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Comment by jodrellblank | Hacker News Reader

Cities designed for bikes and bicyclists, are still not cities designed for humans.

https://newworldeconomics.com/the-problem-with-bicycles/

Bikes are expensive personal transportation, compared to not owning any, they take up space in every home with muddy, oily mechanisms, they take up a lot of space in bicycle parks outside every desirable destination serving to push everything further apart for humans on foot, they don't mesh well with pedestrians (in a collision with a pedestrian and a fast moving metal bike, the pedestrian loses), they require equipment you might need to carry (locks, helmets, other), they need ongoing maintenance, they don't go well with nice clothes and tend to require places to change, carrying a change of clothes, or even showers, after any but short journeys in mellow weather.

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>Bikes are expensive personal transportation

Not true in the Netherlands.

>they take up space in every home with muddy, oily mechanisms

Usually, unless it's a very nice cycle at high risk of theft, it's not kept in one's home. It's just locked up outside. Bike garages are exceedingly common, especially in larger buildings or offices. Or at train stations.

>they take up a lot of space in bicycle parks outside every desirable destination serving to push everything further apart for humans on foot

Bike parking is an issue, especially in high congestion areas like train stations, but pushing things further for humans is most certainly not an issue in the Netherlands.

>they require equipment you might need to carry (locks, helmets, other)

Almost no one wears helmets in the NL in daily cycling and the locks are fixed to the bike or wrapped around the frame. This is really a non-issue in the NL.

>they need ongoing maintenance

Not much...and so do humans (you've still got to take care of yourself; even biking contributes to that).

> they don't go well with nice clothes and tend to require places to change, carrying a change of clothes, or even showers, after any but short journeys in mellow weather.

Most of the year the weather is mellow; people routinely wear suits/formal clothing without issue on bikes; many offices have shower facilities but most people don't use them because the weather is mild and people don't race. All of this isn't really an issue in the Netherlands.

I feel like you've posed a lot of complaints that really don't apply or really aren't such a concern in the Netherlands. Cities here tend to work very well for both pedestrians and cyclists.

Come visit the NL sometime...I think ít will change your perspective.

Dutch-style bicycles go perfectly well with nice clothes, the oil is inside the chain compartment and they don't really become very muddy inside the city.

Yes of course walking is better but not everything people want to do is within easy walking distance, and bikes are preferable to huge infrastructure for public transport within a city.

Not everything is, but most daily things should be. And when things aren't, there can be public transport, bike hire, taxi hire, car hire. But they shouldn't be the default, the city shouldn't be designed around them, designed for them, they shouldn't be necessary.

bikes are preferable to huge infrastructure for public transport within a city

preferable to whom?

Everyone pooling their resources should make for way way better solutions than everyone solving the same problems individually over and over.

A lot of my shopping can be done within walking distance, and I do that. I'll only bring my bike if I need to bring more stuff home than I can carry, as a bike dramatically increases your load-transporting capacity, compared to walking.

However, if I need to go to the hardware store ~5km away, I would have to take a long walk of about an hour, or take a ride on two busses taking a total of ~30-40 minutes each way, or I could simply jump on my bike and be there in ~15 minutes.

Yes, we should absolutely pool our resources as much as possible, but not everyone is going the same place at the same time.

But less than 1/10th as bad as cars, no?

Maybe. I'd rather breathe pedal bicycle air than internal combustion exhaust fumes, for sure. And I'd rather pay bike prices than car prices, sure.

But, designing for not-cars feels like a choice of designing for humans or designing for bikes, not both. If things are close enough for walking then most people don't need bikes. If there's dense, regular, clean, affordable public transport, you can't really bring one bike per person onto it and you shouldn't need to. If things are far enough apart that everyone needs a bike, and everywhere you go has a wasteland of a few thousand bike parking spaces to cover everyone who might go there at once, then you've designed for individual vehicles not people, and cars would be more comfortable and faster. In that sense, I would think it just as much of a failure either way.

Like, if you have poisonous plants, and you want edible fruits, but what you get is harmless inedible plants, in one way it's a lot better, but in another way it's no better at all.

