This doesn't mean driving is useless. Cars are generally air conditioned, and have a greater capacity to carry luggage than walking.
...so cars should this be _slower_ than cars, given these benefits
...so cars should this be _slower_ than cars, given these benefits
So no, cars are not the best means of transport just because you can carry lots of stuff which you usually don't carry...
The CO2 and microparticles are definitely a problem. One which can be addressed by banning non-electric cars downtown.
No need to shower: I just change _all_ of my clothes when I arrive... Cycling clothes on me, business clothes and dress shoes in a semi-rigid pouch in my panniers. Takes five minutes at each end and the total time is still half of what car or public transportation would take !
There are no showers at work, so i do a couple of things to keep clean.
* Showering before you leave so that the sweat doesn’t smell. * Chilling our after the ride for a bit to let your heart rate drop back down. This gets you to a point where you aren’t sweating anymore. * Towel off the excess sweat and put on fresh clothes.
The only real downside is my helmet messes up my hair.
A substantial amount of the microparticles are from brakes and tires, a problem that electric cars don’t really solve. They still have tires.
If you could have some sort of traction assist device like a rubber block on a piston that hit the ground for emergency braking, you could get away with lower traction on the wheels normally, and modern electronic controls could make the whole thing stable and relatively transparent to the driver.
First we'll have to overcome the slow motion catastrophe that is gasoline direct injection.
If you need to wear a suit you are screwed either way. Five minutes standing still outside with a jacket on and you will start getting pit sweat. Just walking out to your car will make you sweat.
That's a big "might" that is conditioned on having a seat and space in which to do these things, none if which is a given.
> Bicycles ... are less likely to have accidents (except with cars)
After three years as a pedestrian in NYC I have almost been run over by assholes on bikes more than I have almost been run over by assholes in cars.
> But infrastructure is much cheaper and easier to maintain then that for cars.
How do you figure? Paved streets are still needed, arguably maintained to slightly higher standards than they are for cars. Signalling is still needed, unless you want a free-for-all of bike traffic (which I don't).
In general, you seem to be comparing the happy cases of bicycles and public transit to the negatives of cars. It's and unfair and disingenuous comparison.
In the past plenty of people read newspapers while standing on trains. Nowadays we have smartphones and podcasts. It’s even easier.
> I have almost been run over by assholes on bikes more than I have almost been run over by assholes in cars.
Looks like an argument for better cycling infrastructure. Cars don’t really go wild in cities because they have dedicated road which are not shared with larger, more dangerous vehicles driven by people who are actively trying to cause problems to car drivers. If we have the same level of infrastructure for bicycles then maybe cyclists will stop competing with pedestrians for space.
Cycling infrastructure can be cheaper than normal roads because bicycles are lighter than cars. It will also need less maintenance for the same reason. It also takes less space to store bikes than cars.
Stand/sit and read my phone is basically what I am forced to do. I don't consider that any more productive than driving, and certainly not "work".
As for podcasts (and audiobooks), I can do that in a car just as well as packed in a train.
Perception, meet reality:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-...
Summary: From 2002-2016 there were 2355 pedestrians killed by bicycle or car in NYC. 2345 of those fatal collisions were car-pedestrian, and only 10 were bicycle-pedestrian.
From mid 2012 to mid 2019, there were 940 reports of a crash with a bike as the primary vehicle and 1+ pedestrians injured. In the same time period, there were 69776 reports of a crash without bicycle as primary vehicle injuring 1+ pedestrians.
Bike infrastructure is cheaper in other ways. You need a much smaller surface for the same amount of traffic, and paved surfaces degrade at a much slower rate with lighter traffic.
You also don't need the sliproads, the same levels of crash barrier, and so on. It's just not a serious comparison.
Are intersections just a free-for-all then? I find congested pedestrian intersections bad enough to navigate. I would hate to see a congested, uncontrolled bicycle intersection.
> Bike infrastructure is cheaper in other ways. You need a much smaller surface for the same amount of traffic, and paved surfaces degrade at a much slower rate with lighter traffic.
I'll grant that people density is higher and wear is lighter. I don't agree with the "much", though, since bicycles not riding in a coordinated group still need a fair amount of space and, as I said, the road surface needs to be maintained to higher standards.
> You also don't need the sliproads, the same levels of crash barrier, and so on. It's just not a serious comparison.
If I am interpreting "sliproad" correctly, that's only a feature of limited-access roads. Ditto crash barriers. I don't see how that's relevant to cities.
Not all pavement costs are equal. A study found road damage proportional to the 4th power of weight [0].
As a pedestrian in Austin, I've been hit by one car and zero bikes. I've been almost hit by many cars; I don't recall any bikes nearly hitting me, but they're less also memorable.
As a cyclist for ~8 years in Austin, I've been hit by two cars (100% their fault) and one bike (100% my fault), and almost hit by many cars and zero bikes that I recall. I've hit zero people/cars and if I come close, it's usually the other person at fault.
Granted, there are a lot more cars to hit me than there are bikes. I'd also say cars are more likely to cause significant damage than bikes when they hit you, though in my case, the 280LB cyclist slamming into me while going downhill got me pretty good. :-)
I think a lot of what makes cycling safe or unsafe is the biking culture. Cyclists are safer when they act like traffic norms matter. I assume they're more likely to do that if the traffic rules are designed in a way that makes sense for them, and when drivers treat them like they belong. (This is, unfortunately, a bit of a catch-22. We might be treated as legitimate users of the road if we acted like it, and we'd act like it more if we were treated that way.)
Bike infrastructure is cheaper to maintain, because bikes don't impact the asphalt as much as cars do. Manhattan's Westside bikeway hasn't been repaved for decades... While most of the roads with similar "body traffic" will deteriorate in 5 years in NYC.
You're assuming cars have an impact. Maybe they don't; it may just be heavy trucks.
A set of people will gravitate to each option. But as OP said, it is people at the margin who help equalize times.
as pointed out, the reason that cars being shown to be slower than walking in many cases is moot because cars provide benefits which more than offset. 1. Weather protection 2. Cargo transportation 3. Ease of movement for the disabled 4. Additional safety for those toting along small children 5. Some level of protection/isolation from others
The argument in favor of bicycling in lieu of cars falls prey to the same reasons. There are pro and cons so we must always fairly assess them before standing up and declaring one method worse than another. In fact none ever are all the time
It almost certainly will not be faster to bike from a suburb 20 miles out of the city into the city than it would be to drive.