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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Go to a shopping center, or a sporting event, or any other place where people publicly gather en masse and ask yourself how many of them could realistically get around on a bicycle.

There are a lot of very fat people, old people, disabled people, and so forth who could not ride a bike half a mile.

This is ridiculous utopian nonsense. Society is not a blank slate, and we don't get to start over from scratch. We don't get to re-litigate the past and pretend it never happened. Some people seem to think that if something happened for bad reasons 100 years ago, we ought to just undo it, but that is not how the real world works. We have to build on what exists, no matter why or how it got to be that way.

We aren't going to rebuild our cities around bikes, and even if we did, a large number of people could not use them. On the other hand, we already built our cities around cars, and self-driving cars would fit right in (if they actually worked).

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This sounds like a very American answer. Have you been to such an event in any other place, like Europe?

Near me is the largest open air weekend market of the Netherlands. Do you know how everybody gets there? By bike, public transportation, walking, etc. And then some small percentage that arrives by car.

> This sounds like a very American answer. Have you been to such an event in any other place, like Europe?

Of course, and I've been to the mecca of public transit, Japan!

And guess what -- outside of the super-dense cities, most Japanese people drive cars. I spent some time in a Japanese city about as dense as a California suburb. Two train stations in the entire city. A car or two in every driveway. I've also been to smaller cities in various European countries and it's the same story.

People need to stop pretending that the world looks like Copenhagen or Tokyo. In reality, most of the world is not dense.

This is an article explicitly about _urban_ mobility. If you're going to exclude large, dense metropolitan areas, are you even addressing the arguments being made here?

Define "urban".

from google: "in, relating to, or characteristic of a town or city."

I am not sure what point you are trying to make

The point is that bicycling is not realistic outside of very, very dense cities. Most places that reasonable people call "cities" would not qualify. Even in Europe and Japan, which have world-class public transit, only a handful of cities have useful subways or usable bicycle infrastructure. Everywhere else, people drive cars.

People who are advocating for bicycles as a primary form of transit are using a hyper-narrow definition of "urban," in which most cities would not be considered urban, and that is deceptive and wrong.

The word dense is in the second sentence of the wikipedia article on cities. It is inherent to discussion of urban transportation. You seem to be using the word city loosely, but it's a rather specific term.

Even though I agree the policies here apply to a small fraction of the world's area, it affects a sizable fraction of the population.

> The point is that bicycling is not realistic outside of very, very dense cities

Bullshit. I grew up in a small village -- 300 people or so live there. It's a couple of kilometers from two other villages in the 2000-500 range. There's one school for the area shared between the villages. The daycare I went to was located in one of the other villages. I biked (alongside my parents) for 5 kilometers on non-separated roads to get to daycare at the age of 4. I biked first 2 kilometers to school every single day until 7th grade where I then had to bike 12 kilometers each way. It sounds tough if you don't bike. If you've done it your life whole it's just a mode of transport. Taking 30-40 minutes on the bike was faster than taking the bus too.

It's not dense because the same people opposing pedestrianization also oppose density.

If we let people build a couple Amsterdams or Londons in America, we could just self select and those that want to cycle and walk can do so, and those who want to drive can do so - just in separate places.

Copenhagen is not super-dense, not even very dense. Berlin is even less dense than Copenhagen, yet both cities are very pleasurable for using the bike as your sole means of transportation.

Copenhagen would be the 3rd densest city in America and would represent less than 1/3 of a percent of the population. America is huge with a ton of space and people have spread out.

> , most of the world is not dense.

But most people in Japan live in the super-dense cities. So we are literally discussing solutions that work for most people

And yet ~70% of Japanese households own cars.

Owning a car and using it daily is not the same thing.

It's funny that foreigner says Japan is fine without personal cars. That's because tourists don't visit random local middle sized cities.

Yes, you are right. Bikes make sense only in dense urban areas or if you're relatively close to commerce or work. That's still a big minority of people, but getting onto bikes and out of cars is great where it's a possibility.

If you aren't that close, you can have hybrid transportation. Take a bike to a bus or train.

Better zoning would help too.

