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Comment by corndoge | Hacker News Reader

Cyclists really don't belong on the road. It's such an odd collective viewpoint that a vehicle which virtually always travels far below the speed limit should be allowed alongside vehicles that travel at the speed limit. I think this is because we conflate the benefits of cycling and the value of making our public infrastructure amenable to cycling with the opinion that cyclists should share highways with cars. It's simply not safe and no amount of "Share the road" stickers and driver education will compensate for that. Cyclists need their own infrastructure, bike lanes on the highways at a minimum. They don't belong mixed in with cars.

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If we insisted bicycles only be allowed on dedicated bicycle tracks, there would be no track because there would be no bicycles (because there was no track!)

As a bicyclist, I would love to have a dedicated network of bicycle track all over town. But it doesn't exist, yet.

Also, this is way fuzzier than you present. There's little conflict between cars and bikes on lightly traveled, spacious suburban streets or sleepy neighborhood county roads. Even on collectors & minor arterials, on an e-bike I travel about the same speed as a slow car.

Speed delta is not an incorrect observation, but varies in significance. In terms of priorities, highways are certainly top candidates for the first dedicated bike tracks.

Do what downtown Vancouver, BC did - take out a travel lane and/or parking spots and create dedicated bike lane.

Sure, some businesses complain, but overall number of bikes on the road seems to have increased.

https://cyclingmagazine.ca/sections/news/opposition-to-propo...

http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/mobi-bike-share-vancouver-rid...

> It's such an odd collective viewpoint that a vehicle which virtually always travels far below the speed limit should be allowed alongside vehicles that travel at the speed limit.

Most cyclists are slower than the speed limit on most roads, but this does not occur "virtually always". Don't assume. Check the speed limit and the cyclist's speed!

As a cyclist, I find it really irritating to be dangerously passed by a driver, seemingly as punishment, catch up with them at a stop light, and then have them chew me out for not going the speed limit, when I actually was going the limit or faster. It's not hard for a fit cyclist to go the limit on a 15 or 20 mph road, particularly downhill. The problem here is that many drivers think anyone not going 30+ mph on those roads is being a jerk, and unfortunately some of those drivers believe dangerously passing slow vehicles is an acceptable response to their impatience.

But the reality is this: Going 30+ mph in a 15 mph zone is being a jerk!

I agree. The real solution is to eliminate cars from the roads, that way they wouldn't have to share with bikers.

This kind of snark, or perhaps just unrealistic statements, gets us nowhere...dedicated infrastructure for cyclists alongside the same infrastructure for cars is actually viable. Making a comment about how everybody should be using bikes isn't helpful.

>>> Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

>> ban cars

> unrealistic statements

You, sir, are funny.

The United States is not Spain. Nitpick all you want - the vast majority of populated places in the US will never ban cars, at least for the foreseeable future.

Not because they can't though. Because they think they can't. Most cities in the US could do this with some adjustments to public transit, and by managing regional transit much better - for example it's insane that the default for suburban rail line stations is the "park and ride" - huge parking lot surrounding the train station, rather than using that area for residential development close to transit.

I wonder how much space could be allocated to residential development though. Here (Portland Oregon) The park and ride infrastructure isn't that built out (Or maybe it is and I just haven't noticed it???). I dont believe you could move all the people that need to drive into the city to work, into the new residential development provided by that conversion.

That's not the idea as much as moving parking away from IMMEDIATELY next to the station - and improving bus links to rail transit.

No... because they literally can't without massive upheaval of where schools, offices and shops are located.

Shops can move with the times, schools can continue to have buses to get kids there and offices can stay where they are as long as they'd like.

Banning vehicles has been shown to greatly increase shopping revenue and improve the healthiness of the area, so if a few businesses suffer, poor them... I'll not shed a tear for the strip malls.

"They literally can't change, because that would involve having to actually change".

They only want change that doesn't involve money, effort or change, or what?

Where in my comment do I suggest moving the suburbs? Nothing in your comment would be a result of anything in mine.

corndoge, it sounds like you assume that (an unnamed) we has to be in the United States.

I’m going to sorely disappoint you there…

However, if you want to talk about the United States, I would agree with you that it’s going to be expensive to shift the suburban sprawl away from personal vehicles. As much as that particular urbanisation failure is seen as typically American, it’s far from the exclusive option there. You will be surprised to learn that there are dozens of millions of Americans living in cities dense enough to justify not using cars as the default transport mode (“banning” isn’t a very accurate description of what that city did).

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-crowded-city-in...

