Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus
finishermag.com
finishermag.com
Public transport doesn't allow for social distancing and there's no space for additional cars.
For urban society overall, more people cycling results in decreased travel times due to less traffic congestion, a healthier population (both from the exercise and distance) and reduced air pollution. Plus there are great economic benefits. Not everyone needs to cycle for everyone to benefit.
I'm not going to ride my bike to the store unless I can be sure it will still be there when I come out.
What I cannot, at all, live with is when a line of 10 trucks is packed on a segregated bike lane and the cops do nothing.
You don't need to make your bike impervious to being stolen, just harder to steal than another bike near it so that the thieves pick that one instead. That isn't particularly hard in my experience. In my case I have two different types of locks as that increases the chances that a thief won't have the right tools to defeat one of the locks. E.g., if a thief has something to pry a lock off that would work on the U-lock, that won't work on the cable lock.
Having an ugly bike probably also helps.
Some people want more expensive bikes, namely electric bikes that provide more mobility, and to a vastly greater number of people.
It also suggests that there will always be a class of vulnerable bikes available for theft alternatives. The cost is still there, simply borne by 'someone else'.
Also: My bike is actually fairly expensive but doesn't look so. The new cost was over $1000 at the time as I recall, comparable to a new e-bike. (I bought it used for a fraction of that.) The bike doesn't need to be cheap, just not look attractive to a thief.
I didn't realize how bad bike security was until I got an expensive ebike.
Pandemic makes this problem even worse due to fewer eye witnesses and social distancing.
Police are never going to get into the business of tracking down your private property. It's not a good use of their time.
The good news is that you can largely mitigate the risk of almost all kinds of bike theft with some pretty basic preventative measures.
Having biked in NYC pre and post bike lanes, I will say that, while riding in downtown traffic was a fun unique experience if you're into that sort of thing, riding a bike share bike in the bike lane made me feel the same way, that bike as a primary transportation could be real there as well.
There are lots of cheap used bikes on Craigslist that will last a long time. Maintaining them is way cheaper than maintaining a car. Cheap bikes are not as targeted for theft, a cheap lock will go a long way towards protecting from theft.
San Fransisco's Vision Zero is why I haven't been able to cycle to work in two years. In the name of bicycle safety, the city tore out my bike lane and replaced it with a ditch.
I don't really need it; I'm a confident vehicular cyclist and I'll take a traffic lane. But the lane I need to be in, which used to be a straight line, is now gated behind an extremely dangerous zipper merge around a half-finished bus boarding island. I have never been more afraid on the road than when navigating a situation allegedly intended to make me safer.
The sidewalks in my neighborhood are being widened, and pedestrian bulb-outs are being added to make crossings shorter. Which means that for the forseeable future, the sidewalks are narrow passages between construction fences, and it's impossible to social-distance with oncoming traffic. The sidewalks around intersections are completely fenced off; to cross the street, you must get within inches of the cars.
All of these things will be great to have, when they are completed in 2030. But until then walking and cycling are much, much worse than they would have been if things were left alone.
The ideal time to do construction is when you have the least traffic and right now cities are seeing less traffic than they have had in decades.
> San Fransisco's Vision Zero is why I haven't been able to cycle to work in two years. In the name of bicycle safety, the city tore out my bike lane and replaced it with a ditch.
This has less to do with general principals and a lot to do with piss poor planning in SF. Here in Eugene, when they do construction, cycling safety is (mostly) taken into account.
> All of these things will be great to have, when they are completed in 2030.
Construction sites are a PITA for everyone and are definitely more dangerous for cyclists, but getting the construction over quickly is safer than dragging it out. Considering how bad bike commuting is in many places, dealing with a few years of marginally worse conditions to get much better infrastructure is worthwhile.
(I suspect that this problem is also in other cities with large mass transit investment)
NYC is also horrible at keeping bike lanes unobstructed and street parking is literally the worst thing in NYC for a road user.
Mass transit relies much more on ridership. (NYC Subway is massively underpriced)
Also - road maintenance is highly dependent on road use. Biggest degrading factors for the westside bike path on Manhattan have been natural(weather and flora). I've been on bike paths that were paved in the 60ies and are still in great condition... without maintenance.
