1. Vehicular drivers have no incentive to care. The laws around liability have to be changed.
2. Cities have to deprioritize car traffic to below pedestrians, bicycles, buses/trams. Free parking mandated or provided by the city needs to be eliminated. Zoning for building dense hS to be loosened up. Thankfully, this trend is picking up.
Car lifestyle is heavily subsidized by the state now.
I am someone that worries about hitting a bicyclist.
To do a proper right turn in the US in 2023 there are three directions a driver needs to look.
1. To the left for oncoming car and bike traffic.
2. To the right for bicyclists riding up the wrong way of the street or on the sidewalk riding towards you.
3. Behind and to the right for any bicyclists that choose to pass your car on the right while you're making a right turn (even if you're signaling your turn).
For context 2 & 3 happen to me more than once per year.
As a cyclist (on a designated bike path), I was hit by a small SUV in case #2.
The driver looked to the right and I thought our eyes connected, but he proceeded from the stop sign to make a right turn right into me. Fortunately, he stopped as soon as he knew he hit something and I only ended up under his bumper, with a slightly bent up bike and major bruise on my left thigh.
In this case, I would have actually been safer (and in better view of this driver) if I had been riding on the road.
Up to that time, I rode over 1,000 miles outside in the summer, mostly on roads. Now, I no longer trust traffic at all and ride mostly on the extensive bike trail system in Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, except when I consider the road to be a better option.
The thought of sharing the road with distracted drivers and other drivers who choose to be assholes to cyclists makes the road riding just too risky.
> 2. To the right for bicyclists riding up the wrong way of the street or on the sidewalk riding towards you.
Is biking the wrong direction on a bike path on a one-way street legal in the state or country that you were in? Are you surprised that you got hit when you were biking going the wrong way down a one-way street?
He was on a designated bike path. Without seeing the signage around the accident, it's hard to say who was really at fault here. But I would easily assume it was the driver.
Correct. The bike path was designated and two-way.
I was certain the driver saw me when he looked to the right and we made eye contact, but apparently he was looking in my direction beyond me toward the street.
To me there's a impedance mismatch between cars and bicyclists. I have known about 2 or 3 people in my life who have died in a biking accident -- one of those people I really liked as a kid.
On the other hand I have seen bicyclists (also electric scooters) riding at high speed on a sidewalk shoot out quickly into a low visibility intersection. If you were the driver at the wrong time wrong place you would hit that bicyclist, and probably feel bad about it.
Leisurely biking on the sidewalks I think is fine, but above a certain speed the bikes should be on the road obeying normal traffic laws.
I agree with both of you actually. I also don't bike because of all the close calls and real injuries I've seen with careless drivers, but ALSO because when I'm driving myself I feel like it's easy to hit someone by accident especially when they are in the right lane. I wish there was more dedicated bike infrastructure, which seems like it would solve both problems
Hmm, if we do that (as a formerly avid cycling commuter) can we also make it so blasting thru the red light (on non empty streets), riding wrong way on the road, talking on your phone while riding, etc - something I saw pretty much daily when I used to ride - is treated as seriously as the same for cars?
* Bicycles are now granted the same "always have right of way" status as pedestrians. The ensuing panic following the damages payout for the first cyclist to be maimed by a vehicle causes local governments to enact laws restricting cyclists to designated bike lanes and sidewalks. The bill is sold as a measure to protect cyclists but it's really so insurance premiums for drivers don't go up. Since breaking local laws doesn't eliminate the liability the city police aggressively ticket cyclists who "jayride."
* Minimum parking spaces mandated by the city go away. And nothing changes because parking spaces in tight areas are worth their weight in gold to the businesses that own them.
* Zoning for multi-family homes and apartment complexes open up. Developers see $$$ and buy up land in trendy well-to-do areas and build "luxury" apartment complexes. It's great for a while until those apartment dwellers want more space and to stop paying rent forever and move to where you can still find affordable single family homes -- low income areas! Ooops, you wanted to avoid gentrification, right?
You can't law your way out of a culture that likes cars and single family homes. You have to make a desirable end-state for people with kids and hobbies. This might work in SF where there is a huge amount of latent demand but in your average med sized city it'll backfire.
> Minimum parking spaces mandated by the city go away. And nothing changes because parking spaces in tight areas are worth their weight in gold to the businesses that own them.
We have lists of businesses that are not getting built right now because they can't afford enough space to build both the store and the mandated parking. Business owners tend to overestimate how far their customers are coming from and hence their parking needs, but they'll be outcompeted by those who get it right.
> It's great for a while until those apartment dwellers want more space and to stop paying rent forever and move to where you can still find affordable single family homes -- low income areas! Ooops, you wanted to avoid gentrification, right?
Gentrification is the problem of prices going way up when a place gets made nicer. Stopping making places nicer is cutting our nose off to spite our face; rather we should make more places nicer so that the price of nice places isn't so high.
For some version of "nicer" which is often not that of the residents. I've lived in neighborhoods that were gentrified. What happened was that luxury condos were built, rents went up, all the interesting independent stores and restaurants moved out or folded because they couldn't afford the new rents, and generic chain restaurants and stores that you can find at any mall moved in. Not an improvement in my opinion.
So we change focus on the outcomes of change. That’s how it goes. Science. shrug
Stop posting hyper generalized subjective perspectives as expert opinion? It just gets sad and you come off like an entitled know it all. Jfc the internet is full of idiots and empty back and forth.
You need to open your mind a bit. There is something in between the 50 storey apartment block and detached suburban sprawl. Liveable cities have 4-5 stories, wide footpaths, car-free squares where kids can be supervised at a distance but mostly left to their own devices. Amenities within walking/biking distance.