> most Japanese people drive cars

Citation needed.

People who drive cars usually have a need for them. Cargo hauling for example.

> Two train stations in the entire city.

Probably wasn't a large city. I've been to some really small cities that had two train stations. You could walk between stations.

> A car or two in every driveway

For the most part, Japan doesn't have driveways. Even in less populated centers, they might have a parking space, or a garage, but not a driveway. It's a waste of space. Even street parking is limited. Some people may have two cars for whatever reason but I doubt that is the norm.

I'm wonder what region you were at that saw this many cars.

Interestingly, the number of cars in Japan is roughly the same as the number of bikes in circulation.

46% of people use their own car for commute in Japan, but it's 9.5% in Tokyo. Sorry this is written in Japanese but you can use translate. https://todo-ran.com/t/kiji/18920

Having lived and traveled all over Europe without a car, I can say with confidence that urban environments of a wide range of density are incredibly well-served by public transit, pedestrian routes, and bikes. Cars are necessary in lots of cases, but the vast majority of day-to-day activity that requires a car for me here in the US would have been silly to use a car for in Europe.

My European city in Portugal, has several routes that have one bus per hour, stop at 21h, and decrease their routes at weekend.

Shoppings and several city services are located on the city outskirts only reachable by car or taxi.

You can cycle around on the city centre and then enjoy the roads that are organised like motorways around the center.

Yes, unless you happen to live in top European cities, those that make the top list where to live in Europe, you get there by car.

Lots of fat Germans, Polish, Hungarians, and British. Heven't visited other European countries, so couldn't tell you about others.

As to a solution; How about recumbent trikes? Beats dissing foreign nations based on biased preconceptions of healthy lifestyles.

So then what's the solution? Self-driving and/or electric cars aren't it. They may be an improvement, but they still waste a whole ton of energy in their construction and use.

Personally, I think this isn't an either-or kind of thing. I, and plenty of people I know, have both a bike and a car. They use the bike for relatively short trips, shopping, etc., and the car for everything else. As it turns out, the vast majority of driving people do are the sorts of trips that can be done easily (and more quickly) on a bike anyway.

People who simply cannot bike for whatever reason will continue to drive. That's fine. But we still need to shift the balance so that it's easier and safer for people to bike, even if it makes using a car slightly less convenient.

The solution is to let people choose what to produce and what to buy. Best way to ensure they care about the environment is allowing them to take home more than $5000 a month. Best way to get them to produce eco-friendly technologies, is to reduce barriers to entry; Like IP law, which is mostly gamed by big corporations to exclude competition.

> The solution is to let people choose what to produce and what to buy.

Which is what we have, and have had, for a very, very long time.

> Best way to ensure they care about the environment is allowing them to take home more than $5000 a month.

I have not noticed that wealthy people care more about the environment than poor people. It seems to me that it tends to be the other way around.

> Best way to get them to produce eco-friendly technologies, is to reduce barriers to entry;

Bicycles are already produced at scale and have been for longer than cars have existed.

> The solution is to let people choose what to produce and what to buy.

Huh? Do you mean that deregulation is the best way to solve this?

The cheapest options for end consumers will almost always be the things that scale the most: race-to-the-bottom, and exploiting the commons as much as possible. While I agree that regulations are gamed, to suggest deregulation as the key solution means disregarding why we have regulation at all.

The Netherlands used to be car-centric in the 70s, but they cleaned up their act. Paris is banning cars in the center of the city. Policy choices and incentives drive these trends. The car industry and fossil fuel lobby have a crazy stronghold on the US and most of the world and everyone is worse off for them.

In the UK you don't drive to a football stadium because they're not surrounded by an ocean of parking lots.

How do many Americans become disabled in the first place? Many of them get injured in a motor vehicle collision. Why do so many lack physical fitness? A big part of that is they have to be in a car all day. And it's not just bikes--look at the variety of new electric mobility options that have appeared over the last decade.

It's self-destructive conservatism to wave off avoidable problems as being inevitable path dependence and pretend like there's no other choice. In fact there is much that could change.

Car makes us less us sedentary and less able to walk. Bikes work the opposite way, and encourage us to be more active and more able to walk.

