Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads? I've seen plenty of places that do both very well, like Spain. Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time.
I get it, when there's not cycling infrastructure everybody is forced to take the car even if it doesn't make any sense, like for short trips, good weather, single passenger, no significant cargo, etc. But there's plenty of occasions when you really need a car.
Also, taking Spain as an example again, scooters and motorcycles are often a better compromise. Practical speed for longer distances like commuting to work, better weather protection, larger cargo capacity, can take 2 people, etc. Why are they always ignored in these threads? Is this an American thing?
> Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads?
In many places you have to win back some space from cars to make cycling/scootering/ anything viable.
For example in London we have a tonnel, Blackwall tonnel, built in 1890's - basically before cars existed. Its the only way to cross the river in east london for miles. It was open to people, horses, bicycles.
When cars became common, it was converted into a road, bicycles are banned. The story of non-car transportation is a story of routes and land being taken away from you.
Anyway, now in London they are building Silverstown tonnel near blackwalll tonnel, exclusively for cars. But there is still no way to cross the river on foot.
I saw a news article about the old blackwall tonnel being pedestrianised, but then realised it was 1st of April.
Also they are building a railway for 100 billion in UK, and the original plan envisioned cycle route along all of it, from london to birmingham. But then budgets were cut and the cycle route was removed to save wopping 0.01% or whatever
> Also, taking Spain as an example again, scooters and motorcycles are often a better compromise.
I think this is a good point, there is also a wide array of electric non-bicycle mobility solution that fit well onto public transport and trains.
I'm not sure this is true, but, on the wider point of cars v cycles it comes down to the usual problem of neither not wanting to share the same space. I have lived in Spain, though mainly live in the UK, and in either place I would not feel safe riding a bike (or scooter) on a public road.
I should add that car drivers and bike riders can be as bad as each other, it's just that car drivers usually have the upper hand in terms of protection.
As a cyclist, I don't have an issue sharing space with other traffic, but I do have an issue with the hyper-aggressive drivers that seek to scare and/or injure cyclists by not giving them enough space when overtaking. There's also the abusive drivers that shout at you and beep their horn at you if they disagree with any choices that you've made such as which road to use.
Drivers and riders are hardly comparable in terms of dangerous behaviour and that's without even taking into account any consideration of pollution and environmental destruction (e.g. car parks, lithium mining etc.)
> There's also the abusive drivers that shout at you and beep their horn at you
Yep, happened to me.
Also there is a 'compulsive overtaking syndrome' where a driver feels they must overtake the bicycle even if you are exceeding the speed limit on your bicycle. Even if there is not enough space.
The technical term for that is MGIF (Must Get In Front). It's especially bizarre when there's queueing traffic just ahead, so they overtake and then you almost immediately filter past them. It seems as though they're not able to look ahead and anticipate their own progress.
The absolute worst are drivers who do the MGIF thing then immediately do a left turn right in front of you!
Edit: Slight correction - the absolute worst were the kids who thought it would be amusing to throw a brick at me while I was commuting by bike through the outskirts of Edinburgh. Fortunately their aim wasn't very good.
My absolute favorite (deep-fried sarcasm here) part of this is when they overtake and then slow down below your speed - regardless if you're driving or cycling.
As if it was somehow tiring for the car or something.
As a cyclist in a town with a lot of cyclist, I see less aggressive behaviour in my town, than in the countryside where people are not used to cyclist.
I was discussing with a fellow cyclist and we agreed that some countryside places were particularly full of aggressive drivers.
The more cyclist you have, the less aggressive it becomes
I spent a few months down in the country last year, and definitely encountered this. Drivers don't know how to react, so you tend to get reactions from given massive amounts of space (not that I'm complaining) to passing at breakneck speed.
Though there's other sides to it too, like the local youths who apparently find cycling inherently amusing and worth an attempt to intentionally run me off the road. It happens in other places too, there was an actual conviction last year because someone got recorded doing it at motorway speeds. I also learned last year that "rolling coal" or intentionally annoying cyclists with truck emissions is something in some parts of the US too.
On the plus side though, you can leave a bike just leaning against the outside of the store safely though, while an inadequate lock is grounds for getting your bike stolen in the city. I guess it's due to the lack of anonymity and places to sell stolen bikes out there. You will need to though, as there's nothing to lock the bike to outside the country store.
> Though there's other sides to it too, like the local youths who apparently find cycling inherently amusing and worth an attempt to intentionally run me off the road.
I second that, this winter I was cycling in the night, and local youths found it would be funny to scare me while they overtake me. One night I had 3 cars who did this "joke".