As a parent, I trade off having less space in exchange for a walkable environment for my children to play and live in. I am lucky to live in a city where my children can safely walk to their friends house and take a city bus to school. They have some autonomy and won't be arrested for going to buy a doughnut unsupervised, like in the USA.
Also, no, I don't have my own metalworking shop, but I do have a Hackerspace nearby, which not only has more tools and equipment than I could ever need, but people to enjoy them with.
The US suburban life is all fear and isolation based. Your home is your castle, your lawn is a moat. Your SUV/Pickup is your steed, used to go into battle every day with a hostile world. You can have a gun before you can have a beer... You only think you need all that space because your are not willing to share it with others as part of a communal society.
> You only think you need all that space because your are not willing to share it with others as part of a communal society
Yeah pretty much. Hell is other people. The few years I spent living in "walkable" neighborhoods exactly like what you describe were the most depressing times of my life, where I wound up contemplating suicide frequently.
The truth is that what you are describing is the ideal and reality is often far from that.
In my case you couldn't go play football in the park, because it was a homeless camp. You could walk to a lot of things but it was basically just endless arrays of coffee shops and such. There were grocery stores in walking distance but they were all priced at a premium. Housing prices and rent prices were sky high, and rental rates were so low that landlords were able to get away with illegal shit like raising yearly rent by more than the legal allowed percentage. Majority of rentals wouldn't let you own a pet, which sucked too. There wasn't any kind of accessible maker space, for that you had to drive. It wasn't even very close to transit! I knew a lot of young families lived in my area but I never saw kids outside playing.
So no, my wanting to be away from that existence is nothing to do with fear of people. Just a desire to have my own space where I don't have to hear my neighbors through the walls all the time. A desire to be able to own the place where I live, and change it however I like. The desire to have enough space that I can set up my own gym/shop/whatever I like, without having to pay a subscription to access it and then compete with other people to actually use it when I want to.
I'm sorry about your experience. Sounds bad, and to be honest I see echos of that in my city. But in my experience, briefly living in suburban/exurban MA and CT USA, I was hugely depressed by the experience and felt lonely, uninspired and trapped.
It’s not about not wanting to share it, it’s about owning it in the first place. I can’t share what I don’t own. All my leisure time rented to me by the hour isn’t community. Listing a friend who is between leases crash in your spare room and use your garage to store their stuff is community. Handing out all the fresh vegetables you grew this season to your neighbors is community. Loaning your friend tools for a renovation they’re doing is community. Having band practice in your garage is community.
Look, I agree with you, it would be amazing if we had actual community spaces, but I didn’t make the system I just live in it. Short of starting a commune (I’ve tried, there was a 4k square ft repurposed church with like 12 bedrooms and lots of land in the city for less than the average home I wanted to go in on with my friends) having a home is the best you can do to have a space that’s yours and you can share with others.
Jeez you make that sound awful. If my kids want to play outside they can play in my enclosed, private, backyard. If I want to sit and read on my iPad in the hot tub or watch a movie in the pool I can do that. If I want to tinker, I can do that and grab a beer from my garage fridge while cooking. I'll take that over what you're offering.
> It's pretty hostile to having children or any hobbies that take any kind of space.
Children and most hobbies need friends more than they need empty space. A city where you live in a flat and can play football with your neighbours in the park is much more child-friendly than a suburb where they live in a house with a lawn that they use maybe twice a year.
> You can't have a metalworking shop in a condo.
You can have one on the block, with other people to learn from, and you'll probably get more out of it. Rooms in your house are a means not an end.
> A city where you live in a flat and can play football with your neighbours in the park is much more child-friendly than a suburb where they live in a house with a lawn that they use maybe twice a year.
Most suburbs have parks?
Hell my girlfriend grew up in a suburb that had a manmade lake that was close enough for her and her friends to walk to. Find that in the middle of a city. Your local pool doesn't even compete.
Plenty don't, or the kids can't get to them, or there just aren't enough families within walking/biking distance for the kids to socialise.
> Hell my girlfriend grew up in a suburb that had a manmade lake that was close enough for her and her friends to walk to. Find that in the middle of a city.
I live "in the middle of a city" and I'm next to one river which has sports fields alongside it, and in the other direction there's another river within walking distance (15 minutes) with a nice landscaped park. Admittedly no lakes, but the first river is about 400m wide and people do jetski etc. on it if that's what you want.
Like the Serpentine in London's Hyde park... Or the bathing pond in Hampstead Heath, or the boating lake in Regents Park or Beckenham Place Park swimming lake for a less iconic one near me...)
I'm pretty lucky, but I have a wood-shop in SF. I live in a duplex townhome, with a garage. The garage has enough room for a car and some shelves and workbenches. I drive the car into the street and park it there (and block my driveway, and nothing else), and suddenly I have plenty of room if I need to get a table-saw out. Yea you need to be intentional and tidy... I share a lot of the tools with my neighbor, and we added weights rack and treadmill too with our space.
I know several people with very comparable living situations in the city. I also have a small backyard. Would kids want to play a 10 person football game back there? No. But you can have some private space to grow a garden, and BBQ in summer, and sit outside with a book on a nice day - its a 10 minute walk to a few parks if you wanted space for something more active. I see kids playing in the street all the time too.