The elder can't walk due in part because they didn't engage in enough physical activity, which in turn reduce their activity level.

Beside, we won't be able to redesign our urban architecture overnight, but with progress comes dividend that will make further progress much easier.

There will always be edge cases for people who are disabled and who are too obese, but I am confident we can find mobility options for them. A healthier society will have more money to support the hopefully dwindling reminders who can't use bikes.

> Go to a shopping center, or a sporting event, or any other place where people publicly gather en masse and ask yourself how many of them could realistically get around on a bicycle.

The vast majority, by a long shot.

The way you describe it seems to me dystopian nonsense, but maybe that's the American reality.

If people are gathering "en masse" that is exactly what public transport should be used for. Not every individual attendee showing up in their own car. Look at football stadiums in Europe. They don't have huge parking lots like stadiums in the US.

As for overweight, old, and disabled, in the Netherlands they can use mobility scooters on the bike paths. This makes the cities much more accessible for them to get groceries and visit the doctor independently. Also much safer and accessible for children, a huge portion of the population that cannot drive.

It's not about eliminating driving. It's about providing alternatives. If those that can cycle or walk do, then there is less traffic for those that need to drive because of distance, cargo, etc.

All three of fat, old, and disabled can use bikes. Adapted to their condition, of course; tricycle-type configurations are often a good adaptation in cases like that.

Not unless that bike also includes an engine. You exclude so many people who are incapable of propelling themselves around, let alone people who can't see well enough or lack the cognitive ability to navigate themselves

There are arm-propelled bicycles (or more specifically, drivetrains that let wheelchair users propel themselves with their arms as though they are on a bicycle).

If you're going into "paraplegic and/or legally blind" as your idea of people that can't get around by bicycle, you will find that most people in public gatherings are just fine going around by bike.

> let alone people who can't see well enough or lack the cognitive ability to navigate themselves

they aren't driving themselves either so what is your point? bicycles with passenger seats exist, as do buses and trains (and, of course, bicycles with motors)

The original conversation was around self driving cars. Self driving cars give freedom to people who can't drive themselves in a way that bikes never will. They also offer things above public transport, namely privacy, security, autonomy.

all for self-driving whatever to help the disabled achieve autonomy, but there is no reason to limit self-driving to enormous multi-ton vehicles

Bikes can include engines, sounds like you've described a solution.

If people can't see or think well enough to navigate on a bike... then cars etc. aren't the solution either. Sounds like they'd be passengers on bikes rather than riders.

> There are a lot of very fat people... who could not ride a bike half a mile

They can start with a quarter mile and work their way up.

> disabled people, old people

Perfectly capable of riding bicycles. Unless you're talking really old, like 80s or 90s. They can ride trikes or golf carts.

> This is ridiculous utopian nonsense

Our ancestors ran down buffaloes and woolly mammoths. Your suggestion that we can't do basic physical exertion anymore is downright dystopian and nanny-stateish. We could all do with a healthy dose of taking personal responsibility for our own transportation.

Biking is not going to be for everyone, nor is it going to work for many rural areas. But as many have pointed out we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. Bikes are just one part of a larger solution to the problem of car dependence.

We need a variety of options for people of varying abilities. We need standard bikes, e-bikes, accessible vehicles[1], busses, trains, light rail, street cars, walkable cities and electric cars.

Self-driving cars are more likely to make traffic worse, not better here's a good explanation about it[2].

At the end of the day, less people driving is good for people living in cities, and for people who need/want to drive

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle) [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVWciFJeFNA

Ironically the people who wouldn’t be able to bike to the event would probably benefit the most from it.

And in a more bike/public transit-centric society, probably wouldn't be in as such a poor state to begin with.

Great solutions don't solve problems for everybody. They solve them for a critical mass.

Lots of people are unable to drive for totally valid reasons. Yet we don't throw away cars because only like 75% of the population can drive.

Any city old enough wasn't built around cars, because they didn't exist yet.

There, car infrastructure was built on what existed - not on a blank slate.

Likewise in the Netherlands bike infrastructure was built around what existed. Not on a blank slate.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o

Change is possible.

