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Comment by jdminhbg | Hacker News Reader

> I'm always surprised how emotional people get when dealing with anything that might challenge car supremacy.

People don't think "car supremacy is being challenged," they think "my commute is annoying already and now it's about to get a lot more annoying."

I like bike infrastructure and use it frequently and I'm way closer to the yuppie-urbanist edge of the spectrum, but it's important to understand where people are coming from if you want to sell it to them democratically. "Car supremacy is being challenged" sounds to them like "fuck you and how you get around town," and it's unsurprising they react emotionally to that.

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Also when no working alternative is being offered. Just shutting down car access and offering a bike is difficult to swallow. Add to that a workable public transport network and we may talk. Some people love to drive but having the option to sip your coffee and read the news in a not-overcrowded bus going from across your street to the office building with say only one change in the same time driving requires, is an option quite difficult to beat.

> Some people love to drive but having the option to sip your coffee and read the news in a not-overcrowded bus going from across your street to the office building with say only one change in the same time driving requires,

I don't believe anywhere with mass transit offers this kind of experience during commute hours.

I think this is a fairy tale story about transit that just plain does not and cannot exist for a meaningful amount of time, especially as cities become more and more densely populated.

London UK and a bunch of other European cities have this. Not sure where you got this idea.

No, not really. Public transit is almost always slower than driving[0]. It's just nicer if you can sit and read instead of having to drive.

[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61077-0

This was basically my experience on the Google bus. Probably it’s only feasible when you have well-behaved riders (even the toilet was clean) and you don’t cheap out on capacity.

I've experienced nice commute trips on busses in multiple US cities.

Maybe places you've lived haven't had nice transit or you didn't live in a good place to take advantage of it, but I promise it's out there. It's just hugely underfunded and struggling because of all the concessions we've made to private vehicle ownership.

I ride a public bus from oakland across to SF a couple mornings a week (used to be every morning before covid) and that trip is basically like this. 3/4 full bus, no one standing, good cell coverage most of the way.

The trip home was always way more full though.

Well welcome to the world outside the us. I take the bus in front of my house, take a seat to the train station and read the news while munching a banana, take the commuter train where I can work on my laptop for half an hour, walk 10 minutes (or take another bus) to the office and all in less time than I'd need to drive. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, it's just reality.

... but these studies aren't on "shutting down car access" and converting to _only_ bike and pedestrian access. Adding a bike lane still allows cars, just not on that narrow strip of pavement. Frankly, it's not even eroding "car supremacy" in that in urban streets with bike lanes, cars will still take up the majority of the street.

I think we need to start talking about how dedicated bike lanes can benefit _drivers_:

- more people getting around by bike (b/c it feels safe) means fewer cars in front of you

- absence of dedicated / protected bike lanes pushes bikes (and ebikes, scooters) etc into the main part of traffic, which can slow down traffic overall, and makes driving more stressful (b/c drivers have to watch for these). Creating bike infrastructure gives them a safe place to go that isn't directly in front of your car.

- more people arriving to a destination by bike/scooter/whatever means less competition in that area for the street parking that does exist

"Just shutting down car access and offering a bike is difficult to swallow."

Is anyone suggesting that?

"Car supremacy is being challenged" sounds to them like "fuck you and how you get around town," and it's unsurprising they react emotionally to that.

Assuming it is a personal attack is not rational though.

According to the article, there are apparently 40 years of studies showing these business owners that bike lanes are good for business. Business owners are usually trying to make good business. What other selling points do they need?

I think the frustrating part is that if less people were driving there would be less traffic. Bike lanes won't change the equation as heavily but mass transit sure would.

From the areas I've lived in, the same people pushing for limiting cars, more bikes are also anti-growth when it comes to housing. Like yeah I'd ride a bike if I lived a mile or two from the office but I can't afford that so have some understanding on the less privileged.

A mile or two? A typical rider can comfortably cover 10km in 30 minutes without very much exertion if it's not particularly hilly.

If you widen the number of people who can bike, you are more likely to include slower cyclists.

A typical urban cyclist in the Netherlands ("not particularly hilly") averages about 15 km/hour. https://holland-cycling.com/blog/260-amsterdam-has-slowest-c... .

Okay, in much of the US even 6 miles from office is still too expensive to live. Point being in the US, many bike and transit activists are also NIMBYs. Good for Europe that it's not that way.

In the area I live, there's a lot of overlap between urbanists and cycling. Cycling is a great complement to to urban, car-free lifestyles.

I can picture a spandex-wearing boomer that likes to hitch his bike to the back of a car and drive several miles away to a recreational bike trail for exercise, then drive home as being a NIMBY. I think that's a totally different kind of person, though, than someone who wants to commute to work and pick up groceries using their bike instead of a car, though. And to be fair, a lot cycling has historically been catering to the spandex recreational cyclists.

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