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Comment by kfk | Hacker News Reader

In Denmark and Germany public transportation is not always that good, they rely heavily on bikes. For instance in Madrid you can rely 100% on a nice, on time, metro system. I hope it’s different in Norway and that they also have public transport that can compete with cars. Of course bikes are good, but not all of us are ready to bike 20-30 mins to work every day in the snow during winter, or hot days during summer.

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The tubes are good in Oslo. Runs like clockwork as far as I have seen.

Buses are ok, not always according to schedule but so frequent during the day it hardly matters to me.

Trains are a bit of both:

- most regional ones are brand new

- the other aren't to bad either: old fashioned but clean and well maintained. In fact a number of commuters prefer the older ones.

- they are expensive (if you teamed up with three others you'd finance a Tesla in 10 years I guess. The downside is you can't expect everyone to go to work and home at the exact same time every day or even stay in their job for ten years)

- while they might be reasonably precise for weeks on end it is never a surprise when they are delayed.

- information is poor (my guess is because they have to pay alternative transport if they are more than 30 minutes delayed so they'll try to avoid announcing delays as long as possible. Again this is just my guess.)

- the commuter trains are always crowded in the Oslo area. Sometimes they are so crowded you literally cannot move around. Having seen and read about stadium fires and other disasters involving crowds I wonder how this is even allowed.

What are tubes?

Underground rail-type mass transit.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tube&t=fpas&ia=web

> In Denmark and Germany public transportation is not always that good, they rely heavily on bikes

Are you really implying that in these countries many people use bikes because the public transport is not good enough ? In Spain nobody (?) uses bikes because the public transport is perfect ? Do you have sources for both or is this just your very subjective opinion ?

I lived in Spain, Denmark and Germany. Let’s take Munich Germany as that’s where I live now. While bikes are definitely a cultural thing here, many people definitely prefer them because the public transport doesn’t get you easily to all places and can be very unreliable during work days (especially the sbahn trains). You also have situations where biking gets you door to door in 30 mins and public transport in 1 hour (to do 8km). Of course after a couple of years of work people buy cars anyways here, I think a lot of that is due to the not so good public transport. Of course Munich public transport is light years better than Naples where I am from, but unfortunately it’s still not good enough to replace bikes or cars in many situations.

Do you view bikes as an inferior form of transport?

I think the main issue with bikes is that they are seen as inferior by the transport administration. For instance if there is heavy snow they’ll clean up the car roads but not necessarily the bike ones. Also many times car roads are straightforward but bike ones are hard to figure out. Add to that that many work places don’t have showers or changing rooms and you tell me how this is practical for work commute (which is 80% of the transport I do).

That's an issue I experience as well. What some cities try to sell as bike infrastructure is a joke. Wher I live in Vienna there's bike lanes BETWEEN two lanes of cars (at least two lanes going in the same direction) with no physical separation between car and bike lane. How this madness ever came into being is beyond me.

> For instance if there is heavy snow they’ll clean up the car roads but not necessarily the bike ones.

Isn't that just a logistical issue though? If it snows, suddenly a huge area is affected. You would need an unreasonable fleet of cleaners to clear all pathways in time. I think they can only concentrate on the main roads, most "car" roads aren't cleared, too. But I may be off here, are there cities that clear all bike lanes?

I'm in Munich too btw., I think the bike infrastructure is pretty okay (try biking in Stuttgart)? I rarely use public transport, its just too slow and inflexible. I also don't think it can be improved to a point where it can reasonably compete with biking. And thats ok, biking is fine. Just take the bike, its more fun and healthy anyway.

Copenhagen for example prioritizes major bike lines over streets afaik.

Germany: I bike to work (30mins), but on rainy and snowy days I take the car (15mins). Public transport is available, but takes 1h with very high unreliability (often you wait half an hour for that bus).

So I tend to agree. Public transport is good as long as your work is in the city center, but all the big employers are in a small radius around the city and hard to reach.

I disagree. I lived in Copenhagen for a year and I always prefered biking over public transport.

While in part that was because of a public transport system that was inferior to my current city (Hamburg), I would still prefer better biking infrastructure over public transport.

I'm not implying that good public transport is bad, but more bikers is definitely not caused by lack of good public transport.

> In Denmark and Germany public transportation is not always that good, they rely heavily on bikes.

I experienced the public transport system in Denmark largely as exceptionally reliable, at least in the cities. Where have you made different experiences?

The reason many people in copenhagen (and other danish cities, but none comes close to copenhagen) use bikes is that the biking infrastructure is just also exceptional.

For germany the story is indeed different (though just both - public transport and biking infra - are much worse).

> I hope it’s different in Norway and that they also have public transport that can compete with cars.

I know several people living in Oslo even with 3 kids not needing a car. But on the other hand this is only true for Oslo in Norway. Every other city/town public transport sucks. Cars are a must in all other cities.

In the Netherlands people bike in cities because it is convenient and has good infrastructure support, while there still is a pretty good public transport system.

I very highly doubt your narrative that biking somehow is only popular because of insufficient public transport.

I ride the bike all year around, except for some times in the summer precisely because the subways tend to be full in winter.

My commute takes 17min by bike and 26 by subway, due to the stops, during rush hour. The same journey takes well over 50 min with car during that time.

i don’t take the bike over the subway because the subway is bad I take it because it is the fastest way to get there.

It's probably irrelevant how good public transport is. It's more about the higher ups of society that are living in the city center not wanting their space being taken up by the bridge and tunnel crowd.

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