[garethrees]

This is a well-known principle of urban transport. If driving is faster than the alternative transport mode (whether that's public transport, if any, or walking), then at the margins people will switch to driving, but that means more traffic on the road, more congestion, and slower driving speeds. Conversely, if driving is slower than the alternative, then at the margins people will switch away from driving, reducing traffic and increasing driving speeds. So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode. In central London, for example, travel speed has been roughly the same whether you drive or take the Underground, for more than a century.

Update since some commenters seem to be having trouble: this process depends on the travellers "at the margin", that is, the people who are most willing to switch modes to reduce their journey time. Thinking in terms of the average or typical traveller is misleading.

[gerbilly]

This is called induced 'demand'¹, and it is why I love biking in downtown.

I like to play a game where I pick a distinctive car 3 blocks ahead, and see if I can catch up to it and pass it. If the car does not turn off the road, I almost always do, and by a wide margin.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

[asdff]

I love filtering through traffic on my bike. My favorite hobby while passing cars trapped in traffic is counting how many aren't solo drivers in a given stretch of traffic, excluding work trucks/delivery. Usually it's under 10%. It's fun to imagine how this would look if all these people were on a bike, but 20' x 6' apart like they are currently arranged in these singly occupied cars. Bonkers.

[kurthr]

I like your example... I've done the same, but it's important to remember that lots of those trapped people came from far away places on freeways that may not have access to a train... certainly that's true of the delivery trucks, which also couldn't deliver on a bicycle.

The key really is to move the marginal traffic that can switch. The key thing I see reducing cars is the absence of parking. Being at your destination, but unable to park (within a few blocks) is often enough to convince people not to drive.

[baxtr]

I changed jobs recently and one of the biggest factors for me was being able to bike to work. 6km a trip mostly through parks circumventing traffic as much as I can. It’s an important life quality factor for me.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I'm not sure this is true in Copenhagen, although I've only visited once and I don't have any data to back me up. There is a huge cycling culture there and it seemed that the bike lanes were often pretty badly jammed up while the car lanes were relatively clear. But perhaps this is more a result of it being impractical to own a car there (eg parking) as opposed to the cost or convenience of operating one.

It would seem to be an outlier so it would be interesting to see some data.

[liotier]

Why do those cyclists stay on the bicycle lane when it is clogged and other lanes are clear ? Here in Paris, I can't imagine anyone behaving in such submissive manner

[Someone]

In the Netherlands, current design calls for three types of streets:

- highways, speed limit >= 100. Cyclists can’t go there (but alternative, cycleable routes always exist)

- main arteries into cities, speed limit 50, with separated cycle tracks.

- ‘last quarter mile’ roads, speed limit 30, where cars and bicycles share the road.

So, if there is a bicycle lane, it typically is separated from the car lanes by a barrier (row of trees, parking spots, etc)

That makes switching from bicycle lane to car lane or switching back to the bicycle lane when the car lane gets busy hard to do.

Also, you may be more likely to get a green light when riding in the bicycle lane, as the the induction loops there are designed to detect bicycles, not cars, and, on top of that, cyclists may be preferentially give green lights on crossings over cars.

[eythian]

I live and bike in Amsterdam, which also gets heavy bike traffic. The thing is, things still work more smoothly if you are in the bike lane. The signals there are tailored to you, and you can get a whole pile of bikes through a light change even though it looks busy because they pack much denser than car traffic. If necessary, bikes will take space from cars, but it's not usually required.

Also, the busier parts tend to be in places where it's not useful to go in the car lanes anyway, or they're already mixed-mode (in which case it's the car traffic slowing everyone down because they end up stuck behind one slow cyclist, but 20 cyclists are stuck behind the car.)

[alistairSH]

From visiting Amsterdam, the bicycle lanes are well designed for bicycles. Even when crowded, staying in the correct lane seems to work well. Pedestrians on the sidewalk, bikes in the bike lane, cars in the car lane (plus the light rail). Signals and crossing are designed so all 3 user groups can get where they need to go.

In the US, where most bike lanes are half-assed attempts (no physical separation, no signals, poorly conceived traffic crossings at turn lanes), a crowded bike lane quickly becomes unusable and bikes spill into the traffic lane.

[VBprogrammer]

I admit it's a stereotype but the German's are certainly more inclined to follow the rules than the average. Certainly when compared to the French.

Edit: Excuse the stupidity. I read Cologne in my head.

[kaybe]

On bikes? Bhahahaha.. I don't think so.

On the other hand, I've had good success with driving a car like I ride a bike here in less rule-abiding places to fit in.

Rule-following seems to be a function of the sensibility of the rules. When the rules don't work for you you stop adhering to them, and the rules for bicycles often don't make sense in a car-centric world.

