[Eji1700]

I do think this is a more complex problem than people give credit.

I've seen bike lanes added to roads, and almost no one is happy. There's always idiot drivers and bikers and every now and then someone gets hurt or killed.

Bike paths make infinitely more sense (especially since they dont have to follow roads and can take more direct paths), but cities seem loathe to adopt them vs just painting some lines on a current street.

Finally climate plays a huge part as well. I live where it gets over 100f in the suummer routinely. Even a 3 mile bike ride at that point means you're drenched in sweat, which is just not acceptable in a majority of environments. Showers can be added but water is already a resource we're flippant with when we really shouldn't be.

Finally its not a great solution for the elderly and has some risks. Yes they can ride an e bike, but when you screw up at 20 mph in a sedan you wind up with a very expensive bill and an insurance premium hikes. When you crash on a bike, even with saftey gear, you can wind up pretty seriously injured.

None of this isnt to say we should not build more bike paths/trains/subways/busses, but I dont think its a one solution fits all sort of thing.

[atchoo]

> Even a 3 mile bike ride at that point means you're drenched in sweat

I can't say that is my experience. Cycling at a relaxed speed is less effort than walking and you get a nice a breeze. I've cycled in 40C heat and it's lovely - more comfortable than being stationary.

It's hills (no matter the temperature) that make me break a sweat because of the exertion and a hardwired instinct to sprint up them.

> Finally its not a great solution for the elderly

Trikes are a nice solution for those feeling a bit wobbly on two wheels.

[amrocha]

I don't sweat too much either but you can't discount the fact that a lot of people do and would if they had to bike in the heat

[atchoo]

Bicycles are amazingly mechanically efficient and very low effort unless going for speed or hills.

I'd measure it relatively against the amount they sweat at rest/walking and sure, some people sweat even then.

[Eji1700]

You seem to be missing the point that standing stationary with no shade in 100+ weather will make some people sweat, even if in shape. Its a natural response, and thats before you consider your attire.

Again people can bring a change of clothes, but Ive worked places that require a suit year round, or at least no shorts. Biking around in pants in 100f heat is hardly fun.

[aembleton]

For those that need to be in a suit, I don't think cycling would work at many times of the year. But if you just need to do some grocery shopping, then a bike with a couple of pannier bags works well.

[amrocha]

Nah, it would be fine, I see plenty of suited salary men cycling in Tokyo

[atchoo]

As I said, cycling is actually more pleasant than staying stationary.

If you want to argue that cycling isn't suitable in an environment in which humans should never be outside and only transfer from one air-conditioned environment to another then fine, sure, but my god, what a dystopia in which no human should live. Time to encourage migration to Siberia rather than cars.

[amrocha]

Well, I would argue that 38C and above are hostile temperatures to humans and people probably shouldn't go outside too much those days hahaha, but it also depends on humidity. I do think cycling is suitable even in those places, and I personally cycle under those circumstances, but there should be a temperature controlled public transport option available as well.

[Melatonic]

True but maybe they would be less sweaty if they were bicycling more and in better shape :-D

[Eji1700]

Trikes are not a nice solution for people who get hit, lose control, or crash into something.

Again its the consequence of something, even if its your fault. Obviously speeding in a car can kill someone, but fender benders are pretty common and mostly harmless. Also obviously most people can fall off a bike and be fine, but for the elderly a simple fall can be life altering or even lethal, and thats before you get to the physical issues.

[atchoo]

For an elderly person, losing control or crashing on a trike is a low speed non-event.

A car driving so dangerously, so recklessly, so without any care for humanity, to hit a slow moving bicycle is homicide. It's an outrage to ever surrender the road to criminals. No-one should ever accept such a mentality.

[RhysU]

Disagree. The President himself bit it simply getting off a bike. A trike does not avoid the need to dismount.

[atchoo]

They are nearly as easy to dismount as a mobility scooter. They are stable, no balacing and typically no crossbar so you just swing your legs across.

https://jorviktricycles.com/tricycles

[ryukafalz]

> Bike paths make infinitely more sense (especially since they dont have to follow roads and can take more direct paths), but cities seem loathe to adopt them vs just painting some lines on a current street.