I also live within a 15 minute walk to 50+ restaurants and stores, I can commute via light rail to the office downtown if needed, I can take transit to the airport, etc. I almost never drive, which is a very common way to die for younger Americans and I walk a lot, which is healthier too. It saves me a lot of money on car maintenance and insurance - if you tell the insurance agency that you don't commute with your car, you can often get the premium to $<50/month, which helps defer the cost of living in the city.
Oh and there are hackerspaces, co-working spaces, etc should you need them less or be on a stricter budget. They have much better tools and equipment than I have, even better than in most big suburban homes.
You can't have everything, but you can have a lot, and you just have to change your balance of compromises.
100% true for most people. I commuted by bicycle for decades and for me, I got used to it. But as time progressed and the number of autos, the size of these pickups and the road conditions, I can easily see why people are afraid. Also on the roads I commuted on, people started to drive much faster as time progressed. In 30mph (50kph) zones the ave speed now is around 50mph (80kph), back then people did not drive like that.
Another thing, when I was young, large trucks were not allowed to drive inside City Boundaries in my US State, plus they were not allowed on the roads on Sundays. But that ended when Regean forced my State to de-regulate their Trucking Regulations in the 80s.
So yes, I can see why people are afraid now.
But one positive, now-a-days I do not get bottles or cans thrown at me and dogs are much more friendly :)
quoted accident statistics from the 1970s where it seemed every scenario other than the “cyclist gets hit from behind by a driver out of ignorance or malice” such as “cyclist hit dog”, “cyclist hit parked car” (my worst cycling accident of all time), “cyclist hit cyclist” (I still think cops oughta arrest cyclist for rising in peloton), “cyclist got hit by driver in intersection because the bike lane had no visibility where it crossed the road” killed more cyclists.
Newer accidents statistics seem to show the “hit from behind” accidents happen more than previously indicated, particularly in the American South.
I spend a lot of time fantasizing about what building a city "from scratch" would look like.
It's a painful problem to actually make it happen because cities are all about network effects (you live there because people you know are there, etc). I just think it would be very appealing to me to live in a city that is optimized for biking + walking instead of having to own a car.
If I were ever to get rich, this would be an area I'd throw funding at to figure out. Is anybody aware of any research in this area?
This is something that I'm working on and hope my next startup will be about, I know there are others interested in it. The problem is generally the regulatory environment, it's a surprisingly difficult thing to do in any habitable location.
Marc Lore is working on this, throwing his billions into a concept for a new city out in the desert somewhere: https://cityoftelosa.com
The team at Culdesac are trying this in a "compliant" way, they built an apartment complex with basically no parking in Tempe, AZ but are positioning it as a car-free neighborhood. I believe this is their prototype and they hope to scale it up in future projects, this is about as realistic of a path as I think anyone has.
Building for cars is required by law across North America, and getting around that is quite hard.
I fantasize about that, too. You might be interested in the work of Culdesac (https://culdesac.com/); they're building an expressly car-free neighborhood, from scratch.
I'm optimistic that I can make strides closer to home. I have only ever lived in places that predated the advent of automobiles. At one time, they were very accessible via walking, biking, rail, and trolley. So, last fall, when I moved back to Providence, I made it my mission to get involved in local transit activism. It's been a great source of social and civic satisfaction, and I intend to repeat the exercise when I move again next Fall.
It feels like positive change is (slowly) happening.
Has Culdesac made much progress? The site looks fairly similar to last time I looked at it, a while back. Are they building it all out or waiting on sales to finance progress?
Vancouver didn't start from scratch, but aggressively built out its cycling infra over the past two decades. I love bicycles, I love green tech, and I love my e-bike! But I also note these concomitants:
- Rapid gentrification. Foot/bike accessible urban infrastructure turns out to be the hottest possible commodity.
- Luxury pricing of car parking, insurance, and spacing. This seems harmless until you remember that e.g. poor people shop at box stores (which depend on a car to access) in order to bring down the cost of living. Intentionally pricing car access as a luxury good makes the poor pay for climate progress. Making cars more expensive to own and operate is an inflationary force that disproportionately afflicts the poor.
- Gentrification + Inflation = Displacement. It's almost a joke at this point -- if your neighbourhood is putting in a bike lane, and you don't own your home, you are basically watching them tidy up for the next tenant, who will be like you, but better-off, and will pay more in rent.
When I see a bike lane getting put in, I know I'll be moving in a few years. And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with bikes, and I listed the above adverse outcomes as 'concomitants', and not side-effects. I don't want to suggest that the lines of causality are that clear.
But talk about 'optimizing' cities is fundamentally talk about redistributing those cities, and redistribution creates (or effaces) winners and losers.
> Making cars more expensive to own and operate is an inflationary force that disproportionately afflicts the poor
No it isn't. I think you know the answer to the question "are transit riders more or less affluent than drivers on average?"
> And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Please name one place where this has occurred in Vancouver (which I am intimately familiar with).
> Luxury pricing of car parking, insurance, and spacing
This is a transition problem more than anything. Those are used by poor people today because the state subsidizes that way of shopping. If the state subsidizes a different way of shopping, that will become the cheap way of shopping
All problems are, when seen from far enough away, 'transition' problems.
They are very, very real for the people experiencing them. Life itself is transitory, often on a shorter timeline than the problems encountered throughout.
The book “Car Free Cities” is a beautiful imagining of what would be possible if we built from scratch, attempting to connect concepts in cities like Venice that actually are car free.
The book itself is a beautiful physical object. I really wish we could do cities from scratch.
There are many cities around the world that don't prioritize cars at all. None of them are in the US. We got pretty much screwed on this count -- the US wasn't always so car-centric, but then we got suckered into it only to discover that it's a trap after it's too late.
