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Switzerland recently decided to stop German trains on one of their line, because it was too unreliable and was making local trains late.
We have it easier as a large country, and we still do the dumbest short-term thinking thing.
Public funding per citizen per year: - Germany: ~200€ (2013, so 250€ with inflation) https://www.bmuv.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Pools/Forschungsdate... - Switzerland: ~750€ (2024) https://switzerlandtimes.ch/swiss-public-transport-revenues-...
So you have a third of the money, and about half the population density.
https://press.siemens.com/global/en/pressrelease/germanys-mo...
Owning a car isn't the problem, of course, but the excess importance attached to the car through decades of conditioning and cultural reinforcement has made the car something of a religious symbol in the American religion.
Similar reasons stand behind gun ownership, something the Left consistently fails to grasp. Some trace this to the myth surrounding the frontiersman Daniel Boone who, interestingly enough, was a Quaker. The firearm is an instrument of self-sufficiency and protection, of being able to face the frontier without fear. It, too, is bound up with American sensibilities regarding masculinity. Restrictions on gun ownership and regulations around gun acquisition, however mild and sensible, are predictably seen as attacks on the aforementioned.
Most people, and that includes most people here, are awful at examining their sense of normality, not to undermine it, but to know what they're standing on, to know how it is justified and if it is justified, and so on. Many political conflicts, especially today, are rooted in a failure to understand the true source of disagreement, which often lies in presuppositions n layers deep.
"It's why even modest and sensible restrictions around car traffic are met with such violent opposition."
It's often not opposition to the restrictions, but the low quality of the alternative being offered.
"Restrictions on gun ownership and regulations around gun acquisition, however mild and sensible, are predictably seen as attacks on the aforementioned."
It might not be as simple as you make it out to be. It's also possible that what one person thinks is sensible is not in fact sensible, but rather a political play. The Overton window is real. It's a well know political play to make an unwanted thing legally risky or burdensome to push people out of doing it. This is used by both sides on a variety of issues - guns, abortions, etc. That's why those sorts of topics have some many roundabout laws trying to make things deemed legal/protected too difficult for a normal person to want to pursue.
I do agree on your last paragraph though.
Why not take a bike ride to the train and then ride the train in? People wanting autopilot driving cars....that's literally what a train does, complete with wifi.
Sorry they’re too busy freaking out and conspiracy-posting over 15mn cities.
The throughput of a single cycle lane is insane
You'll quickly figure out that if they just took one lane away from cars to give it to the bikes, and did so all over your city, that'd equate in throughput 3+ car lanes magically getting added to every road in your city (by removing cars that you wouldn't get stuck behind, and wouldn't occupy your parking spaces)
And you don't even need to add lanes, you just build concrete separators and take lanes from cars
The best thing you can do if you want to drive is to enable others to not drive
And that includes sharing the road and not being a NIMBY about the damn bike lanes.
On the other hand the throughput of public transport is good almost everywhere I have lived is reasonable, and in many places very high, especially at peak times. One bus carries as many people as a very large number of cars, one train carries far more.
yes, sometimes they run empty, but not at the times the roads are congested.
Most places only do a few of these.
We don't care about shading either, and we'll happily bike in the snow
There's 3 things that matter; safety, what mode of transport is the fastest to get me to my destination (where I live, that's mostly cycling), and cost (of owning & using the mode of transport)
You just focus on making as many cycle lanes as you can first, and make sure they're good so that they're used. Cycling should always have the more direct itinerary available. Separate them from cars with bollards and pay attention to how the dutch handle intersections and you'll get 95% of the way there without planting trees for shade or building repair stations
It is very difficult to fit into existing urban areas. If you narrow streets but the alternative does not work, then you worsen pollution by increasing congestion.
Effort matters too - cycling is more viable somewhere flat.
I live off a main road into a town with a wide cycle path separated from cars. The town has slow moving traffic and seems a reasonable place to cycle. The cycle lane is still lightly used.