They can make more sense in certain circumstances for long trips between population centers, but as an alternative to bike lanes within cities… not really. The problem with only having bike paths is that they usually don’t take you all the way to where you need to go! If you’re trying to get to a particular business and they’re not directly on the bike path (which they probably aren’t), you need to leave the bike path at some point. And that’s when it’s helpful to have a protected bike lane!

> None of this isnt to say we should not build more bike paths/trains/subways/busses, but I dont think its a one solution fits all sort of thing.

Correct, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for transportation. Including roads for cars, but they’re currently treated that way in North America.

[throwaway894345]

> Correct, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for transportation. Including roads for cars, but they’re currently treated that way in North America.

I've lived in Chicago for almost a decade, and I initially did all of my transportation by public transit. That said, I'm really surprised at how well driving works in Chicago, the 3rd largest city in the US and one of the most dense major cities, and one which has far fewer highways than even smaller cities: Chicago has only a few major thoroughfares for getting across town quickly by car, and even still traveling by car is almost always 2-3X faster than taking the El which is faster than the bus and so on.

Of course, this isn't an argument for investing more in cars and less in other forms of transit--if the folks who rely on cycling and public transit instead decided to drive, then congestion would be unbearable.

At least in Chicago, I think we could make a lot of progress in making all commuters safer by enforcing basic traffic laws. Chicago has some of the worst drivers I've ever seen--people routinely running solid red lights, weaving through traffic, generally not paying attention, passing on shoulders (on highways), parking in the middle of the street or in a bike lane, and generally just not paying attention to pedestrians and cyclists. Similarly, it seems like most cyclists just fly through stop signs and red lights with no sense of self-preservation--I'm a very careful driver, but a lot of intersections have low visibility and I've had a lot of near-misses with reckless cyclists. Also, public transit could be a lot safer and more comfortable if we would enforce such laws as "no smoking, urinating, panhandling, fighting, stabbing, robbing etc on buses and trains". Unfortunately, we're in the process of driving the police out of the city (we are hemorrhaging police officers) while also making sure offenders are minimally penalized (our district attorney prefers to let violent offenders out on low bail, lenient parole conditions, short sentences, etc if her office is even willing to prosecute in the first place).

[frenchy]

> Unfortunately, we're in the process of driving the police out of the city

Where I'm from, the police never really enforce traffic law anyway.

[jonas21]

I think that's their point. Even if bicycles aren't a solution for all, everyone can still benefit from more trips happening by bicycle. The elderly or those with a commute that would leave them unacceptably sweaty can still drive, and they will enjoy less traffic, cleaner air, and an easier time finding parking thanks to the cyclists.

[conductr]

That’s a chicken and egg problem. If you live in a city without ideal weather thats already built with automobiles in mind, getting even just a whole whopping 1% of trips by bike is nearly impossible and still makes no difference. Possibly even counterproductive as the bikes are consuming the infrastructure yet volume is not contributing enough to the “everyone can benefit” part.

Living in a place that is overly car dependent, I’ve watched as billions are spent on light rails and bike lanes and such but ultimately have very low utilization. People, on average, don’t want to use it here. They won’t want to use it until there’s any economic reason to use it.

[ryukafalz]

> Living in a place that is overly car dependent, I’ve watched as billions are spent on light rails and bike lanes and such but ultimately have very low utilization. People, on average, don’t want to use it here. They won’t want to use it until there’s any economic reason to use it.

Or, alternatively, until it can actually get them to where they need to go?

It’s always frustrating when cities put in a few disconnected bike lanes and then act surprised when nobody uses them. It’s like… yes, I would love to use this bike lane, if it didn’t just end abruptly and throw me into multiple lanes of fast-moving cars! There’s one near me that looks very nice in isolation but ends at a freeway on/off ramp, so I don’t dare use it.

[joshlemer]

Bikes/trains/buses/pedestrians taking up space that was once allocated for cars is actually a good thing though. By reducing road capacity you are increasing the cost of driving, which encourages people to get out of their cars and bike more. Think of it as the opposite of induced demand.

[conductr]

It doesn’t though. Not here. This statement is purely theoretical in an incentive vacuum. Or maybe just an ideal city repurposing old infrastructure (eg I think in NYC some old rails were converted to trails).