The network effects evolve over time because people move. As a city increases bike friendliness, it will attract people to move there who want a livable/bikable life.
As NotJustBikes has taught me, you don't have to start from scratch. Many cities in Europe were bulldozed for the car only to regret this decision decades later. Now you have bike utopias like Amsterdam.
Definitely. Brussels was designed for cars (and Belgium is very car-centric in many ways) but it's got much better for cycling in the ~15 years I've been here, thanks to a mixture of incremental improvements and political "big pushes".
There seem to be two styles of city from scratch: extravagant and monumental, as St. Petersburg, Washington, or Versailles; suburban, homogenous, and bland, as in the Levittowns or whatever Disney called its development in Florida.
Yep and I know this to be true because my family often vacations in places that have this as a core feature. It's easier in resort type areas for the reasons you mention. The freedom of biking and walking about is a great feeling.
I've spent time living in China and where I was they had these fantastic protected bike lanes. They were double wide lanes that had an island (with a decorative but still robust and functional metal barrier down the center and attractive plants and trees all around it) protecting it from the traffic. It was like a bike specific roadway that only interacted with cars when crossing at intersections and it felt so safe that riding downtown in crazy Chinese vehicle traffic became a non-issue (they did need bollards at the entrances to these lanes otherwise someone in a smaller vehicle would eventually try to use it to get around the traffic). I wish we had that sort of system where I live in the US.
they did need bollards at the entrances to these lanes otherwise someone in a smaller vehicle would eventually try to use it to get around the traffic
In Beijing, many of these lanes (辅路) double as parking lanes. The side by the sidewalk is full of parked cars, and the side near the island is for bicycles, scooters and cars getting in/out of parking spots.
Even though cars may be present anywhere in the 辅路, they're not going fast when looking for parking. So I still felt far safer cycling in Beijing (a city of 20MM people) than I do in San Francisco (sub-1MM).
My fear off cars has been going up recently, mostly because of extremely dangerous driving, aka people using their phones
I was rear-ended because the driver behind me was on their phone. When I am driving now, all I can see is the amount of people that are looking at their lap and completely ignoring the road. I have even seen people watching TV while driving.
This has made me, for better or worse, a really conservative and defensive driver.
This. I was born and raised in Portland and recently moved to Austin, having cycled and driven in both (though primarily in Portland). Both are often celebrated as being bicycle friendly, however in both cities, taking public transportation gives you a view into people's vehicles while you pass by and it's scary just how many people are texting or scrolling their social media feed while driving.
I think Austin is a bit more dangerous because 1) there are far more oversized pickup trucks driven by city people that reduce the driver's visibility (part of the whole "Texas identity" thing) and 2) the city finds it acceptable to allow/encourage cyclists onto streets where the speed limit is 55mph which are basically highway speeds (sometimes there are painted bike lanes, sometimes there isn't).
Within the first few months of moving to Austin, I had a middle aged woman aggressively cut in front of me while I was riding down a hill and yell at me for riding in the street (which is not only legal, it's required for cyclists). Then follow me home in her pickup truck and try to call the police. Police never showed up, likely informing her she was in the wrong.
Had the same thing happen to me 2 years ago while waiting at a red light. A woman blasted into me and the 2 cars in front of me. She ended up in the oncoming traffic lane and her car did a 180 so she was facing the opposite direction. This was at the end of an old bridge where the lanes are narrow and the speed limit is 35 MPH, ie, a hazardous road in the first place, and yet traffic routinely drives 50 MPH - without even paying attention!
She had the minimum required insurance for KY, 25/50/10, which is ridiculously low. My ER visit was $22K, and the total bill was $45K after all was said and done, including a nose surgery. That is only the doctor/hospital costs, not pain and suffering. I had to pay $20K above my car settlement for a (used) replacement car. The bodily injury claim is still pending with my own insurance company for underinsured motorist, and they've ignored me for 4 months. I have a 2-year deadline coming up, so if they continue to ignore me, I'll have to sue them.
And the fine for texting while driving in KY? That would be $25.
It's been a shitshow for nearly 2 years, all because some dumbass was using her phone instead of driving. I hate driving now and avoid it whenever possible.
> The amount of people that are looking at their lap
It's uncanny. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. That half cocked head, the periodic glancing up, one hand out of view. It's the posture of like half the drivers out there.
It's not even just the phone thing. I'm not from the US but have driven 10,000+ miles there in the last few years on various roadtrips. So many American drivers drive with a death wish, like they're invulnerable and are not fussed if they do or don't survive their next lane change.
When I was first driving (16) I got a ticket for some silly thing like turning on red when I shouldn't have, so I went to 'diversion program.'
Every other person there was there for speeding, but the part that really got me was when the instructor asked everyone who thought they were a good driver to raise their hands, and we all did.
Easily the case for me around the NYC area. I biked recreationally both within the city and in Jersey on more country roads. The fear of getting hit in both scenarios eventually became to big for me, and I picked less dangerous forms of exercise. It's a shame as I never felt as free as when I was tooling around on my bike
That is one of the most frustrating things about bike advocacy in NYC. 90% of the people who would bike don't because they think it is dangerous, and then people at CB meetings say we don't need to build bike lanes because they don't see anyone biking. They think of it as a way to increase safety of existing bikers and not a way to draw in new bikers.
And because of fractured nature of how these decisions are made, and the vetocratic nature of how our political system gives everyone a way to say 'no', every bike lane is a painful fight. And in the end, even if a bike lane gets built, the city doesn't actually put physical barriers to stop people parking cars in them. Then you factor in the lack of traffic enforcement in this city and the situation is pretty dire.
