[dahart]

> all it takes to bike to work is all the tarmac and smooth roads of a car world, all the parking space of a small car world, all the maintenance of a small vehicle

You are just joking, right? You’re exaggerating by an order of magnitude, you can literally fit 10 bikes in the space of a small car, on the road and when parked. You think bike maintenance is the same effort as car maintenance? I’m baffled by this claim, and I maintain several bikes and several cars. Cars are much harder, much more expensive to maintain, and require far more resources. Bike maintenance is something most riders can do on their own, while car maintenance is something people take to a shop.

> Do bikes have the largest amount of unmentioned externalities of any form of transport?

What on earth are you referring to? Are you comparing a few sidewalks and bike lanes in select metro areas to the 3 million miles of paved roads in the US? Are you suggesting the 1-2 ounces of oil I use on my bike chain per year is somehow worse than the average 2 metric tons of gas and oil used by the average car in a year? Are you including pollution in your list of externalities? Are you including accidents and fatalities in your calculation? I’m confused, I really can’t think of a single unmentioned externality where bikes don’t compare favorably to cars by a very wide margin.

So, it seems like the answer is a really clear and obvious no, there are other forms of transport with externalities so much larger than bikes that it makes the mere suggestion seem pretty absurd. Examples include but aren’t limited to: cars, airplanes, and cargo boats.

[jodrellblank]

> You are just joking, right? you can literally fit 10 bikes in the space of a small car, on the road

You are just joking, right? A Fiat 500 is 3.5 meters long and 1.6 meters wide. No way can you "literally" fit 10 bikes being ridden on the road in that space - or even 3. Parked, you might be able to fit 3 if they're staggered, but if you're going to tell me you can double-decker it, you won't also fit the stairs/ramp/elevator mechanism in that space as well.

> You think bike maintenance is the same effort as car maintenance?

You take it to a shop, drop it off, and leave it there, then get it back later? Yes, that sounds about the same effort. Except a car usually needs servicing and is still drivable, a bike is probably punctured or chain snapped and unusable, making it more hassle, and if you decide that means you have to do it yourself, more effort. Everyone remember how fun it is to take a bike wheel off and run it through the bathtub to identify the location of a puncture, yes? Never spent that much effort on taking my car to a garage.

> Bike maintenance is something most riders can do on their own, while car maintenance is something people take to a shop.

You've gone from "baffled by this claim" to "most people spend more effort on bike maintenance than car maintenance" in the space of a paragraph. No comment.

> What on earth are you referring to?

I'm referring to the things I said. If you didn't have paved roads made for cars, you would need to build them for bikes. You wouldn't need to build them for walking. Bikers never ever mention this, it's a kind of parasitism on the car infrastructure - a cost that bikers don't consider. If there were no cars, but we needed to upkeep hundreds of miles of tarmac roads, bikes would need to be taxed hugely. It's an externality in the sense that bikes need it, but aren't paying (directly) for it, and are offloading the cost onto car drivers (who currently need it more and do more damage to it).

> Are you including pollution in your list of externalities?

No I'm not including the cost of container shipping enough bikes for 500,000 people from China, or the cost of digging up the iron ore and making the steel and carbon fibre to build them, or the trash heaps where hundreds of thousands of bikes rot. Good point though, neither do bike enthusiasts.

> Are you including accidents and fatalities in your calculation?

The kind where a big heavy fast moving metal lump collides with a soft squidgy easily damaged slow-moving pedestrian? I'm not including those either, but I am against bikes being allowed anywhere pedestrians are, so let's add that in as well.

> I’m confused, I really can’t think of a single unmentioned externality where bikes don’t compare favorably to cars by a very wide margin.

Neither can I. That's a totally cherry-picked comparison because it's like saying "being stabbed compares favourably to being shot by a very wide margin". There's no unmentioned externality where walking doesn't compare favourably to bikes by a very wide margin - in a place which is designed and built for humans walking -- which all places should be because humans are more important than vehicles. Walking needs less tarmac, less machinery, less maintenance, less money, is more accessible to people of more abilities, takes less parking space, less infrastructure, causes fewer accidents, places fewer restrictions on clothing, has lower environmental cost, lower pollution, less waste, doesn't need helmets and high-visibility clothing and bike-locks, doesn't need insurance and breakdown recovery and loan-cars...