Let’s just consider the work commute/rush hours. The average commute where I live is probably 20 miles. But it has a wide range. I’d guess some double digit percentage commutes more than 50 miles one way. They do this because most of my city and surrounding area has grown in the age of the automobile. It wasn’t optimized for density and short distances. So, the driving commute would have to worsen severely to make someone consider even just the extra time of a bike trip. The weather, danger, physical capabilities, and limitations of a bike are added hurdles.

This is very observably true as when bike lanes are added, nobody uses them.

[dropofwill]

Your comment sent me on a bit of a rabbit hole, it turns out you can look up commute distance histograms in the census data here https://onthemap.ces.census.gov/

I looked at a few dozen cbsa metro areas, big cities, small cities, east, west, middle and the only 3 i could find with more people traveling 10-24 miles than <10 miles were Houston (34/36), Dallas (34/37), and Atlanta (34/38) so even in the worst case ~⅓ of commuters are doing less than 10 miles.

I couldn't figure out how to query this data via an api, but I did find a paper that looked at the 96 largest metros, which showed that Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta had the highest median between 12.2 and 12.8 miles. So I think that a 20 mile average is likely not true anywhere, though double digit over 50 miles does occur in all three of the above cities. Most cities have plenty of people commuting across the spectrum, though some are significantly denser than others (up to ~45% for <10).

Now looking at the per mode data, 10 miles is still on the long side for a bike commute. There is a steep drop off in people cycling/motorcycling to work (for some reason combined in the dataset) at the 30 minute mark. 20mph is fast even with a e-bike assist, probably somewhere around <2-6 miles would be the ideal probably.

I do agree with you that most people aren't going to start using bike lanes if that means a worse commute. I used to, but I cycle for sport and would do those hours anyways (now my bike commute is faster than train or car). Most Dutch people don't bike commute for fitness or sport or fun, they do it because it's the most efficient way for them to make their daily trips. Part of this is because of the density of that country and part of that is the infrastructure.

[conductr]

Thanks for doing the deep dive this is interesting data that I didn't want to research :)

> There is a steep drop off in people cycling/motorcycling to work (for some reason combined in the dataset) at the 30 minute mark

I live in Dallas which is one of your samples. I think on the above point what you would find is above a certain threshold and commuters are using a highway/high speed road and probably see it as a necessary component to keep drive time down. I just mapped my commute and it's actually 12.2 miles of which 9.3 are on a highway. It takes me a consistent 20 minutes to get to/from work; or about 35 if I avoid the highway for some reason. Average speed is probably a small factor and stop lights/merging traffic being the dominant slow downs.

On a bike, intersections still slow you down and you don't see people bike across a highway's path very often at all here because all of those intersections tend to be high speed, several lanes, and quite dangerous too. Since biking isn't a normal activity for most people here, I'd venture to guess most people would impose an additional danger to themselves until they got familiar with things.

The shear number of roads and infrastructure to be upgraded to make it feasible is daunting.

[asoneth]

> when bike lanes are added, nobody uses them

People generally take the mode that makes the most sense from a time, money, safety, and comfort perspective.

If a city wants more people to switch from driving to walking, biking, or transit the only way to do that is to make the latter options some combination of faster, cheaper, and/or safer than driving. Adding a bike lane here or there only induces those people who were right at the boundary to switch from driving to biking.

Given that most cities have spent the last several generations making automobile transportation as efficient and cheap as possible it would be very hard for a few bike lanes to convince people to get out of their cars.

To really move the needle you'd have to start charging market rates for parking and road use and/or make walking/biking safe and enjoyable. Or you could just wait until population increases inevitably result in auto traffic slowing to biking speed.

[ZeroGravitas]

> Given that most cities have spent the last several generations making automobile transportation as efficient and cheap as possible it would be very hard for a few bike lanes to convince.

I agree but would phrase it as "externalising all the costs of automobile traffic onto other people (and some of those 'other people' are other car commuters who in turn externalise their costs onto other drivers)"

The kind of nerdy efficiency argument free-market libertarians would make if they weren't owned by fossil fuel interests.

[googl-free]

If you're afraid of showing visible signs of sweat on a 100F day, something else is wrong.