Electric scooters or bikes, typically the dockless kind, combined with existing (but re-inforced) public transport sounds doable, especially if you invest the same order of magnitude as local authorities spend on highways. That would require little investment (most of it would be private and from people keen on giving away billions).

   it sounds like you assume that (an unnamed) we *has* to be in the United States.

I wouldn't say this to anyone on hn who uses "we" without a qualifier because I assume as a matter of course that everyone on this website is aware that there are non American users. The pedantry here isn't appreciated.

   I’m going to sorely disappoint you there…

   You will be surprised

I'm a cyclist and I drive a car. Dedicated infrastructure is usually for slow bicycles. I welcome it but I stay clear of it. I don't feel in danger in the road and I can go faster.

Problems with bicycle roads:

90% of traffic is much slower than me, which I do 20 km/h in cities (nothing special with some training)

They go up and down sidewalks and turn before intersections. This slows down everybody willing to go faster than 10 km/h

They are bumpier than roads

They are on the side of the road and more dangerous at any intersection, where they are close or before the stop line for cars coming from the side. Furthermore there is less space to look for incoming traffic. Being on the car's road is safer. I like bicycle roads when they are far away from car's roads, for example along rivers. Small low traffic roads are good enough.

On the other side, roundabouts and every other modern road layout that force cars and bikes to get close is dangerous for bikes. I feel safe to say that roads became less dangerous for cars in the last 20 years and more dangerous for bicycles.

I'd like to have the roads of the 70s: long straights, no speed bumps, no roundabouts (cyclists also don't like stop and go),

There already exists dedicated infrastructure for cyclists. It's called roads. Just need to get cars off of them.

I'm joking just as much as the people saying that bikes don't belong on roads are.

I love small walkable shopping centers that are organically grown over decades that mix residential, commercial, and retail uses. I live in such an area and it is great, but, if society wants to find a way to move to a better human scale constructed landscapes, it might be a good idea to stop referring to people in cars as non-human inhabited objects and use a more human focus word like motorist. We use pedestrian for a person use their feet or a bicyclist or biker for someone using a bicycle.

Cars can be a great tool for humans to use and they are not yet running around without a human inside.

Cars are typically utilized under 5% of the time. A car most of the time is a non-human inhabited object that is wasting a lot of space

Similar to most rooms in a house/apartment? My living room and dining room is utilized way under 5% of the the time, both more square feet than my car.

I think the most intrusive part of cars are when they are moving. That is when they are dangerous, mess with peds and bikers, and occupying roads that break up community space. Look at how much parking structures are as a % of the total building space in downtown SF or Manhattan. Not nothing, but pretty small. Maybe 5%. Probably less.

You must live in America. Here in Portland, the bike are winning out and things like a city-wide 20mph speed limit are taking hold. It's faster to get across town on an ebike than in a car, because all the drivers are stuck in traffic that the bikes rarely see because they use different streets. It's far from perfect but pockets of success like this prove the investment is worth it.

If you are interested in a ROI based perspective on town planning, https://www.strongtowns.org/ makes a compelling case that sprawl is not economically sustainable.

Totally agree with the sprawl issue, but I cannot see why we have to make one more of transportation worse to make another better. Not everyone can ride a bike. Either because of their physical ability or because of the for they'd need to travel. Europe has better bike lanes and higher speed limits for cars. We can have our cake and eat it too. Let's get rid of the sprawl, add some decent public transit and prohibit cars in city centers and we get somewhere. The sprawl that's subsidised by everyone is the root of all Urban planning problems in the US.

Small note, cars usually get stuck in traffic because they are bad at handling intersections, while pedestrians and bicyclists have such a high troughput in intersections that this seldom is an issue.

Disagree, slow the cars down. I've seen good results with "road diets" where 4-lane roads are converted to two lanes for cars and more space for bike lanes and center turning lanes. Also, adding pedestrian activated lights to stop cars.

Why do we need to slow down and even stop cars if we in your proposal even have a dedicated bike lane? Why not put up a small barrier between cars and bikes and have everyone go their own way? Speed limits on the US already are insanely slow compared to most of Europe and the bike thing seems to work better their regardless. We need more diverse infrastructure for different modes of transportation. I want trains that go 200mp/h, dedicated bike routes, and smaller dedicated roads for cars that are better organized with much higher speed limits and walkable city centers where pedestrians can feel safe from cars AND bicyclists. Sounds crazy but works in parts of Europe.

