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Comment by larve | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand take that this is not possible due to disabled people, winter, hills. Climate and city planning is an incremental problem. Just 2 new bike lanes significantly change the way I am able to commute, even far into the winter, and when it’s raining or snowing I switch to car or public transport. I live in a reasonably bike friendly city for us standards, and it’s clear that some overhauls have made the road much more efficient for cars themselves, pedestrians don’t stray out nearly as much into the road, as did the consolidation of parking spots into parking lots. Just go see some European cities for how not only public transport, biking and a more modern street layout make life better for almost everyone.

For disabled people, having dedicated parking spots as well as a pedestrian friendly street layout makes life easier than having to navigate a busy street.

Make the city better for bike doesn’t mean making it hell for cars.

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There are also lots of options for disabled folks that aren't all the way to a car. My wife and I bike around our city daily, and there are plenty of disabled folks zooming around on all manner of mobility devices, in the bike lane, on sidewalks, at similar speeds to bikes. I'd argue that making a city more bike friendly also makes it more friendly to these types of mobility devices as well. It seems that these two things, bike friendliness and disabled friendliness have the same needs of our infrastructure.

My belief is that the same carbrains pushing the "what about the disabled" argument are the same people parking their huge SUV illegally on the sidewalk, blocking wheelchairs from passing..

> Make the city better for bike doesn’t mean making it hell for cars.

It doesn’t, but it does mean that you can’t dedicate 100% of street space and 75% of space for businesses to cars. And some drivers seem to interpret losing any sliver of their dominance over the streets as “hell for cars,” making this a tough battle.

The opposite is true of course.

Bike lanes and pedestrian sidewalks can transport more people per minute than the car lane(s).

So if/when you do need to use a car, you'll actually find less people in your way.

Yep. If everyone’s only reasonable option for getting around is to drive, then everyone will drive, and there will be a lot of cars on the road.

> making this a tough battle.

well, they have some strong arguments.

In my Country cars are worth 77 billion euros in taxes every year.

If my country was a free market utopia like US, people would be screaming that they paid for those roads and it's their right to use them exclusively.

Bikes aren't worth that much, unfortunately.

Its not so simple as “I paid I, so I do what I want”.

Are roads funded exclusively from tax collected from car taxes? Aren’t bicycle and public transport users also funding roads also? Even if indirectly, by going to a shop that use those roads for supplies.

As far as I heard, roads cost a LOT to maintain (and more to build). 77 billion might be a small bucket in the ocean depending on the country.

This is public space, your freedom to drive a car impacts my commute time by bus.

Cars also cause a lot more road wear than bikes do, and they require a lot more road surface area than bikes. It makes perfect sense that car users pay for the majority of road maintenance.

cities are already hell for cars.

This is a piece I don't know how to explain coherently - cities function _as poorly_ for passenger vehicles as they do for bicyclists.

Tons of queueing time, low reliability, noise, hassle, expense, lack of perception of progress.

I think a good city engineer would:

1. start gathering benchmarks for travel time by mode across the city, at various times of day. 2. Start counting intersection vehicle through-put 3. Start counting intersection "vehicle dwell time" (an intersection that has 15 cars stopped waiting for a light to change is wasting an incredible amount of time)

And then with this data, start modifying how the intersections are laid out, run experiments. There's 50 things someone could experiment with, some of which would be worth retaining and expanding.

American traffic 'planning' is so boring and so openly ineffective. It's a traumatizing institution to be a part of, if you have a sense of awareness and responsibility and agency.

Yet another video from NJB on this topic.

https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k?t=402

Chuck Marohn measured his average speed at rush hour, and found it was about 16km/h ... So despite the roads having a speed limit of 50 km/h or more, his average speed was less than 16, because of all the traffic lights. And this was in a tiny town of only 14,000 people. Incidentally, 16 km/h is the average speed of a cyclist in Amsterdam

> So despite the roads having a speed limit of 50 km/h or more, his average speed was less than 16, because of all the traffic lights.

> Incidentally, 16 km/h is the average speed of a cyclist in Amsterdam

Unfortunately this only says that removing traffic lights would drive cars' average speed up and many bikers aren't actually stopping at traffic lights.

Maybe average speed is not that important as a metric and we should not optimize for it.

I would prefer a 15km/h average speed for cars, but to avoid any intersections with other users and flow interruptions: people should not cross streets, they should pass over them on bridges.

Crossroads should not exist, only roundabouts.

Etc.

Anyway, in most of Amsterdam the average speed of cars is between 15 and 30km/h [1], while bikes on average go at 14.9km/h.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-average-traffic-s...

> removing traffic lights would drive cars' average speed up

My gut feeling is that the "coordination cost" of big heavy cars needs to be paid one way or another.

You can reduce the coordination needed, sure, but the car-centric design of North America cities requires a lot of it.

> many bikers aren't actually stopping at traffic lights

I jump the light as much as I jaywalk - only when I have looked both ways and am sure of the safety.

It probably come out wrong.

what I meant whit this

> removing traffic lights would drive cars' average speed up

is that knowing that cars are slow because there are a lot of traffic lights to stop at, it's not very helpful.

The only thing that we can logically conclude with that information is that traffic lights take down average speed.

On the other hand, being bikes' top speeds much lower than cars and being subject at the same traffic lights, the only thing that we can conclude is that they don't stop at traffic lights as much or they pass cars stuck in traffic, even if it's probably forbidden.

Which is okay, everybody does that, but, again, not very helpful.

It only says that bikes don't respect every traffic laws in the book.

Not a big deal, but we can't use that information to optimize traffic.