I bike commute in Texas year round about 8 miles one way. 4-5 days a week. 104F or 22F.

For a typical day, it takes about 15 minutes of air conditioning for me to stop sweating, and I don't even change my shirt. On a more formal day, I'll arrive an hour early and bring my button down and pants in a bag, and the key is to completely stop sweating before you change. If you shower in the morning at home, a bit of sweat isn't going to make you stink. Office shower is a plus if you do cold showers though

I'm not a jock but being a bike commuter gets you more positive office cred than the anti-sweat pearl clutching gets you negative office cred.

[amrocha]

Look mate, a lot of people just don't enjoy sweating. I'm glad you can make it work but it's an unpleasant experience for most people

[Eji1700]

And others work in environments that will get you fired for sweating. Its not about "office cred". Its about doing your job, and theres plenty where having bad BO is going to affect your ability, especially in more formal environments.

And this is before you consider all the extra steps now required such as show up an hour early.

[amrocha]

Chill, nobody is getting fired for sweating and nobody is taking an hour to shower

[Eji1700]

Ive seen people fired for less in certain environments and the guy literally two comments above talks about showing up and hour early

[throwaway894345]

To add to the list of challenges, not only are there places which get very hot, but there are also many places that get very cold or which have lots of precipitation. Obviously we can still increase bike adoption in these places during better weather, or in places that are just more moderate overall.

Other challenges include transporting infants, pets, or just larger commodities, so it seems more likely that most people will need to own a car and a bike. Again, not all trips require transporting one or more of these things, so we can still increase bike adoption.

However, these factors mean that the overwhelming majority would need a bike in addition to a car, and arguments about how much cheaper cars are than bikes only apply to people who satisfy the following:

* Healthy * Live in an urban environment * Work/shop/etc within a ~3 mile radius * Live in a hospitable climate * Don't have kids * Don't have pets (at least not that need regular transport) * Don't travel outside of their ~3 mile radius frequently

There are probably criteria that I'm missing, and yes, I'm sure some of those criteria are optional in theory (I'm sure someone knows some dutch guy who cycles his kids everywhere), but in practice these are deal breakers for mere mortals.

[Ottolay]

I disagree with the cold part. It is easier to dress to stay warm in a cold place than to dress to stay cool in a hot place. Both adults and kids bike in Scandinavia in the winter.

Here is a good video on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

[amrocha]

The Dutch are mere mortals too.

Cargo e bikes solve at least 3 of those problems. Public transport solves the rest. Being healthy is a result of your environment, not the other way around. The transition sucks but you gotta do it.

[throwaway894345]

> The Dutch are mere mortals too.

Yes and 80% of Dutch households have cars, and those who don't own cars aren't foregoing them voluntarily--rather, they have health or financial problems that prevent them from driving (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358798695_The_wides...). Of the remainder of the voluntarily carless, I suspect that's biased pretty heavily toward the young, healthy, and childless. Moreover, car ownership in the Netherlands is increasing--in 1992, 42% of Dutch households were car-free.

> Cargo e bikes solve at least 3 of those problems. Public transport solves the rest.

Maybe theoretically, but not in practice. You're probably not hauling furniture by ebike or by public transit, and for most people there are so many individually-rare-but-collectively-common things like this that it's not practical to rent a car twice a week.

> Being healthy is a result of your environment, not the other way around.

No one claimed that your environment is the result of being healthy...

> The transition sucks but you gotta do it.

You don't have to be car-less to be healthy. This is silly. Note also that rejecting the anti-car extreme doesn't imply opposition to more public transportation, cycling infrastructure, or changes to make cities more walkable.

[amrocha]

Nice straw man. I'm sure you can refute your own arguments if you gave it an honest try.

[throwaway894345]

I didn't invoke a straw man, I literally quoted your arguments and cited research. Falsely claiming "straw man" is the cringiest way to concede a debate.

[g9yuayon]

It seems China had a solution, but no more. When I grew up in China, cities had dedicated bike lanes. Each lane was at least 2-car wide, and was separated from car lanes by a green belt, so bicyclists were safe. The bike lanes disappeared or shrank in width as China got more and more cars, and the green belts were removed as well, making it a lot more dangerous for bicyclists.

[simne]

This was not solution.