Not only is it not an either or, but you just have to look at other countries to see how a bike friendly increases quality of life for everyone. If able bodied people significantly rode more bikes, this means less congestion, more pedestrian friendly zones for disabled people to drive, park and move around.

What’s the alternative to moving away from cars? Let the people be fat and unhealthy in perpetuity, and hope that we invent an “exercise pill” some day that can save them?

Everyone needs to start moving more, and we can do it gradually. The people who are extremely unfit and can barely walk right now would benefit from some extra movement a lot.

It’s not like entire cities & towns go from “all cars” to “all walking and bikes” immediately. It’ll phase-in over like 20+ years. There will be slightly more opportunities to walk around each year, and it’ll get a little less convenient to drive to the shop that’s 1/4 mile away. The unfit will have plenty of time to adjust!

Those with physical mobility issues have tons of alternative solutions:

1) If fewer people drive, it’ll be easier for a disabled person to drive 2) Focusing on walking/biking ties naturally to expanded public transit, which is also better for the environment and better for people with disabilities, visually impaired, and elderly who shouldn’t be driving anyways 3) disabled and immobile-obese people can also benefit from cycling infrastructure — the Netherlands has tiny little electric mobility scooters which require a special “disability registration” to use (similar to disabled parking), which are able to use the bike infrastructure.

It sounds like you're arguing that we can't decide to change what our priorities are as a society because previous generations already made a decision for us. In the US the decision was made around 100 years ago to focus on cars and focus less on public transit because it's easier to make money selling cars. The most important policy consideration in the US is always 'will it produce more profit for the owning class'. So we developed infrastructure that forces us to rely on cars. Different priorities prompted different decisions in other countries. In the Netherlands 27% of all trips and 25% of trips to work are made by bike. There are still fat people (though fewer), old people, and disabled people there. But they have collectively decided that bikes are a good idea. They have winters there. It rains there. The only real argument against biking in the US is we don't have as much infrastructure built for it as other countries. And that's because we have decided not to have it. We can always change our minds and build it.

Are our cities designed the way they are because people are unfit for better forms of transit, or are people unfit for better forms of transit because of the way our cities designed?

Is your contention seriously that we're incapable of improving anything because design decisions that have been made in the past are now unchangeable? Nothing must ever change after it is built for the first time? It's impossible to nudge people towards better transit possibilities incrementally through more thoughtful design? What a ridiculous take.

> There are a lot of very fat people, old people, disabled people, and so forth who could not ride a bike half a mile.

Maybe many of them wouldn't be in that state if their normal day to day activities involved cardio?

Sure, some people health conditions have nothing to do with their exercise level. But having a lot of people who couldn't ride a bike half a mile is not the expectation. People can ride bikes until pretty advanced ages.

We can reserve cars and other transportation for people who actually can't use anything else.

All three of those populations, aside from the very obvious extremes, can in fact use bikes. The former two without many modifications, the third with some hefty ones.

Plenty of fat or elderly people can ride bikes, especially e-assist bikes. More people can ride bikes than can drive cars… 82M people don’t have drivers licenses in America.

In fact, it’s much more devastating for elderly people in America who can no longer drive due to poor eyesight when the only mode of transportation in a city is by car.

It wouldn’t take much investment (compared to pricy car infrastructure) to make many American cities bike friendly.

I think for mass adoption, most people (young/old/healthy/infirm/frail) would want enclosed bicycles that are still useful for protecting passengers and cargo from precipitation. Those with physical challenges would need electrified recumbent bicycles. But those would need to be high enough to be easily seen by motor vehicles.

Most people will also want climate control options (heat, A/C).This should be possible in the future but may require more battery cost than would be supported by acceptable prices at the moment.

How much would people pay for a highly-visible-to-pickup-truck-drivers recumbent bicycle which can safely go 45mph and has air conditioning? How much would this cost? At a hypothetical $8,000 I'd be tempted to just spend twice as much on a car so I can go on the highway.

Cars also get stolen a lot less than bicycles, so the extra $8,000 for a car might pay for itself if the proposed recumbent might get stolen once or twice.

