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Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

Read on - what they were really afraid of was the dirty/smelly poors coming onto their precious island.

You see the same BS with bike paths through residential neighborhoods. Despite studies showing that bike paths increase property values, residents bitch and moan about safety/crime. They basically figure that poor/non-white people will bike into their neighborhood and rape/pillage/burn everything.

So you get a bunch of environmental concern-trolls funded by wealthy people who don't want to admit that, really, it's about race/class.

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Heh, I was just trying to picture Some Puerto Rican Guy on a bike, cycling into rich white neighbourhoods.

https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Some_Puerto_Rican_Guy

The only criminals on a bike that I'm aware of are bicycle thieves.

> The only criminals on a bike that I'm aware of are bicycle thieves.

And, to be fair, it's only easy to identify them after it's too late.

How does that work? You steal a bike and ride both home? Wouldn't a van or being on foot be the better approach to stealing bikes?

Who said anything about them being on a bike before they'd stolen it?

> Despite studies showing that bike paths increase property values,

Citation needed. This is an extraordinary claim; you are going to need more than one single study done on a tiny sample with no control variables.

Is it really extraordinary or unbelievable? Easier access to infrastructure which is quiet and environmentally friendly should reasonably not decrease property values?

I would definitely be more interested in a property with bike infrastructure, although that is just one tiny sample with no control variables:)

> Is it really extraordinary or unbelievable? Easier access to infrastructure which is quiet and environmentally friendly should reasonably not decrease property values?

Well, yes, when you're talking about residential areas. Home owners don't want a wall of strangers around their home all the time - it makes it difficult to spot the ones with ill-intent.

I mean, if that wasn't true, homes in gated communities wouldn't be more expensive than standalone houses.

> I would definitely be more interested in a property with bike infrastructure, although that is just one tiny sample with no control variables:)

You'd think that (I certainly did), but the price for homes in gated communities are far far higher than the equivalent in non-gated.

Which is why I want to see this hypothetical study that shows that residential areas closed to non-residents are cheaper than residential areas open to the public.

Because, a simple look at home prices shows this to be wildly untrue.

I'm not sure how we've got from the claim the poster actually made about designated bike lanes improving property values [over regular street/sidewalk access to the property, and possibly highway-only access to town] to the almost entirely unrelated claim you've invented about the relative value of residential areas closed to non residents.

The majority of people do not live in gated communities and even gated communities have access routes outside the gates.

> I'm not sure how we've got from the claim the poster actually made about designated bike lanes improving property values [over regular street/sidewalk access to the property, and possibly highway-only access to town]

That wasn't the claim the poster made. The specific claim was that bike traffic through residential areas by non-residents increase the value of properties in that residential area.

>> Read on - what they were really afraid of was the dirty/smelly poors coming onto their precious island.

>> You see the same BS with bike paths through residential neighborhoods.

GP could not have been clearer in his implication that having public traffic pass through the residential area increases the value of that property in that area.

Which is complete nonsense when you look at residential property prices in area which has a through-flow for non-residents/the public and compare to areas which are effectively gated off for residents only.

Buying a house in an area that is limited to residents traffic only is damned expensive.

GP could not have been clearer that residents in somewhere that Maui, which is an island with a population of about 200k, were daft to object to the idea that easy connectivity to other islands because they were more worried about visitors from the neighbouring island than interested of the greater employment and commercial opportunities that connectivity brings. I'm not sure how you got "gated community" from that.

I'm not sure that your own implication that property prices are inversely proportional to the ease of commute to where all the people and jobs are is well evidenced by representative studies either. Even if the GP was talking about gated communities, which he wasn't, they're still usually nowhere near as expensive as being cycling distance from central San Francisco or London.

Also brings more foot traffic and possibility for crimes of opportunity and lowers the barrier to trespassing

That's a very very american way of thinking

> You see the same BS with bike paths through residential neighborhoods.

