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Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

Cycling is suited to distances of a few miles. Within a few miles of a sprawl house there are only other sprawl houses. The mix and layout of buildings and uses also needs to be overhauled so that putting reasonable numbers of hours/calories into a bike gets you somewhere useful.

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in the summer i commute to/from work 3 times a week on my bike. It is 50km (31 miles) one way. So i ride to work monday, home wednesday, to work friday type of thing.

This trip takes me around 2 hours and people think i am crazy for doing this.. but those same individuals will spend an hour commuting and then go to the gym for an hour?

Cycling isnt suited to a few miles.. I have never been "athletic" and can do a 50KM ride with a bit of training.

If the ground is fairly flat i'd say 10 miles is reasonable.

Do you sleep at work?

In the US nearly 30 percent of trips are a mile or shorter, 40 percent are two miles or shorter and 50 percent are three miles or shorter.[0]

These distances can be easily covered on foot or bike with minimal change in infrastructure.

[0] https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household-travel...

Wouldn't those three mile or less trips usually be for transporting cargo that wouldn't fit on a bike?

There are bikes that can take fairly large loads[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freight_bicycle

I don't think "usually" is close to accurate. People go to work, restaurants, friends' homes, etc without transporting any cargo. Big grocery runs are maybe once a week.

They seem to count ALL forms of travel (walking, biking, driving). Also the definition of a trip is to go from one address to another. So when I walk over to my neighbors house across the street it is technically a trip.

https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips

For vehicle trips:

21.4% of trips are 1 mile or less.

35.2% of trips are 2 miles or less.

45.6% of trips are 3 miles or less.

Walking is only suited to distances of a few miles. People walk at 3 mph. Bikes are 4-5 times faster than walking.

Yes, single family zoning must be abolished. Doing so will cost governments no money and is among the most effective changes to improve housing affordability and climate change.

In the US we'd be better off refactoring cities with a goal of 'Caves of Steel' (Asimov), which would put far more within biking and walking distance as the core of the city expanded outwards.

This seems likely to work better in areas that aren't as geographically constrained. Seattle, for example, has far too much water around it and industrial areas near that. It'd be a good one-shot conversion though.

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