I thought the page will talk about scientific advantages to cycling or something like that but it just rambles hope about cycling benefiting from this.
I don't think you understand what this is about. Most of the cycling for transportation is short hops, 0.5 - 2 miles and low key. No sweating or showers involved unless you live in Phoenix (in which case you have my sympathy regardless). I have a 7 mile commute and since it's cool in the morning and I'm not working out hard. I don't need to shower when I get to work.
Also, e-bikes are likely to be a bike part of this which makes the sweatiness even less an issue even if your commute is longer.
It does feel like they are trying to shove this solution in there to some extent. Many large cities have been trying to find ways to increase the amount of cycling and walking regardless. Cars and their infinite demand for resources (parking, wider roads, gas stations) have become a growth dead-end in dense urban areas.
1. Everyone in the US has to own and maintain a car. (I've saved $85k by not owning a car over the past 10 years.)
2. We have an increase in the number of 2000 lb steel boxes driving around, polluting, being built and trashed.
3. More drivers, more deaths. Driving is already a leading cause of death in the US.
4. Further sprawl, growing infrastructure costs, higher taxes.
5. Further decline of spontaneous interactions in the US.
There are many many other negative externalities of car dependence. Cycling is an opportunity to reduce our car dependence, and is safer than public transportation for COVID.
Yes, sitting in your personal, 40 thousand dollar, 2 ton steel box anytime you leave the house is the best way to avoid COVID transmission. But it also destroys the earth, social ties, lives, etc.
I think there's another point you've missed. You sitting in your personal 2 ton steel box is good for you, but it practically takes up the entire street space, and forces pedestrians to stay on the much narrower sidewalks, breaking the 6 foot social distancing rule-of-thumb. Opening up the streets to bicycles and pedestrians allows people to use the street to maintain safe distances.
I'm talking strictly about streets inside cities. Cars are great tools for traveling great distances. They're a ridiculous tool for traveling inside cities. They should be looked at with a similar level of absurdity as taking a cruise ship out on the lake for a weekend fishing trip.
It's a very American attitude that this is "cute" or "idealistic". In cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, bicycles dominate intra-city transportation. And what's funny about these cities is that they have worse cycling weather than most US cities.
1. Nobody's proposing an elimination of streets. What is being suggested is that streets become more open to cycling and even pedestrian use without an implicit serious threat of death.
2. Re-thinking cities, where we design not around personal car ownership and convenience is possible. There are countless solutions that still allow for automobile use. For example, a number of parking garages throughout—or on the edges of—the city. Think about amusement parks, for example. You can't drive your car right up to Space Mountain when you go to Disney World. You park your car in a massive lot, and a shuttle (glorified golf-cart) takes you into the park where there are miraculously no cars, and no threat of being killed as you cross the "street" to get a cotton candy.
As I said in my previous post—there are working examples here. There's no need to pretend these are unsolvable problems—or even difficult-to-solve problems. Would we need to re-shuffle some things in most US cities? Absolutely... but that's exactly what we're talking about doing.
>Everyone in the US has to own and maintain a car.
More than 90% of American households already have a car. Many of the rest want them, and just can't afford it (either because of their own income or the scarcity of parking where they live).
>More drivers, more deaths.
True relative to staying home. Used to be true relative to public transit. May not be anymore, since public transit got a lot more dangerous.
>Further sprawl, growing infrastructure costs, higher taxes.
Americans love their sprawl. The only reason it's not infinite is that at some point it gets counterbalanced by commute time. It's not clear that commuting is ever coming back on the scale we had before; remote or mostly-remote workers will, by and large, live even farther from population centers.
>Further decline of spontaneous interactions in the US.
Yes, that is an extremely compelling benefit and the explicit reason most people will seek it in a world newly cognizant of infectious disease risk.
Public transit is still much more safe, even with COVID-19 threat, than driving.
> Americans love their sprawl.
Americans used to love it, when the jobs were right there.
Removing cars boosts local small service economy, as evidenced by multiple cases.
Yes, exactly, all of these. All of the flaws with everyone driving and owning a personal motor vehicle that existed before the pandemic still exist during it and even afterwards. We cannot give back the gains we made in a handful of areas, and were in the process of making in a lot of other places, as a result of this. A virus running rampant is bad, but the economic and social upheaval of our planet becoming even slightly less hospitable due to climate change will beat all of this by multiples.
