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Comment by fataliss | Hacker News Reader

That would take a lot of political will to do something like that though and it would take YEARS! I don't think the US is a great market (right now) for city-bikes. Outside of maybe Manhattan & SF I can't think of any major city where a bike would take you places faster/better than another way of transportation would. When you consider all the hassles that biking as a transportation comes with, I doubt this has any large potential (compared to the Uber scale). Could be wrong though. I actually really hope I am!

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Seattle? Portland? Minneapolis/St. Paul? You might consider bicycling while you travel more. In Seattle alone, OFO, LimeBike, and Spin are all competing.

American bicycle infrastructure is behind, but it exists. I don't own a car. I get around those cities on bike without issue. It's as fast or faster than a car in many cases and I'm peddling the old fashioned way (with legs).

Minneapolis? As someone who commuted via bike "before it was cool" in Minneapolis I want to ask what you're smoking :)

The density simply isn't there, and the infrastructure is pretty horrible aside from some exceedingly small areas of the city proper, and of course the amazing bike paths (which typically are not useful for anything other than leisure). If that's what you consider a high bar for "bike infrastructure" in the US, I think the situation is pretty dire.

I moved to Chicago largely due to transit-related reasons, and the bike commute here isn't exactly stellar - but it's at least night and day compared to the average suburban-oriented city in the US.

That said, spending significant time in the Netherlands may have raised the bar too far for me to really think of any US bike infrastructure as being much more than an afterthought at best.

Maybe you need to visit to check up on the state of affairs in the 'cool' era. I biked as primary transit in Minneapolis 2007-2014. The city is commonly ranked in the top ten for bike infrastructure in the U.S. (as you pointed out, admittedly a low bar).[1][2] I've been biking in Chicago for 5 years now and if you're going between any two points that don't happen to be connected by one of the non-deathtrap segments of lakefront, the cycle infrastructure here is at least a decade behind where Minneapolis is at. Most of it due to generally dismal road maintenance which impacts cyclists much harder than motorists, but lots of tremendously unsafe shared road conditions, too.

1. https://www.outsideonline.com/1930411/10-best-bike-cities-no...

2. https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/outdoors-and-adventu...

I don't understand biking in Chicago or Minneapolis. What do you do when it rains, or snows, which is like 2/3 of the year? And after that it's 95 degrees and 98% humidity. There are probably no more than 30 to 45 days a year where it's really decent biking weather.

LOL. There are probably 15 days a year that a truly inhospitable to biking in Minneapolis. On those days the hardcore riders go out anyway, and the rest work from home or catch the bus. Snow isn't a big deal except immediately after it falls, because the city does a damn good job cleaning it up, at least on the major streets. Your pants will get filthy, so plan to change them (or wear snowpants). These are things people in the North deal with even when not biking; have you tried scraping the windshield of a car that's completely covered in half-frozen puddle slush? When it's falling you can bike too, just need to take it slow (same as motorists do) and maybe pick an alternate route that's more secluded from car traffic. I actually think it's kind of fun to slip around in the fresh snow and fall on my ass, while I never much enjoyed spinning the tires on my car. I may just be weird though.

There's nothing out-of-ordinary about the amount of rainfall in Minneapolis or Chicago so not sure where you're coming from with that one, but you just wear a rain jacket and, again, have a dry change of clothes if you're going somewhere that demands formal dress. In Chicago I've found the wind has a much bigger impact on my biking than precipitation.

Well, in Chicago you pretty much bike on the good days. The infrastructure isn't great (like noted by OP in his followup to me) - but the density of the city makes it pretty workable if not entirely enjoyable. You can typically get around on bike on the good weather days faster than most other forms of transit - largely because you're only a few miles from anywhere you need to be.

So in Chicago the typical bicycle commuter commutes on the nice days (maybe half the year?) and will take public transit the rest.

In Minneapolis I commuted via bike for financial reasons so it was mostly a "suck it up, buttercup" sort of deal. You brought changes of clothes, outfitted your bike for the weather, and otherwise just made do. Honestly summer was worse than winter because I sweat a lot in heat. I cannot imagine living in that area without a car voluntarily. You just cut yourself off from far too much - but I suppose this was pre-Uber so the situation is a little bit more tenable.

Public transit in Minneapolis is basically for poor folks or those with DUIs - so it's not exactly stellar and usually not an option for most folks living in the metro area.

Edit: The follow up of "maybe 15 bad days" you had is for what most would call hardcore riders. The number of days the casual fair-weather bicycle commuter rides is far, far, less. I feel pretty comfortable saying this considering my family was known as crazies because we'd bike throughout the winter no matter the weather.

