[ghaff]

What on earth makes you think that autonomous driving that alleviates a driver from having to drive (and park) in some of the least pleasant to drive in conditions will result in fewer cars? Having to drive into the city that's about an hour away is a major consideration for me not doing it more frequently.

[Akronymus]

I was writing about why bike paths are a net positive for everyone, rather than a regressive transfer. Even if just by reducing the amount of cars.

[briandear]

They aren’t a net positive for everyone when valuable transportation lanes are lost for bicycles. I’m not taking my four kids to the doctor on a bicycle. In an emergency, I’m not going to pedal my way to the emergency room. When it’s pouring rain, or baking hot, I’m not going to ride a bicycle. If I’m buying groceries for a family of six, I’m not going to carry a week’s worth of groceries in a backpack. A bicycle trip of 15 miles takes a whole lot longer than a car trip of the same distance. How about transporting young babies on a bike? Bikes are far more unsafe than cars.

[dalke]

It's only valuable lanes you're concerned with, right?

That is, you are okay with giving up low-value car transportation lanes for valuable bicycle lanes, yes?

You may be interested in Braess's paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox describe it as "the observation that adding one or more roads to a road network can slow down overall traffic flow through it."

That Wikipedia entry gives a few examples where closing roads helped automobile throughput, and links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand for more details about how building more highways fails to reduce congestion. ("the more highways were built to alleviate congestion, the more automobiles would pour into them and congest them and thus force the building of more highways – which would generate more traffic and become congested in their turn in an ever-widening spiral that contained far-reaching implications for the future of New York and of all urban areas").

Thus feels very much like there are net-negative transportation lanes which can be replaced by bicycle lanes and improve your transit rates.

Are you against removing those lanes? Are you against experiments to determine where those lanes might be?

As for the rest of your comment, you live in an area designed for cars, so of course cars are essential for your daily life. If you don't know what you're missing, it's easy to overlook how other solutions exist.

I happen to live in a walkable part of my city. Our health care center is 4 blocks away. The urgent care center is about a mile away. Both are walkable, even with two stroller-age kids, which we've done.

When we've needed to get to the hospital in a hurry, we've used a taxi. The savings in not having a car more than pays for both a bus pass and the occasional taxi.

We've got a good bus system, so when the weather is horrible, people switch from walking or bikes to buses when going to work.

We get our groceries delivered - again, the cost of delivery is less than the cost of owning a car.

And since we live in a walkable area of the city, we used strollers to move babies around, including on the bus, and to get to preschool. (We had several choices within walking distance.)

The big box store is about 10 minutes away by bus, and it's 5 minutes to the bus stop. When we've bought something big, we pay for delivery and removal of the old item, but car/truck rentals are also possible.

Nor must one be without a car to live here. We have several neighbors with a car, parked in the parking garage on our block. Instead, we've made the choice to not have a car.

While you don't have that choice. You are stuck, just like most people in the US. It's no wonder you interpret any talk about opening other possibilities as a diminishment of your life.

But on the other hand, having everyone's life organized around the way you personally want it diminishes the ability for people who want a car free life, and for those who for whatever reason cannot drive.

Consider that in a few years your kids will need you or another adult to drive them to all the places they want to go. The proverbial soccer mom is an unpaid chauffeur, and likely needs an extra vehicle for that purpose.

While my kids will be able to walk, bike, or take a bus, on their own, even as 10 year olds. I'll be able to send them to the store to pick up a missing ingredient for dinner. If they get bored they can walk 6 blocks to the library, or to a park to play, or to the local youth arts and culture center, or the swimming pool, or visit friends.

What will your kids be able to do?

[ProfessorLayton]

It's worth noting that public transportation exists, not just bikes and cars. Designing city less oriented around cars would mean that you could take your kids to the doctor on a train/bus/walk, and that your grocery store wouldn't be 15mi away, and not need to buy a week's worth of groceries at a time.

Of course you could choose to drive anyway, but as long as people have the option to rely less on their cars it's a net win.

[ramblenode]

> I’m not going to carry a week’s worth of groceries in a backpack. A bicycle trip of 15 miles takes a whole lot longer than a car trip of the same distance.

The problem is solved by cars but only because it was created by cars. People used to have bigger families and walk to the grocery store.

[ghaff]

Except that bike lanes often cut into lanes for auto/truck/bus traffic. Traffic has gotten worse over the past few years since a lot of bike lanes were put in. Maybe that's a reasonable tradeoff (probably), but bike lanes almost certainly didn't make things better for drivers. (ADDED: Around where I live I suspect bike lanes serve more as an alternative to walking and public transit than they do cars. Again, they're probably for the best but they don't really help drivers.)

[xracy]

Citation needed for "Traffic has gotten worse over the past few years since a lot of bike lanes were put in." For one thing, it's not even a causal statement, but you're implying it is.

For another bikes take up ~half the space of a car going in the same direction. So the inclusion of bike lanes and their usage would only improve traffic because it removes the actual cause of traffic (cars) from the road.

[gibolt]

Not 1/2, closer to 1/10 (for the exact space of the car). Cars also need far more buffer space, parking space, overall road area for maneuvering around a city. If completely replaced, infrastructure area could probably be reduced by ~20-100x

[xracy]

I'm being real generous here that on a 4 lane road, if you want to add bikes I would just take away 1 lane of car traffic, and that would allow for bikes to be insulated from the cars in both directions.

But I definitely agree with you that we could probably 1/100th the size of roads (and open up a whole lot of space for property development), if everyone biked everywhere. (Not useful as a goal, just useful as an idea for space requirements.)

[AnimalMuppet]

Depends. If 90% of the traffic is still cars, bike lanes make it possible for the 10% that is bikes. But the 90% now have fewer lanes.

You sound like you're assuming that, given more bike lanes, 50% of the traffic will ditch their cars and ride bikes. (At least, your logic doesn't work without that assumption.) I don't think that's a valid assumption.

[trgn]

I guess it depends on the location. More lanes don't equal better traffic. In my city, every road is pretty much a 2-3 lane highway for cars, and it seems like a huge waste of space. Invites speeding, crashes.

There's been road diets, where they've been reduced to single lane, and these had had no effect on travel time. Did reduce crashes a lot, less of that aggressive jostling for position, just cars chugging along calmly in single file.

There's been years long construction on a few big buildings, blocking whole lanes, forcing cars into single file; absolutely zero effect on travel times.

When there's snowfall, only middle lanes are cleared. Zero effect on traffic flow.

Imho traffic flow is pretty much determined by number of cars and number of intersections, and very little by number of parallel lanes. So much room for dedicated bike or bus lanes, it's really AND/AND, really everybody wins, and it's such a tragedy that my city just doesn't seem to understand that. All it takes is paint and bollards.

[ghaff]

I was speaking of a specific city that has added extensive bike lanes. No idea of causality. Maybe a lot more people have decided to drive in and out all of a sudden.

I was mostly objecting to the comment up-thread implying that bike lanes are inherently win win. They can be a good idea on net while increasing driving times.

[xracy]

Yeah, your trying to hide your argument in specificity makes it an "anecdote" and not anything meaningfully contributing to the conversation. So you can either find specific sources that demonstrate more than that "you feel like traffic has gone up due to bike lanes in city X", and that would be an interesting content/addition to the discussion or you can mark it more clearly as an opinion, and people will be more likely to ignore it...

[cozzyd]

Bike and bus lanes have only improved traffic for me. But I don't have a car...