Historical patterns and sustainability implications of worldwide bicycle use | Hacker News Reader

Historical patterns and sustainability implications of worldwide bicycle use

nature.com

51 pointsbenbreen53 comments

The point that might be missed is that it is more fun and more healthy and more convenient to live in a bike culture city. Driving and parking kind of sucks—there is such a wonderful flow in bike transportation.

In other words, it isn’t a personal trade-off for sustainability; rather, it is a win-win.

> it is more fun and more healthy and more convenient to live in a bike culture city

When its 18:30 in November, when weather is cold, dark and raining I don't see anyone enjoying the fun and convenience of the existing bike lanes, why ?

Similarly, I don't really see bikes being used to carry the weekly groceries for a family of 4, are they reserved for the people who can afford to go shopping every day and just have to carry few items ?

I mean people definitely didn't buy groceries before cars existed, right? Obviously if your area is an asphalth wasteland where you have to ride miles to get to the closest mall, bicycles won't work well. That's something that can be changed though.

You know that before cars became the de facto mean of private transportation, the streets belonged to the people and kids could freely play outside? That is something we completely forgot, now that we live in post apocalyptic concrete wastelands where simply existing and walking around puts you at danger of being crashed by a vehicle.

> people who can afford to go shopping every day.

There isn't an entrance fee to go to the shops. It doesn't cost more the more you go there.

18:30 in November on a rainy day, I will absolutely be using my bike to commute to and from work (I'm Dutch). Is it enjoyable? Not really. Is it better than standing in a traffic jam for two hours? Absolutely. Plus on nice days (plenty of those in November, hetregentbijnanooit.nl) you get some nice exercise. Also for groceries. My mum used to do them for a family of 5 with saddle bags.

It's a habit. The weather usually looks worse from inside than outside. In any case, people do use bikes during the whole year. And if you have to carry a lot of cargo, use a cargo bike. It's not an accident their popularity is skyrocketing.

“Weekly” is the keyword. I live in a city where it’s normal to go shopping every 1-2 days, and city bikes have a basket that will fit that amount of groceries. It’s not as inconvenient as it sounds because there is usually a grocery store within walking and definitely one within biking distance.

>I live in a city where it’s normal to go shopping every 1-2 days

>It’s not as inconvenient as it sounds because there is usually a grocery store within walking and definitely one within biking distance.

I've lived exactly what you are describing and I would not go back to it given the option.

There's a pretty substantial opportunity cost difference between shopping weekly and shopping every couple days. That's time you could spend doing other things you actually want to do. And if the store that's on your way is in a prime location then there is probably a monetary cost too.

Edit: Since I'm apparently wrong would anyone care to point out my error?

Time is spent on going to a grocery store in a car too. That's also a substantial cost. With proper urban planning, it wouldn't be a PITA to shop for grocery since it will be close to you.

But it's not like you can't shop weekly with a bike too. Cargo bikes can carry more grocery than usual. Coupled with electric assist, it shouldn't be too bad.

Oh, it's definitely possible to shop weekly, especially with a modern e-bike. I used to do it with a big backpack and a shitty walamrt bike when I lived in the city because the good (read: cheap) grocery store was inconveniently located.

I just take issue with the lunacy that adding an extra errand and the associated overhead, even if it's just a stop on your way home, doesn't have a cost.

It is actually less of bother or time suck then weekly/bi-weekly car trip. You typically stop by in the way home from work in smaller store where you can pop in/out super quick. It also requires less organizing and planning.

Weekly/bi-weekly car trip is something like 2-3 hours of your time.

The other bonuses are that sometimes you just send kids to fetch bread or whatever.

Stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work added about 20-30 minutes to my commute every day of the week, which got to be enough of a hassle I bought my own grocery cart and now walk to the store with it once every 1-2 weeks - and that trip is typically only around 50 minutes. Nearly half of it is just walking to/from the store, so I expect a car would be even less time.

It's not nearly as straightforward as everyone here wants to make it.

For me, it definitely is not 30 min. It is 10-15 and I am not in hurry at all.

This assumes that the end your work day ends far before the store closes in ordre for you to be sure its open when you get there.

Anyone working until 5 or 6, or anyone working with flexible hours will not have that luxury since store typically close at 6 and any delay in your commute back home means not being able to get food for the evening.

It is nice that you can afford to do that - reliably - but there are significant constraints on your working hours and your reponsibilities that you need to sort out first before switching to this approach, and not everyone is in that position.

Weekly shopping (car trip) is literally 40 minutes for me (3 person family).

The whole thread just shows how different we all are.

