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Comment by incognito_limey | Hacker News Reader

Myself and the Mrs. took free cycling lessons from the council a few years back with the idea we wanted to start cycling to work etc more. We decided it was too risky due to the terrible traffic. As a regular pedestrian, I've almost been run over multiple times in the last few years. I think the city really needs to look at banning non delivery vehicles from zones 1 and 2, or something to that effect.

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Or modify the roads; driver and cyclist behavior are heavily influenced by road design. Protected lanes actually protect cyclists, and narrower roads naturally cause drivers to slow down.

Cycle facilities in countries without a strong cycling tradition are generally dangerous, illogical, and awful. Cycle facilities in countries with a strong cycling tradition are usually better-engineered but mostly exist to get cyclists "out of the way" of motor vehicle traffic.

The solution is low speed limits in urban areas.

It’s also a chicken and egg problem; it’s hard to build strong cycling traditions while cycling is poorly supported and dangerous.

It’s more than needing to reduce speed. Many countries need to completely invert their mode of thinking; an hypothetical space alien in some cities would be forgiven for assuming that cars actually rule and humans serve. We’ve come to act like the fast movement of cars is the highest social good, and anything that slows traffic is heresy. We need to get back to a point about asking what the people of a city need, not just the commuters.

Re-engineering cities, even if there was a popular will to do so and it served the right business interests, would in the US be a multi-generational project.

I'm not going to outright reject "it needs to be more than reduced speed limits," but speed limits are a change that can be made in the short-term that would lower noise levels, lower pollution, lower traffic fatalities, and increase tax revenue.

I disagree. Most of America’s car-first city infrastructure was set up remarkably quickly during short bursts in the 1930s and 1940s, depending on which city you’re talking about. We just don’t think about how remarkably fast it happened, because it’s outside of living memory.

Undoing some of this infrastructure should be an easier process than setting it up; bikes take less space, asphalt, and steel than cars do.

I should have said "the US, today?"

In the 1940s the United States was able to mobilize into a war economy in months. Today we are incapable of manufacturing medicine and surgical masks.

It absolutely happened quickly back then. There was money to be made and a capable leadership class. We are now led by their incapable grandchildren. The smart money is seeing strong returns in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and has no interest in long-turnaround you-need-to-know-what-you're-doing stuff like concrete, asphalt, and steel.

Just as a medieval peasant had no hope of figuring out how to build a coliseum or an aqueduct, a modern American neoliberal technocrat is entirely un-equipped to engineer, build, or plan much of anything.

That’s fair. It’s certainly possible, but the political will does not exist.

Your comment is spot on, however I'd go further: cycle facilities in countries with a strong cycling tradition don't exist to move cyclists out of the way from motorists — it is the other way around: motorists are moved out of the way from cyclists and the points were both intersect are carefully chosen.

This makes things easier for both sides..

...and high speed limits are maintained. The poor still wind up with highways through their neighborhoods, and a blanket of noise covers the country. Everyone breathes vehicle exhaust, asbestos particulates from brake pads, and ground-up tire dust.

As someone who lived at a main crossroads for a while: don't forget the mind numbing effect of constant noise

> non delivery vehicles from zones 1 and 2,

Look out the window in z1 and you will see that it mostly is already.

What will you do regarding the person's who live in those zones? Will they not be allowed to drive?

That's one option of course, though I prefer a cap and trade system on permits to operate a vehicle in those zones, reducing the cap as much as possible. People in city centers are less likely to own cars as it is. Often, road infrastructure (especially parking infrastructure) exists to benefit the suburbanites at the expense of the city dweller.

The UK is a largely rural country. Living in z1 and owning a car in order to get out of the city and travel freely is perfectly reasonable. There are also many pursuits and personal and familial reasons to make use of a vehicle.

It is also not reasonable in any way to charge persons to leave their homes (currently the case anyway). That's morally repugnant.

The infrastructure to connect your house to the public street network has to built and paid for by someone. It is the same for other types of infrastructure such as gas and electricity. Do you think it morally repugnant to charge people to connect their house to those networks?

> The infrastructure to connect your house to the public street network has to built and paid for by someone.

Yes. Me. I pay for it

Care to expand on your comment, it currently doesnt seem to have a purpose that I can discern.

I am saying that I cannot see how it is morally repugnant to have to pay for the infrastructure that you use.

I have paid for it already?

The UK is a largely rural country.

No it isn't.

83% urban: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rural-population-...

The same could be said for keeping a helicopter in z1, but obviously that would be silly.

I live in a far more rural country than your own (Ireland) and Dublin city centre is choking on suburbanites' cars and hgv's. Those same suburbanites vote down any cycling improvements in the council. I think it's morally repugnant that I'd be terrified to let my kid ride a bike to school so you can have easier motoring, and expect me to pay for it to boot!

I ended up leaving Dublin in the end, bitter at its catastrophically weak approach to cycling and tired of drivers being jerks on the quays.

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