As a cyclist I've seen too many barriered-off cycle lanes that left me trapped and unable to go where I wanted to go, so if my choice is the main road or a cycle lane behind a barrier, I'll stick to the road. Separate lanes make sense for between-city highways, but inside the town speeds are already low enough - and space limited - that we ought to be able to share.

In hindsight, maybe training a neural network on Betsy DeVos was a bad idea.

Wow, never heard of her but quite interesting background.

DeVos is married to Dick DeVos, the former CEO of the multi-level marketing company Amway, and is the daughter-in-law of Amway's billionaire co-founder, Richard DeVos. Her brother, Erik Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, is the founder of Blackwater USA.

What surprises me here is the fact that Amway has done so well in China yet is connected to Blackwater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsy_DeVos

Just make the cars slower and this problem is solved. 20mph in cities is safer for everyone, doesn‘t take longer to drive and allows sharing the road.

I think there's a happy medium that already works fairly well. I live in a fairly bike-friendly mid-sized city. For the most part, cyclists stick to designated bike paths and neighborhood streets, where traffic is minimal. Someone who's riding a bike on a main trunk road is either inexperienced, or trying to prove something. Most people eventually find ways to avoid those roads.

For me, high speed and low speed are both OK. I take longer rides that get me out onto the trunk roads where people drive 55+, but they usually give me plenty of room. What I'm not OK with is congested roads where drivers are not controlling their cars -- if someone stops suddenly, there will be a crash.

The city is gradually adding bike lanes on the more congested main roads when there isn't a good alternative. They're also designating some side roads as "bike boulevards" with "traffic calming" features that effectively discourage cars.

A way of planning for bike paths is if bike traffic gets heavy enough on a road, then set aside a portion of that road for bikes and leave the rest for cars.

It really depends. The biggest safety issue for cyclists is being overlooked at crossings. Being on the road makes them safer for cyclists in those situations. Especially for bigger roads there are also other solutions to this problem.

definitely agree. in fact, one of the biggest dangers of accidents is difference in speed on the roads. Its my understanding that this is one of the primary reasons for a speed limit (note if you drive too slow you also get a ticket), which is to limit the variance of speed.

Do you have a source for that? I had always understood the speed limit as simply being an objective, statutory codification of the subjective notion of "appropriate maximum speed for conditions"

Which fits well with dynamic speed limits cropping up in places that get regular bad weather

I started to reply to thinking there was a federal minimum speed limit but decided I should confirm what I believed and glad I did because I was wrong. In the US, states have full control over the speed limits that are set on both the state hwys and the interstate freeways within that state. That said, I'm pretty sure every freeway I've ever been on had a posted minimum 45mph speed limit, and bikes are not allowed.

Whether or not speed variances between vehicles increase accidents doesn't seem to be clear. With a quick search I found this(1) that indicates that speed variances don't play a role in causing accidents. I also found this (2), which says "that the greater the difference between a driver’s speed and the average speed of traffic—both above and below that average speed—the greater the likelihood of involvement in a crash". And I found this (3) which basically says the speed limit should be set at the 85th percentile of what everyone is driving. Kind of like how you should build sidewalks where people walk ("Don’t make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look at where the grass is worn away. That shows where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths"), set the speed limit at the speed most people drive.

Everywhere in the US I've lived, the max speed limit laws were written like "whatever speed is safe for current conditions up to a maximum of XX Mph" So you can get a speeding ticket for going slower than the posted limit if conditions are bad. I've actually been pulled over going well under the posted max speed limit during a hard snow storm.

(1) https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/TRB04... (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_curve (3) http://onlinemanuals.txdot.gov/txdotmanuals/szn/determining_...

>That said, I'm pretty sure every freeway I've ever been on had a posted minimum 45mph speed limit, and bikes are not allowed.

There are exceptions, especially in the US West, where interstates may be the only path for miles and miles through some mountain ranges. Of course, they mostly have wide shoulders where people ride.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

There is the source for California -- I see it gives exemptions for safety and law (I assume for road works, etc) but generally speed limits are objective based on conditions. It doesn't mean you can drive slow and impede other traffic traveling around you though, which is why there are laws for it. I don't see it enforced as much in San Diego, but when I lived in the Lake Arrowhead area it was enforced quite often on the highway up and down the mountain.

Quick edit -- that law is for highways, I haven't checked whether this also applies for other types of roads.

> Quick edit -- that law is for highways, I haven't checked whether this also applies for other types of roads.

Note that “highway” in California law has a very broad definition; see https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

“Highway” is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel. Highway includes street.

Thanks for that, I wasn't aware of how broad the term was for California. Do you know if (silly question I'm sure) that definition can differ per county or municipality?

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