> So, it seems like the answer is a really clear and obvious no, there are other forms of transport with externalities so much larger than bikes that it makes the mere suggestion seem pretty absurd.

Cars pay for roads in terms of fuel taxes and vehicle taxes. Bikes don't pay for either. Cars often pay for car parks, bikes often use sidewalk, or car parks. Cars pay for accidents with mandatory insurance, bike riders are uninsured. That other things are worse was not my point, my point was that bikers gloss over needing roads and the cost of that, car drivers don't.

[dahart]

Look I don’t know what has you so triggered and angry about bikes, but your hyperbole and exaggeration is undermining your arguments, you’re making your points weaker by trying so hard to prove your point. A good example is framing fixing a bike flat to be more effort than taking your car to the mechanic. Fixing a flat takes roughly 5 minutes if you’re slow, which is less time than it takes to drive to the shop (by approx. 1 order of magnitude), and a lot less money (by approx. 2 orders of magnitude). I know it happens once in a while, but I’ve never snapped a chain in my life. On the other hand, I have had a car engine blow out, more than once.

It’s just us here; acting like a bike is soooo hard to deal with isn’t going to convince me, since I know how much effort bike maintenance takes and how much car maintenance takes. I know from experience that cars are the bigger drain on time and money by many multiples. Pretending otherwise is just ensuring I have more reasons to discount what you’re saying.

> A Fiat 500 is 3.5 meters long and 1.6 meters wide. No way can you “literally” fit 10 bikes being ridden on the road in that space - or even 3. Parked, you might be able to fit 3.

Standard bike rack spacing is 12-16 inches. Mine is 14 and fits mountain bikes side by side. I’ll give you a generous 15 inches, in which you can comfortably fit 8 bikes in 3.5 meters. 1.6 meters wide is a tad narrow, but many full size adult bikes come in at just over 1.7 meters long. You ungenerously picked one of the smallest cars ever made to attempt to prove your point, but I’m happy to concede that you were wrong by 8x rather than 10x. If you picked a Honda Fit, which is on the small side of small cars, then 10 bikes actually do fit in it’s 162 inch length.

Lanes aren’t 1.6 meters wide, they are wider, and bikes don’t need to be spaced out as much as cars. The throughput can be much higher than 10x due to slower speeds and the higher density in both directions, sideways and front to back.

It seems like you decided the outcome before you thought about this very carefully.

> No, I’m not including the cost of container shipping ...

There’s a lot of snark in your answer, but you fail to acknowledge that there’s no winning the comparison against cars, which is what I was talking about. Whatever the costs of shipping and materials, cars are 20-40x the mass of bikes.

Hey, I agree with you that walking is cheaper than bikes in all ways, and I surely advocate walking. I don’t get your rage over bikes though, they’re a huge improvement over cars, and they are not otherwise causing problems relative to walking.

> my point was that bikers gloss over needing roads and the cost of that, car drivers don't.

One tiny little nit you seem to have overlooked: walkers need and use sidewalks too, so for the one “externality” you’re considering (while selectively ignoring the larger and more important ones like pollution, oil & gas, and accidents) pavement is an externality for walking too. You could claim walkers don’t need sidewalks, but bikes don’t really need sidewalks either, plenty of bikes will ride on dirt paths comfortably.

[dahart]

> Hey, I agree with you that walking is cheaper than bikes in all ways, and I surely advocate walking.

I'm going to back-pedal just a little bit. Pun intended :P I love walking as a means of transport, but...

Biking is the most energy-efficient form of transportation by a long way. https://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/humanpower1.html#:~:te....

That answers a bunch of the questions asked in this thread. Another relevant answer to why biking is useful is that it extends the range of accessible daily activities around 10x compared to walking. You can bike further than you can walk in a given period of time.

So one of those hidden externalities you like to account for @jodrellblank, of walking vs biking is that walkers require more food consumption to sustain a daily commute of a given distance compared to bikers commuting the same distance.

[jodrellblank]

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about with unmentioned externalities.