[untog]

Perhaps, but Copenhagen isn't in Germany

[jchrisa]

Cologne and Copenhagen both have very strong cultures of abiding by traffic signals, even for pedestrians. One time in Cologne I started to feel awkward that we are all waiting, and suddenly a sports car zoomed out of a tunnel and through a green light. That's why no one was crossing against the light.

[liotier]

> more inclined to follow the rules

Cycling lanes exist for the cyclist's convenience but there are no rule that make them mandatory

[anonymou2]

No, they exist for motorists' convenience, as can be seen from the example. Cyclists have been brainwashed for the last 50 years to believe that riding on the regular road means instant death, that's why they stay in the bike lane even if the normal road is empty.

[akvadrako]

It sounds like you're talking about American cyclists. In Amsterdam (and maybe Copenhagen) cyclists are dominant over cars. But it would be pretty rude to ride in the car lane for any distance when a bike lane is available.

[Faark]

Are we talking about german law? Cause usage of bike ways can be mandatory depending on signage according to StVO § 2 Abs. 4 [0].

[0] (german) https://dejure.org/gesetze/StVO/2.html

[anonymou2]

That was the whole point of bike lanes, get cyclists off the roads and leave these exclusively for motorists. So It seems it has worked pretty well. Generations of cyclists fooled by this, it's so sad.

[petra]

// So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode.

Doesn't this mean, that the real "battle" between the public transportation and cars, should be based on a better experience ?

And since driving a car in traffic, everyday, is a negative experience and will stay so until autonomous driving - in theory, we could create the right public experience, that will win over most drivers ?

And so, why haven't we done that ?

[rayiner]

Because it would cost too much. About 90% of commutes are driving, versus 5% for transit (mostly buses). But even though transit accounts for only about 5% or commutes, it accounts for 25% of spending at the federal, state, and local levels (combined): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/....

The majority of people, quite reasonably, will not pony up even more money for transit until it can actually improve their commutes. And it can’t, for two different reasons. First, it costs us five time as much money to build a unit of rail as it does say Paris (a city where the majority of people don’t drive to work). That kneecaps your ability to increase coverage of the transit network—making it a viable choice for the majority of commuters. Paris has a dense network of subways and commuter stations, which means that people can take a reasonable walk to a transit station. You can’t build a dense network like that if each mile of track costs you five times as much.

Second, our cities don’t look anything like the cities where most people take transit to work. People are catching on to measuring population density of metro regions in weighted terms (calculating the density in a way that shows the density in the places where most people live, rather than using arbitrary administrative lines). Under those measures, places like Paris and Barcelona have metro are densities of 30,000-50,000 people per square mile. Only New York City comes close. San Francisco and LA are at 12,000. DC, Seattle, Portland, etc. are in the 5,000-6,000 range.

Taking both figures together kills you. When you build 10 miles of subway in Barcelona, you might cover 250,000 people (assuming you get people walking from 0.25 miles on either side). And say it costs you $1 billion. In DC that same 10 miles of subway covers 30,000 people. And it costs you $5 billion.

Oh, there is really a third reason. Because you have to drive everywhere anyway, our job centers in the US are widely dispersed. Google’s main Paris office is in Paris itself. Google’s main Bay Area office is in the suburbs of San Francisco. Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC. Fixed transit networks are awful for such layouts.

[abdullahkhalids]

> Because it would cost too much. About 90% of commutes are driving, versus 5% for transit (mostly buses). But even though transit accounts for only about 5% or commutes, it accounts for 25% of spending at the federal, state, and local levels (combined): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/....

That's disingenuous. The driving infrastructure includes both what the state provides as well as what private funding spends (i.e. that cost of the all the cars, fuel etc). The transit infrastructure funding is entirely public in nature.

[asdff]

There are also corridors in L.A. that are very dense and would benefit greatly with transit. L.A. metro is so ambitious because the size of the basin, >500sq miles; you can fit over 20 manhattan islands with room to spare in the basin. Koreatown is the densest part of the town (and very well served by metro rail), and its at 40k per square mile.

Metro is prioritizing building into dense areas and state government and developers want nothing more than to focus new builds around these rails and get these areas one day near ktown density levels. The thorn is NIMBY neighborhood councils and the city councilmen beholden to them that want to plug their ears and hope L.A. gets back to 1960s era population levels by some magical force of collective cognitive dissonance.

The fact is, people are moving to L.A. in droves because they are getting hired in droves, rooting against that is rooting against economic growth of the city.

[korethr]

My intuition says that your 2nd point is, at least in part, caused or exacerbated by how city zoning has progressed from the postwar period to modern day, with large swaths of residences going over here, all the stores and business over there, and industrial going on the other side of the river across a large empty field, because who wants to live or work within smelling distance of the meat processing plant? This seems especially bad in newer sections of the city.