Bicycle and pedestrian traffic mesh rather well with each other, and both mesh well with public transit. I submit Copenhagen as an example, you should come visit sometime :-)

The problem with car traffic is that it only really meshes well with car traffic. Making it mesh with public transit requires a lot of parking, and cars take up way too much space on the streets compared to bikes, the density is way too low for the amount of people moved.

Modern commuter bikes are simple, reliable and low maintenance, usually with hub gears and sometimes with belt drives that don't need lubrication. Even chains can be kept running for years and years with no maintenance at all. And you can absolutely bike in your normal clothes, people do it every single day here, summer or winter.

I was on a train (in the UK) a few weeks ago. It was crowded, to the point of standing room only, maybe a hundred people in a few carriages I didn't count - and two people brought their bikes. One didn't fit in the bike space because of a high child carrier on it, a space which took up half a carriage couldn't take two bikes. And they took a lot longer to load and unload than the people took to step on and off, and everyone had to make room for them to unload, wait for them.

There's no way it would have worked if even 10-20% of the people had brought bikes, let alone everyone.

I Googled Copenhagen Bike Parking, and this was one of the top results: http://jtwonggg.com/2017/11/06/photo-diary-copenhagen-street... - those bike parks are not meshing nicely with a human world, they're big areas of nothing of any interest to living walking humans except for the individual bike owner, space taken up by matter storage that you have to walk further to get past, they're ugly, they're a greedy use of public space for "my personal transport", and that size of parking almost has to be replicated all over the place. Even if bike parks were underground, that's still prime city usable space which could be put to use by things of interest to more people.

The picture with the outdoors clothes racks and Zara shop - lots of pedestrians. Imagine a cyclist trying to go fast down that street - they can't, there's too many people. This either means the pedestrians have to dive out of the way (maybe urged by a demand of a ringing bell) or that the cyclist has to go at walking speed - and in that case may as well be walking. And if there was a rush hour of cyclists, that street would become a much less pleasant place for people to walk.

Bikes let you go further - ten miles is a fairly short bike trip but a long walk - but they do it by letting you go faster. You can't go faster in dense pedestrian traffic unless you prioritise the bike and make the pedestrians second class who have to watch out and make way, and that - each bike taking precedent over dozens of pedestrians - seems the wrong kind of tradeoff.

but then, Copenhagen appears to be a city with car-streets, and in that situation, preferring a bike over a car in a place spread out for cars, is possibly the best compromise you're going to get.

Getting squeezed on trains is something that happens everywhere, especially during rush hour. Bikes or no bikes. It seems to be that the train you took wasn't adequately furnished to handle bikes. Is there an additional fee to bring a bike on the train? If not, the train should be better furnished to meet the demands.

The Danish train network is the one I have most experience with, especially around the Copenhagen area. The local S-trains have open areas in the middle part, with bike racks that pack in the bikes pretty well, and there's room for people standing with bikes to approximately double the capacity. There is also smaller compartments at either end of every trainset. During rush hour, at least two trainsets run coupled together, and there's a train every 10 minutes (every 5 minutes on the busiest routes). It has only ever been tight for space to the level of having to wait for the next train once or twice in my experience.

The bike parking in the picture you linked is at Nørreport station, the second-busiest station on the network, that area supports thousands of commuters every day, both by public transit and by bike. It's the only station on the network that has restrictions against getting on and off the trains with a bike during rush hour, due to it being a very busy underground station.

A picture is not going to give you an adequate perspective of the space available, take a look at Google Maps' satellite view or even better Street View. The area is very spacious and open, with plenty of room for pedestrians, yet it still supports parking for hundreds and hundreds of bikes, packed rather densely for efficiency. If each of the people riding those bikes had been in cars, the parking space demands would be insane.

Pedestrians are humans, cyclists are humans, we don't look at it like "us versus them". Good bike parking facilities are in everyone's interest. Public transit is a great backbone, but it cannot serve everyone perfectly, so bicycles fill in the gaps for a lot of people. For some of us, it often becomes the primary mode of transport, because it's small, unobtrusive, agile, affordable and healthy.

The other pic you mention is Strøget, which is a pedestrian street; No vehicles allowed other than deliveries outside of normal business hours. It's specifically made as a walking shopping street, not a transport street, and literally no one in Copenhagen would dream of commuting through there in the busiest seasons, as it can be literally packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists.