Unless you're cooped up in your home every day you'll cycle past a grocery store on your way home from something else, so you can easily pop in an grab what you need. You also don't spend any time thinking and planning what you're going to eat a whole week in advance, only to forget some core ingredient for the 5th meal and then have to drive to the store again (or order takeout and let the rest sit til next week only to have it go off before you get around to cooking it).

>Unless you're cooped up in your home every day

That actually seems pretty plausible given that WFH is normalized now. Sure, you might still leave the house to eat out or whatever, but it seems pretty inconvenient to also pick up groceries in those cases.

Wanting to continue working from home rather than commuting is actually strongly correlated with driving (and longer commutes). 91% of bicycle commuters miss some aspects of the commute; ~40% miss it a lot, whereas 55% of car commuters don't miss it at all. Unsurprisingly the main aspect missed was the activity of commuting itself (53%). Cycling to work is like a free gym membership and a free trip to stores rolled into your commute.

Reference (N=1014): https://urbanstudies.uva.nl/content/blog-series/covid-19-pan...

I've recently been heading into the office pretty often due to noisy home renovation works and can relate - I love my mostly-bike-path commute. But for embarrassing reasons I chose to take a car during peak hour yesterday and it was truly a horrible experience. I don't mind moving "slowly" (and note that in most cases within 15km of home my average travel speed on a bike is better than in a car) but being stuck behind unmoving traffic for what seems like interminable periods of time is just incredibly stressful and frustrating.

> Unless you're cooped up in your home every day you'll cycle past a grocery store on your way home from something else, so you can easily pop in an grab what you need.

It's more expensive to buy in small daily quantities though. It'd be cheaper to buy in bulk and only go once a month or so.

For non-perishable goods sure. Buy those in bulk (based on your storage capacity) and have them delivered. Buying highly perishable items once a week tends to result in a fair bit of wastage unless you're a whizz at meal planning. For one thing, I've yet to come across bread with genuine flavour and perfect texture that lasts more than 3 days.

You don't see it because it's rare, but it's possible and just not cultural thing anymore in "rich" countries. It's even seen as sign of poverty to do that, it's a shame, that's the main reason, along with security because of the prevalence of cars and the danger they represent

I use my bike almost daily since decades, cold and dark is not an issue (you never really feel cold on a bike as long as you're active/pedaling), rain and wind a bit more, I can carry 20kg of stuff on my bike, bags on my back and front and crate on the handlebar

I own a cargo bike and regularly use it in bad weather to go to the supermarket and get a full load of groceries. Works great, much more fun and a better workout than a car. Invest in a good jacket and the cold/rain won't bother you.

I do see people enjoying the convenience of bikes all over winter. Where I shop families do their weekly groceries with cargo bikes or just two bike bags.

We got different experiences, probably live in different cities and countries and now? Both of them are just singular experiences strongly depending on the specific circumstances of our lives and of the concrete available good infrastructure.

Family of four here, all groceries done with a cargo bike, year round. And I’m definitely not the only one where I live. You can wear warmer clothes if it’s cold, the bike has lights (and there are street lights) for when it’s dark, and a raincoat and rain cover for the bike work well against the rain. Definitely more fun and healthier than a car.

Somewhat dismissive but this comment deserves at least one earnest reply.

The culture hasn't caught up with the power and availability of electric cargo bikes. Carrying four bags of groceries two or four miles is trivial in good weather, practical in a lot of poor weather, and you can probably manage six, you can hitch a trailer and go to CostCo if there's a safe path for that.

Anyone can do that if they don't have severe hip immobility, because you pedal when you want to, not when you want to move. It's great for the cold but not deep winter parts of the year: you start moving with the throttle, and pedal to warm up, you can stop before you start sweating into your jacket. In summer, you can work up a sweat, or enjoy 20kmh breeze and just cruise.

They cost a few grand, can come with an eighty mile range, and handle realistic traffic speeds safely. Once the public consciousness notices these things, you'll see a lot more of them.

Edit: I said "a few" grand but there are a couple compelling bikes which come in under 2K.

I don’t know why your question is downvoted, it is totally valid.

We literally live above a grocery store, but my wife still orders grocery delivery on a weekly basis. So maybe cars aren’t necessary if they can be substituted by grocery delivery and smaller loads on bike.

You also raise the reality of cold dark and rainy novembers… well, when my son complains about biking to his guitar lessons on days like that, I hand him his rain pants. Builds character!!

But, biking on snowy days is too dangerous. It is so easy to slip and fall. We have maybe 2 snowy days a year (Amsterdam) and the city pretty much shuts down. However, where I grew up (Cleveland), there were many many snowy days. So, sensitive to the fact that cars are still necessary in many places.