I'd invite you to take a look at the Springwater Corridor in Portland. It is plausible that ubiquitous bike paths would not have the same problem, but it is difficult to fault someone for taking one look at that disaster and wanting it to come to their own quiet neighborhood.

> Despite studies showing that bike paths increase property values

Except that these studies are rather suspect and/or very narrow.

The situation for actual residential neighborhoods is at most unclear.

Crime does seem to center around heavily developed public transit corridors, but it is difficult to tell if economic or transit accessibility are the primary drivers of increased crime (probably a bit of both).

I'm not saying _anything_ about crime. I'm disputing the assertion that bike lanes inevitably increase property value.

One case where they don't would be commercial roads with small shops that rely on street parking. But the comment you're responding to was talking about residential, and I haven't seen enough dispositive data on that one way or another. Like anything, it's probably a mixed bag.

Nope. There too. It turns out that foot traffic and bike traffic do a lot more for small shops than cars do (because drivers go fast enough that they don't pay attention to 90% of the small shops).

This would really be relative to what kinds of shops, and the layout of the street parking (if any) after the bike lane is put in place. You're assuming that bike traffic is sufficient to make up for car traffic. But if it's a market, a bicyclist or pedestrian might only buy one bag worth of goods, while someone driving up with a car might be there to buy three. Similarly, you're assuming there's increased foot traffic; but the foot traffic doesn't increase just because parking is replaced with a bike lane, so that's basically static.

> Nope. There too.

Yep, there too not.

Evidence for bike lanes in the US comes from very methodologically suspicious studies (e.g. the Portland State one) that were heavily influenced by hyper-local effects and neglected to look at nearby businesses.

Some of the more honest studies found the opposite effect. E.g. the LA study has shown that the non-sabotaged section had more revenue growth than the road-sabotaged section.

There are also clear cases of bike lanes destroying businesses: https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2022/dec/26/stringers-46...

I'm an anti-bike activist. Bike lanes work only in _very_ narrow cases:

1. In densified hellscape cities, like Manhattan, where normal traffic is simply impossible.

2. In small tourist destination towns.

3. On university campuses and around them.

And that's pretty much it.

Not bike lanes, bike paths

Really? My street was recently turned into a greenway / bike street, and it's brought me nothing but an endless bike parade of smug white people in silly clothing. Just a couple hours ago, I was having to get my car towed and the tow driver was 3/4 into turning slowly back into the street when two women on bikes zoomed right in front of him, causing him to slam the brakes. One of them then shouted "Thank you!" over her shoulder. I can barely open my car door without some sanctimonious guy in spandex flying by and screaming at me.

What's wrong with being white or wearing silly clothing?

Nothing. At least half the people I know fit that category. I was just bringing it up as a counterpoint to the "poor/non-white" statement by the parent comment.

Hmmm. I think the point was that NIMBYs fight bike lanes because they’re concerned about what they could bring.

Which, as the comment stated is not at all what bike lanes actually deliver (higher property values, white folks in silly clothes).

>endless bike parade

This would be the first time im hearing about something like this. It sounds like the bike path was very successful.

Do you have more information?

Portland, Oregon. Home of the timid and the passive-aggressive.

Lmao, that's the worst of it? A guy had to brake sharply once? And people were polite to him afterwards? The utter tragedy.

I'll trade you streets and you can deal with the 3 dead kids from traffic incidents over the last 5 years

Sadly, whingeing narcissists and traffic accidents aren't mutually exclusive where I live. I guess we all have to live with idiots wherever we are.

Lots of folks on your street are getting around town with zero emissions and you're moaning about that while talking about the troubles of fixing your polluting vehicle? Have you ever paused to think how inconsiderate it is to pollute the air people have to breath? I'll take smug white people in silly clothing over polluters any day.

> I can barely open my car door without some sanctimonious guy in spandex flying by and screaming at me.

You are supposed to yield to traffic when opening your car door into a lane. The "sanctimonious" cyclist is justifiably mad because you violated his right of way and placed him at risk of severe injury.

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