> Cycling is an opportunity to reduce our car dependence, and is safer than public transportation for COVID.
I agree that cycling reduces car dependence and can be a safe option, but I don't follow that public transit in the era and after COVID will be "unsafe." There's increasing evidence, like this linked Twitter thread[0] from a doctor reports, that it's sustained contact, particularly around activities that increase viral spread, that are the issue. Factors like air flow, air turnover, and fresh-air intake are shaping up to have pretty big influence; these are things that many buses and trains already account for with HEPA filters and air conditioning.
I'm less worried about transit than I am about what's at the other end of the trip. 30 minutes on a bus, I can control what I touch and wear a mask and there's onboard air handling with filtration. In a grocery store? Far less of that.
0 - https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1260905937910587392
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
Unfortunately, urban planners and authorities is not how you promote cycling. This is how you promote cycling [0]. You rebel.
[0] https://file.ejatlas.org/img/Conflict/2797/stop_de_kindermoo...
I don't know much about the history of cycling in the Netherlands. Where can I read about how angering drivers helped there?
Put another way, how would you feel if car drivers rebel and park their cars across all the bike lanes?
Btw, car drivers already park their cars across all the bike lanes, there is no need for a hypothetical.
So change opinion based on legal protest and organization. Blocking infrastructure that others rely on is militancy. And let's get real - this is cycling we're talking about, not slavery. To compare the two is to downplay what slavery actually entails (brutal violence, theft of civil liberties).
> Btw, car drivers already park their cars across all the bike lanes, there is no need for a hypothetical.
A very narrow minority does this, and usually it is out of ignorance, not malice.
Some of the worst offenders, delivery truck drivers, tend to know that parking in the bike lane is illegal. They tend to not care about cyclists, which is different from ignorance or malice.
If protesters blocked all the routes - yes. But it's a case of causing inconvenience. Causing inconvenience is militancy only in a very broad definition of militancy.
But it's a very typical thing to see - when you're in a privileged position and all convenience is targeted at you, loss of that convenience is often perceived as oppression.(Have you heard how evangelicals in US moan about being the actual oppressed people?)
>A very narrow minority does this, and usually it is out of ignorance, not malice.
Knowingly breaking rules is malice.
> Have you heard how evangelicals in US moan about being the actual oppressed people?
I am not religious but there are many ways in which they are correct to make that claim as well.
> Knowingly breaking rules is malice.
Sounds like you agree that protesters blocking infrastructure is malice.
You literally described inconvenience and told me that it's not inconvenience. That's Olympic level mental gymnastics ;)
> I am not religious but there are many ways in which they are correct to make that claim as well.
Sure...
> Sounds like you agree that protesters blocking infrastructure is malice.
Last time I checked protests are not illegal. Using public roads to protest - not breaking rules.
In the Netherlands these disruptions effected policy change. In the US disruptive protests result in police brutality, protestors getting run over, and then public support for policies restricting disruptive protests.
When policies get implemented in the US, it's through corruption — including policies we'd agree are good, like bike-friendly policies being pushed through municipal governments by major corporations who want them for their employees, so they get implemented where it benefits them and not where it benefits marginalized communities who don't work for them.
As long as there's enough money pumped into a policy, no amount of disruption will affect it in the US. Disruptive actions _that don't target who's funding the policies_ won't accomplish anything here, no matter how effective they were there.
So that's why people say "disrupting commutes won't work" here. The people commuting aren't funding these policies; they could all be voters and change out the entire city government and the same money will just pump through different people, and policies won't change, and the next time a disruptive protest happens the public turns against them because what did it accomplish last time?
Meanwhile, the people who do fund policy are flying over them or riding past them in private or restricted lanes that they pushed through municipal government, looking over at the protests, maybe even cheering them on.
There are countless cases where people have annoyed a group of people to sway the majority. (Do you think that LGBT got it's freedoms by not annoying anyone?)
Just like public debates between politicians, these protests don't have to get the people getting annoyed on the side of the protesters. It's about getting attention and convincing others.
If I stand and block the road for an ICE worker getting to the parking lot and he tries to drive over me - I'm getting more sympathy and exposure for annoying one ICE employee.