I usually walk into town. I only use the car for shopping or longer journeys (I do less than 3k miles/year). For me cycling has a very narrow potential use case - if its too far to walk, and close enough to cycle, and I do not need the luggage space of a car.
>I live off a main road into a town with a wide cycle path separated from cars. The town has slow moving traffic and seems a reasonable place to cycle. The cycle lane is still lightly used.
I'd have to see a streetview of it but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a lone bikelane with no real network around it to support its use
It's not enough to have just one lane that's safe, people won't bike unless they can find a whole itinerary where they don't risk getting flattened by an F-150
>Effort matters too - cycling is more viable somewhere flat.
And somewhere sunny, and somewhere dry, the fact is, people cycle in Finland yet they don't in Canada because it's not safe
We have electric bikes now so slopes are even less of an issue than they were previously
>For me cycling has a very narrow potential use case - if its too far to walk, and close enough to cycle, and I do not need the luggage space of a car.
Tell that to all those people in Amsterdam who don't even bother to get a driving license
London and Paris for example: [1], [2].
> Effort matters too
Nothing except for safety and distance matters actually. Every other factor is minor. You just need to make cycling appear safe to the average person living in a city.
The solution to that is obvious once you realize cars are the source of the unsafety.
London: mostly projections that it will increase. If you look at the graph on page 14 the actual growth and the absolute numbers are small. Tiny compared to the tube:
https://madeby.tfl.gov.uk/2019/07/29/tube-trivia-and-facts/
A little over 5m person kilometres travelled compared to 84m. The proportion of total travel (with car, bus, tram etc.) will be a lot lower. Huge expense (esp taking land use into account, and side effects such as making cars more polluting by increasing congestion) it does not look like a success to me.
> Nothing except for safety and distance matters actually. Every other factor is minor. You just need to make cycling appear safe to the average person living in a city.
Tell that to an unfit or elderly person trying to cycle uphill, or people with kids.
Why tell them anything? Having more options is not going to stop them from driving.
They have elderly people and kids in the netherlands.
When you oppose alternative modes of transportation, what do you tell:
* The elderly
* Kids (that half of the sentence when you mentioned "people with kids")
* People with disabilities like spatial awareness, mental disabilities etc
* People with other disabilities who would LOVE a cycle lane for their motorized wheelchairs
* People who just aren't good at the wheel and who (thankfully) can't pass the driving test
For them it's not a small drop in convenience, it's their whole life.
"tell that to..." really doesn't go in the direction you think it goes.
Driving is not an "accessible" form of transportation, and it's most likely one of the first things that could get taken away from you by a life event.
It's not the right approach to start worrying about a slight decrease in convenience for those who somehow got a life event that'll allow them to drive, but not walk, use a wheelchair or bike.
Bike trails in the US that are fully separate from traffic are very commonly used. Trails that do road sharing at some parts are not.
I am in the happy medium where I can just as well bike or drive to work. It takes 2x to 3x as long (latency) to bicycle than to drive. Aside of slower speed, numerous latencies add up along the way - I can't time bicycling to hit green wave; I require brief but measurable time to dress into bicycling clothes and then to change at the destination, to park & lock the bicycle - nowhere near as quick as clicking the car's remote!. I know both modes, and while bicycling is better for my health and likely has higher throughput along my route, it certainly has higher latency. Which is the OG subject.
Lastly there's matter of variability: between occasional flat tire, the rare drained headlight battery, and other uncommon issues, my bicycle is significantly less reliable than my car. And that's in spite of heavy, and ongoing, investment into the bicycle - including well known puncture-resistant tires. This unreliability adds non-trivial variability to the latency.
Throughput fixes traffic
Plus your point stands for "adding lanes for buses" as well! How would that fix latency?