Biking is the most energy-efficient form of transportation, if you ignore the fact that to get such a result you have to make bikes and make steamrollers and concrete mixers and tarmac and roads first.

> Another relevant answer to why biking is useful is that it extends the range of accessible daily activities around 10x compared to walking. You can bike further than you can walk in a given period of time.

But not 10x compared to walking + bus or walking + taxi or walking + train, and not without added inconvenience of biking; and also not if you've built your environment so plenty of daily activities people want are close enough to comfortably walk to.

> So one of those hidden externalities you like to account for @jodrellblank, of walking vs biking is that walkers require more food consumption to sustain a daily commute of a given distance compared to bikers commuting the same distance.

And walkers require paying more taxes for the infrastructure to subsidise bikers.

[dahart]

> But not 10x compared to walking + bus or walking + taxi or walking + train

Buses, taxis and trains are even less efficient. You’re arguing that we should use motorized vehicles instead of bikes??

> walkers require paying more takes for the infrastructure to subsidise bikers

Bullshit. Nobody is paying walking taxes. You are enjoying the very same “externality”.

[jodrellblank]

> You’re arguing that we should use motorized vehicles instead of bikes??

Are you going to bike 100 miles to the next city? Are you going to bike to work with a broken ankle? Are you going to bike furniture home from the furniture shop? Are you going to bike everyone's garbage to the dump? Are you going to bike building materials around?

Given that you're going to have motorized things, they should be for optional, occasional use as an assitance for walking people who then don't need a bike or a car.

Because otherwise, you're going to have motorized things, and walking people, and bikes on top, for no particular reason except a bike obsession.

> Bullshit. Nobody is paying walking taxes. You are enjoying the very same “externality”.

? Nobody is paying explicit sidewalk taxes in the same way nobody is paying explicit streetlamp taxes. People are still paying taxes for infrastructure in the environment they live in, and that covers paying for sidewalks.

[jodrellblank]

Any argument which makes bikes better than cars, makes walking better than bikes; you keep ignoring that and diverting back to "bikes are better than cars". Yes bikes are better than cars. Walking is better than bikes.

> Fixing a flat takes roughly 5 minutes if you’re slow.

I googled "how long to fix a puncture" (it's a long time since I had to do that) and CyclistResource.com[1] says puncture repair glue takes 5-8 minutes to dry. My proverbial mother is not going to have her puncture fixed in the middle of a pedestrian street in 5 minutes, and when she ends frustrated and with chain oil on her tidy clothes and muddy wet hands with nowhere to wash them and I call her "slow" that will earn me a proverbial slap. Assuming she even knows what quick release is, and can find the tiny inconvenient weight-optimised tyre levers which she's sure are in her bag somewhere under all this stuff she actually cares about. It takes 5 minutes maybe true for a certain kind of bike enthusiast mechanically interested person, I doubt it's true for a majority of the population.

Going to a garage is less effort even if it takes more time. That's usually the trade off - longer, less effort. But even so that's you redirecting to cars away from walking. Nobody has to carry tyre levers and a Nike Air pump to fix even their fancy airwalk trainers, let alone their ordinary tidy going-out shoes.

I'll concede that you can pack more bikes into a parking space than I counted for, but even your estimate of approx 10 bikes per 4 meters means a city like Amsterdam of 800,000 people would need a row of bike parking 80km long just to cover a quarter of its population having a single place to park their bikes. No matter how multistorey that gets, by the time those people can park in many places (at home, work, green park, shopping, entertainment) it's a lot of city space for a benefit of a minority of people. And yes, before you say it, cars are much worse.

> It’s just us here; acting like a bike is soooo hard to deal with isn’t going to convince me, since I know how much effort bike maintenance takes and how much car maintenance takes

I also know how much effort bike maintenance takes, which is not a /lot/ but is more than I can be bothered with for the few situations they have value in. If a journey is short, walking is more convenient. If a journey is long, cars are more convenient. If there's something to carry, cars are more convenient. If there's a destination I need to go inside, walking is more convenient. If there's multiple people to go with, walking or driving are way more convenient. If there's a chance plans will change and I'll get a lift back or we'll meet up with other people, walking and cars are more convenient. Bikes only win out for people who want to ride a bike for the purpose of riding a bike (fun, exercise) or for people who have a short-car-journey distance to travel with little to carry, alone or with another biker, but don't want to use a car (for environmental, cost, or idealism reasons), or a blend of the two (a single digit mile commute they'd rather not drive).