I love bicycles, I want to be able to use them for my commute. But I think to make that happen we need to focus on broadly-acceptable solutions rather than pipe dreams.

How many random people I see on the street could get around on a bicycle? Probably all of them. Where I live, most of them actually did. Of course: I live in the Netherlands.

Fat people: Most people aren't super-fat, though those that are ... do ride bikes.

Skinny people: Not a problem

Old people: Often use an E-bike. Although I've seen 80 year olds riding without assistance just fine. (And beating me to my destination besides)

Young People: Get kicked outside by their Moms in the morning, rain or wind or snow. "Kids are not the wicked witch of the west, you won't melt. Now get to school young man/lady/other , and don't let me get a call from the headmaster saying you were late!"

Disabled people: There are many ways to modify bikes for diverse disabilities (including pedalling with hands, having 3 or 4 wheels, etc).

Me? I actually drive a car a lot. I like driving, I need to travel long distances, and where I live the car infrastructure is pretty decent too. And most drivers are pretty good, because people who don't want to drive don't have to.

Sounds like cars should be the exception rather than the norm.

Go to a shopping center, or a sporting event, or any other place where people publicly gather en masse and ask yourself how many of them could realistically get around on foot.

There are a lot of very fat people, old people, disabled people, and so forth who could not walk for half a mile.

Is walking now an utopia?

>We aren't going to rebuild our cities around bikes, and even if we did, a large number of people could not use them. On the other hand, we already built our cities around cars, and self-driving cars would fit right in (if they actually worked).

And also we aren't going to magically reverse Type 1 Diabetes, but that doesn't mean everyone who doesn't have it shouldn't have a decent diet instead and instead eat like pigs and then get hooked on pills until the day they die.

It's sort of funny that the very reason you cannot get to most of these places by walking or by bicycle is because of the massive seas of concrete that have been built for "convenience".

And then you need to walk across them anyway, even if you drive.

To the response below as to why don't people don't invest energy to reply, I'd reckon it's because comments can be intellectually inconsistent within their own framing constantly here & sometimes you'd wish the original person took a bit more effort into examining the implications of what they're saying.

The contention that thinking societies could incentivize and build towards decreased reliance on car infrastructure and that bikes can have a serious role in that is 'utopian nonsense' is obviously entrenched in some 'nothing can ever change' mentality. Yet, interestingly, the point also highlighted that things that have cemented themselves in societies that are maladaptive or wrong have come about for bad reasons 100 years ago. It's almost as if those advocating for making better decisions in society today are acknowledging the previous bad decisions and working towards making better ones now, so that the actual conditions in societies 100 years from now is an improvement, y'anno, not pretending they have a magical history reversing wand to rewrite the past.

Guess what, there are even US cities in which a good proportion of the people at the store could have certainly biked, if the future came with dedicated infrastructure and incentivization making it easier to do so over the years. The above doesn't address that, or e-cargo bikes, or the increased mobility that ebikes provide to those that struggle due to physical limitations. I became fit by biking after a lifetime of not being so. Had you looked at me in the hypothetical crowd of incapable of ever biking, you'd make the incorrect assessment of what is possible for the future. And what of people gradually getting more exercise that are able to bike or ebike? who is saying disabled people must bike, rather than we should incentivize those that can, make it easier for all, and have public transit whenever possible. When I had issues for a period that made biking hard, I eventually got a homebuilt ebike for $600 which restored a lot of my freedom and enjoyment, and eventually made it so it was easier to bike unassisted again.

Believing we exist in some optimally selected world in which the market or some other magical force has made everything exactly the way it is for a reason and that we have no say in the matter is a pretty prevalent viewpoint around here. It's almost absorbed as naturalistic in people's brains, rather than reflecting as to what immense past and continued vested interests are at play in cementing the sales of large, expensive vehicles to every individual as our only 'utopian solution' to the future of transit or climate crises.

> a lot of very fat people, old people, disabled people, and so forth who could not ride a bike half a mile.

