This is very true and frankly, if a city is going to make that kind of radical infrastructure investment, focusing primarily on bicycles is an odd choice since a significant portion of any urban population simply cannot ride a bike.
I’ve been struggling with obesity throughout my whole life (BMI of 46 at my high point which is damn high) and never been particularly fit, strong, or into sports.
I don’t have a car (though I could afford one) and go nearly everywhere by bike. Non-electric bike. My hometown (Dresden, Germany) is relatively – but not totally – flat in all the places you might want to get to. That certainly helps. (Though the nearly non-existent biking infrastructure – except for painted lines – certainly doesn’t. But Dresden is not terminally car-centric, so it’s alright to drive there by bike.)
I mean, just for moving around the city (usually around ten kilometer roundtrips, maybe the odd twenty kilometer roundtrip on the odd day where a more distant destination is where I want to get to) that just works for me without any problems, no matter how heavy I was. That doesn’t mean I go places at 30 km/h, in fact I might only go 15 km/h – but that’s still several times faster than walking and actually pretty competitive with cars and public transport.
And while walking got harder as I got heavier (mainly just in terms of causing pain after relatively short distances), while climbing stairs got much harder as I got heavier, biking (and swimming!) honestly never felt that way to me, at least not for normal roundtrip distances around ten kilometers or so.
I use bikes to get to places, to move throughout the world, not for sports. And for that you don’t need to that fit. And with an e-bike? That required fitness drops even lower. (Unfit seniors getting stuck somewhere in the alps with their rented e-bikes is a real classic …)
For comparison, far less than 94% of American adults have a license as of 2018[2].
And certainly, teenagers should count too -- having a bike opened up my world as a kid.
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-dont...
[2] https://www.statista.com/chart/18682/percentage-of-the-us-po...
Under 30% of adults ride bikes in a given year, and less then half of them even ride twice a month.
People don’t like bikes. They’re significantly more likely to injure you than a car (though more mildly, and probably a lot less likely to kill you if you’re riding somewhere designed for bikes and where there are no cars). They offer no protection from the elements. You have to wear a helmet and mess up your hair. Etc.
Adults just don’t want to bike everywhere when they could drive and billions in infrastructure won’t make that much different.
On the other hand, there are lots of reasons why adults who can drive don't want to drive. I have a license but I'd rather bike than drive and not have to deal with parking, gas costs, traffic, etc. Plus I get some exercise.
Look at places like Amsterdam where there has been serious effort in building bike infrastructure. People bike.
Are there reputable statistics that attest to this? I agree that your odds as the cyclist in a bicycle v auto accident aren't good, but driving is (statistically speaking) a pretty dangerous activity in its own right.
> They offer no protection from the elements. You have to wear a helmet and mess up your hair.
FWIW, this is also true of motorcycles, which aren't exactly a rarity in much of the rural US.
"So we’ll compare risk at both the 6.2 billion and 21 billion miles traveled levels.
784 cyclists died in 2005 (p. 86). That would make the death rate of 0.37 to 1.26 deaths per 10 million miles.
33,041 motorists/passengers died (p. 86) from 3 trillion miles traveled (p. 15), making their death rate 0.11 per 10 million miles traveled.
So cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile. Neither conclusion is very happy."
Motorcycles are about 30x more dangerous per mile than cars, for reference. I've seen it said that walking somewhere is also more dangerous per mile than driving, but I can't find a source for that.
The page links to a source which suggests cycling is much (6x) safer per hour than driving, which intuitively seems like a more reasonable measure of safety to me, but I'm unsure.
Put another way, cars kill people. Bicycles do not.
I try to use my e-bike whenever possible, but it's seasonal and dependent on destination and cargo (e.g., taking my cat to the vet when it's snowing? car! going to the gym or on a small grocery run in the spring? bike!). If I only had to use a car rarely, I might consider giving it up and renting as needed (like how I rent a uhaul van or pickup from Home Depot then ~1-2 times a year I need to haul a lot of cargo), but I'm a long way from that goal.
I'd love to bike everywhere, it just isn't safe unless the infrastructure to it is dedicated to making it so. Even if I'm wrong and its just a perception issue (IE, I'm uncomfortable with the narrowness of bike lanes with cars so close)
If we had wide dedicated bike lanes (some cities do this) and bike infrastructure, I'm all in. I'd bike everywhere I could. I hate owning a car. I hate driving. I hate anything to do with transportation where I am doing those things because I could either be enjoying the fresh air on my own (biking) or would like to move the responsibility to a true professional (public transport).
Because, however, in most cities in the US, public transport and bike infrastructure sucks, its the best option I have.
EDIT: Also, in the US, cars are a tax on the poor and lower middle class. Hell, even solidly middle class people would have way more quality of life if they didn't need to buy and maintain the stupid things for (essentially) your entire life. They're just stupid worthless to have day to day IMO
Poor people are much less likely to live close to where they work, so switching to bikes won’t help them. The people who want this bike infrastructure are far from poor.
Cars are not stupid and worthless. They’re expensive and the vast majority of the population owns and uses them every day, surely they have huge benefits. They are obvious to most people. They are not great for the environment but even if you magically got rid of them entirely we’d still be way over emissions targets.
> You’re going to bike to the restaurant in the rain or snow?
Yes, yes I am? Why would I not; I own clothes for being outside in bad weather. Those clothes and bike were cheaper than a car, so why would I not?
> You’re going to bike to work in the snow or when it’s really hot and you’ll show up there gross?
Also, yes? You know people used to have to walk to places of work before cars, right? And while cars allow us to not experience any of those mild annoyances in exchange for huge sums of money, most economically minded people would rather be a bit sweaty than pay an extra pile of money for a car.
The amount of parking alone that is required at virtually every destination (and generally far in excess of actual parking demand) is the key culprit. But massive amounts of space dedicated to wide roads and highways also contribute.
This space dedicated to cars increases distances between everything and actively makes other transportation methods less convenient.
>Poor people are much less likely to live close to where they work, so switching to bikes won’t help them. The people who want this bike infrastructure are far from poor.
Poor people who are spending lots of money and time on public transit could substantially benefit from a low cost, point to point transportation system. Especially if their commute distances could be lowered in a less car dependent society.
People don't like cycling within the current infrastructure. Not only would most bikes have to share the road with vehicles (and semis!), but car dependency creates vast distances to traverse - massive parking lots, wide roads, highways, etc.
That's not true.
Sure, in some areas the population is very unfit. But that's a problem that bikes can help with.
If you look at areas that are very bike friendly, most of the population will bike. Even the elderly.
How so? People who are physically unable to are a vanishingly small number - maybe single-digit percentages.
The US has the needed infrastructure, converting to an elite bike lane network is incredibly cheap. In fact it saves a huge amount of money.
Far less costly accidents, healthier people, better business in the city, higher property rights and so on.
This has been proven over and over again. Its just in the US where even liberals seem to just buy the car industry marketing hook, line, and sinker.
It has been proven also, that once there is safe bicycle infrastructure, people will bike. And most people can bike just fine. In fact, because children can actually bike, its actually more accessible to the population then cars. There are even these people, they are called poor people, that also might have a bike but not a car.
At some point people have to break out of it and think about these things with logic and consider the last 30 years of evidence, rather then 1960s propaganda.