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>Well good to see that the 1920s auto-industry propaganda[0] still has it's firm grip on American society

I am curious do you guys typically have showers at work ?

One of the reason I don't bike to work is that we don't have showers at work. Most of days in this part of US are hot and humid and I don't feel like sitting at work drenched in sweat.

Not always, but I've seen a few places that had it. But over here you don't really sweat when biking to work - it's not really an exercise, more like going on a very fast stroll to work.

It would be unfair to pretend the Netherlands don't have a huge geographic advantage when it comes to bike-friendliness; it's a flat, small country with bad weather (read: neither hot nor humid).

>But over here you don't really sweat when biking to work

Thats not the case most parts of the world. Summers get really hot even in cold parts of the country here in the US.

There are many factors at play here. Simply installing bike lanes is not enough. Blaming it all on 'auto industry propaganda' is not fair.

"Thats not the case most parts of the world. Summers get really hot even in cold parts of the country here in the US."

And yet places with boiling hot summers can have a high bike mode share. Davis is not exactly pleasant in August.

It's not ALL auto industry propaganda, but a lot of it is. Much of what started out as auto industry propaganda is now deeply engrained cultural bias. People talk about jaywalking, but how many people talk about jaydriving???

For all of human civilization streets were for people, horses, carts, etc. They were used for recreation by children and this was accepted as a normal use. They were gathering places. But the car showed up, started killing everyone in its way, and we decided "well that's that, it's a cars-only zone now and anyone else who wants to use the street is a special case!"

I don't think he was arguing against bike popularity, just that there are obstacles in parts of the world the Netherlands clearly doesn't have. I personally would not bike to work if I could not shower; I show up with my t-shirt soaked when I do bike.

From what I've seen in Holland, it's simple etiquette there that an office commuter is expected to keep his speed low enough to avoid breaking a sweat. And since the prevailing speed in the bike lanes is set by middle aged office workers, everyone winds up adhering to the rule.

Even here in Boston, I'd expect the same norm to work, though right now the prevailing norm in the bike lanes is set by speed demons like myself.

>Summers get really hot even in cold parts of the country here in the US.

That's a really good point. Most Midwestern states can get down to -30F (-35C) in winter and above 90F (32C) in the summer. Whenever I hear people say "winter doesn't stop the Dutch from biking", I always think of the climate in Amsterdam. The record low for the city is still above 0F. The average low is still above freezing, even in the dead of winter. The average low for my Midwestern city is close to -10F in January. The average high in summer is 10F warmer.

We have some really extreme temperatures here, you can't discount the effect it has on modes of transportation without built-in climate control.

My mom puts on her winter tyres and drives her bike to work through the winter, in Finland. She's almost 60. A few of my coworkers do as well.

It doesn't quite get to -35c, but -20 isn't uncommon and it's below freezing for two to three months.

I'm not quite as tough, I ride to work the 9 months when there's no ice on the roads. I might try winter cycling but O don't have the equipment yet (mostly clothes but tyres etc too).

As a bike commuter who rides as far down as 10F (-10C), I can say the cold itself really is the problem. The problem is that for too many routes, either the traffic is so crazy that if you wipe out on black ice the cars will run you over, (i.e. many, many main streets around Boston) or there is no traffic and you won't be seen (e.g. the Minuteman Trail, where a fucking coy-dog wanted to eat me when I met some black ice.)

But on a typical not-quite-main street around Boston, winter biking is easy. There's enough traffic to make sure you will be seen, and it's slow enough you won't be killed.

> Blaming it all on 'auto industry propaganda' is not fair.

I'm not "blaming it all" on anyone (I'm not sure what "it all" is even supposed to refer to in this context). If anything I'm defending cyclists from being accused of "asking for it".

The only thing I said was that auto industry propaganda is responsible for the blatantly wrong idea that roads exist purely for cars. That's not the same thing as discussing why bikes are or are not popular (although there is overlap).

