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Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

What I want is a minibus towing a little flatbed trailer. All it does is take people and their bikes from the bottom of the hill to the top.

For example, there's a place in San Francisco, West Portal to the top f the hill where Portola meets O'Shaughnessy, where you have about a mile to climb about 220 ft. Google maps bike route, shows elevation profile: https://goo.gl/maps/zmcb8RkBtNGzUqFi7 From there most of the rest of the city is downhill, including all of downtown and the Mission district.

If there was a bike-shuttle service for that uphill, and another from, say, Castro station to Diamond Heights, I think you would get a lot more people commuting by bicycle.

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In Seattle I know many people who live on flat routes and don't bike. I don't think the hills are the main deterrent. Anecdotally, it sounds like fear factor (especially riding near cars) and sweat (even if office has a shower) are the big ones.

> fear factor (especially riding near cars)

a credible one at that.

Yeah. I used to commute by bike in Seattle but stopped after hamburgerizing my face trying to dodge a car coming out of a garage on the hill between 2nd and 3rd. I have plenty of coworkers with similar stories of accidents or near-misses that spooked them out of bike commuting.

I still enjoy cycling in the area in general, but downtown during rush hour is a meat grinder.

Yeah sure, but let me tell you biking from Ballard to Montlake on the Burke Gilman was awesome and easy. Now I live on Capitol Hill (Seattle) and don’t bike cause the climb is a killer.

You can bike part way and put your bike on the front of a bus to go up a big hill. You can rent ebikes for pennies to go up the hill, you can get your own ebike for 500 bucks.

All of these things apply to me too :-) I live by a big freaking hill, 300' up and whenever I ride I have to take a shower. If I had a flatter hill I'd ride my bike the 4 miles to the p&r a lot. Instead I drive my stupid car.

Ebike rentals aren't pennies. My last ride was $4 for about a mile. I was surprised.

I always bike to the UD or the ID (depending on what side of the city I'm on) then grab the light rail to Broadway station.

Buy an e-bike: they’re perfect for daily commuting without that one hill being a disincentive.

Yeah Burke Gilman should get even better whenever the missing link is completed.

Those are the two biggest obstacles for me personally, as well. I live in Providence and it is VERY unfriendly to bikes. I routinely get honked at for going slowly (10-15 relative to what cars want, 30ish). Cars don't look out for me, there are often "bike lanes" that are really just painted pictures of bikes (wow, such safety), and there are hardly ANY other bikers. Then, I get to work and it's just a run of the mill government office, no shower, no bike room, no bike racks...

I’m somewhat of a risk taker. I first rode a commuter bike in DC, a slow traffic biker-friendly city. I did so for about two years. Many years before that (as a teen) I did BMX and half pipes. I’m competent on a bike.

Much of the time I spent on the bike commuting was fucking terrifying.

I would guess commuting on a bike around cars is prohibitively scary for many folks.

Bristol, England is notoriously hilly, but 7% of all peak-time journeys are made by bicycle.

http://bristolbybike.blogspot.com/2009/11/bastard-hills-of-n...

https://bristolcycling.org.uk/cycling-trends-in-bristol/

Don’t forget bike parking. I don’t trust locking up my bike on the street in Seattle; I’ve known people who’ve had bikes stolen out of “secured” parking rooms. And there aren’t too many places to chain a bike either.

There's a lot of social pressure for women to wear makeup which is especially hard to pull off if you bike to work. A woman with tasteful makeup is perceived as more professional, even if it's just subconsciously. I'm sure there are men here who will object to that statement, but 9 times out of 10, when a guy thinks a woman is wearing "no makeup," she's actually wearing primer, foundation, concealer, mascara, eyebrow pencil, lipstick, and blush and just hasn't done anything too obvious.

Because of this illusion, women don't want to be seen bare-faced by their coworkers (because society's expectation of what a woman looks like without makeup is actually a woman wearing a lot of makeup so the real no-makeup look is shocking). Now a woman who wants to bike to work has to decide if she'll hope her makeup stays looking good after a bike ride, do her makeup twice, or go without makeup for the bike ride (and risk being seen without makeup going into the office). This doesn't bother all women, but it's no wonder that a lot of us choose not to go through this minefield of issues.