I do have some hope this is starting to turn around. In the myriad construction I've seen going up in my local area, especially near the already-established major transit lines, there's been mixed zoning, with shops at the ground level, and apartments or offices up top, as an example.

Though now that I type that out, it sounds like a chicken/egg problem. Until transit lines are in place and established, there's probably going to be less incentive zone things to make transit worth using. And until things are zoned to make transit worth using, there's probably going to be less incentive to build out transit.

I don't have an easy answer here.

[asdff]

I visited portland recently and was pretty blown away that I could take a train from the departures to my hotel in 20 mins or so, while the city was otherwise choked in rush hour traffic. Transit is always going to loose money, but that's OK. Even for a small city, a good transit network has huge benefits for the environment and just enjoying the city, being able to get around quickly and cheaply.

[barney54]

Transit does not need to lose money. Buses and trolleys used to be private and make a profit.

[C1sc0cat]

Presumably why Googles New London office is next to two of the main rail stations St Pancras and Kings Cross and Euston is only a 10 Min Walk.

[alistairSH]

Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC.

Google has 2 (or 3?) offices in DC metro. One is on Mass Ave, in the heart of downtown. The 2nd is in Reston, which is suburban (20 miles out of downtown) but is accessible via rail and a 10 minute drive to IAD.

They might have an office in Sterling/Ashburn, but I think that's a data center, so not a huge employment center.

[rayiner]

At least as of several years ago, the Reston office was bigger, right? I got the impression that the DC office had more corporate folks while the Reston office is where most of the engineers are.

The Reston office is not accessible by rail. The Reston Town Center silver line station will open sometime this year or next. And even then, it’ll be largely inaccessible by rail to people who actually live in Reston, since the only place the silver line goes is toward DC at one end and toward IAD at the other. From Sterling it’s a 15 minute drive, but an hour and 15 minute trip involving multiple buses. And if you live in one of the Virginia suburbs like Vienna, you can take the train to Reston Town Center, but you have to go in the opposite direction toward DC first on the orange and then switch at Ballston to a silver going back out. 45 minutes or so, versus a 20 minute drive.

[alistairSH]

I'm not sure about the sizes. I don't think either is a large office.

And you're correct that if you don't live on the rail, nothing is rail accessible. And even if you do, it's hub/spoke, so only useful for going downtown or to IAD, there's no matrix of lines to get from Tysons to Bethesda or similar without going downtown and transferring first.

That said, I think Google is opening a new office at Reston Station (Wiehle Road), which is currently accessible by rail. I don't know if this is an additional office, or if they're moving/expanding the RTC office.

I'm so glad I live and work in Reston, walk to work, and can mostly ignore this stuff. Except for when the weather turns to crap - then I have to deal with traffic on Sunrise and Reston Parkway with everybody else (and it's only getting worse as developers turn all the parking lots into new high-rise developments). I wish Fairfax County's bike lane implementation wasn't so half-assed - many of the areas could be bike-accessible in reasonable time frames (my old Herndon-Fairfax commute was 30 min by car or 45 by bike and saved me working out some other time).

[DoctorOetker]

>Oh, there is really a third reason. Because you have to drive everywhere anyway, our job centers in the US are widely dispersed. Google’s main Paris office is in Paris itself. Google’s main Bay Area office is in the suburbs of San Francisco. Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC. Fixed transit networks are awful for such layouts.

it seems like the government could apply zoning for work places?

[elbasti]

It seems like the obvious answer is to consider fixing the "cost disease" of infrastructure as the #1 priority. Not more trains, or faster trains or whatever. Just getting the costs in line with the rest of the world. The extra infrastructure should follow, right?

Same spending, 5x the transit.

[0xffff2]

Okay... and how do you do that? I want to write more here, but I just don't know where to even begin. Where is the money in US infrastructure projects going, and is any of it to things that we can actually agree to eliminate?

[asdff]

A lot of it gets lost to private contractors and consultants. Privatization is nice if you don't have the labor pool to do the work with public employees, but it's very wasteful and costly because everyone down the line needs to get their chunk of the pie. Public can run at cost or over budget and still be a huge success because no one is clamoring for a >30% profit margin. It also invites nepotism.

[rayiner]

European cities also generally use private contractors for construction. The Paris subway expansion, which is proceeding at a fraction of the per-mile cost of New York's Second Avenue subway, is being done by private contractors: https://tunneltalk.com/France-25Oct2018-Grand-ParisExpress-n....

[elbasti]

This might sound like a cop-out answer, but I think the answer is "nobody knows".

So-called "cost-disease" spans infrastructure, education (public & private!) and medicine (again, public and private). All of these things cost 10x what they used to and 10x what they cost in other countries.

