to lack of dedicated biking lanes, but I think cyclists have a cultural problem that makes them extremely unlikable, and not just to motorists.

My flaky pet theory is that society and culture has simply become worse over the past few decades. Maybe it's social media, maybe it's phones, maybe it's the endless war on terror, I don't know. But something changed, and now everyone is angry, frustrated, distracted, and short-tempered. They're all looking for someone smaller and weaker to inflict violence on, and "the streets" are a place you can get away with it. So you've got guys in oversized pickups driving aggressively against the normal cars, who then attack the cyclists, who attack the pedestrians. And even pedestrians will harass people in wheelchairs or with canes.

Interestingly, I did not experience that in Japan. Even in the places with no cycling infrastructure, or even sidewalks, everyone is nice and respectful and shares the road. Drivers will actually make eye contact with you and let you pass, instead of trying to push you out of the way. You see a lot of women riding bikes with a small child in the back, no helmet, no fear, and it all just runs smoothly. It's amazing. (though admittedly kind of slow)

There might be a cultural dimension but a big part of it is that slowing to a stop and restarting is actually a significant inconvenience to a biker in a way that it's not to a driver since it requires a large expenditure of your personal physical energy.

That sounds like a convincing argument against allowing bikes as vehicles on city streets.

Rather, city streets shouldn't be built for cars. There is no real reason why people should be drivng in cities except for delivery vehicles and workers transporting tools. Streets should be built in a way that is adjusted to people and how people use the streets, not cars.

Even if enacted, this wouldn't solve the issue.

First of all, it is intentionally wasteful. Once a road that can accommodate a delivery vehicle or pickup truck is constructed for their purposes, why shouldn't I be able to use it to go visit my cousin? Are we supposed to let this resource go unused 99% of the time?

Second of all, it doesn't fix the problem that people don't live in a line. I know there is that Dubai city idea. Great for them. Most of the time transit is totally useless to get to anywhere you want to go other than, perhaps, an urban core.

Third, it doesnt solve capacity. Carrying grocery bags is heavy. Bike or walk.

Many problems. All solved by the humble automobile.

Once a road that can accommodate a delivery vehicle or pickup truck is constructed for their purposes, why shouldn't I be able to use it to go visit my cousin? Are we supposed to let this resource go unused 99% of the time?

It will be used by pedestrians, of course.

Then how will the delivery truck utilize the road effectively?

I don't see the problem. There are multiple layers of roads in the city:

  • highways that let you drive at 120km/h, allow all motor vehicles and avoid residential areas
  • arterial roads that let you drive at 60km/h and allow heavy motor vehicles only with permits
  • residential streets that let you drive at 30km/h
  • pedestrian streets that allow only emergency vehicles and small delivery trucks

So the delivery truck will progressively slow down until it reaches the shop, unload the goods and then progressively speed up until it reaches the warehouse.

More comments

The usual suggestion seems to be only allowing trucks to deliver at night. This has the added benefit of keeping the peons who take deliveries out of sight and mind. And of course keeping us off public transit that only runs during the day.

Once a road that can accommodate a delivery vehicle or pickup truck is constructed for their purposes, why shouldn't I be able to use it to go visit my cousin?

A huge difference between a low throughput street and a high throughput street. This street can accomodate deliveries. This street is made for mass transportation The first street has far, far more people on it, takes less space and is much less demanding in terms of resources. Also the people in the second photo are likely fatter.

Second of all, it doesn't fix the problem that people don't live in a line.

Which is why many trips require a connection. A bus or subway is far more efficient at moving people than cars. They also require less space and make the city less hostile to cycling and walking. This reduces the distances and the need for travel.

Why would we even contemplate comparing those two pictures? One is urban and one is not.

Which is why many trips require a connection. Yes, which is why public transit doesn't work in practice as a substitute good for private cars. It has to be imposed on people through poverty or draconian regulation. Yes some cities make it mostly work even for the more moderately wealthy, but they are the exception. Lets, take, for example, London. Webley Stadium to Tottenham Stadium is 20-30 minutes by car and 75-105 minutes by transit.

Streets should be built in a way that is adjusted to people and how people use the streets, not cars.

This bit of linguistic gamesmanship is ridiculous: cars don't use anything. It's all just people out there. Anti-auto advocates ought to find a less saccharine and grating slogan.

I don't want to spend an an extra hour (actually 0:58 by Google Maps) getting to work every day. Do you have a way to resolve that issue, or will I just have to deal with it if you have your way?

Why is a city designed so that people spend 8 hours in a bed and 8 hours behind a desk and these two places are an hour apart? The issue with cars is that they create the need for transportation. Things get spread out making the car necessary. The issue isn't transporting people great distances, the issue is creating a city in which people don't have to commute long distances. Cars counteract that goal.