The video is actually comparing cars on a main road in London (Ontario) with bicycles in Amsterdam (North Holland). NJB is humorously pointing out that the traffic design in London is so inefficient, that Amsterdam bikers actually have comparable performance to London cars (qua average speed).

> and many bikers aren't actually stopping at traffic lights.

It is not because of this, but because Amsterdam created entirely separate bicycle routes that have grease separated intersections with main roads for cars. So they simply don't have as many traffic lights for bikes because of that. Also, even if the are traffic lights they're much smarter at adapting to traffic and have much faster phases than in America.

> avoid any intersections with other users and flow interruptions: people should not cross streets, they should pass over them on bridges.

No, the cars should be the ones going over bridges or through tunnels. Doing it the other way around is prioritizing cars and dehumanizing pedestrians and cyclists.

I average 20-25km/h on an electric-assist bike in San Francisco (because my commute happens to have dedicated bike lanes the whole way along the bay). Would be much slower if I had to dodge vehicles.

I understand there are a lot of documents and papers on this in the Netherlands, since they have been measuring and experimenting for over half a century now. They don't just count vehicles, but also persons. If you're in government, maybe also see if you can contact the dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat). https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/en

Our city converts street lanes into bike only lanes like crazy. All under the guise of keeping carbon emissions down. With the result that still no one is using the bike lanes and the traffic is now more condensed and way worse on the remaining car lanes.

Bikes sound so good if you live somewhere with an eternal summer (or spring) and where it never rains or snows or gets below 20 C.

You make it sound like it’s impossible to bike in less-than-perfect weather. Which is false. Makes me think you haven’t really tried to use all those new shiny bike lanes.

Bikes are recreational vehicles. I wouldn't ever swap my car for a bike.

You’re wrong on the first take and entitled to your choices on the second - to each their own.

It would certainly take some time for the cultural shift and all weather cycling gear investments to take place.

I bike all-year around here in Norway. Studdes tires feels even safer than walking. And on mornings after a big snow storm cars are stuck everywhere while I zoom past on my bike.

I went to high school in a country where 20C during school season would be exceptional, and where there is a lot of rain.

Bicycle was mandatory, and actually pretty useful: it's a great form of transport to get around on when you're a teenager!

How does your city accomplish this politically? Sounds impossible to fight the masses if they aren't even using the bike lanes...

Car-dependent Americans have such myopic vision that they can't see that investment to improve cycling and mass transit infrastructure actually improves the driving experience dramatically.

From my grandparents village to the district capital in a Portuguese countryside region, there is a bus coming twice a day, once in each direction.

If you don't want to lose a whole day just to go to town, either own a car or better be wealthy enough to pay for a 20km taxi ride (X2).

Most people won't cycle in a mountain region where temperatures in August are 40° C on average, nor do they possess the health to do so.

Plenty of European regions are just as deplected of good city with wonderful public transport networks, specially on the southern countries where the people love to spend their vacations and end up renting cars if they actually want to move around in a timely manner.

There are also a lot of disabled people that have a hard time walking or using public transport, because of steps, need to sit down and stand up, etc. But with the right bike it's much easier for them to move through the city. So even there the bike infrastructur is an enabler for disabled people. Don't force them into cars.

Also worth noting that many disabled people cannot drive due to their disabilities.

Right but the argument is that it’s not worth investing a lot of dedicated space for a mode of transportation that’s only usable for part of the year, by a subset of the population, and actually utilized by a so few people that you could argue that nobody bikes and after rounding be correct.

My city is approaching it differently, instead of bike lanes they are just adding significantly more sidewalk and marking the left side as where bikes should ride. The sidewalk can be fully utilized by everyone all of the time. During big crowded events it’s just sidewalk.

Your first paragraph sounds like you're talking about cars. That's the mode of transportation only a subset of people can use!

Young people, old people, poor people, some disabled people etc can't drive. Many more can bike, especially with el assistance / tri-wheels.

> Your first paragraph sounds like you're talking about cars.

Every single person no matter how old, poor, or disabled can utilize roads meant for vehicles year round. There is no "public transportation" for bike lanes.

Every single person no matter how old, poor, or disabled can utilize sidewalks even if that means assistive devices like wheelchairs.

This is not true of bike lanes at all. My grandmother even with a try-wheel and fully electric would still be unable to use the bike lane. People seem to forget that one of the ways people can become disabled as they age is balance.

Infrastructure that accommodates bikes is a good thing, dedicated infrastructure for them isn't.

Dedicated bike infrastructure is good, because if more people cycle it leaves more room for those disabled that need their car. So being so anxious about providing for them, you surely agree that we should do that and also ban other cars from the roads to make it even easier for them. Right?

That “if more people cycle” is carrying a lot of weight and even accepting the premise it’s still no because more road and more cyclists on them makes more room for cars. Bikes on the road condense but a dedicated lane is a fixed size whether it’s utilized or not.

dae if you really cared about the disabled you would hunt the abled for sport isn’t an argument. Providing for the disabled is making accommodations. Blanketing a city with dedicated infrastructure that in practice is inaccessible to people who aren’t young, somewhat in shape, and abled is silly — that takes away space from the abled. And trust me I’m not weaponizing the disabled, it’s entirely selfish of me because with 100% certainty in my lifetime I will be disabled temporarily from injury and permanently from age.

Ban cars entirely for all I care, I’ll fully support you turning city centers into pedestrian only areas with scooters and small electric golf carts for those limited mobility. Even in a world entirely without cars bikes lanes are still dumb.

> Even in a world entirely without cars bikes lanes are still dumb.

The bicycle hate runs deep. Why?

Dedicated bike infrastructure also reduces conflicts with pedestrians. Often better to have two separate ways, than one big with everyone intermingled. If you are unable to even comprehend that, I question your bias in this.

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