There are a few exposés and studies that try to explain the issue but IMHO none of them are satisfactory:

NYT tries to answer the question for NYC (but then why is cost disease a thing in other cities with different contractor/union/transit authority interactions?)[0]

Alex Tabarrok says it's growth in demand and slowdown in productivity growth (but then why is this a US only phenomenon? Does it really "jive" that infrastructure costs 10x what it used to because of "increased demand and slowdown in productivity?" I don't think it passes the smell test) [1]

Slatestar codex says "beats me" [2] and [3]

[0]:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

[1]: https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/helland-tabarrok_why-a...

[3]:https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

[4]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-co...

[usaar333]

> San Francisco and LA are at 12,000

Small nit. SF is about 19k people per square mile. (Almost 900k people on 47 square miles of land)

[rayiner]

I’m talking about the population weighted density of the metro areas, not just the cities. Most people in the Bay Area don’t live in San Francisco (just like most people in “Paris” don’t live in the city itself). So you’ll never move the needle on transit usage if you’re just limited to the city itself. The arithmetic density of the Bay Area is 800 people per square mile. That’s not a very useful measure because that is dragged down by lots of sparsely populated areas where few people live. 12,000 is the population weighted density (basically, the density of the areas where most people actually live). Paris and Barcelona are 3-4 times that.

[cgiles]

I visited the Bay Area for the first time (as an adult) a few weeks ago and was astonished by the difference between what I was expecting based on HN comments, and reality.

All I saw of the city made it seem like a giant suburb. BART stations were miles apart and therefore practically useless. It is really not that dense and traffic is not bad.

I am sure some areas are different. I was mainly in the area around SFO, and my conference was not hosted in downtown because apparently the homeless problem is bigger there, but at that level of low density and congestion, I fail to see how public transit is much of a win. People will not realistically take public transit if it doubles their travel time. And this case applies doubly to medium-sized suburbanized cities in the central US.

On the other hand, I can see what people mean about a housing problem when there are virtually no buildings taller than 3 stories except hotels in such an urban area.

[dragonwriter]

> All I saw of the city made it seem like a giant suburb. BART stations were miles apart and therefore practically useless.

While there are multiple BART stations in the city, it is not the main public transit in the city, Muni is. BART is the regional rapid transit connecting suburbs to the city.

> I was mainly in the area around SFO

Then you quite possibly didn't actually see any of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is operated by the San Francisco International Airport Commission, which is a body subordinate to the government of the City and County of San Francisco, but is not actually within the geographical boundaries of the City (or County, the two being one and the same.)

[NikkiA]

SFO is quite far out of the city - SF itself is on the other side of the range of hills SFO is south of, about 15 miles all told.

If you have that big hill between you and SF, all you're going to see is the northern end of the south/west bay, particularly San Mateo.

[wutbrodo]

> I was mainly in the area around SFO

This seems like a bizarre data point to extrapolate from. Aren't airports often specifically put away from dense population centers (for obvious reasons)? It's not as if Charles De Gaulle is on the Seine.

[Amygaz]

So, why is it working in Toronto and Montreal?

[rayiner]

It doesn’t. The Toronto and Montreal metro areas are about twice the density of the DC metro area (14,000 people per square mile in weighted terms, versus under 7,000). But about 20% of DC area commuters take transit, versus 22-23% in Toronto and Montreal. (Remember, we’re talking about the whole metro area—in all three places, most people don’t live in the city proper.) In all three places, roughly 70% of people drive to work.

[_ea1k]

Comments like this make me really wonder if companies like the boring company actually have the right idea, but maybe a slightly wrong implementation. What if the tunnel networks were based on pedestrian traffic rather than vehicle traffic? The tunnels wouldn't have to be exceptionally large, but they could carry a tremendous amount of traffic.

Even better, they would be insulated from the weather, which is by far the worst part of the pedestrian experience in big cities, IMO.

Cars on surface streets are quite probably the worst approach possible from an efficiency standpoint, but they appeal for experience reasons.

[esotericn]

Private transportation is fundamentally at odds with public transportation as far as I can tell; public transport campaigners just don't "get it".

In cities where public transportation is a huge success, it's because driving is completely impractical due to congestion.

Even a first class compartment on a train is frankly uncomfortable compared to sitting in a car.

An autonomous car or a chauffeured car beats it hands down, because public infrastructure is never going to be as clean or as luxurious as an individual can afford.

I love public transport and I want it to do well because, well, it's ultimately the only thing that's going to scale. But it's just not acceptable to say "oh well the train is warm and smelly, deal with it". Unless it's a cause that really matters to them, most people who can afford it are going to opt out of that.

[pathsjs]

Well, it seems to me that you don't get it. In the city where I live, car traffic is not especially impractical, and I drive from time to time. But if I have the chance to go somewhere by subway, I prefer that, since I can read or do seomthing else in the meantime. If I can walk, this is even better.