> One of the reason I don't bike to work is that we don't have showers at work. Most of days in this part of US are hot and humid and I don't feel like sitting at work drenched in sweat.

Microfiber towel and a change of clothes?

I typically wait the 30-45 minutes needed for me to physically cool down in my air conditioned office. Then I towel off and change and I'm good to go.

Probably wouldn't work for everyone, but it works for me.

Hey Alpha, it's probably not working for your colleagues.

Pro-tip: body odor is a result of bacteria on the skin that breaks sweat down into various compounds. Sweat itself doesn't actually stink.

So what's a great way to remove that bacteria? Showering (with plenty of soap).

So showering before you exercise, toweling off quickly after exercise, and following with deodorant, is a very effective way of eliminating body odor as a result of exercise, as that combination a) removes bacteria on the skin, b) removes the food they feed off of before odor compounds can form, and c) staves off further odor production as a result of additional sweating and bacterial growth.

Try it. You might be surprised.

Additional tips: adjustments to diet can make a huge change in body odor. Thinning or removing body hair is also helpful, as bacteria tend to thrive in those areas.

You could also try using disinfecting wet wipes as part of a post-exercise clean-up routine, in addition to simply toweling off.

Bravo! A pithy comment that adds much to the discussion. Surely this has never occurred to anyone without it being pointed out to them. You provide a valuable service.

Sweating is OK though, it's not dirty. Wipe the surplus with a tissue/towel. This is a sad culture that everything has to be hysterically aseptic... A bit of body odor is not unhygienic nor rude. People complaining would be the rude ones. Happy to pollute to preserve their delicate olfactory senses.

> A bit of body odor is not unhygienic nor rude. People complaining would be the rude ones.

I'll agree on the 'bit' part, but lets not overdo it.

I have a gym membership to a gym near work and shower at the gym after cycling in. Obviously that won't work for everyone, and it's not overly cheap, but I use the gym for other stuff too, so it works out.

It makes me sad that (in the UK) so many people don't realise that the roads are there for people, not for vehicles that people are permitted to use on license. So we had to build "pavements" - areas dedicated to the refuge of people. Now people park their motor vehicles on the pavement, they cycle on them, they obstruct them. So once again, the person on foot is displaced :-(

I really enjoyed the bike infrastructure in the Netherlands.

I also almost got hit head on by a vehicle that decided to use the bike path (it was segregated) to overtake. It wasn't some huge highway either, it was the main street through a village, a few hundred meters from a stop light.

So I guess I probably was unlucky, but I probably would have died if I hadn't swerved over into the grass between the street and path, so the experience sticks with me.

I treat most highways in America like the highways described in Farenheit 451.

Thankfully, I live in a rural area which means there are tons of standard roads that are very unpopulated, but even then... "sharing" a road between a 2-ton metal cage and anything else is terrifying for anything but the automobile (2-ton metal cage).

The common criticism though, is that biking in the US is much harder logistically. Many people commute for over an hour at 60mph+ to get to work. This would be implausible on a bike.

> Roads were not made for cars, the cars claimed the roads once they got on the scene.

Really depends on where you are. Freeways are emphatically not for anything but high-speed vehicles.

> Well, no wonder: Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes.

Roads are made for human beings.

Where did this idea come from that we should build infrastructure for our inanimate property, anyway? Roads are for humans, however humans choose to use them.

> "Where did this idea come from that we should build infrastructure for our inanimate property, anyway?"

As the comment you're replying to points out: the car industry.

On the Wikipedia page for Jaywalking:

> Origin of the term

> The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1917. The term's dissemination was due, in part, to a deliberate effort by promoters of automobiles, such as local auto clubs and dealers, to redefine streets as places where pedestrians do not belong.

Yea, I was vehemently agreeing, not arguing, no worries.

That quote is coming from Rob Ford, a Canadian.

Sigh. And also someone who should never be cited about anything, unless in the context of a humorous anecdote.