> I don’t get your rage over bikes though, they’re a huge improvement over cars, and they are not otherwise causing problems relative to walking.

They are an improvement over cars. They aren't a huge improvement. Instead of a roof, you have to change your clothes and carry a change of clothes with you. Instead of a trunk you have to arrange your life around the limits of a bike to carry less stuff. Instead of an engine to go any distance comfortably you have to pay attention to distances and hills and how sweaty you are willing to get. Instead of freely wearing what you want, you have to wear clothes suitable for biking. Instead of having a lockable metal storage you have the inconvenience of not having that but still needing to carry bike things (helmet, lock, toolkit). Instead of being comfortbly on a sidewalk as a pedestrian or on a road in a car, you have to be annoyingly (maybe illegally) on a sidewalk or in danger on a road full of cars, or be lucky and go a diversion in the few places there happens to be a bike path.

They're a "huge" improvement over cars only if you take away all the conveniences of a car, and offload those things onto the person while pretending you aren't doing that.

> One tiny little nit you seem to have overlooked: walkers need and use sidewalks too

Walkers should get sidewalks without bikes. If I say you walk at 4mph and bike at 6mph you'll probably tell me you can average 20mph on your bike. If I say bikes don't mesh with people, and are an accident risk, you'll say bikes "use sidewalks too" and point to people sedately biking at 3mph among strolling pedestrians. If you're biking at a speed that's safe /and not annoying/ to pedestrians (i.e. not weaving between people, making them jump out of the way) then you're going slow enough that you're as well off walking. If you're going faster in a way that only a bike can, you shouldn't be on a sidewalk and need a dedicated concrete place to cycle fast.

All 800k people in imaginary Amsterdam pay taxes for sidewalks because all 800k people use them. All drivers pay fuel and road tax, all cars use roads. Bikers don't pay any special tax for roads or bike paths, which means the minority of bikers are subsidised by everyone else. It's not hyperbole, exaggeration, hatred or snark to point out this kind of thing.

> You could claim walkers don’t need sidewalks, but bikes don’t really need sidewalks either, plenty of bikes will ride on dirt paths comfortably.

Leaving a chewed up muddy plowed mess for everyone else to walk on. Walking on cobblestones is easy and comfortable, riding on them needs suspension and arms that don't mind juddering. But what I'm really claiming is that taxing 100% of the people to make sidewalks that 100% of the people use is fine. Taxing motorists for roads which their cars use is fine. Bikes get the benefit of lots of paved roadway, which they approximately need, without explicity paying in any way. If there were only sidewalks bikes would clash with people. If there weren't roadways, bikes would need them to be invented. If my mother needed a full suspension mountain bike to go to church on, she probably wouldn't. If cars vanished, bikes don't provide anything like the income for the upkeep of the roads left behind by cars if cars vanished. If instead you move to a model where bikes need hundreds of km of bike paths weaving through the city seperate from sidewalks, and then you move to a model where bikers are the people who pay for that, bikes will become a lot less desirable.

Even the limited convenience and usefulness bikes have (which is nonzero) is enhanced by leaning on a car-culture and would struggle hard to stand on its own merits.

[1] https://cyclistresource.com/how-long-does-puncture-repair-gl...

[dahart]

Did something bad happen to you relating to cycling? You’re struggling so hard to paint bikes negatively, exaggerating so much about minor and insignificant problems, that I can’t help but assume a cyclist must have collided with you or there’s someone annoying in your life who really into cycling. Do you have a physical condition that prevents you from cycling? Do you lean libertarian and have a problem with taxes for things you don’t use?

I still don’t get your angle whatsoever. Every single thing you claim to want is advanced considerably, and we get closer to walking culture, every single time someone rides a bike instead of a car.