For longer travels, a train is always better than a car for me: I can read, watch a movie, study. The time of arrival is known in advance unless there are delays and I can just relax.

You seem to assume that everyone prefers to be in a car, but this is just not the case

[esotericn]

I can't speak for 'everyone'.

The thing I'm getting at here is not whether you, or I, personally drive or not.

It's that public transport is built (necessarily) for the public. It's lowest common denominator. Very, very few systems worldwide are actually comfortable places to be.

A car that has air conditioning, your own seat, space, etc is more comfortable than a tube carriage that's crammed to the rafters and is 30+c.

A specific individual might prefer the cost/time/whatever tradeoff of one over the other. But to pretend that cars are just strictly inferior is only true in a situation where public transport actually works properly - which is really vanishingly rare.

Even in a place like London with its' fantastic tube network, it's completely normal for people to stand armpit-to-armpit in a sweltering carriage. A car might be slower, but it provides an opt-out for that discomfort, and some people will choose that unless you literally ban it.

[bostik]

London is particularly bad, and one reason is the insane increase for demand in commuting capacity.

I can't find the source, but in 2010 or so, there were about 250k people traveling to London daily for their work. (That figure was 350k in early 2013.) In 2019, there are something like 850k people doing the same.

Even if the numbers were only vaguely there, that still means >200% increase in required commuting capacity in a decade. Don't know if any transport infrastructure could support that kind of expansion.

[pathsjs]

I think we agree. I am not sure of the percentages, but there are some people that prefer cars, others that prefer public transport, other that prefer bikes. The way you phrased your comment seemed to assume that car is a preference for everyone, which in my experience is not true (although of course it is for some people)

[JAlexoid]

You backpedalled from your earlier claim that a car is better than first class rail. It's demonstrably NOT.

Considering your apparent location(England) - a car is the slow option.

[swat535]

You clearly haven't taken public transportation at peak hours.. When even finding a single available seat is impossible.

No one is able to enjoy their latte and "read", people are crammed together and have to keep moving further back to allow for others to join in.

Have fun not missing your exit station..

[JAlexoid]

"Even a first class compartment on a train is frankly uncomfortable compared to sitting in a car." - So being able to stand up, walk about, have space* is not luxury to you? Could I get those knockout pills you take?

* I have Jeep Cherokee and the space I get is less than first class rail.

[TheCoelacanth]

> Even a first class compartment on a train is frankly uncomfortable compared to sitting in a car.

I strongly disagree. On a train you can stand up, walk around, go to the bathroom, etc. and the ride is usually smoother than anything short of brand new shocks plus pristine road conditions.

[akvadrako]

I wanted to say this too and to add that trains can be much faster. Even slow trains almost never get stuck in traffic.

[perl4ever]

In the US, Amtrak often gets "stuck in traffic", because freight trains have priority. I think a lot of people don't realize this and it contributes to the general opinion that Amtrak just sucks for no reason.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I wonder what percentage of the population could be considered at the margins, as it were - in my city cars very very quickly outpace alternative modes for transportation. I'm lucky to be in a position where transport is the same time as driving, and walking is just the right distance to be enjoyable, but that's incredibly rare.

[neaanopri]

This doesn't mean driving is useless. Cars are generally air conditioned, and have a greater capacity to carry luggage than walking.

...so cars should this be _slower_ than cars, given these benefits

[pergadad]

The average commuter won't carry huge luggage around. But they might spend the time reading or working out they are sitting in a train/metro compartment. And they exercise when using the bicycle, meaning they will be healthier and have reduced health issues and cost. Bicycles are also much less costly and environmentally friendly, don't pollute, are less likely to have accidents (except with cars), ... But infrastructure is much cheaper and easier to maintain then that for cars. Cars on the other hand block the roads not just for each other, but also for public transport, trucks, emergency vehicles, ... They produce co2 and microparticles, take up valuable space when parked, etc. Overall cars have huge externalities.

So no, cars are not the best means of transport just because you can carry lots of stuff which you usually don't carry...

[rayiner]

Have you ever lived outside San Francisco or Portland? Here in DC, during the summer (which lasts six months out of the year), the heat and humidity will have people sweating with even mild exertion. So to the speed of walking or biking, you have to also account for the time to take a shower at either end.

The CO2 and microparticles are definitely a problem. One which can be addressed by banning non-electric cars downtown.

[Xylakant]

>The CO2 and microparticles are definitely a problem. One which can be addressed by banning non-electric cars downtown.

A substantial amount of the microparticles are from brakes and tires, a problem that electric cars don’t really solve. They still have tires.

[cameldrv]

They do help with the brakes though. Most of the braking in an electric car is from regenerative braking rather than friction.