There is also the time factor... I have to get my kids to school/daycare in the morning and then pick them up before 5:30 when daycare closes... I already feel squeezed by these hours at work, and having to add time to my commute is a non-starter.

because bicycles are fair weather solutions to transit and even then if the distance is within the rider's ability which far too many over estimate. then throw in convenience and security.

still this solution of theirs isn't really worth the money being sunk into it, there is no reason to not work along side ride sharing services to get people between their destinations and light rail or bus stops

Hills might not be the only or even the main deterrent but they are definitely a deterrent in SF. In college we'd joke that someone should install a chairlift, and while I'm not sure that's the solution, I still think something similar would reduce the reliance on Ubers, Lyfts, etc.

Seattle has crap for actual bike infrastructure. We dropped some lines at random on a map with no connections, and especially no east-west routes. It's getting better but man if the Burke is still basically the only east-west MUP in the city.

Here's the graph: http://seattlecitygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/inde...

Note that only the red/orangey color (MUPs) and bold blue lines (protected cycle lanes) count; the rest are just paint on roads.

Neighborhood greenway = tons of speed bumps, nominally cars should depart after a block or two; otherwise ordinary residential road.

Sharrow = just a road.

Non-protected Bike lane = debris-filled shoulder, or worse, parked car door zone.

I know you're talking about doing this at scale, but FYI: Muni buses in SF already provide this service. Nearly all have 2 or 3 spots for bikes on the front and you can throw your bike on and take it up the big hills for no extra charge.

For the route you posted, the 48 does exactly what you want.

Yes, but for $3 it's not worth it.

I'm really glad that they put those bike racks on the buses though.

Just get a pedal assist bike and call it a day. If you bike it regularily you'll get used to the hills pretty quickly also...

Why not a bicycle lift (like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipZ5kwhFfs)?

At least this design for a bicycle lift would never be allowed in the US. It's pretty tricky, the first couple of times people usually fall off. Instant lawsuit overe there, I'm sure.

In fact it was closed for quite a few years pending EU safety regulations approval.

>At least this design for a bicycle lift would never be allowed in the US. It's pretty tricky, the first couple of times people usually fall off.

Isn’t that all literally true of riding a bike too?

Trouble is, it's a lot harder introducing a new technology with risks, compared to just keeping an old risky one around.

I was thinking the the same thing. My city (Chicago) and I assume many others, have pay per use subsidized bike sharing. How does liability work with that if someone falls on one of those?

Then a better design maybe? Shuttles for bikes are honestly an awful solution.

Yeah, it needs a better design. The trouble is, you need to make it easier, while retaining the features of this one: no way for bystanders (including kids) to pinch fingers/hands inside moving machinery.

I agree that it isn't an easy problem. We need to get creative.

> At least this design for a bicycle lift would never be allowed in the US

I don't think this is very different from a "surface lift" used in ski resorts all over the world including the US?

It's pretty different, it's a small metal bar (probably 1 inch wide 10 inch long) that you stand on with one leg, while remaining seated on the bicycle. The design is a lot more compact, so you can retrofit it to normal streets.

Sure the design is different, but the risk that the "first couple of times people usually fall off. Instant lawsuit overe there, I'm sure" looks the same to me. And yet t-bars and the like do exist in the US.

When you buy a ski pass at US ski areas you sign a huge disclaimer of liability. It's hard to imagine doing that for this kind of in-city infrastructure. Also, falling on snow is a bit different than pavement. :-)

Those disclaimers are legally meaningless. They have no teeth. Just like those signs on dump trucks that say “Stay back 500ft”.

That's a pretty strong claim. Do you have some citation for "this is a dangerous activity, participant assumes all liability" contracts being "legally meaningless?"

Not nearly enough rocket engines.

That's an unnecessarily hard route. Take Dewey around to Laguna Honda and turn onto Portola. Then you can coast down Market or Clipper to your heart's content.

Pittsburgh has this...

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

That photograph is really beautiful!

There’s an even easier way than a bus: https://www.boredpanda.com/bicycle-escalator-cyclocable-tron...

Bike escalators!

Oh perfect! A bike cable car!

Out of curiosity, why is West Portal station one of the endpoints of the proposedd route? It almost makes sense since it's a public transit hub, but you can't take your bikes on MUNI metro anyway. So why not just have a terminus further down Portola instead of at a MUNI metro station?

Don't electric bikes basically solve this problem another way?

you essentially need the bike version of this

https://www.sunkidworld.com/en/2017-02-height-adjustable-sma...

not a bad idea

Do a kickstarter to pay the first year of costs.

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