That said, there has been very slow progress. Compared to 15 years ago it is quite a bit better, but good lord it is a very drawn out fight. I try to encourage folks to show up to local community board meetings to advocate for bike lanes because I do think it makes a difference.
Thinking about how much is within a 5-6 mile distance of you at any point in time in NYC, you can see the potential for NYC to be an incredible place to bike if we prioritized safety, pollution and efficiency when we allocate street space in the city.
A friend of mine was a bike messenger in early 2000s NYC over the summer, and quit before the summer was out because he'd been hit by cars twice. It's such a shame as NYC's density, weather ~9mo out of the year, and elevation change all lend themselves to extensive biking.
I'm even afraid of walking because of cars. Last week when crossing a driveway near where I live, twice a car blasted through the pedestrian crosswalk without even looking.
Drivers are out of control and are blissfully (or willfully) unaware of the dangers they pose to others.
It's been a controversial point among cycling advocates for years.
One fear is that if a handful of bike lanes exist, cyclists will feel confined to them, that they don't feel it is safe and permissible to ride on the roads -- like you need to haul your bike on the back of an SUV to an authorized bike trail if you want to bike.
What tends to happen in London is about 90% of cyclists use the bike lanes, while a few racing-bike hotshots will skip them (especially when congested) and use the car lanes. Usually those guys are easily fast enough to keep up with the cars on busy city streets anyway. There's certainly no rule, real or imaginary, that says if bike lanes exist then cyclists must use them. But having decent cycle lanes there absolutely does encourage more people to cycle!
As a regular commuter who cycles through Surrey and south London, I must say that most cycle lanes in London are a joke. They are either shared bus lanes (the good case, albeit you might get in trouble when multiple buses queue one after another) or half-a-meter wide ones, where cars are allowed to cross your lane from both sides. Sometimes using the car lane just seems safer than that.
There's some good ones in central London. The C2, C3, C6, etc. Wide segregated routes, fully signalised at intersections so turning traffic doesn't cross the cycle lane, etc. I'm not so familiar with South London but some boroughs are better at doing cycling than others. eg: Hackney and Camden very good. Kensington & Chelsea very bad.
I literally had a driver in London slow down to yell at me for a couple of minutes because I wasn't riding in the cycle lane (which was narrow, full of broken glass, and had blind junctions every few hundred metres with side roads off the main road I was riding on).
There's one particular bike lane on my commute that I hate. There are cars parked all along the road and it's a single line placed 3-4ft away from the average car. Any above average sized vehicle or poorly parked vehicle takes up some or all of the "bike lane".
I refuse to cycle in it, but I can feel the judgement of every driver trying to pass me. I would much rather that cycle lane wasn't there.
I was pacing the vehicle in front of me and briefly took the lane around an s curve on a town street sharrows, a couple blocks from a stop sign. The guy behind me closed the following distance to intimidate me and when I went up on the sidewalk and yelled at him at the stop sign, he told me to go ride on a bike path.
He put my life at unnecessary risk for the offense of being on a designated bike street...
Vehicular cycling is such a ridiculous ideology and mantra. John Forester has done more damage to not-cars-means-of-transportation than pretty much any other person riding a bike, and many more outside of that group.
The "Well there's your problem" podcast goes over a lot of his ideas in great detail [0]. The crux of it is what the above study says: if you want to encourage cycling you have to build dedicated infrastructure (and maintain that infrastructure in all weather and conditions) in order for people to view it as something reliable.
The key is to avoid what the parent poster specified by just increasing supply: to assuage fears that there are "only a handful of bike lanes and paths (and thus cyclists fear they are confined)" is to just build more. It's vastly cheaper than our current car-focused infrastructure. Cities exist today that seem to figure this out without turning into Amsterdam, so surely the rest of us can figure it out as well.
> The "Well there's your problem" podcast goes over a lot of his ideas in great detail [0]. The crux of it is what the above study says: if you want to encourage cycling you have to build dedicated infrastructure (and maintain that infrastructure in all weather and conditions) in order for people to view it as something reliable.
I can't read videos, but how does he sustain this claim given that Tokyo exists and has a large cycling modal share with virtually no bike lanes?
Vehicular cycling is absolutely right IME. If you want to build "dedicated infrastructure", junction priority changes and advance stop lines should be a lot higher on the list than cycle lanes on plain road (which is not where the killing of cyclists by drivers is happening).
I live in Tokyo. People generally ride bikes on the sidewalks, unless they're riding on the really narrow side roads that have virtually no car traffic. The big roads do have painted bike lanes, but you don't see them used much, definitely not by the mothers riding mamachari; they're all on the sidewalks almost hitting pedestrians. Also, things are really different in different parts of the city. Some parts are newer with much wider sidewalks (and even dedicated bike lanes separate from the road), other parts are not. Some parts are just terrible for cycling, because there's too many pedestrians and the roads are hazardous (like Shinjuku).
The place would be a lot better for cycling if they installed more dedicated infrastructure, but it works as-is for many reasons: there aren't that many cars in most places, because parking is rare and expensive, vehicle speeds are rather low, motorized vehicles have most of the liability for accidents with pedestrians or cars (no matter what: if a kid runs out in front of you and you kill him, it's your fault), theft is very rare, and people are extremely non-confrontational so even though many pedestrians hate sharing the sidewalks with cyclists, they just put up with it. Back in the US, I had people screaming at me and trying to start physical fights with me when I rode on sidewalks and there was no one else on the sidewalk except them. Here, people just step aside. Another thing here: cyclists are legally required to carry liability insurance, in case they hit a pedestrian.