This is same, as complaints in exUSSR countries, that when where communists, roads where empty, and traffic issues does not exists.

In reality, people where so poor, that there was less than 1/10th automobiles, which normal similar western city has, so those automobiles number was not enough to create traffic issues.

China current officials are essentially same communists as soviet, so they used obvious things for propaganda, and does not do real measures as long as possible.

Western world is not ideal, but at least it is honest- we could talk free about such things; we could critic officials, and we could suggest solutions and take part in implementing them.

[bambax]

> * I live where it gets over 100f in the summer routinely. Even a 3 mile bike ride at that point means you're drenched in sweat*

You're certainly not drenched in sweat on an ebike, and you're probably not either if the terrain is flat and you're not in a big hurry.

[tablespoon]

> Bike paths make infinitely more sense (especially since they dont have to follow roads and can take more direct paths), but cities seem loathe to adopt them vs just painting some lines on a current street.

They're probably loathe to adopt them because often there are buildings in the way that would have to be demolished to make way. Painting lines on an existing street is infinitely cheaper, because no one has pay to demolish or build anything.

[ultrarunner]

Bicycles turn quickly. We're happy to route around buildings and terrain. No one's talking about demolishing buildings, and with the size of parking lots required by code for cars, there's often plenty of space to go around.

Paint is popular with cities because they literally do not have to care about people's motivations at all. Which they don't. Paint is an easy out.

[Melatonic]

Bike paths are indeed amazing and could of course work great for small little electric assist bikes, scooters, etc. That bike ride that drenches you in sweat might actually feel pretty nice if the electric motor is doing most of the work and now you are getting a nice breeze over you. Although 100F is pretty miserable regardless of what you are doing without AC - there may not be a solution to that other than highly cooled public transit.

[ZeroGravitas]

Once vehicles are outputting less toxic fumes, semi-enclosed outside spaces make more sense in both hot and cold climates.

Pedestrian subways is an idea overdue for a revisit as are bike routes that pass through parks and indoor malls.

Do any of these "city of the future" projects explicitly address this kind of thing? Seems kind of obvious.

Though I think its obvious that bicyles would be really handy in a zombie apocalypse (or any kind of apocalypse really) and that seems to be generally ignored by our modern culture too, preferring hot rods, trucks and helicopters.

[JeremyNT]

> Finally climate plays a huge part as well. I live where it gets over 100f in the suummer routinely. Even a 3 mile bike ride at that point means you're drenched in sweat, which is just not acceptable in a majority of environments.

I live in the American south where it routinely hits the upper 90s with very high humidity. I really hate this sort of thinking.

It's completely possible to ride 3 miles in 100 degree heat without actually getting very sweaty. The mind-blowing revelation? Just ride a bit more slowly! The natural breeze from your motion will evaporate perspiration. If you have hills to climb and find yourself struggling to keep your cool, it means you simply need to find lower gearing, so you can climb the hill at a similarly leisurely level of exertion.

There's a notion that cycling has to be a physically exhausting endeavor, but it really need not be. If you simply put in the same energy on the bike that you would put into walking, you'll move a lot faster than you would have walking, and you'll actually be a lot less sweaty due to the breeze.

[simne]

I live in Kiev, Ukraine, city famous for it's territory on few great hills.

We have so large angles of roads in some places, so cheapest models of cars, with smallest engines, can't drive up on 4th speed of gearbox, sure it is not easy for bikers to drive there.

So, in few districts bikes are impractical. And also, are very rare cars, with small weigh/power ratio.

[throw0101c]

> Even a 3 mile bike ride at that point means you're drenched in sweat, which is just not acceptable in a majority of environments.

First, how much you sweat depends on (a) how out of shape you are. After a couple of weeks your fitness level will improve and you'll sweat less/not-at-all.

As well as (b) how hard you pedal. I used to pedal hard on my cycling commute to work in the Before Times, and did arrive sweaty, but that was I wanted the cardio. I simply wore the funny-looking clothing and changed at work. No, I didn't stink: I took a shower at home beforehand, which reduced the bacteria on my body, and so it was fine. Sweat does not stink (it's just salt water), but bacteria stinks. But if I pedalled at a leisurely pace, then I hardly sweat at all.