> Public transit in Minneapolis is basically for poor folks or those with DUIs

What? No.

I'm in Minneapolis. I live downtown. I find using the bus and light rail far more convenient and easy then a car. Let alone the baggage a car brings such as maintenance, insurance, upfront costs, and not to mention parking.

I bike here in Scandinavia through all fall and winter, not really sure what's stopping you except from proper clothing and gear.

Is this using a properly sorted MTB (switching to fat snow tyres in the winter months)?

Or the heavy Boris bikes or the small wheeled shopper style that a lot of these bike share companies use and most of these bikes are probably badly maintained.

Not sure who you are but I bet we were friends. Left MPLS for SF. MPLS is "the best city" for nearly anything if you ask a local. Too bad they wasted the Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot $20M on shitty latex paint bike lanes at $75,000 per block.

What do you think they should have spent that on?

They treated it like a slush-fund with no accountability. All of the projects were late and gave a feeling of "a little paint cost how much?" Now they're spending more money to make better bike lanes they could have built in the first place. That's a MPLS thing though. They're always trying to reinvent the wheel instead of using the good infrastructure that's been tried other places.

I think your experience in the Netherlands is coloring your opinion a bit. Minneapolis is consistently ranked one of the best cities for biking in the US.

Regarding Seattle and Portland, while it's true there are bike share programs, I don't see them used very often. The few who are using the bikes are either tourists (minority) or the homeless on stolen bikes. Additionally, just about half the limebikes that I see are abandoned under bridges or broken and unusable.

Portland itself is a very bikeable city and a lot of time/energy is spent to improve and grow this infrastructure. Traffic is getting to the point where cycling is faster for inner-city trips, but as I live outside of the city it's a non-starter because public transportation from my end of town is severely limited.

Seattle doesn't seem nearly as bike friendly, and while it's certainly faster to bike or walk during rush hour, it doesn't seem nearly as safe as Portland. I certainly have no interest in cycling in Seattle, driving is bad enough.

I rode up Capitol Hill at 4:30PM every day last spring/summer, took me 10-15 minutes to get home from 2nd & Seneca and never had any safety issues. Drivers in Seattle are fairly aware of their surroundings with everyone walking randomly at all times and the city is adding new bike lanes often.

Going up the hill on a Lime, Spin, or Ofo...no way -- you see those at the bottom of every hill.

I'm in Seattle as well, I have to disagree. Drivers here are mostly clueless. I know many who bike or ride motorcycles, and they have many stories to tell about the cluelessness of Seattle drivers. It's a dangerous city to ride a bike.

Every biker in every North American city has stories about clueless drivers and close encounters, if not full impacts.

Seattle is probably in the top 5 cities for driver awareness, but it has room for improvement.

I would argue it's fairly safe, especially comparing to rural areas. I now live south a few miles outside of the normal Seattle walking/biking and I've already experienced a few near-death situations, but didn't have any problems in my two years downtown. This is just a personal anecdote, but I still do feel people driving Seattle downtown & on the hill are fairly aware of bikers and people walking at any time they want.

If you live on the Burke Gilman trail, biking in Seattle can be pretty good. And they even have a bike lane over 520 now for those hardcore Microsoft bike commuters.

For most trips in Seattle more than half a mile and less than 5 miles in distance biking is the fastest way to travel. It stays competitive for east-west travel and places without mandatory parking minimums for longer distances.

Washington, DC is a big bike commuting city. Jump bikes are everywhere here.

los angeles is perfect for bike transport. it's sunny and doesn't get too hot or too cold most of the year (in the LA basin proper, the san fernando and inland valleys are a different story). the city government is pro bike path and installing more bike lanes every day. biking is faster during the 6 hours of rush hour a day. most amenities are within 2-3 miles (~15 minutes) of where you live. you can take your bike on buses and trains for the daily commute.

the biggest challenge is bike security (not getting it stolen). bike racks and locks are a poor solution if unattended. if we could put bike racks right in front of the gate attendant booths that most public parking garages have, it would be a much better deterrent to theft. and for residential buildings, you could have lockers or a locked bike storage room (possibly with security cameras too).

>"los angeles is perfect for bike transport."

Except that LA is a sprawl and almost nothing is close together. Maybe if you live at the beach its nice.

True, but generally folks live within 5 miles of 90% of the places they go.

Also, a bicycle can serve as a last-mile connector to the transit system - imagine someone who lives at Wilshire and La Brea but works in West Hollywood, and would like to take the Red Line, but doesn't want to lose an hour to walking.

