[ollo]

Walking or biking does not always imply high density! On the other hand, public transportation can easily get crowded. That is one reason why European cities are moving away from public transportation in favour of bikes, scooters and so on. Finally, I agree that it would be better to encourage car usage during a pandemic. One reasonable reason not to do so is that parking spots are limited.

[luckylion]

Bikes and scooters cannot replace public transportation though.

I live at the very edge of a large city. Fortunately, I don't work in the city, but if I were, it would be a 30 minute train ride. Sure, I could also do that by bike, but it would take me ~90 minutes. That's not a realistic alternative. Scooters are fine if they are to replace buses that you'd take for two or three stops, e.g. a kilometer or two.

And we still occasionally get bad weather. I predict that scooter and bike usage will drop extremely fast once it rains for a week or two, or, god forbid, we get a real winter once again, with snow and sub-zero temperatures. People want comfort, and riding a bike in bad weather, even if it's an ebike, isn't comfortable.

[ollo]

> And we still occasionally get bad weather. I predict that scooter and bike usage will drop extremely fast once it rains for a week or two, or, god forbid, we get a real winter once again, with snow and sub-zero temperatures

Live in the Netherlands for a week and you'd be amazed at the resilience of Dutch bikers in bad weather.

[luckylion]

Maybe living with the knowledge that the sea lurks to drown you gives them fortitude ;)

I live in northern Germany, we've got plenty of bad weather and always have, and you can see lots of cycling when spring blesses us with a sunny and warm day, but it drops when it rains.

Maybe it's intention ("I want to ride my bike to work because reasons") vs opportunity ("I can take the bike, it's so nice outside") that helps create all-season bikers.

[ProZsolt]

It's also an infrastructure thing. Is it faster if I cycle? Do I have a place with a roof where I can store my bike? Can I change and store my wet clothes at work? Expect from a few, people will choose the most convenient way of transportation.

[wott]

> Walking or biking does not always imply high density!

Right, and yet it will get parroted each time the subject surfaces here (i.e. twice a week).

I never had a car. At the moment, I live in a municipality of less than 750 inhabitants. I've lived in small towns of less than 4000 inhabitants, in areas below 1 inhab. / km². I've never had a problem, everything has always been 1 or 2 minutes away with a bike, or less than 10 minutes by foot. In such places, the farthest possible shop would be a mile away, at worst. By definition, we might say! since the urban area doesn't spread farther.

Density is not needed and it often doesn't makes things better.

In dense areas, things are sometimes closer (which improves walkability, but has little effect or bikability), sometimes not. But everything is slower. Not only cars, but also cycling and walking. Cycling: because of all the cross-roads every 100 yards, with traffic lights or without, because of the need of taking care of the erratic behaviour of pedestrians, of parked cars, of cars going in and out of parking slots, because of traffic jams or traffic density causing irregular pacing, etc. Walking, the same: traffic lights again, erratic movements on the pavement, being limited to pavement and a very limited number of crossings, which lengthen the route. I can ride over 10 km and visit 3 villages in the countryside, in the same time I needed to ride 5 km in a city (not even in the centre of the centre).

Hell, American suburbs should be perfect for cyclability, if not for walkability. Either the hard grid type with its huge number of streets/lanes/alleys every 100 yards with very very low car traffic; or the smooth shaped housing estate suburbia with its super-wide and empty streets; even on inter-blocks streets, the car traffic is much less dense than in Europe because those streets/roads are 3 or 4 times as wide as European streets/roads with similar role! Yes, there isn't a small shop at every street corner of American suburbia, but even if a supermarket/mall world, almost of the suburban area is with 1 mile or 2 of distance of one of those supermarket or mall, which is perfect biking distance; in most cases you'll have something half-a-mile away from home. Yes, there are also places where people chose to build a fancy house in a fancy estate on a hill-side, which make everything harder, but the bulk of suburban area is not like that.

I am not advocating for urban sprawl, I just say that arguing that walking and especially cycling would be only possible in dense areas is plain wrong: both suburbs and countryside small towns and villages can be plenty bikable.