Fat tire e-bikes can support fat people and it's not an engineering impossibility to make bikes for fat people (it's largely market driven AFAIK). old people in many other countries routinely use e-bikes as they require very little effort. No, everyone on the planet can't ride a bike, but the vast majority of people who drive are capable of riding an ebike.

Of course, there may be fewer fat people if it were possible for ordinary people to run errands around the neighborhood on a bicycle. Go to Amsterdam and take a look around.

"There are a lot of very fat people, "

This may be a consequence of building everything in a car-centric way.

Fat and old people can use bikes, actually! Bikes are actually better than walking in many instances, because bikes reduce strain on joints (whether from weight or arthritis). An average bike can carry up to 275-300 lbs, and a specialized bike can carry up to 500.

Sure they could. There are bikes made specifically for obese and elderly people.

If you prefer driving your car, that's fine, but don't pretend that biking is somehow reserved for young fit people, that's simply not true.

Go to any northern European city and see for yourself.

I think the bikes and the very fat people are a self-solving problem there.

>and even if we did, a large number of people could not use them.

Few people were riding bikes in the Netherlands too, before investments were made to switch to a more sustainable and human system.

This, but also just ordinary, perfectly healthy people too - who are just not young single people.

My litmus test is: Will this work for one parent, with two kids, and three bags of groceries. That description loosely fits a LOT of people!

Cars provide an incredible amount of liberty, flexibility and autonomy. You go where you want, when you want, you can bring whatever you want, and for the most part you don't have to answer to anybody else about it.

Clearly there are alternatives in some cases. Many people who own cars also own bikes and take trains and buses when it makes sense to do so.

Somehow we can imagine a world with low-pressure hyperloops and self-driving electric car swarms, but our creativity with bikes ends with 2 wheels and a rod ? Bikes are about space and ease first. At its very core, a bike is a small & slow people mover on wheels. That's it.

Disabled -> Electric wheelchairs are basically bike already [1]

Have things -> Delivery bikes [2]

Old people -> Yep, the ones that absolutely should not be driving? Old people use electrified bikes just fine in walmarts around the country. Same applies for obese people. [3]

Electric bikes of different shapes and sizes are completely redefining the usability of a bike. Most importantly, bikes are the last piece of a public transportation puzzle. They solve many of the last mile problems and force urban planning to be dense and walkable. This provides many additional benefits for accessibility. Walkable/ transit-based areas allow vision impaired people to independent. Bikes lead to many more smooth ramps that naturally accommodate movement impaired folks on wheels.

___________

> Society is not a blank slate, and we don't get to start over from scratch

Given that America literally destroyed cities and moved mountains to make the car-centric cities that we have today, your statement is demonstrably untrue. Le Corbusier's Paris almost happened and

America's biggest problems today are aging & crumbling infrastructure (owing to unsustainable building [4]) and low supply of housing. The nation is overdue for new economically-sustainable infrastructure and needs more space for housing. Guess what the most natural solution is ? -> Densification. (infrastructure costs shared over more people, allows for more housing when space is at a premium) Biking comes out as a natural side-effect of dense spaces.

It is also a little ironic that you name lack of accessibility, safety & obesity as big problems, without realizing how cars have been at the center of facilitating that very problem.

> aren't going to rebuild our cities around bikes

No one is asking for this straw man. The goal is to integrate into the existing fabric of cities. Building bike infrastructure has shown to reduce traffic and make it easier for those who NEED cars to continue using them. Bike infrastructure is the cheapest of all major forms of transportation infrastructure.

The fact that cities as dense as NYC have pathetic biking infrastructure is a testament to just how far behind America is on accommodating humans within its cities. We aren't talking about rebuilding Phoenix. This is about making biking a viable option for the densest of American cities. ___________

[1] https://image.made-in-china.com/155f0j00JvfYuGpRmTbU/New-Mod...

[2] https://ferlabikes.com/delivery-cargo-bikes

[3] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0026/0030/4684/products/im...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

I’d much rather people who disagree with this point of view dissect it in a reply than reflexively downvote. I personally disagree with twblalock’s conclusions but acting like path dependency isn’t a powerful force reminds me of the kids who stick their fingers in their ear whilst shouting “I can’t hear you!”.

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