An open source tool for planning sustainable public bike paths | Hacker News Reader

An open source tool for planning sustainable public bike paths

geo8.webarch.net

39 pointsjpereira9 comments

Unfortunately in the US, bike paths have often tended to occur not because of sustainable planning for bicycles, but because people have tended to favor gas-guzzling cars over railways, the railway tracks fall into disuse and abandonment, and then get paved over as bike paths.

What would be much nicer for the environment is having both railway AND bicycles. Trains and bikes complement each other amazingly well; in much of northern Europe this combination is a perfect way to get around.

Having bikes and no trains sucks because you can't just cram bikes onto buses and cars, so bicycling becomes a hobby exclusively for the athletically fit who are determined to cycle long distances and carry repair tools wherever they go.

Having trains and no bikes sucks because once you get off the train you can't get where you need to.

> in much of northern Europe this combination is a perfect way to get around.

Haha what? SJ (the Swedish railway company) doesn't allow the transport of bicycles in any of their trains. At least in southern Sweden you have the Öresundståg where you're allowed to take the bicycle with you.

I also like the combination of bicycle+train, but you can get a bicycle rack for your car and lots of long distance bus companies offer to take your bicycle with you.

Oh that's interesting. I'm speaking mostly from travelling in Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and Germany, all of which allow bicycles on most regional train services (perhaps with needing to buy a bike ticket).

fwiw, buses can be equipped with bike racks: http://www.fietsberaad.nl/library/repository/nieuws/busrek%2...

Yeah, that's true. But there's a limit as to how many you can put on a bus, and if they're full, you're not getting on the bus.

Also here in Boston, some buses have them and some don't. Often it's a question of the physical bus and not the route. Murphy's Law often dictates that when you're stranded in the middle of nowhere with a bicycle, flat tire, and a bus that comes every hour, the physical bus that shows up will be one without bike racks.

The full paper with more detail on the model used to and its applications is at http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.04425

Some very nice work with the mapping visualization although I am not too sure how to use the tool. Perhaps an intro or walk through might help?

What is the source of the map. Maybe it is just refreshing to me being so familiar with the big guys, but I find it super appealing.

As with almost any cool map you'll see these days, it's OpenStreetMap, via CycleStreets specifically.

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