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Comment by aisengard | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the average trip is for Americans in large cities. For me in Brooklyn, it's about 4 miles to my office in Manhattan. Even in an ideal world with no cars, I still wouldn't really be able to bike to work (in terms of my desire to bike that far). If I'm going out to eat in my neighborhood, it's much easier and safer to just walk up to about a mile. So, there's not really much use for me to bike anywhere other than purely for recreation. Maybe I'd bike between a mile and four miles, I'm not sure. But it definitely would be my least-used form of transportation.

Obviously this is anecdotal, but I am skeptical how useful a focus on bike lanes will be to the general public in American cities as compared to things like buses.

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4 miles is not much on a bike if you have a safe bike way. If you need to do it on the street with cars it's a different story. It's less than 30 minutes ride for the average cyclist. (assuming it's pretty flat)

Honestly if you just get out and do it every day a 4 mile commute on a bike is a breeze. I'm not a Lycra clad sports fanatic - I just started riding to work and got into a routine.

4 miles is absolutely nothing in terms of biking distance. In high school I (and a lot of the other kids in my village) used to bike 11 miles to school, and then 11 miles back again at the end of the day. Took about 45 minutes if I was hasty. Now, if it rained or was very windy it was pretty bad, but it was very doable :)

There's definitely a middle distance where biking is the easiest way to get around. Particularly in Brooklyn, if you're traveling perpendicular to the direction of Manhattan you're almost certainly not served by transit anyway.

I don't know what the average is, but I've always made it a point to live within 5 miles or so of where I work. Life's too short to spend too much of it commuting.

Like you, if my destination is with a mile or two, I'm probably walking (unless I'm pressed for time or have to carry a bunch of stuff).

I do bike to/from work, though (about 5 miles each way). I sold my car a few years back, and a bicycle is the only transportation I own.

I really enjoy being car-free! I didn't realize how much of a burden and hassle owning a car was until I got rid of mine. It seriously improved my standard of living. When I'm in a situation where I really need a car, I either rent one or (more often) hire a cab. This happens about once per month.

NYC is by far the exception, not the rule, when it comes to modes of transportation that are applicable to most other American cities.

Manhattan is unique in having everyone at a trivial walk from their nearest subway stop. Most people are going to need a 1-5 mile trip to their train station. Very good local bus service might be on par with walking (after factoring in average wait time), but not even close to competitive with cycling.

Congratulations, you just described what the article found, which is that biking is preferred for trips of a certain moderate distance (roughly 0.5-2 miles).

Yes, and moderate-distance trips are the least-common trips that I tend to take. Plus, those would probably be better-served by better bus service anyway.

I hate the buses in NYC. They're tremendously slow.

I bought a One Wheel, comparable an ebike basically, and it's awesome for the 0.5-4.0 mile range. Plus, it's more fun than the subway or a bus so I'll even take it over the subway when practical.

Yes, we need to clear certain streets for primarily bus usage. This recently happened on 14th street to humongous success. The hope is this can extend to other heavily-trafficked routes in the near future.

This is certainly a case where the small size and compact nature of European cities give them advantages over American ones. Forget four miles, I have drive forty each way for prior commutes. Biking is great if you're a yuppie making six figures a year at a cushy, white-collar tech job. Not so much if you have to go to a client, have to do something physical, or even work in an office in the rest of the world. Let alone if you are a blue-collar worker, and possibly have to bring tools, equipment, etc.

Telecommuting may mitigate this problem, but only for a small sub-set of workers for now, and even long term the fact remains that people still need to go into an office at least occasionally, and a good number of people can't get to work feasibly by bike. Plus, most people want to go somewhere after work, to the store and to church once a week, etc. This is orders of magnitude larger than a mile and a half (apparently the dutch average).

I don't see why electric cars can't accomplish sustainability goals without trying to force a demographic shift of that scale (which is very unlikely to happen).

I'm not sure if the average European city, or the city/town the average European lives in, is smaller or larger than in the US (in terms of population).

I live in Berlin, with the population only slightly smaller than Los Angeles, and about 30% of the people regularly use bikes. Almost all trips I take somehow come out to about 4-6km, or 20 to 30min.

L.A. isn't even that much larger (1300km^2 to 900km^2). But anecdotally it seems to me like long commutes across metro regions are far more common?

As for blue-collar workers, I just recently saw a local plumber had switched to one of those cargo bikes. He said he had customers mostly within a 2x2km area, and was spending 20% of his days searching for parking spaces before.

> I don't see why electric cars can't accomplish sustainability goals

Because anything resembling a personal automobile is

1. Still enormously dangerous to everyone else on the same road;

2. Takes up a ridiculous chunk of space;

3. Doubly so when parked/not used;

4. Does not navigate nimbly in traffic;

5. Rips up tarmac and damages road surfaces;

6. Makes a fair amount of noise still;

I could go on but I think you get the point. It's not only about CO2 emissions, it's also about its place among the humans it shares living spaces with.

Not to mention that the environmental impact of manufacturing them is substantially higher than that of manufacturing a bike.

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