I really, really don't want to live in a dense urban region. The urban decay near me is ridiculous and completely intolerable. I need to do right by my kid and the city schools are jokes. At least most of them. I can easily shop around for a neighborhood with a great school district and send my kid to an even better private school in the suburbs. My suburban cup runs over on schooling and housing options in a way it doesn't within city limits.

So as a basic matter of self preservation I live far from the city. Well, an easy drive by car actually. But really quite far by public transportation; so my family is shielded from the worst of it. Comparatively few home and car break ins around here.

In existing car-centric cities, how many houses are within car-commuting range of a given workplace? In proposed walking cities, how many?

If you drop that number too low, then people will have to relocate to find work, even if it is just relocating across the city. I'm not sure if that's any better than commuting.

In proposed walking cities, how many?

what you mean by walkable city here? I seen anything described this way, from "total private car use ban" to "maybe have sidewalks at least on some roads"

And I would not look at proposed ones but at what exists already

"walkable city" is not specific enough

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would you take a trade where the city builds a lot more freeways where you can drive 60+, in exchange for having to go 20 or less on all regular city streets? That seems like the obvious trade to me. Otherwise it's just really difficult to share a street with cars going 40, and it's really difficult for cars not to go at, what feels to them a slow speed.

Sure. Given the areas my commute goes through, it would speed things up for me. I suspect it would help everyone else as well.

That's pretty much what I see as the best solution, given our current tech and culture. I just don't think it's possible for current-year Americans to really "share the road" with each other. Instead we've got this awkward compromise where most streets are frustratingly slow for cars and dangerously fast for anyone else.

I think this line of argument gets into the issue that a lot of people driving cars in cities (probably the vast majority) do so because they are employed in the city yet live in the suburbs dozens of miles away. Which is kind of an intractable problem unless capping the density of commercial real estate (or ratio of commercial to residential) is on the table.

That's what park and rides are for. Everyone parks at the outside of an urban core. Then walk, commute, bike into the urban core.

Which is nice until your car is stolen. There’s a nice little train to a neighboring city I want to take my kids on, but theft at the parking lot for it is too high, so we drive an hour instead.

If we're fantasizing about remaking the fabric of urban America we can fantasize about effective law enforcement.

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I empathize. America's urban problems need to be addressed whole sale. Generally, a large parking lot is easy to secure. A few cameras + security and you're set.

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People (in most of the US anyway) use the streets by driving cars in them.

What if people use the the streets by driving cars on them?

Walking, cycling, kids playing, outdoor cafés, selling stuff, meeting place.

You're entirely correct but ... aren't large expenditures of your personal physical energy half the point of biking? If you're on a bike because you can't afford a car, I'm totally sympathetic to you wanting to add as few calories you can to your grocery bill in the process, but at least for myself the biggest advantage of biking to work (because "work" meant "typing stuff", not ∫F·ds) was to build up some of the muscle and burn off some of the fat that would during the rest of the day be wasting away and accumulating respectively. I suspect I was more the rule than the exception for cyclists in the USA.

You're entirely correct but ... aren't large expenditures of your personal physical energy half the point of biking?

The other half is going places, the joy of the ride, etc.

Also, a cyclist tends to plan to use a certain amount of energy by picking a certain route. Going over budget is not necessarily preferred.

My only point is that it's apples and oranges to compare drivers vs. bikers being deferential to pedestrians, because it's nearly costless for the drivers.

I don't even bike regularly, but I always wished I could, I just don't feel safe with bicycle lanes. Physically separated bike lane is definitely the way to go. I live in a ~20,000-person town but if we had physically separated bike lanes (let alone normal bike lanes, which we still only have on a couple of roads), or even more sidewalks, it would be really cool and would raise the value of living here. There's enough to do for most people in this town within biking distance, but many roads are absolute crap for biking. There are roads where there is literally a 3-inch shoulder and then straight into forest or open water after that ends, I don't know how people have the courage to bike around here.

My prediction is that we'll see more enthusiasm for cycling in general (and therefore for cycle lanes) as electric bikes become cheaper and more popular. The world is getting more urban and more childless. For urban singletons and DINKs, commuting by electric bike can make a lot more sense than by car.

I'm also seeing more segregated cycle lanes in UK cities which are obviously far superior to the kind that drivers can park on.

My hope is that adoption of e-bikes will improve the behavior of cyclists as well, as it seems like the most annoying behaviors are driven by their desire to never lose momentum and especially never to come to a complete stop.

The start -stop behaviour is fairly unnatural. People don't do it when walking, cycling, boating or ridng horses. It is really a car specific behaviour. Urban areas existed for thousands of years without traffic lights and then as soon as the car came they were all over the place. Good urban design is less built around starting/stopping and more around interactions. Speed probably needs to come down a lot.