One particular problem with city motorists is mobile phone use, especially in traffic queues. People like to think that they can context switch between using their phone and paying attention to their vehicle surroundings, but I would disagree.
> As a cyclist, I don't have an issue sharing space with other traffic, but I do have an issue with the hyper-aggressive drivers that seek to scare and/or injure cyclists by not giving them enough space when overtaking
I haven't generally seen that in Germany, although I have only lived in cities with a generally good biking infrastructure. The only time when I get uncomfortably close is either due to fundamental infrastructure constrains (intersection squeezed in between buildings) or if some stupid delivery van parks on the bicycle path so I have to overtake it by crossing into the road. I wonder if more cyclist would normalise the situation so that abusive drivers calm down.
I'm in the UK and it's very noticeable how much nicer the German drivers have been when I've gone there (just Munich and Berlin). Most surprising was when drivers were wanting to pull out of a side street, but waited patiently for cyclists to go past without any hint of impatience or anger.
In the UK we have 'Vehicle Excise Duty' which used to be known as 'Road Tax'. There is a commonly held misconception that this 'tax' goes directly to the provision and maintenance of the road network (it doesn't, it's just another tax), hence the entitlement of some car drivers when confronted with, what they perceive as, a cycling free-loader.
I think it might be an American thing - at least the polarization part.
Over here in Poland some of my friends and relatives switched to scooters(125cc typically) when fuel prices spiked and are largely happy with the result - especially this one guy who used to daily a Nissan Pathfinder. Of course this becomes difficult in winter and inclement weather conditions, but I also see fewer cyclists then.
People need to realize that even the Dutch generally have cars and drive. It all works because they thought and fought hard to get to this point.
> People need to realize that even the Dutch generally have cars and drive.
It depends a lot where you are. Live in a major city and very few people have cars, they're expensive and spend a lot of time just sitting around taking up space and money. Go to a less dense area and they're a lot more common.
Also, pay-by-the-minute or whatever car rentals aren't uncommon for when people need them but don't want to actually own one.
Of course it does because it's like that everywhere in Europe. I wouldn't expect many e.g. Parisians to own cars.
My point was that there's a whole spectrum of lifestyles with rational choices behind them and you can't just brush over that with a simplistic solutions like "ban cars".
That's one of the biggest strawmens I've ever seen. Nobody is saying that they want to ban cars outright, they want to ban cars in city centers, in order to make them walkable.
> Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads?
Because cars pollute the air I breath, car horns constantly stress me, because politicians and city planners will use cars as a justification to develop cities as asphalt wastelands, because pedestrians and bikers are killed daily by unruly car drivers and so on. Plus somehow cars manage to bring out the worst in every person. Road rage is a thing.
> Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time.
I don't have a car. I either bike, walk or use public transportation. I don't even live in an area where public transportation is great.
> scooters and motorcycles are often a better compromise
Still deadly in accidents and still polluting. The only thing that would make sense is low speed electric scooters, but those dont work well either in suburban sprawls like the US and Canada have.
One absurd but conventionally normal thing is that cities have to build wider streets just because car drivers will inevitably transform them into parking lots, on both sides, halving their width. Old streets often seem narrow, but they aren't really narrow when they aren't full of parked cars.
It would be lovely to see parked cars disappear if autonomous cars become common enough. However, that would also rely on people deciding against car ownership and moving over to a shared vehicle model.
The problem is when public transport doesn't match with the people's requirements.
If I were made world leader, I'd subsidise public transport so that it's more or less free to use for the public in an attempt to wean them away from private cars. It would then make sense to expand the network as more and more people choose to use it.
Autonomous electric cars solve only some of the problems cars create while exarcebating others. In a world where semiconductors and rare minerals already cause a lot of geopolitical tensions, do you really think it is feasible to migrate most of the world cars to autonomous electric?
There is only one solution that solves all of the problems car create and has several other benefits. Rethink the urban and infrastructure development for walkability and shorter travels. We can't avoid it, like it or not.
I do agree. Electric cars were invented to save the car industry, not the planet.
I consider that the main problem with cars are their size and weight, so simply electrifying cars doesn't solve issues such as congestion or pollution from tyre wear (which can be comparable to the emissions from an ICE). Here in Bristol, UK, we've got a lot of people using hired e-scooters (the privately owned ones aren't allowed on public roads without a license, insurance etc.) and I think they're a great way to get people around cities. As they're small they don't need huge batteries and thus they're much lighter and carry far less kinetic energy into collisions. A large percentage of the batteries in electric cars are used to move the batteries around, rather than just moving the passenger(s) and vehicle. E-scooters and e-bikes are great for delivery services as they can avoid getting stuck in traffic congestion and the batteries can be swapped out for fully charged ones in a matter of minutes if needed.