Anyway, you're not going to replicate Tokyo's success with cycling by simply copying one feature. The whole culture here makes it workable despite the lack of great cycling infrastructure, as well as many other things that are basically impossible elsewhere.
Finally, while the infrastructure could be better in many places, things are constantly improving; newer developments (housing, malls, Olympic sports venues, etc.) have bicycle parking as a standard feature, for instance.
> unless they're riding on the really narrow side roads
That's most of the cycling that happens, from what I've seen. (I also live here)
> The big roads do have painted bike lanes
Very ward dependent; some places do, many don't, and even in the places that do they're a recent thing.
> Another thing here: cyclists are legally required to carry liability insurance, in case they hit a pedestrian.
That's a very recent change - I think it was only last year or the year before.
> Anyway, you're not going to replicate Tokyo's success with cycling by simply copying one feature.
I suspect you might if that feature was "make street parking illegal", because everything else flows from that - narrow streets become possible, sharing those streets becomes necessary. But my point is mainly that this idea that segregated cycle lanes are the sine qua non is very wrong; Tokyo definitely proves that much.
It doesn't really prove it at all. Because there's so few segregated cycle lanes (I live in a part of town that has some, but they're only in certain places along wide, higher-speed roads), cyclists just mostly stick to sidewalks. This causes lots of interactions between cyclists and pedestrians, which has led directly to the requirement for liability insurance that I mentioned before, because of so many pedestrian injuries.
Basically, cyclists have a choice: take roads and risk getting hit by cars, or take sidewalks and risk running over pedestrians. The risk to the cyclist is FAR lower with the latter, so that's the rational choice to make, and that's what they've done. Getting hit by a car is easily a death sentence; hitting a pedestrian can cause serious injuries, but that's rare, and usually the risk is to the pedestrian.
If you really want safety for everyone, you need to separate all 3 modes of traffic. It works ok here much of the time just because people are tolerant and non-confrontational, the car traffic is rather low-speed (unlike America), there's no that much car traffic in the first place (no place to park! So much of it is taxis and delivery trucks), and a lot of the streets are really narrow (also leads to low speed for cars).
Personally, I stick to sidewalks unless there's a cycling lane, or the street is so low-traffic and low-speed that I feel safe on it. So little residential back streets are fine, but the big boulevards, forget it.
IMO, I think that, at least in my area, they could do better just by painting cycling lanes on the sidewalks, and educating people to use the appropriate lane (cycling lanes for cyclists only; too often I see careless people walking in the clearly-marked cycling lane), and also by widening some of these sidewalks where possible. They could also stand to put some of the roads on diets to make wider sidewalks and cycling lanes. Maybe levy some more parking taxes to pay for it.
I really don't think this is it; yes, you see a few cyclists riding on the pavements alongside the main roads, but you see many more making their way along the side/back streets which don't even have a segregated pedestrian pavement - and don't need one.
> This causes lots of interactions between cyclists and pedestrians, which has led directly to the requirement for liability insurance that I mentioned before, because of so many pedestrian injuries.
It's not "so many", otherwise that would have happened decades ago. It's largely an (IMO over-) reaction to one dramatic case where a cyclist hit an elderly person who then needed a lot of expensive medical care.
>I really don't think this is it; yes, you see a few cyclists riding on the pavements alongside the main roads, but you see many more making their way along the side/back streets which don't even have a segregated pedestrian pavement - and don't need one.
Yes, many parts of Tokyo are like this, with lots of side/back streets that help cyclists avoid even needing to ride along the main boulevards. But not all of Tokyo is like this; it seems like every time I run into someone online who lives here, they completely forget that Ariake/Odaiba exists, or maybe they've never been there. There are a lot of places where you can't really take a side street because the geography prevents it, so cyclists are forced to divert to main streets for some distance (like over bridges) where they then share the sidewalk with pedestrians.
>It's largely an (IMO over-) reaction to one dramatic case where a cyclist hit an elderly person who then needed a lot of expensive medical care.
It's interesting how societies don't weigh risks rationally when it comes to cars. How many people (esp. pedestrians/cyclists) have gotten seriously injured or killed in car crashes? But that's just considered "unavoidable" for some odd reason, and little to no effort is made to avoid it in the future. But a cyclist hurts a pedestrian (and not even fatally, as is common with crashes involving motor vehicles) and suddenly everyone freaks out and wants to ban or restrict cycling. Why aren't they trying to ban car driving?
To be fair, I do see this insurance requirement as not too onerous. It really is possible to seriously injure a pedestrian when you're riding a bicycle at speeds well above those that pedestrians can travel, and we already require motor vehicle drivers to have a lot of insurance coverage. Bicycle insurance here is quite cheap really. Mine was only 3000 yen/year. So I don't feel this particular requirement is really an overreaction. However I do wish they'd be more proactive on the infrastructure side and do more to make cycling safer, and not by painting stupid bike icons on the sides of high-speed, high-traffic boulevards, which to me is an insult.
> not all of Tokyo is like this; it seems like every time I run into someone online who lives here, they completely forget that Ariake/Odaiba exists, or maybe they've never been there. There are a lot of places where you can't really take a side street because the geography prevents it, so cyclists are forced to divert to main streets for some distance (like over bridges) where they then share the sidewalk with pedestrians.