> Any argument which makes bikes better than cars, makes walking better than bikes; you keep ignoring that and diverting back to "bikes are better than cars". Yes bikes are better than cars. Walking is better than bikes

I responded to your comparison between bikes and cars. My argument is that bikes are better than cars. So we are in full agreement. I’m not arguing about walking, I said twice already I’m in favor of walking.

> Walking is better than bikes

That depends entirely on what you mean by “better”. Bikes have a larger range, shorter travel times, and are more efficient. Walking is IMO more pleasant and a slightly safer, but not as functional for traveling more than .5 miles or carrying any cargo with you, even as small as a laptop.

Personally, I think it does a disservice to both bikers and walkers, and to the causes of human designed cities and pollution reduction, to fabricate drama by pitting bikes against walkers as if they're somehow in complete opposition. Bikers and walkers are 99.9% on the same side. I love doing both walking and biking. As a biker, I see people advocating for walking spaces and even bike-free sidewalks as a good thing that helps me. As a walker, I see people asking for bike lanes downtown as a good thing that helps me. You say you don't want bikes on your sidewalk, yet complain about how bike paths are paid for... you do realize that dedicated bike paths get bikes off the sidewalk, right?

> Going to a garage is less effort even if it takes more time.

For someone who brought the concept of externality to this thread, you’re actively trying to externalize time to exaggerate your claims. Cars are more expensive, and money requires time. You can’t count only the travel time to the shop while ignoring the extra time it takes to earn the money to buy & repair your car.

> Walkers should get sidewalks without bikes.

Irrelevant to our discussion, but I happen to agree.

> [in Amsterdam] Bikers don’t pay any special tax for roads or bike paths

This isn’t true, you are making assumptions, making things up. Citizens fund Amsterdam’s bike infrastructure. Not walkers, not drivers. Citizens.

In the city I live in, bike paths are being added by referendum. They are voted on and the funds come from multiple tax sources. I’m paying for the bike infrastructure I enjoy, and the majority of my fellow citizens are asking for improved bike infrastructure.

You are harping up a storm on a complete and total non-issue. Who pays for bike paths is not a major problem anywhere. And if it was a problem, it would be a great problem to have, because it would mean people are biking instead of driving.

[jodrellblank]

> Did something bad happen to you relating to cycling?

A haw haw haw an ad-hom.

> You’re struggling so hard to paint bikes negatively

I'm writing pages of stuff off the top of my head, my biggest "struggle" is how you can't see any of these things exist. I haven't mentioned bike theft (compared to, say, shoe theft), noise pollution of squeaking brakes, people I see around biking while staring at their phones, the fact that we live in a car-world which is to a rough approximation the best possible world for bikes (lots of tarmac, lots of spread out things, low costs) and even then the vast majority of people don't own or regularly use bikes, and almost any other world would make bikes less convenient and more costly, making that worse. Not to mention the way you can leave maps and notes and sunshades and medical kits in your car glove box, but you always need to carry everything away from your bike, not to mention the huge change that sets in if you happen to bike at night and need lights and batteries and reflective clothes for safety, not to mention the extra difficulty of calling someone up to ask for a lift if they have nowhere on their car to put a bike, or leaving your bike out to come back to a wet rained-on saddle, or how cold your hands get held out in front of you, or how wearing a helmet messes up your hair, or how people desire a 'dashcam' experience and have to have it affixed to their helmet.

> I still don’t get your angle whatsoever. Every single thing you claim to want is advanced considerably, and we get closer to walking culture, every single time someone rides a bike instead of a car.

No we don't.

Take the "ungenerously small car" comment and look at the Top Gear clip "Driving in Lucca" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_eLViH7_YI - the ultracompact cars are the Fiat 500, the Citroen DS3 (~4m long, 1.7m wide) and a Renault Clio also ~4m long 1.7m wide. And look how they barely fit in the streets of a city built for humans. Look as they drive around, how there's no long straight roadways for a bike to get up to speed and make strong use of the vaunted efficiency and ability to cover longer distances more quickly. And if you tried, a chance of a bike popping out of any junction at any time at 10mph would make everything awful for humans who weren't biking.