[Xylakant]

It’s very hard to find definite stats on this, but the ratio tires:brakes seems to be somewhere between 2:1 to 3:1. So the overwhelming majority still remains. The other problem that remains is that microparticles that have settled will be pulled in the air again by passing cars.

[kasey_junk]

But you get to count the commute against your exercise budget instead of your sedentary time budget.

[liotier]

> you have to also account for the time to take a shower at either end

No need to shower: I just change _all_ of my clothes when I arrive... Cycling clothes on me, business clothes and dress shoes in a semi-rigid pouch in my panniers. Takes five minutes at each end and the total time is still half of what car or public transportation would take !

[vonmoltke]

I guess that depends on how much if a sweat you work up. Personally, if I work up enough whereby I need to change my clothes at he end I am going to feel disgusting if I don't also shower.

[dropofwill]

I use my commutes as a way to get some hill repeat intervals in and in the summer that means i’m covered in sweat.

There are no showers at work, so i do a couple of things to keep clean.

* Showering before you leave so that the sweat doesn’t smell. * Chilling our after the ride for a bit to let your heart rate drop back down. This gets you to a point where you aren’t sweating anymore. * Towel off the excess sweat and put on fresh clothes.

The only real downside is my helmet messes up my hair.

[liotier]

A small towel is part of the kit. Very short haircut too... But yes, at some point it is a lifestyle choice: I quite happily sartorial sophistication (I forego tie and jacket: my office attire is dress pants, dress shoes and a nice shirt - sufficient social camouflage that packs neatly) but I understand that others might prefer the "delicate princess in an air-conditioned bubble" way of living, even though it is harmful to their health.

[asdff]

Where I live it can get so hot in the summer that my AC can't cool the car down if it's been parked outside. Opening the windows doesn't even get all the heat out. Plus I have leather seats so my back fuses to the leather. You can get electric bikes that are assistive, so every pedal you do will feel like you are pedaling downhill even if you are going uphill. Combine that with the sweet breeze lapping at your back, evaporating that back sweat, and I can't imagine a better summer experience.

If you need to wear a suit you are screwed either way. Five minutes standing still outside with a jacket on and you will start getting pit sweat. Just walking out to your car will make you sweat.

[kaybe]

Funfact: The pollution inside the cars is even worse (unless you have upgraded the filters).

[vonmoltke]

> But they might spend the time reading or working out they are sitting in a train/metro compartment.

That's a big "might" that is conditioned on having a seat and space in which to do these things, none if which is a given.

> Bicycles ... are less likely to have accidents (except with cars)

After three years as a pedestrian in NYC I have almost been run over by assholes on bikes more than I have almost been run over by assholes in cars.

> But infrastructure is much cheaper and easier to maintain then that for cars.

How do you figure? Paved streets are still needed, arguably maintained to slightly higher standards than they are for cars. Signalling is still needed, unless you want a free-for-all of bike traffic (which I don't).

In general, you seem to be comparing the happy cases of bicycles and public transit to the negatives of cars. It's and unfair and disingenuous comparison.

[llamathrowaway]

> That's a big "might" that is conditioned on having a seat and space in which to do these things, none if which is a given.

In the past plenty of people read newspapers while standing on trains. Nowadays we have smartphones and podcasts. It’s even easier.

> I have almost been run over by assholes on bikes more than I have almost been run over by assholes in cars.

Looks like an argument for better cycling infrastructure. Cars don’t really go wild in cities because they have dedicated road which are not shared with larger, more dangerous vehicles driven by people who are actively trying to cause problems to car drivers. If we have the same level of infrastructure for bicycles then maybe cyclists will stop competing with pedestrians for space.

Cycling infrastructure can be cheaper than normal roads because bicycles are lighter than cars. It will also need less maintenance for the same reason. It also takes less space to store bikes than cars.

[vonmoltke]

> In the past plenty of people read newspapers while standing on trains. Nowadays we have smartphones and podcasts. It’s even easier.

Stand/sit and read my phone is basically what I am forced to do. I don't consider that any more productive than driving, and certainly not "work".

As for podcasts (and audiobooks), I can do that in a car just as well as packed in a train.

[anonymou2]

No, being an asshole is not solved by infrastructure, what you need is education. Cyclists typically don't believe that they are driving a vehicle (which they are). In fact dedicated infrastructure for cyclists only helps keep the myth that bicycles are not vehicles but some kind of toy and that its operators are not responsible adults but kids incapable of learning.

[oftenwrong]

>After three years as a pedestrian in NYC I have almost been run over by assholes on bikes more than I have almost been run over by assholes in cars.

Perception, meet reality:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-...

Summary: From 2002-2016 there were 2355 pedestrians killed by bicycle or car in NYC. 2345 of those fatal collisions were car-pedestrian, and only 10 were bicycle-pedestrian.