People only started living further from their destination because they gained the ability to travel faster. In transit, the invariant is how much time people are willing to spend commuting on average
If you increase throughput you will, in time, decrease latency
Looking at your post,
* I live in a very bikeable city in Europe and I've never worn "bicycle clothes"
* Variability in cars are entirely dependent on traffic. I've never been stuck in traffic on a bicycle. Bikes are much more reliable than cars and you can get one for $80 on craigslist literally overnight, meaning you'll never care about getting a spare. Flat tires almost never happen, and bike maintenance is a gimmie. Let's flip. What happens to your day when your car breaks down?
* The "green wave" is an infrastructure problem that can be fixed with infrastructure solutions
Then for the point of speed, cycling is only faster in dense areas and it'll mostly save you time in traffic & parking
If you live 7km away from your workplace, go through suburbs and large roads with single story buildings, the only people who'll benefit from cycling will be the people who are already living close to the center
But that's good for you, because you won't need to fight them for parking nor stand behind them in traffic
Once you have bike lanes though you can densify your city a bit more easily
Both the latency and the throughput of motorcycling with lane splitting is far better.
And, notice, it requires no infrastructure changes. Nor does it take existing lanes away from anyone. And motorcycles work in any weather that bicycles work.
We have the technology and the infrastructure but not the widespread policy. Silly cagers.
Motorcycle lanes next...?
Back to square 1
Put motorcycles in bicycle lanes! That's crazy though, because motorcycles and bicycles are very different beasts.
But wait! We put bicycles in car lanes all the time. So clearly mixing bicycles and internal combustion engines in the same lane of travel is acceptable despite massive speed and weight differences.
If separating two-wheeled vehicles from cars is safer and more convenient and therefore societally compelling, do it for all 2-wheeled vehicles.
Legally and practically, cars are allowed to drive to the very edge of their lane. If both cars in adjacent lanes do this, there is no room for a motorcycle. If there is no room for a motorcycle and a motorcycle is there, there will be a collision.
It seems like lane splitting practically forces everyone to drive in the middle of the lane (which again is not legally required anywhere AFAIK), or to watch constantly for motorcycles behind them, or it accepts a certain rate of motorcycle on car collisions even when everyone is following the rules perfectly.
If there is a collision whose fault is it? The motorcyclist for not reading the mind of the driver? The driver for not shoulder checking before they move within the lane?
It doesn’t seem scalable for this reason, and it just drops a useful property of driving seemingly without giving it much thought (i.e. that no one else will be in your lane unless they are violating a rule).
90+ percent of roads have more than sufficient room. That's why it requires no new infrastructure. When lanes are too tight for conditions, motorcycles simply act like cars.
True, but one should be scanning one's mirrors all the time anyway. Please tell me you scan your mirrors and pay attention to your surroundings all the time when you drive.
Door to door, my car trip takes about 20-30 minutes, my bike trip takes 15-20. Not having to deal with parking, stop signs, traffic, etc genuinely does speed things up.
Riding a bicycle is more fun though. Something about it triggers daydreaming and I often arrive at work and realize I got there on autopilot. I haven't done it much since the start of COVID, but I recently tuned up my bike, ordered a good floor pump, and plan to resume soon.
I don't do it every day though. I only go into the office 3 days a week and for much of the summer it's too hot for me to bike (I'm in Austin, TX). I can manage up until about 101F/38C, but anything after that feels dangerous.
Traffic sure, but you still need a good place to park your bike so it does not get stolen and you should be stopping at stop signs.
I walk basically everywhere and I have to be more vigilant of bicyclists on crosswalks because they always blow through them at full speed regardless of who has the right of way.
So no, I definitely shouldn't be stopping at stop signs, but I should be following the rules of the road. Eye contact with peds, sometimes you can quickly negotiate "no, you go ahead". If not, stops for pedestrians.
My work has bike cages, which are right at the entrance and require a badge to access. If not, my bike parks vertically on its own and I could just bring it inside.