| > The bike paths are small now because hardly anyone uses them. If everyone and their mother was riding bikes around everywhere they’d have to be a lot bigger. A bike path capable of taking 200 bikes / hour is always going to be smaller than a road that can take 200 cars / hour. Bikes are physically smaller, you can fit plenty of them into the footprint of a single car. > Furthermore, I think you’re really underestimating what it’s like to live in a cold northern place during the winter. There are snowstorms that go on for hours and hours and you need to plough and salt the roads hourly just for cars. Most of the world doesn’t live in these locations. If your city is really so bad that it impossible to move around without a car, then stick with a car. Doesn’t change the fact that most places are perfectly compatible with bikes. > Not to mention the fact that people like to be comfortable so nobody’s going to want to ride a bike in a blizzard. Wear a thick coat. There are plenty of places where that have blizzards and the majority of trips are made by bike. > If a city tried to force everyone to use bikes then people would move away. There’s more to a city than just the number of cars in it. There are plenty of cities that already punish car driver heavily. Their populations still grow, their economies still grow. Providing enough roads and space for everyone to drive is not a requirement for a successful city, arguably the opposite is true. The worlds largest mega cities have the best public transport, and some of the most punishing and expensive to use road infrastructure. Just look at cities like Tokyo, London and Paris. |