> True, but generally folks live within 5 miles of 90% of the places they go.

Isn't LA like, the single place on earth where this is least true?

Most Texas cities are arguably worse, but since it's Texas, the expectations are pretty low.

>"True, but generally folks live within 5 miles of 90% of the places they go"

I have never heard this before? Do you a citation for this? More likely in LA is that people simply "limit their tether to 5 miles."

the LA i live in (not at the beach) allows me to walk/bike/bus/train to basically anywhere i want to go, most of which is within 5 miles of where i live. when i need to go farther, i can take a lyft or rent a car.

but you gotta get over that perception of sprawl to realize how great LA is for multi-modal transport.

>"but you gotta get over that perception of sprawl to realize how great LA is for multi-modal transport"

multi-modal transport? You mean the bus? The bus in LA is a joke. Nobody wants to take the bus in LA - it takes way to long to get anywhere. The metro is notable in how little area it covesr. I think this map illustrates this well:

https://media.timeout.com/images/103334943/image.jpg

So what does that leave? Cars. You yourself even mentioned ""Lyft and renting a car." Owning a car, renting a car and calling a car are all car-centric modes of transport.

And LA doesn't have a perception of sprawl it is actually sprawl.

I think this is the first time I've ever heard someone make an argument for LA as a bikable city. Very interesting indeed.

I biked around LA as a tourist, but the sprawl was so bad, that the majority of the time you spent in transit only to stop off at certain points. Biking in the Berkeley area is like night-and-day, where I don't have to sit on the bike for 10 min. to get to the next plaza. I'd do it again as I enjoy biking much more than driving, but I'm definitely more on the bike-nut side of things.

i can see that being a tourist in LA could be a little frustrating, especially on a bike. the major attractions like the getty, venice beach, k-town, hollywood, the tar pits/moma, the disney concert hall, disneyland, the huntington gardens, the forum, the hollywood bowl, beverly hills, LA live, the zoo/science center, watts towers, the sunset strip, malibu, etc. can be annoyingly far apart.

but as a resident i almost never do that kind of ping-ponging around town. you can find good food, drinks, and entertainment in each neighborhood so i typically hit up only one area of town on a given evening, depending on which friends i'm with (or visiting).

berkeley is nice and chill and bike-friendly, but it's also tiny compared to LA (18 vs 500 sq. miles).

This seems to be a little bit of coastal elitism. Do you know what the largest market is right now for Bike Share?

It's....Dallas! We have over 20,000 bikes in the city now.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-bike-share-regulat...

Seattle seems like it's doing well with Ofo, Limebike, and Spin however it will never be a replacement for a car, and they're 40-70lb bikes that can't make it up Seattle's hills which makes them kind of useless outside of downtown. They are used often and I see people riding them all day down by the waterfront, especially in the late spring/summer.

I unfortunately don't see them being any kind of major replacement for anything in Seattle anytime soon unless the Mayor actually puts high tolls on downtown exits -- especially since we have fairly good public transit.

Limebike now has electric assist bikes[1] scattered throughout Seattle which makes climbing those hills a breeze.

[1] - http://www.limebike.com/electric-assist-bike

I haven't tried the Lime e-bikes yet, but I'm definitely interested because I see them all around my workplace now.

Have you tried and confirmed you can make it up the hill with little to no issues?

I've watched people go up the hills on e-bikes. It looks easy enough.

Are any of them actually making money? We had Pronto too but it was hopeless as a business.

I live in Toronto - a bike is ALWAYS the fastest way to get anywhere in the city under about 5km (although it's pretty close).

Traffic is pretty bad at core times and the hassle of parking adds quite a bit of time at each end.

I'll throw Baltimore's name out there. They even have a Bike Share program (https://www.bmorebikeshare.com/), which is, interestingly enough, sponsored by Lyft.

There are a lot of cities with older areas which have gentrified into concert/eating/drinking-hang-out hubs. These areas weren't planned so they may be too spread out for foot traffic and adding bikes may increase travel in the area. People aren't about to bring their own bikes but if they're already there why not use them. And if the bike sharing startups prove to cities that people are willing to ride bikes cities, especially those with universities, may begin planning to have dedicated bike lanes. As drivers learn to look for bicyclists it will become safer and easier politically to plan for bicyclists. I'm all for it.

City bikes are huge in Washington, DC. I think there are now four brands of bike shares in the city.

It's also a great fit because traffic SUUUUCKS and there are a lot of healthy people who buy into the concept.

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