1960s Bike Buses Used to Transport Cyclists Under the Thames

Make them take public transport? If they’re older than 10 or 11, let’s say. Or make them walk to school? Assuming you live at about 2 km max from said school (a good half-hour walk to and back from school has never hurt anybody, to the contrary).

Now, I understand that there may be laws around where you live that ban leaving kids unaccompanied, but you can and try fighting those laws (I guess there would be other people who might join you). Also, maybe your local public transport is crap, but it’s easier and better for the whole society to try and fix that than to try and impose cycling paths that would be used by only a small percentage of the people living there).

I have friends in multiple states who spend hours every single day, sitting in a line to drop off/pick up their kids from school. It's utterly, mind-bendingly insane. I still cannot fathom it, and it makes me angry.

They'll say things like "you have to get there an hour ahead of time so that you only wait 45 minutes more" because if you show up at the "correct" time you'll be waiting for 2 hours.

In a lot of cases, these schools have been built where you really can't walk to school, and children are not allowed to leave on their own.

Cars are only faster (marginally anyway) and more convenient in cities because 95%+ of infrastructure is built for them. Make it closer and a bike wins on most routes in populated areas.

Want to use a vehicle which weighs 2 tonnes, is 5meter long and 2meter wide to move your ass? It's only fair you go around on narrow one directional roads.

Here in the UK we have the worst designed cycle "paths" that are just painted onto pavements and stop at each side road, so it's far better to completely ignore them and use the road as then you have priority over the side roads.

Except the rail companies wouldn't like it you use your bike to cycle a couple of stops rather than use the train.

In Belgium, they get nice things like this: https://goo.gl/maps/6toGgkvU4DGsry3e8 to keep motor traffic and bikes separate.

In the UK we have this kind of horror: https://goo.gl/maps/eTb1615DFL3BTZRV7 - stop the traffic via multiple pedestrian crossings to reach a pedestrian bridge positioned within the middle of the junction.

You say "it's impossible because X", but what is usually the issue is that cars just take over all the space and make public transport, walking and cycling impossible. I could live in the country side without a car thanks to the pandemic, I do understand that most people make choices in their life that make that harder, but those are choices made by people and infrastructure planners. They are not fixed truths.

There is so much to disect here and I do not think we can reach a common conclusion because everything is a special case. For reference I lived 9 km to the primary school, bus and store, 60 km to the nearest hospital and train station, 4 km to the nearest daily bus. I understand that it might feel strange to build bicycle infrastructure in such an environment. Luckily for us it was perfectly possible to live there and have my children ride their bicycles to school, but this was only possible because a lot of people alreadt walked on these roads, and it was quickly known in the community that my children rode there in the mornings, even if they were the only ones doing it.

Yes you need to change the infrastructure even in the country side to enable walking and cyclists, it does NOT have to be 10km of cycle track, but it might have to be that.

So? If it’s a road that leads to a school it should have a separate way for bikes.

Isn’t it? Cars are drastically different. Visibility is poor in a car, so it’s difficult to see narrow objects like a bike. Cars normally drive much faster than a bike — 20mph is slow for a car but fast (ish) for a bike. Cars are vastly heavier and larger, meaning they cause a severe amount of damage when they hit a smaller object like a bike or human.

Cars and bikes sharing the road is not ideal for either. Countries with excellent bike cultures and safety records (the Netherlands) promote separate infrastructure for different modes of transit, and it works well.

Sounds the same in Ireland. The bike infrastructure seems built to get cyclists out of the road for the benefit of drivers, it's not built with the cyclist's experience in mind.

So, elsewhere there are calculation re energy use per person in "western world". They tend to land around so many KJ per day which tends to be something like X times 3000 calories per day, which is like have X servants / slaves. X often turns out to be 40 ish. Now imagine you had 40 people working each day for your benefit. Some would work farms to feed you, some would carry you to work. But overall, is the current layout of your life, the one you would plan if you really had 40 servants?

(No we ignore the weird sexual plans here, and the worst unethical plans).

What I am saying is that the industrial revolution has transformed energy allocation and use. But the way we happen to have built the world does not mean it's the best way.

Maybe it's too late for the UK but the citizens of China, India and Africa might be able to learn something useful.

But I hope we can learn how to rebuild our worlds to benefit us the most.

Out of interest I think Demoocracy plays a huge part here. So many people feel powerless or unable to direct or control resources. Whereas they would know what to do with 40 servants.

And yet 50% of resources and activity in our society sits in private companies that are outrageous dictatorships. The resource allocation of that 50% should be waaay more democratic - either through regulation or just voting by the owners of capital (the employees ! The ultimate beneficiary of stocks (pension funds usually vote with the execs. why can I not vote my pension fund alice how Inlike?)

And finally the 50% under government ownership - again I do vote but local government in UK is a joke, years of cut backs have decimated courts, police, etc. These are probably not the choices most people would have made locally.

We can remake our world - once we take the levers of power away from those hording them (I would say elites but despite that being a correct term, somehow it has been corrupted to point at the wrong people.)

So society has not really saved. Apart from the boring monetary losses like bike and car damage and lost working hours, there is my physical recovery / therapy, ambulances being unavailable for something serious and worse that poor kid needs years of ... something ... therapy?

My guess is the door requirement was to avoid needing to scrape people off the single lane roadway in rush hour more than a thought for passenger safety and that difference may have got lost on the way to the page