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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Cars >>> Bikes + Rail + Pedestrian infrastructure

More money flows atop highway and road infrastructure than on biking, rail, and scooter infrastructure. By orders of magnitude.

Commuter rail has 1/200th the economic impact of interstate highways.

Biking infrastructure is actually deleterious as it doesn't serve the pregnant, elderly, sick, frail, doesn't work well for rain/snow/high heat/weather, doesn't transport high volumes of goods, etc. etc.

Lots of cities are tearing up road infra to cater to this, and in doing so, they're reducing the economic corridor capacity and throughput of roads. Roads are simply much more valuable and flexible for logistics, people, and business.

The value of roads is going to become even more apparent when we have widespread autonomous vehicles.

Bikes are popular for 20-40-something men, mostly yuppie, mostly upper middle class. But they're not doing the economic heavy lifting.

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Biking is not meant to replace everything. More people biking means more room for people that cannot bike. Bike-heavy cities like Amsterdam show that most of your "facts" are incorrect (bikes can be used to transport goods, are usable when it rains, are used by a large part of the population). That's a trope common when bike displaces cars, but studies show the reverse (for example in Madrid: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02642...). Also, biking is good for health despite the risks (for example https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4521).

> Commuter rail has 1/200th the economic impact of interstate highways.

Ok, and what fraction of investment has it gotten?

We've underfunded rail/bike infrastructure for decades, of course money is going to flow on the cheapest route. Roads are cheap because we've subsidized the shit out of them.

Bikes are not going to deliver your packages and food and medical services. They're not going to take you on vacation, haul your gear, or provide shelter.

There's a meme that bikes will solve everything and that cars suck, but it's dismissive of the orders of magnitude more value that road infra can and will always provide.

Bikes actually deliver a lot of packages and food in areas where car infrastructure hasn't made other forms of transportation practically impossible, and they do it much more cost-effectively.

On the medical front, that's quite a strawman. I doubt you'll find much of anyone opposed to using cars for medical and emergency services.

I live near a very congested area and watch ambulances and fire trucks (which are also too big) get stuck in heavy traffic all the time.

Bikes do a lot of package and food delivery here, but fewer people commuting by car would make it easier for ambulances to get where they need to.

Counterpoint: there are four Blood Transfusion Service motorbikes parked outside the doctor's surgery across the road most days of the week, because cars are no good for delivering urgent and time-sensitive medical supplies.

Here's a bicycle used for transporting blood tests/samples in Copenhagen.

I see these go past my office fairly often. A Facebook photo (I won't link) shows there's at least 8 of them.

https://www.dreamstime.com/official-blood-test-transporting-...

And one from a private analysis company. It's obviously a fake photo, as we all know it's impossible to ride a bike when there's snow.

https://dbio.dk/nyheder/nytaenkning-cykelbud-med-friske-blod...

Light ~110cc scooters in most of South East Asia are used for just that actually, and a lot of Western European cities have a rather large cargo e-bike push. Reducing heavy road traffic also makes it easier for EMS to get around.

Yes, they are, and they do.

The bike meme is unrealistic, and you're dismissing all of my arguments.

You're ripping up infrastructure for yuppie pickleball.

How do you transmit tons of material on bikes? How do people move in the rain or when they're on their period? How do they move multiple small children or being home furniture? What do old and sick people do?

Every lane taken away is centuries of economic activity destroyed.

You'd be ok with restricting automobile traffic to delivery vans and trucks then? With regular checks to ensure they're actually delivering stuff.

Could you kindly explain to me how being on my period would in any way shape or form affect my ability to ride a bike? I'm all ears.

Have you ever been to China? They haul huge amounts of stuff with bicycle trailers.

But yeah, you got me. It's impossible to ride a bike in the rain, or on your period. Checkmate, I surrender.

I think you’re suffering from a false dichotomy. The average car capacity is 1.1 people per car, and 90%+ of the time, a normal individual is not hauling more than a backpack. Just imagine how much less traffic would be on the road if the people who could just biked. They get 1 protected lane (out of 6), and you get 50% less traffic? Hell yeah, that’s be awesome, right?

In terms of economics, consider how terrible car parking can be. A bike rack can park 20+ people in the space of 1 car parking spot (1-4 people). Do you really think a business would be better off with 1/10th the number of customers who can actually enter their building at once?

Bikes and rail should exist as options, not requirements. And when done well, like in Amsterdam, people will like using them. And driving will be even better, because of so much less traffic.

I've heard from the same sources that woman on their period cannot drive a car or even ride in one so that's a wash... :)

> How do you transmit tons of material on bikes?

How do you transmit tons of materials with these crappy oversize pickup trucks? Their towing and payload capacity is pathetic.

Why does someone who is not literally a builder or joiner need to drive something as big as a full-size Ford Transit to take their child to school?

> How do people move in the rain

I mean Historically when I did that sort of thing I'd have a change of clothes if necessary, but otherwise I never really minded riding in the rain. Or light snow.

> or when they're on their period?

I'm sorry, what? (I actually do have anecdata based answers for this but I don't want to risk offending your sensibilities.)

> How do you transmit tons of material on bikes? > How do they move multiple small children or being home furniture? What do old and sick people do?

Cool! There's more room on the road for that to happen.

But in general you're implying a dichotomy where none exists.

Bike couriers in shambles to discover this.

that literally happens in NYC right now

Wow there is so much wrong with this post I don't even know where to start.

Widespread car usage has caused an enormous amount of harm. It has destroyed American cities, killed thousands of people directly, tens of thousands more with sedentary lifestyle diseases, and burned a truly enormous amount of fossil fuels into CO2, and locked in the infrastructure to continue to do so for decades. It's an absolutely enormous tragedy.

Cars are also useful and have helped a lot of things, but they should not be the default choice of transportation.

Thank you for posting this. Don't be discouraged by downvotes.

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