[pedantsamaritan]

NYC has open crash data too: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Public-Safety/NYPD-Motor-Vehic...

From mid 2012 to mid 2019, there were 940 reports of a crash with a bike as the primary vehicle and 1+ pedestrians injured. In the same time period, there were 69776 reports of a crash without bicycle as primary vehicle injuring 1+ pedestrians.

[vonmoltke]

Now that is an interesting dataset that demonstrates my experience thus far is an outlier.

[anderskev]

Injuries would probably be a better statistic to use, as you much more likely to die being hit by a car than a bicycle. I'd also guess injuries in bicycle on pedestrian collisions are nearly impossible to measure accurately, as most of them are minor and go unreported.

[perl4ever]

I wonder if the reason for the perception that bicycles are more threatening is because of the sense that they don't respect boundaries. Cars and pedestrians have their separate areas, and I would think accidents in cities happen mostly when they cross paths. But bicycles tend to have to share the path of either cars or pedestrians all the time.

[vonmoltke]

That's deaths. I'm not going to argue that car collisions with pedestrians aren't more likely to kill then. The point was accidents, not fatalities, so I don't see what this statistic demonstrates.

[oftenwrong]

The point is still accidents. Serious accidents. Cars are more likely to kill or seriously injure you. Would you prefer those assholes who almost hit you were driving cars?

[lkbm]

> After three years as a pedestrian in NYC I have almost been run over by assholes on bikes more than I have almost been run over by assholes in cars.

As a pedestrian in Austin, I've been hit by one car and zero bikes. I've been almost hit by many cars; I don't recall any bikes nearly hitting me, but they're less also memorable.

As a cyclist for ~8 years in Austin, I've been hit by two cars (100% their fault) and one bike (100% my fault), and almost hit by many cars and zero bikes that I recall. I've hit zero people/cars and if I come close, it's usually the other person at fault.

Granted, there are a lot more cars to hit me than there are bikes. I'd also say cars are more likely to cause significant damage than bikes when they hit you, though in my case, the 280LB cyclist slamming into me while going downhill got me pretty good. :-)

I think a lot of what makes cycling safe or unsafe is the biking culture. Cyclists are safer when they act like traffic norms matter. I assume they're more likely to do that if the traffic rules are designed in a way that makes sense for them, and when drivers treat them like they belong. (This is, unfortunately, a bit of a catch-22. We might be treated as legitimate users of the road if we acted like it, and we'd act like it more if we were treated that way.)

[JAlexoid]

As a NYC resident and a cyclist - pedestrians are no picnic either. I mean - NYC has horrible bike infrastructure, street parking(unplanned) and pedestrians that just take over the few bike lanes or wait for the signal in the middle of the damn road.

Bike infrastructure is cheaper to maintain, because bikes don't impact the asphalt as much as cars do. Manhattan's Westside bikeway hasn't been repaved for decades... While most of the roads with similar "body traffic" will deteriorate in 5 years in NYC.

[perl4ever]

"bikes don't impact the asphalt as much as cars do. Manhattan's Westside bikeway hasn't been repaved for decades... While most of the roads with similar "body traffic" will deteriorate in 5 years in NYC."

You're assuming cars have an impact. Maybe they don't; it may just be heavy trucks.

[pedantsamaritan]

> Paved streets are needed

Not all pavement costs are equal. A study found road damage proportional to the 4th power of weight [0].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test

[chimprich]

I don't believe signalling is not needed for bike-only infrastructure. I don't know of any cities that have signals where bikes are separated from cars.

Bike infrastructure is cheaper in other ways. You need a much smaller surface for the same amount of traffic, and paved surfaces degrade at a much slower rate with lighter traffic.

You also don't need the sliproads, the same levels of crash barrier, and so on. It's just not a serious comparison.

[vonmoltke]

> I don't believe signalling is not needed for bike-only infrastructure. I don't know of any cities that have signals where bikes are separated from cars.

Are intersections just a free-for-all then? I find congested pedestrian intersections bad enough to navigate. I would hate to see a congested, uncontrolled bicycle intersection.

> Bike infrastructure is cheaper in other ways. You need a much smaller surface for the same amount of traffic, and paved surfaces degrade at a much slower rate with lighter traffic.

I'll grant that people density is higher and wear is lighter. I don't agree with the "much", though, since bicycles not riding in a coordinated group still need a fair amount of space and, as I said, the road surface needs to be maintained to higher standards.

> You also don't need the sliproads, the same levels of crash barrier, and so on. It's just not a serious comparison.

If I am interpreting "sliproad" correctly, that's only a feature of limited-access roads. Ditto crash barriers. I don't see how that's relevant to cities.

[JAlexoid]

What do you mean "higher standards"? The standards for regular roads are way more than enough for cyclists. Bike paths are not supposed to be racetracks.