No matter the cause, blocking someone’s commute and making them waste time is not really going to convince them to be on your side, unless they were already on it. So you are essentially alienating the people in the middle and in the opposition to your cause, while not adding anything extra to those already on your side (+the possibility of some of those people defecting to the opposition, after being inconvenienced enough).
If all they're doing is blocking the road as is the case in the photo I was responding to, that's not likely to help. That's screaming into the ether. It might make them feel better but it's not likely to solve the root cause of their problems.
I think a lot of activism is more about making the activists feel better than actually changing the world.
sure, it gets people's attention, but if they don't already care, why would you expect their solution to be "right this injustice" rather than "get the police to clear these people out of my way"?
You are trying to protest corruption of your local city council by gathering outside of the building and yelling loudly? I will support you, maybe even join you, if I feel strongly enough about the issue. You protest the same thing by blocking off random highway ramps to any traffic (which could potentially affect emergency services), inconveniencing random people who have nothing to do with the issue? Yeah, you lost my sympathy and support, and very likely gave some ammo to those trying to derail your cause and those on the fence.
It's true for pretty much anything. You will never get any rights/freedoms if you don't demand. No freedom/right has ever been granted by the grace of the people in power.
I've seen it first hand in LGBT rights over the last 20 years. Angering a small part of the population exposed their alien nature to the majority, so the majority of people pick the "nicer side".
Do you advocate against funding for safe and effective cycling infrastructure? Okay then. I'm in the infrastructure you've provided me, and you get to go my pace.
People who can afford cars are going to continue driving them. Given the option between bicycling and driving, someone who can afford a car or already has one will likely opt to drive if public transport becomes impractical because of reduced capacity, mask wearing, etc. The poor are left to either ride "filthy" buses and trains, ride a bike, or walk.
Right now businesses and residential units are required by law in most cities to provide parking, take that away and the cost of owning a car goes up quite fast. If you have to pay $500/ month to park your car, it won't just be the poor who live the car-free lifestyle, lots of people with opt out of that.
In the Netherlands, almost everyone rides a bike (rich/ poor) because it's the best way to get around cities. In the US, nobody rides bikes because the infrastructure is designed for cars. In the UK and Paris (where this article is focused), they are somewhere in-between and trying to get closer to where the Netherlands is.
I think more accent should be put on NMF bikes, Natural Material Frame, like those made of bamboo [0] or wood. These materials absorb CO2 from the air to grow, unlike steel or carbon which produces it.
1 A lot of us cant or prefer not to live in the heart of the city
2 Most offices are not built with showers and secure bike parking - for longer distance commuters last time I worked in central London I wanted to use a Brompton but boss said no I cat store it in the office so that was that.
Take a GF boat or a CF* bike - both of them have a lifetime of at least 10 years. Storing them in a concentrated manner, will take a very small amount of space(we overestimate our landfill needs) and would make recycling or dismantling much cheaper when the tech comes in.
(*CF bikes last longer than alu alloy frames, btw)
On the other hand people could wear a full face mask with good screw on filters too.
Bicycles (or other small wheeled vehicles) are much more accessible to more people now that electric power is practical in addition to human power.
In many urban areas, there is a lack of _any_ safe bike routes from point a to point b, which is not the experience of the motorist.
Plus, few people can afford it. Have you looked at the price of a parking spot in e.g., major parts of Boston or NYC? 5-6 figures to buy, or hundreds/mo to rent, and that's with working mass transit. I guess that those prices would at least triple if everyone started driving. Lots of wealthy people take the subway and commuter rail.
I don't think cycling is the solution. But cars are definitely a non-starter.
Own a car in NYC. $400 for the lease. $200 for insurance. $400 for parking.... or about $200 every 2 months in parking violation tickets.
But... Even in NYC a car is the difference between going to one of the packed urban parks... vs going to the woods upstate.
There is no way cars are the solution to this.
I couldn't find a parking spot in Palo Alto, CA... and that's not a densly populated area.
Bikes on the other hand scale much better. You can easily double a road's throughput with bikes. Now take away lanes used for parking and even more bikes fit on the road.
For often jammed inner city street, I think its more an order of magnitude increase or more rather than a double.