It’s a lot more convenient, until you have kids, need to shop for a week at a time, you need to visit family that likes to have a garden, want to have a garden yourself, or it rains.

There is a reason people started to get cars in the first place.

Cars and larger transport could be used occasionally for those bigger tasks. The problem is that people seem to use them for everything including transporting only themselves down the street

I think an important datapoint would be urbanization and population density. If somebody lives in a dense neighborhood they're much more likely to be able to bike to where they want to go.

Nationwide density is very misleading for countries where the population is concentrated in only a handful of urban areas. I wonder whether density data has sufficient quality to provide percentiles of density, say, 10km around each citizen.

For some data sources, there's only city data available:

> Since the bicycle and car trip shares from travel surveys are mainly for cities, we used the mean of city-level values as the corresponding national trip share, because the derived values appear in line with national values from other sources

I grew up in a small town of 10k, mostly single family housing on relatively small plots. At the time most people didn't have cars and even old women biked to the church (and old men to the pub). Those who did not use the bike could walk, it took longer but was still possible because the shops, services, hospital, schools and offices/factories were close by. Only those who worked or studied in nearby towns used cars or buses/trains. Because of this, I think the most important variable is the availability and affordability of cars. Everything else follows.

That's a good point. Over a few decades the availability of cars naturally destroys the usefulness of other modes of transportation unless there is active effort to prevent these effects. Once most people have a car, small local shops aren't really viable anymore, for example. Too many people drive to the more convenient big shop that is further away.

Also known as a radical monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_monopoly

On top of that, as everything gets rebuilt to be more convenient for cars, this makes it too inconvenient for walking or cycling, because now there's huge parking lots everywhere, the streets (or stroads) are widened for all the car traffic, crossing these streets is now dangerous because of all the traffic, walking or cycling anywhere is dangerous and miserable because of all the noise and pollution from all the car traffic, etc. Cars only really work with walking and biking when a very small portion of the population has and uses cars. If you make your city so that everyone can conveniently have a car, that becomes the only convenient way of getting around.

I live in the dutch city of Eindhoven and it's both convenient to have a car and convenient to ride a bicycle. This is possible as long as you invest as much in bicycle infrastructure as you do in car infrastructure.

When a road becomes too wide to cross by bicycle the city here either builds a wide bicycle tunnel or a suspended bicycle roundabout. Those types of infrastructure are expensive, but it's the kind of thing you get if you don't put all of the city's infrastructure budget into one mode of transportation.

What does a suspended bicycle roundabout look like? Have some pictures: https://imgur.com/a/08RJEsk

Here's the location: https://goo.gl/maps/pBTFJGr9sbVHZeDT6

Here's an example of a bicycle tunnel: https://goo.gl/maps/GzAvRCMi1BoxLXgdA

And here it is from the cyclist's perspective: https://goo.gl/maps/mzogX37mqRqrK1JY8

And we also have bicycle roundabouts with tunnels: https://goo.gl/maps/ui28SMbKbXjbvevr5

Did you accidentally cut a freeway through your city? Just build a bicycle bridge over it: https://goo.gl/maps/WqLgJdhsTsr5sufE9

Of course you do need to make sure that there are actually places worthwhile going to within a convenient cycling distance. Which involves building lots of multi-family housing at the edges of downtown. With shops located within those neighborhoods. Rather than huge suburbs with exclusively single-family homes requiring a car to even do grocery shopping.

> Over a few decades the availability of cars naturally destroys the usefulness of other modes of transportation unless there is active effort to prevent these effects.

That is simply not true. The car isn't some inherently superior mode of transportation. People will use whatever infrastructure a city invests into most. If you build a city where all the infrastructure budget is spent on cars, then is it any surprise people will use their car to get everywhere?

Once you force people to use cars to get anywhere, then of course that kills local shops, but that didn't happen simply because of the availability of cars. It happened because the city stopped investing into any infrastructure that's not designed for the car.

It doesn't need to be a dense neighborhood, but one that give you all you need to live.

Some city designers chose to make areas that are businesses only and living only - about the worst you can do for bike- and walkability

A common measure for this is called "population-weighted population density", which more or less tries to capture the average local density that each person experiences.

> First, the bicycle stock data are difficult to obtain directly from statistics because most countries do not have bicycle registration system like that of cars.

I didn’t know that bicycle registration is a thing in some countries, though it does make sense why it’s required when I think about it.

Where I live, if your bike is stolen, you’ll just have to pray that your bicycle is unique enough, because like most cyclists, you probably didn’t bother to remember any of their bike’s identifying id.

And considering how much of a mess the government is right now, setting up a bicycle registry let alone any other bicycle-promoting initiatives are probably never considered. It’s a shame because cycling is fun, but if you’re a risk-averse, you’re limited to only a few safe cycling spots.