[oarabbus_]

You are ignoring heat, cold, rain, etc. A car is a magical piece of insulation from the elements. And depending on where you live that can matter quite a bit during the morning and evening commute.

[graeme]

You’re putting your preferences on others. Some people will drive for these benefits. Others prefer fresh air and exercise. Others prefer reading.

A set of people will gravitate to each option. But as OP said, it is people at the margin who help equalize times.

[dannyw]

On the other hand, there’s no need to find and pay for parking, and you can be drunk and take public transport.

[Shivetya]

we are discussing uber here, parking is not generally a consideration here.

as pointed out, the reason that cars being shown to be slower than walking in many cases is moot because cars provide benefits which more than offset. 1. Weather protection 2. Cargo transportation 3. Ease of movement for the disabled 4. Additional safety for those toting along small children 5. Some level of protection/isolation from others

The argument in favor of bicycling in lieu of cars falls prey to the same reasons. There are pro and cons so we must always fairly assess them before standing up and declaring one method worse than another. In fact none ever are all the time

[jandrese]

Also, there's an assumption that the car is going from someplace in the city to some other place in the city.

It almost certainly will not be faster to bike from a suburb 20 miles out of the city into the city than it would be to drive.

[Skunkleton]

That isn't always true. I commute from a downtown to an office park in a suburb (against traffic when driving). On my bike, it takes about 40 mins (~11-12 miles). The same commute in reverse by car is about 45 mins due to traffic. If I instead lived in the suburb and worked downtown, it would be a tossup travel time wise between my bike and car.

[zulln]

Driving cost more and then you have the parking problem. There are ups and downs to both alternatives.

[megablast]

Cars also have the huge advantage of killing 40,000 every year in the USA. Yeah, go cars.

[Balgair]

> In central London, for example, travel speed has been roughly the same whether you drive or take the Underground, for more than a century.

Demonstrated humorously by Top Gear here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_POxZSkaU

[n4r9]

The data from the article is surprising even after taking this into account, since public transport is generally a lot faster than walking. However, I suspect that people who are driving will normally start and/or finish well outside central London thus making the journey worth it.

I had a play around with some travel times in London on google maps (using the look-ahead function by one day):

Shortish journey (Waterloo to St Pancras)

- Drive: 12-35 mins

- Walk: 46 mins

- PT: 27 mins

Longish journey (Wimbledon to Arsenal)

- Drive: 50-120 mins

- Walk: 4hrs

- PT: 56 mins

[jschwartzi]

I think London and New York will be among the few places this bears out. In Seattle many of my trips double, triple, or even quadruple in time if I try to take public transit. EG driving to the Amazon locker for a pickup takes 10 minutes, or 45 minutes by bus. The bus time is for travel time only, and doesn't include time spent waiting.

And trying to get to my SO's house by bus takes a 15 minute trip up to about an hour and a half of walking and transferring.

[JAlexoid]

That's not the case. There are more dense places with good public transport than just NYC and London.

(We shall exclude all of American cities from any consideration, because even in NYC the public transport is pretty bad)

[benatkin]

If they don't also have really bad traffic, driving will tend to be significantly faster for most routes. They don't look like Seattle, but they don't look like NYC or London either. That said it's nice to be able to relax and take public transportation and is often a win even if it's a little bit slower, but there's no need to deny that it usually takes at least 10 minutes longer to take public transportation in a place that has good public transportation but not horrendous traffic.

[JAlexoid]

If you're comparing walking, driving and public transport, then at least pick realistic scenarios.

Waterloo to St Pancras will never be a 12 minute drive, even at 4AM - that's practically impossible with the amount of traffic lights.

Let's presume that you're a wealthy Lloyds Group banker(City of London office) living in Holland Park area. Your commute is 35-1:30 by car or 27 minutes by public transport.

Or you're not so wealthy Canary Wharf worker living in Southwark - stable 20 minutes for PT and 30 minutes driving.

[n4r9]

At 4am next Tuesday morning Google actually says 9-18 minutes. I assume they have quite a lot of data to model this on, so blame them!

[heavenlyblue]

Yeah, but you must also consider that there’s literally nowhere to park you car in St Pancras or Waterloo, and consider the fact that central London is incredibly prone to congestion which gives the driving less predictability.

[n4r9]

Right, which makes the data even more surprising! I know I'm reluctant to make a journey by car through central London even if Google maps tells me it's going to be fast.

[lutorm]

What ends up being "faster" doesn't just depend on travel speed though. It also depends on startup costs. The startup cost for biking can be higher than a car (if you need to carry the bike out from your apartment) but also the other way (if you need to walk to your parked car and then walk from wherever you find parking to where you're going).

People might also be willing to trade some extra time for less exertion, but this depends heavily on the terrain.

[agumonkey]

jevons paradox ?