Ariake/Odaiba you just can't reasonably cycle at all IMO - e.g. you're simply not allowed to cycle across the Rainbow Bridge or through either of the Tokyo Minato tunnels (neither in the traffic lanes nor on the pavement) so if you're coming from the west you have to go 5-10km out of your way before you even start. I tried to go to the cycling course on Wakasu once and gave up, and I'm a pretty confident/experienced cyclist who can usually handle tangling with road traffic. Rather than it being a success story of cycling on pavements / segregated cycling infrastructure, I would bet that the mode share of cycling in Ariake/Odaiba is just a whole lot worse than Tokyo in general.
>Ariake/Odaiba you just can't reasonably cycle at all IMO - e.g. you're simply not allowed to cycle across the Rainbow Bridge or through either of the Tokyo Minato tunnels
People cycle in Odaiba and Ariake all the time. Have you never been there?
No, they're not crossing the Rainbow Bridge, but they don't need to. They live in Ariake and cycle around it just fine. There's no need to cross the Sumida with a bike for most people.
>I would bet that the mode share of cycling in Ariake/Odaiba is just a whole lot worse than Tokyo in general.
It sounds like you've never been to Ariake. There's tons of bikes, and lots of bike parking at the various destinations there. You don't seem to realize that a lot of people actually live in (or close to) Ariake. Take a look at a satellite view on Google Maps: those big towers next to Ariake Gardens mall are housing towers. People live there. And people live in other parts of Koto-ku and cycle to Ariake, because it's close by bike. There's wide sidewalks and even actual bike lanes (separate from the road) in some places. But there's probably no one trying to cycle regularly between Ariake and the west side of the Sumida, but that doesn't make Ariake "un-cyclable".
Man, I almost put a bunch of caveats in my last post to pre-empt this, but I assumed you were going to engage constructively rather than just attacking me. Yes, I've been to Ariake, more times than I can count. Have you never been to the rest of Tokyo?
> People cycle in Odaiba and Ariake all the time.
I saw fewer and emptier bike parking areas than on the "mainland", and fewer people cycling around.
> those big towers next to Ariake Gardens mall are housing towers. People live there.
Some people do sure. The fact remains that it's a lot less residential than most of Tokyo.
> But there's probably no one trying to cycle regularly between Ariake and the west side of the Sumida, but that doesn't make Ariake "un-cyclable"
Well, I was actually a person trying to cycle regularly between Ariake and Meguro at one point, so there was at least one, but it simply wasn't practical. No, one poor connection doesn't make a place un-cycleable, but it's indicative.
I'm not trying to attack you; sorry if I seemed harsh. My whole point was that there are parts of Tokyo that are not like the (generally much older) parts you're thinking of. Next time you're at the mall there, check out the bike parking garage next to the AEON entrance (on the east side). Of course, the people living at the towers don't bike to the mall, since they live right next to it, but my whole point is that these places aren't "un-cyclable" just because they're not cyclable between two random points (which happen to be separated by a huge river where it empties into the bay). Your whole claim that Ariake is un-cyclable seems to come from the assumption that everyone lives west of the river, which just isn't true: lots of people live in Koto-ku and Edagawa-ku, and many parts of those are bikable to Ariake. To be sure, living in that part of Tokyo does separate you from the parts west of the river in many ways, especially by bicycle. But still, many people live in these parts and ride bikes every day there. They just don't ride to Meguro :-)
AFAICT, most cyclists in Tokyo do not ride long distances at all: they use their bikes to ride around their local neighborhood, and especially to get groceries. I've met a bunch of people who told me the only time they ride a bike is to get groceries, in fact. They don't use their bikes to ride halfway across the city; they use the trains for that. People who ride long distances seem to be pretty abnormal.
OK, so I've resorted to actually looking it up: Toyosu has 4.2% cycling mode share, and Ariake has 2.1%. The figure for 23-ku as a whole is usually said to be around 13%, and the figures for other parts of Koto-ku seem compatible with that (e.g. 15% for Kameido). https://www.city.koto.lg.jp/650102/documents/030322boumachis... , page 15.
Vehicular cycling at least puts you where drivers expect other vehicles to be coming from. It's a good choice in many situations. Being in pedestrian areas, riding as far right as possible (area-specific mandate), or in a bike lane makes you practically invisible in many cases.
Cycling specific infrastructure can do a lot, but it can never be a solution for all destinations because of limitations enforced by pre-existing infrastructure.
my knee-jerk reaction is: and because streets aren't just for cars!
But more pragmatically, vehicular cycling is often the best choice because of visibility and predictability, and also as regards driver awareness and expectation: it at least seems safer if drivers are accustomed to sharing the road than if they never have to.
Nah. Unless you ride in a town where everyone rides and no one drives, you're gonna have to interact with cars at some point. It's just inevitable. You need to know how to ride on a road with other vehicles.
I'm not convinced that the answer is just more infrastructure. IME, most bike paths are just bad. They're some combination of poorly designed, poorly made, or poorly maintained. There's one on the way to my office that has marked loading bays for trucks such that I have to keep getting off onto the car traffic because there's no way I'm passing between a vehicle and the sidewalk. Why would you build something like that there? And of course if you decide that it's just too risky to use the bike path people scream at you because they think they're entitled to that lane that you didn't even ask for.
Most "bike lanes" suck but physically separated bike lanes are great in my experience. You can also have slow streets or bike boulevards which filter the through traffic.
If I had my way, downtown areas would have very low speed limits, and narrower streets would discourage cars from going fast. People who need cars (or, make deliveries) could still use them, but the streets would be slow enough that pedestrians and cyclist would feel seen and in-control.
> "If I had my way, downtown areas would have very low speed limits, and narrower streets would discourage cars from going fast."