At 4:30 in the clip there are ~7 bikes visible. That's approximately everywhere you can leave a bike in that scene including in front of some windows on the left. That's 7 people can bike to that street out of a city of ~85k population + tourists. There's no room there for a "small car sized parking for 10 bikes" turned sidways because the "ungenerously small car" takes up the entire human-size space and there wouldn't be room to take the bikes out and barely room to walk past.

What you get from bikes is not "closer to walking", it's "things built around distances too far to walk with the idea that people will bike those distances". Building around walking means building things close enough that nobody needs or wants to bike. It's like saying you get closer to reading by watching a short film.

> My argument is that bikes are better than cars. So we are in full agreement

I'm saying that bikes are /bad/ and you're saying bikes are /good/. That's not full agreement. Even if we both agree that cars are bad, I say bikes are bad for the same reasons, on a smaller scale, and for their own reasons on top.

> As a walker, I see people asking for bike lanes downtown as a good thing that helps me. You say you don't want bikes on your sidewalk, yet complain about how bike paths are paid for... you do realize that dedicated bike paths get bikes off the sidewalk, right?

... you're going to terrorise walkers into paying for bike lanes for you to use, so you don't have to pay for them? You do realize that doesn't sound nice or friendly, or what someone on "the same side" would say, right?

> For someone who brought the concept of externality to this thread, you’re actively trying to externalize time to exaggerate your claims. Cars are more expensive, and money requires time. You can’t count only the travel time to the shop while ignoring the extra time it takes to earn the money to buy & repair your car.

Me: cars have costs. bikes have costs.

You all: Why can't you see that cars have higer costs?

Me: I can see that. Why can't you see bikes have costs at all?

You: I don't understand how you can ignore the costs of cars are so big?

Me: I'm agree the costs of cars are high. Look at the downsides of bikes.

You: But her car emails!

Me: Stop focusing on cars. Bike costs. Annoying. Inconvenient.

You: How can you ignore the cost of cars like this!?

Hello? I know cars have high costs! I'm not /denying that/. I'm not interested in that because /I'm not supporting everyone-has-a-car-world/. I'm supporting nobody-needs-a-bike-or-car world specifically against the alternative most-people-need-a-bike-world.

> This isn’t true, you are making assumptions, making things up. Citizens fund Amsterdam’s bike infrastructure. Not walkers, not drivers. Citizens.

If everyone payes the same tax, that's another way of saying bikers dont' pay any special tax. Which is what I said and you said is made up, then said the same thing. ???

> the majority of my fellow citizens are asking for improved bike infrastructure.

Because the majority (>50%) of them want to use it? Or because they are willing to suffer paying for it to get you off the roads and sidewalks because you're annoying both pedestrians and drivers? Cycling England says there are ~160,000 bikes crossing London every day, but Transport for London says there are 2,600,000 cars registered in London.

Cycling England says "n 2018, cycling accounted for 1.7% of all trips". That's 99.3% of citizen-trips on foot and in cars and public transport "funding" 1.7% of citizen trips.

"England: 42% of people aged 5+ own or have access to a bicycle" yet "80.9% cycle less than once per month or never".

https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics

> You are harping up a storm

A storm full of points you're completely glossing over in favour of ad-homs and diverting the talk about cars instead.

> Who pays for bike paths is not a major problem anywhere

Did I say it was a major problem? I said it was an example of something bike enthusiasts don't mention. In England 2% of journeys are by bike. That leaves "Citizens" paying for road and pavement usage for 98% of journeys and also paying bike path costs for some subset of 2% of journeys.

> And if it was a problem, it would be a great problem to have, because it would mean people are biking instead of driving.

That would be bad because you'd have a world built around distances too far to walk, far enough to want to drive, but unable to drive. What would get 80% of people to bike those distances in lieu of cars is most likely motorized bikes.

[dahart]

I wasn't attacking you with an ad-hominem, I'm sorry it seemed like that. I was honestly asking why you're so bothered about bikes. You have a lot of reasons, but I don't understand your overall thrust or point.

> and diverting the talk about cars instead.

You keep saying this over and over and over, yet I keep pointing out consistently that I'm primarily focused on bikes vs cars, and primarily responding to your comment here, which compared bikes to cars, and didn't even mention walking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24186001 You somehow don't even see you're the one moving the goal post.