As all experience shows here in Copenhagen, if you down-prioritize cars, there is absolutely oodles of space for both pedestrians and cyclists, it really brings a perspective on how much space cars take up for no good reason. I would love for the inner city to be completely car-free, only allowing buses and a delivery driver here and there. It would free up so much space that your concerns about cyclists taking up space would be thoroughly disproven. As one of the bike-heaviest cities in the world, there is still plenty of space for both cyclists and pedestrians.

Dense clean affordable public transport isn't, unfortunately. (At least in the US where we can barely keep our sparse, dirty, expensive PT running.) Bikes help bridge gaps in the transit network. That's one of the main reasons they're so heavily used even in the countries with the best transit. (Visit any Dutch train station...)

>"Bikes are expensive personal transportation, compared to not owning any"

I will admit that my bike cost $550, but it's also a really nice bike. You can get a perfectly serviceable, reliable and comfortable bike for less than half that. And it'll last for years and years with minimal maintenance (or none at all, even).

Yes, obviously owning something is more expensive than not owning something. But if you walk everywhere, you also have to account for time spent going 5kph instead of 20kph, not to mention shoes that wear out quicker. I used to commute 3km by foot, and my shoes wore out very quickly, even good quality sneakers didn't last long.

Not to mention payment for using public transit or taxi services or car rentals.

>"they take up space in every home with muddy, oily mechanisms"

I park my bike outside, locked to a bike rack. I ride in the city, it has never been muddy. I do a lot more maintenance than the average cyclist, I wipe down the chain if I've been riding in the rain, and I actually lube the chain and other mechanisms once in a while. Most people don't do anything at all, and their bikes still give them years of service. On my bike the chain is exposed, I prefer it like that for ease of maintenance. Most commuter bikes have enclosed chains, some have belt drives.

>"they take up a lot of space in bicycle parks outside every desirable destination serving to push everything further apart for humans on foot"

They do take up some space, but dramatically less than most other forms of transport. Based on my experience here in Copenhagen, it really isn't an issue. Bikes left abandoned on sidewalks and in bike racks are regularly marked and then taken away, especially if they're obviously broken. There is plenty of space for pedestrians here.

>"they don't mesh well with pedestrians (in a collision with a pedestrian and a fast moving metal bike, the pedestrian loses)"

That is why we have sidewalks, bike paths and streets for motorized traffic, grade separated from each other. On shared traffic streets, cyclists slow way down and everything flows nicely. Only idiots would race their bikes down a street like that, it happens extremely rarely. Pedestrian/cyclist collisions do happen, but they're usually very low-speed affairs, unless a pedestrian steps out in front of a bike on a bike path, without looking. Certainly not the cyclist's fault.

>"they require equipment you might need to carry (locks, helmets, other)"

My primary lock is fixed to the bike frame and locks the rear wheel, it's completely unobtrusive. My secondary lock is a chain lock, which I carry wrapped around the seat post, again completely unobtrusive, it just stays with the bike always.

My helmet either stays with the bike (if it's in a shed or the weather is nice, secured by the chain lock that also secures the bike to a fixed object. Or I clip it to my messenger bag, or simply carry it with me, it's very lightweight. Or you could do what most casual cyclists do, and not bother with a helmet at all.

>"they need ongoing maintenance"

I do basic maintenance with tools everyone should have in their house anyway: Screwdrivers, hex keys, pliers and old rags. The only stuff I've had to buy specifically for the bike is chain lube, and you could get by with something like household 3-in-1 oil. Or just not bother at all, and get the chain replaced every 3-5 years or so.

The maintenance needs for a commuter bicycle are very light. They're literally designed to be dependable and low-maintenance.

>"they don't go well with nice clothes and tend to require places to change, carrying a change of clothes, or even showers, after any but short journeys in mellow weather."

Even when it was ~35C here during the summer, I never needed more than to splash some cool water in my face, and maybe change my t-shirt to a fresh one. Most workplaces here have lockers and showers, because cycling is so popular, they're mostly meant for the hardcore lycra-clad cyclists. Ordinary commuters simply ride in their work clothes or whatever, no problem at all. Take it easy, and you won't sweat. Or get an electric bike, they're becoming very popular for this reason.

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