Thankfully, this is exactly the sort of urban design we're gradually seeing more of, at least in many bigger European cities.
New UK Department for Transport guidance is for all urban and residential streets to have 20 mph (~30 km/h) speed limits, down from 30 mph previously. It is, however, still up to local authorities to actually set those limits. In London, most streets have been 20 mph for a while now.
There doesn’t have to be a good reason. Just imply that all cyclists are leftists soy sipping femboys that are wasting your tax money on wasteful bike infrastructure and you’ve got 95% of this group riled up.
The biggest obstacle for me has been the weather. If it rains, you get soaked and all of the shit from the road flies onto your clothes. And during winter, the roads are so icy and uneven that I'm worried I go tumbling downhill and slide right under a car.
Helps that the bike path situation here is decent, where you're usually on a shared-use path with a curb, although you really need to pay attention when the bike path crosses a road. Some people just don't see you and others don't know that they actually need to yield to cyclists in quite a lot of intersections.
I've been commuting by bike daily for the last 20 years, and the only weather that I think is too unpleasant or dangerous to bike in is the same weather that cars shouldn't drive in, too (with one exception: wind. Lord, how I hate the wind).
But, as with all other outdoor activities, I dress for it. I wear raingear when it rains, etc. I've been through plenty of downpours and have never arrived at my destination soaked, once I take the raingear off.
I used to ride my bike to work in Boston, and one day I ran into the rear fender of a car who had cut me off, basically crashing into the car at pretty high speed, and the car didn't even notice.
I realized that even if I was a master at city biking, through no fault of my own I could easily die or be seriously injured, and I haven't ridden a except for fun now and then since.
If you're interested in 13 minutes of beautiful art from a completely different viewpoint, I highly recommend checking out Lucas Brunelle's "Road Sage"
I'm always conflicted by Brunelle's videos. The skill displayed is certainly impressive, but I think it's wrong to glorify that kind of behavior. Those people are irresponsible fools. If you want to do stunts, don't do it around people who don't want to be involved. And I say this as someone who commutes by road bike daily.
I agree with you on some level, and I don't condone everything in this video. I think I probably draw the line in a different spot than most people however.
Alex Honnold has honed his craft to a point where he can casually do things that would probably have a 99% mortality rate if tried by most climbers. These folk aren't that good, but there's a huge gulf between your average road bike enjoyer and someone who races to win alleycats. While this behavior on a bike CAN cause severe injury, including to bystanders, I think compared to checking directions on your phone etc. the amortized increase in mortality for those around you is likely much lower.
I think it's wrong to "glorify" this behavior, but I don't want to live in a world where we can't appreciate the beauty of it. Where we don't understand why some people chose to do it, and where we can't take a step back to reflect that perhaps chasing this visceral sense of aliveness is worth some the danger it may cause to other people, perhaps more so than checking your phone while driving, or even going maskless in public during flu season.
Solution seems simple to me: build more bike lanes and bike paths, especially in cities.
Although honestly, sharing a road with cars isn't that big of a problem as long as car drivers are responsible drivers. Put more emphasis on interaction with bicycles in driver license tests, and keep the murderous idiots that you get in some countries off the roads.
That's a matter of culture and driving standards. I trust Dutch drivers. I had no problem bicycling when we didn't have as many separate bike paths yet.
That some other countries have drivers who don't care about the lives of cyclists is utterly insane to me. Those people do not belong in cars, or even out in public.
Big cities tend to be the better and safer places to cycle in my experience. More cyclists on the streets, so cycling is "normal" and car drivers are used to seeing cyclists and know how to behave. Better cycle lanes and infrastructure. Generally slower traffic speeds so bikes are moving closer to the same speed as cars.
In rural areas you may have less traffic, but it will be travelling much faster, and not every driver may be paying attention and looking out for cyclists.
Absolutely. Growing up in the Netherlands, I would bike everywhere. At my height, I would be biking 90-120km per week. From commuting to work, to the gym on the other end of town and some trips .. whenever. Now I am in Asia, there are people biking here, but not me. Suddenly all the trips I take, even the shortest ones are by car. Because screw cars.
This is the main reason I stopped biking to places in the city. Now I just use bike paths in places where they're wide.
I've met people that take pride in bullying cyclists because of course when we drive we become the most impatient creatures in the planet.
I really doubt it is. The biggest barrier must be the weather - biking in the cold and rain is just super unpleasant for an average person, especially for errands and commute. I know you can prep, but it's still pain. I gave up due to Seattle rain, and I am not even an average commuter - I'd go on a major hike on a rainy day... but biking in the same weather just sucks so much. And Seattle is mild.
I can see how it can be the 2nd biggest barrier, although for me in Seattle it's the fear of my bike being stolen. Dunno if I'm lucky or what, but the only 2 times I've been in serious cycling accidents it was 100% my fault (both times at 20+ mph passing cars on the left - rear ended another car once, and rode into tram tracks the other). I'm still afraid of cars but not as much as having to uber back in wet cycling clothes if my bike gets stolen :)
For a long time, "vehicular cycling" was a big thing - the idea being that bicyclists should use the road as if they were driving a car. This put a lot of focus on teaching people how to ride a bike on the road, rather than designing safer infrastructure for them.
It makes sense, no? If someone wants to ride now, they should know how to do it safely, not have to way until someone makes the road safe enough that they don't have to learn anything.
It makes sense at an individual level, but does not make sense at a population level. On an individual level, I would tell someone how to stay safe, but if I was advocating at a population level I would be focusing my time on infrastructure change.
Car lifestyle is heavily subsidized by the state now.