We have bicycle registration in Tokyo. Cops will sometimes stop people and check that they aren't riding a stolen bicycle, and if your bicycle is reported stolen and recovered, they'll bring it back to you. Registration costs about USD$5.

Tons of people bicycle here just to get around, including mothers with small children. They have bicycles which have 2 child seats. In newer areas, there's bicycle parking lots everywhere: in apartment towers, at the mall, at the grocery store, etc. Bike parking lots don't take up much space unlike car parking lots. In older areas, people just park wherever: on the sidewalk in front of the convenience store, on the side of the street, etc.

You don’t need to rely on the government in all places. Cycle registration is available, but not mandatory in germany. The ADFC (German cycling club) offers it and they basically engrave a combination of initials, birthday and city into the frame with a high-vis sticker https://www.adfc.de/artikel/fahrrad-codierung/. Police offers similar services too, but since the encoding scheme is standardized, they‘ll know how to decode the sticker when a bike is found.

If you're worried about bike theft, there's an easy solution - just buy a cheap bike.

I understand why people would rather not talk about the actual reasons why bicycling and public transportation aren't popular in places without high social trust.

It's a very awkward conversation.

But it mystifies me that people insist on still promoting bicycles and public transportation without addressing the real reason many places rely on private passenger cars.

What's the point of incessantly henpecking people who clearly and obviously can't turn to bicycling and public transportation on account of obvious logistical and safety issues?

In my bike club it’s a standing joke that bike ownership is governed by two rules:

  Right number of bikes = n+1

where n is the number you currently own. Limited by:

  n = S-1

where S is the number of bikes that would cause a separation from your spouse.

I own 6 bikes right now and want another. My best friend used to keep one bike in the boot of his car so his wife wouldn’t see it[1]. He’d then switch it with another every winter and spring[2].

We both own cars and drive most days, so these two things don’t seem that related. I would like to cycle commute more.

1. What really makes me laugh about this is, he chose the same paint scheme because that’s the only thing she notices; 1 is a winter road bike and the other a TT bike.

2. Until it all came out in the pub; she thought it was funny too. :D

You managed to combine sexism with useless consumerism while missing the point of the article entirely: owning 6 bikes while still using your car for the most part is not sustainable and might even hinder bike adoption in the long run. So why would you be in a bike club again?

"sorry guys, I've got to leave the club, some guy on the internet gave me the run down. Yes I know I enjoy it but we can't let people be mad on the internet."

what part of "sustainability" do you not understand?

Sexism? Where? You will please note that the deliberate use of the term "spouse" is genderless. My friend just happens to be married to a woman that doesn't cycle.

There really is no need to seek offence where none is given. It cheapens any further discussion.

Since you ask, I'm in a bike club because I like to ride, race and tour bikes with friends in my spare time. I've just finished a bike tour where about half the group where women. They also collect bikes just like me. Just like my friend, not all their partners ride or have any interest in cycling either.

I have 6 bikes because: a) I've been riding a very long time and I tend not to throw things away. b) different bikes serve very different purposes.

i.e. I don't commute on my TT bike and I don't ride my Brompton folding bike on single track.

As for sustainability, I suggest you look at the actual impact of owning a few old bikes vs say, having even one pet dog, cat or child. These are several orders of magnitude worse.

This article seems to be politically biased BS. It goes into where most bicycles are made, yet completely leaves out Taiwan, which is a huge manufacturer of bicycles (including most of the high-end carbon fiber ones). Giant is the largest manufacturer of bicycles in the entire world, and is a Taiwan company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Bicycles

Instead, it names "China" as the #1 producer by far. Taiwan is a separate nation.

Giant also produces bikes in main land China. On top of that is the carbon bike market quite small compared to casual alloy bikes. It's pretty shitty to argue that something BS without providing a single datapoint for the contrary. Just the internal yearly market for bikes in china is larger than the Taiwan population. It would be extremely surprising if Taiwan is even got close to the production output of China.

It's not just carbon bikes; e-bikes are also a huge export from Taiwan:

https://cyclingindustry.news/taiwan-export-figures-analysis/

The e-bike market, unlike carbon sports bikes, is rather huge, and growing fast.

Your link shows some pretty low sales numbers. Not even 1 mio. units sold in 2018. While the E-bike production in China the same year was over 30 mio.

I'm not saying that Taiwan is not a big bike producing country. But comparison to the total world market of all categories of bikes, their output is not world leading. Just because you are personally into Taiwan bike production doesn't make it fair to call researchers politically biased (especially with your bias so openly on display).

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