They’re naturally opposed in a way. Bike infrastructure is car infrastructure, you need protected cycle paths etc where there’s a lot of cars or they’re going fast. If it wasn’t for cars, the current infrastructure is great for bikes.
I can recommend Carlton Reid's "Roads Were Not Built For Cars" book as a history of the early development of modern roads (i.e. tarmac). Many of them were funded by cycling societies before cars became commonplace. Also quite a bit of interesting history of the early cars.
>Why are they always ignored in these threads? Is this an American thing?
I don't know but Vespa-type scooters are very uncommon in the US. Motorcycles are less rare but are widely considered (with some justification) to be dangerous as a form of transportation. (It doesn't help that there are some crazy motorcyclists out there though of course many aren't.)
May have something to do with the type of road infrastructure and traffic, or just custom, but don't really know.
> I don't know but Vespa-type scooters are very uncommon in the US
why? They are also quite common in germany for people living in the city and very useful to get around in the city. I personally bike but I see the appeal.
No idea about the why. Vespas were a bit of thing maybe 20 years or so ago in the US but, while I think I know one person who owns something along those lines, they just aren't very common in my experience. (Maybe because car ownership is higher and it tends to be either/or?)
> But there's plenty of occasions when you really need a car.
Eh, depends on your needs, really. I've gotten along without one for decades; I keep meaning to learn to drive, but it never rises to the top of the priority list as I just don't really have a use for it.
People also just adjust. If you don't drive--or at least can't rent a car easily/don't want to--you just tend not to do activities or go places requiring that you do so. I couldn't get by day-to-day without a car but even if I lived in the city, I'd regularly want to drive one to visit people, do weekend activities, etc.
Eh, I find I can get wherever I need on public transport, in general. Now, that said, I'm not regularly going to very rural areas, or anything.
I mean, it definitely wouldn't work for everyone, but for me, I can walk or get public transport anywhere I need to go (and this is in Dublin, a city that is... not known for the excellence of its public transport; they'll finish the underground train one day...)
Now I'm in my late 30s, I also have the vague superstitious belief that the enforced walking is keeping me alive; if I wasn't doing that I'd be pretty sedentary.
If I lived in Boston, there's basically no way I'm getting to the mountains, north shore, Cape Cod, western suburbs/exurbs where a lot of people I know live, etc. without a car that I either own, rent, or someone else does. The city itself has a pretty good public transit system and there's even a pretty good commuter rail--but that's designed for coming into the city from suburban train stations with parking lots. So I'd be pretty much limited to the metro itself without a car in some form.
Which is fine for some people. They'll just naturally tend to avoid activities that are a pain to do in one way or another.
Yeah, my impression visiting the US has been that once you leave a big city, things become difficult to navigate alarmingly quickly. It's a bit different here; the suburbs and other cities and towns are usually fairly accessible via public transport.
I think that's generally true. While it's not like you can easily get to every corner of the British Isles or Western Europe generally without a car, there's a lot you can do out of Dublin or London with public transit and maybe the odd cab ride. Generally good as Boston's public transit system is, other than taking the train to New York City, flying somewhere, or taking a bus to someplace that is mostly not very interesting without car transportation on the other end, your options are pretty limited beyond what's covered by the greater metro transit system.
Ah. So I think basically anywhere near here that has restaurants that anyone would be bothered about making a trip for would also be within walking distance of a bus route. The places that you really _can't_ get to on public transport are very rural.
I think it's mainly a U.S. thing as their cities are designed around personal car usage. That leads to the separation of living spaces and facilities (i.e. the anti-15 minute city) as more roads need to be built to cater for all the traffic which then leads to the distances increasing until a car is needed for almost every journey. Once you have cars dominating as the form of transport, it becomes dangerous to use other vehicles as most drivers will inevitably just be looking out for other cars and not two-wheelers.
because cars pollute, produce a lot of noise, take a lot of space when not used(so majority of time), infra for them is expensive(roads and parkings) and it should be maintained frequently and bc of them a lot of people die (at least where average speed is >30km/h)
I'm fine with electric motorcycles that are speed limited by design and have slower start acceleration by design, this would be really nice
I get it, when there's not cycling infrastructure everybody is forced to take the car even if it doesn't make any sense, like for short trips, good weather, single passenger, no significant cargo, etc. But there's plenty of occasions when you really need a car.
Also, taking Spain as an example again, scooters and motorcycles are often a better compromise. Practical speed for longer distances like commuting to work, better weather protection, larger cargo capacity, can take 2 people, etc. Why are they always ignored in these threads? Is this an American thing?