When you stop on a bike - a commuter bike, with a high saddle - you have to swing your leg to anchor on the concrete, which has the side effect of crushing your testicles. The desire to avoid this at all costs is like, half the motivation of attempting to keep the bike moving.

which has the side effect of crushing your testicles

something is wrong with your bicycle if that happens

Is it possible that your saddle is just set up wrong? This isn't something I experience. Clip right foot out, slide weight forward, stop, foot down. No big swing, no nuts crushed.

I'm a New Jersey cyclist. Usually in cyclist culture wars I find myself reluctantly on the side of the drivers, because it appears to me that the cyclist-activists don't want to (as they claim) act as traffic, but to be treated super-specially due to either their vulnerability or moral superiority. Neither, IMO, entitles cyclists to anything.

Surprisingly, New Jersey drivers, at least where I bike, aren't particularly hostile to cyclists (agressive in general, yes). I rarely get trouble from cars. There's one particular hill near me which for some reason attracts assholes who yell shit and honk (not because they're blocked -- it's two lanes). And last Sunday some moron did a close pass, but that's the first one in a long time.

I don't think Johnny Gaudreau's death has much to do with cycle culture wars. The killer had "five or six beers" and was drinking in the car, and the drunk driving culture wars were lost by the drunks a long time ago.

I think about the topic of bad drivers a lot - I think it is absolutely a systemic issue, in American society anyway. Cyclists are perhaps uniquely vulnerable to the things bad drivers do, but of course pedestrians and other drivers are affected as well.

I have the sense - entirely subjective, backed by no data admittedly - that the problem is less with driving ability and more with driving decision-making. That is to say: driving tests are testing for things like the ability to handle the car properly, and the ability to follow the rules of the road. However, the dangerous situations I see on the road are commonly not caused by people who can't drive the car safely, but people who don't do so for other reasons: they are impatient, they don't care about the safety of other drivers, they are drunk or high, or they are looking at their phone instead of the road. The guy that killed the Gaudreaus is a great example; he was drunk but I see this happen often. It's illegal to pass on the shoulder, and in instances like this there's no need to. You can always wait until you have room to pass legally, but dude decided that that didn't apply to him.

Just as a related thought, not tied exactly to your point, but I also subjectively feel like since the advent of smartphones, the quality of driving has dropped sharply; and I wonder if this is supported by evidence. I don't know if there's anyone tracking the frequency of, for example, someone failing to turn left when they get the left-turn arrow, because they're watching their phone instead of the light; and how many quality life-minutes that's costing society.

I know post-Covid we have more traffic fatalities. Looks like phone adoption could have caused a minor spike, then a larger spike that went down before 2019-2020. The pre-2020 increases aren't found in other nations looks like, so the phone factor may not be real.

People get comfortable, then they stop driving and start doing whatever else. Most people are not going to be F1 capable drivers. There the act of working a vehicle is an active, exhaustive set of skills that require constant attention and decision-making. The average person puts however many thousands of hours behind the wheel and they stop thinking about it unless their lizard brain gets triggered.

Average people are going to have lapses in attention while driving. Average people will make a mistake and get mad at someone else for it. Most of the time they won't hurt themselves or others. That's how I assume the majority of accidents occur. Not cases of poor judgment ("I can make this light"), but cases of without much judgment, absent mindedness, and habit.

Cases of misjudgment and bad drivers obviously cause accidents. The courts don't try very hard to identify these people out of the sea of tickets and educate them. Even people that get DUI's don't have to take more training. They get sent to some state-sponsored money mill that they pay money to be told drinking and driving is bad. Forget DUI school. Make them take driving classes taught by professional drivers. People that receive DUI convictions could be the most elite class of driver on the road.

Just as a related thought, not tied exactly to your point, but I also subjectively feel like since the advent of smartphones, the quality of driving has dropped sharply; and I wonder if this is supported by evidence. I don't know if there's anyone tracking the frequency of, for example, someone failing to turn left when they get the left-turn arrow, because they're watching their phone instead of the light; and how many quality life-minutes that's costing society.

At least in Toronto the number of hit and runs had doubled in the five years leading up the pandemic. The speculation is that these are mostly distracted drivers on their phones or other screens. The incident cited in the article where someone was hit sequentially by two vehicles both of whom fled is awful.

I can't imagine things have improved since then.

I wouldn't expect distracted driving to disproportionately impact hit and runs but not overall accidents, so the fact that that's the statistic used here makes me suspicious that overall accidents don't follow the same trend.

More likely impaired driving and/or rolling around with a bunch of guns/drugs -- those ones change the calculus on hit-and-run a lot more than 'oh shit I was checking my messages'. Could be 'suspended license' stuff too.

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