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Comment by kruczek | Hacker News Reader

> Now imagine how many bikes you could fit on a two lane road vs how many cars

No need to imagine:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/uI...

I feel the picture is misleading. First, the angle for cars results in a closer, more zoomed in picture than for the bus and bike. Second, it assumes 1 occupant per car, but a full bus. More likely, each car will probably average more than 1 occupant, and buses will probably be less than half full, if not 25%.

I’d be interested in seeing an equivalent side-by-side image based on occupancy data. For instance, cars in the US average only 1.7 people per vehicle:

https://m.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-average-vehicle-occupancy...

Yeah I wish I could find a better picture bit this gives a sense of Edinburgh centre.

https://www.nfpplanning.com/uploads/2/4/0/5/24056719/taxi-tr...

Queues of buses, and during the day they will often only have one or two passenger.

Plus car drivers are advised to give a bike the same room as a car, so on mixed use roads a bike effectively takes up the same space as a car.

> Plus car drivers are advised to give a bike the same room as a car, so on mixed use roads a bike effectively takes up the same space as a car.

Yes, that is one case. On the other hand:

1. The fact that such advices are given doesn't mean they are followed. I also heard that car drivers are supposed to leave at least 1 meter of space between themselves and a bike when overtaking said bike. In my experience that happens only on an empty wide road; otherwise car drivers won't hesitate to overtake as close as possible.

2. In case of bike lanes, bikes obviously do take much less space, both when driving and when queuing.

3. Even in case of mixed road, there may be multiple bikes which do not need to stay so far away from each other.

4. Also on mixed road, when queuing together with cars, bikes will usually position themselves alongside cars, therefore effectively taking zero space in the queue.

5. Finally consider also requirements for parking. A single car parking space could probably fit 10 bikes.

> First, the angle for cars results in a closer, more zoomed in picture than for the bus and bike.

That's true, but I don't think it makes much of a difference. I couldn't fix the angle, but here's the same picture with second and third images also zoomed in similarily: https://imgur.com/a/2GMcSlE

> Second, it assumes 1 occupant per car, but a full bus. More likely, each car will probably average more than 1 occupant, and buses will probably be less than half full, if not 25%.

Actually, below is an example for a few countries. Average number of persons in a car seem to be decreasing with 1.8 in the 80s, down to around 1.4 in 2005. At the same time average seat occupancy for buses seem to be around 70%. This matches what I observe everyday - vast majority of cars has only the driver inside.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/occupancy...

It's a powerful image, but the angle and zoom of the first picture differs a lot from the other two.

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