Pedalling effort can also be reduced by pedal-assist e-bikes.

[kikimora]

I’m fit but sweat a lot even with moderate physical activity. Same for my father. I guess it depends on your DNA. I’ll sweat in 40C just standing doing nothing.

[TYPE_FASTER]

Re: sweat… At least on a bike I’m moving and wind is hitting me. When I commuted via subway somewhere that required button down shirts and pants (not shorts), I still carried a change of clothes due to the heat and humidity in the subway.

[wlecometo]

> Finally its not a great solution for the elderly and has some risks.

it's not a great solution either to have elderly people in a car where one of their mistakes couuld kill people; but it is more accepted this as a "fatality".

btw there are lots of solutions of mobility for elders that do not include a car.

[simne]

> There's always idiot drivers and bikers and every now and then someone gets hurt or killed.

Consider, how safe will be world with self-driving bikes of 5 level!

Unfortunately, even cars still does not reach 3 level, but why we should bother such tiny nuances..

[nedt]

> There's always idiot drivers and bikers and every now and then someone gets hurt or killed.

There are idiots everywhere. I just prefer them to be on a bike or walk, because then they are much less likely to cause harm if they don't care about others.

[empraptor]

> I've seen bike lanes added to roads, and almost no one is happy. There's always idiot drivers and bikers and every now and then someone gets hurt or killed.

which is why we should allow only bikes and public transport in large cities.

[aaroninsf]

Re: bike lanes,

San Francisco is an illustrative example of how they are done right, and done wrong.

TL;DR: physically protected lanes are the viable solution and the one with the least unhappiness.

Almost all the unhappiness I have experienced in the city as pedestrian, driver, and biker of 20+ years,

is the result of improper (frankly half-assed) bike-lane retrofitting by painting some lines on long-established car corridors.

The inevitable and predictable result is they become a convenient parking lane. The advent and popularity of meal-delivery services and ride-share amplified this problem 100-fold.

Valencia Street is a laboratory example of this. The few blocks south of market with mostly-protected lanes are 1000x better for everyone than the nightmare blocks further south. On a typical commute down that street I have had to go into traffic at least a half dozen times to get around people parking. As ride-share traffic returns the corresponding risk of oblivious passengers throwing open doors is returning as is the perpetual stopping "right in front" of the destination regardless of open spaces 10' away.

Even Valencia's protected lanes are poor by the standards of any properly engineered white-page design; the constant interruption by "shared" turn lanes and the need to jog around them, of drive ways, of pedestrian cut throughs, is all just accumulated urban planning cruft there is no will to wipe away.

Me, I'd like Valencia to become a permanent pedestrian/bikeway, with no cars but emergency vehicles. full stop...

[throwaway894345]

> The inevitable and predictable result is they become a convenient parking lane. The advent and popularity of meal-delivery services and ride-share amplified this problem 100-fold.

Has any city ever actually tried ticketing people who block lanes? In Chicago there's no enforcement at all, and I have to think that even a little enforcement would send a clear message. I don't mean to argue against protected bike lanes (although I've heard people say they accumulate trash and street cleaners can't access them, but I don't have strong feelings), but I don't understand why we talk about this as an inevitable problem.

[jackvalentine]

> Has any city ever actually tried ticketing people who block lanes?

There is a large amount of discourse about this on twitter, the issues as I’ve seen:

- Police don’t think to

- When it’s pointed out to them, police don’t want to.

- Police are often frequent bike lane parkers

- Non-police traffic wardens don’t think to

- When it’s pointed out to them, non-police traffic wardens are sometimes unsure how to actually ticket them as their handheld computer doesn’t have a wizard for bike lane parking and requires inputting of a special case

etc etc.

My experience, I think ticketing is of limited use to discourage it as the chances of getting ‘caught’ if you’re only there a short time is pretty low.

[throwaway894345]

These seem like pretty absurd obstacles. Police in various places have historically been pretty notorious for zealously ticketing other offenses--I can't see anything special about these bike lane offenders. Of course, following BLM there has been a lot of pressure on police to avoid any "unnecessary" policing (lots of studies confirm that police have been pulled back all over the country as a direct consequence of BLM-related pressure), so maybe that would affect things as of the last 5ish years?