In 1900, Los Angeles had a bike highway | Hacker News Reader

In 1900, Los Angeles had a bike highway

vox.com

110 pointsjrs23542 comments

Happy that my hometown of Louisville, KY is partially finished with building out a ~110 mile bike (and walking) loop that circles the city by connecting existing parks and creating new ones. I can't think of anywhere else in the US where a cyclist could a century ride without having to deal with automobiles.

It's called the Louisville Loop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Parks

Michigan has a boatload of trails - These are all broken down sectionally. Many of them connect so you could easily build a 150+ mile trek.

http://www.traillink.com/state/mi-trails.aspx

Ohio is finishing up a 325 mile pathway. http://ohiobikeways.net/swregionlist.htm#swohiotoerie

That is a spiffy facility, but it takes another kind of political fight to build bike lanes or dedicated bikeways in the city center where people actually want to go.

> I can't think of anywhere else in the US where a cyclist could a century ride without having to deal with automobiles.

I assume you mean in or near cities. There are several long-distance bike-only trails (that I know of) in the US, but they tend to be in protected nature areas.

The 185 mile long Chesapeake & Ohio Canal bike path connects to the 150 Great Allegheny Passage bike path, giving a 335 mile long bike-only trail between D.C. and Pittsburgh.

It is very nice to have separated bike lanes, but they're of limited utility if they don't connect useful transportation endpoints (eg residential, commercial, recreational).

Here's a related article on how highways and the auto industry gutted many American cities:

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cit...

It is classic crony capitalism - you can't blame the auto industry and absolve the massive federal government program that paid for it.

I blame a weak government that can be influenced by outside monetary pressure and lobbying. I also blame ignorance and prejudice against minorities and the poor.

The fact is The Big Three plus the oil industry has a lot more monetary influence than urban planners and architects.

That article was on HN recently, and I recall it doesn't prove out any of the points it claims in the intro paragraphs. Nearly every city it alludes to being gutted is thriving. Detroit is basically fallen over, of course, but blaming the highway system for that is fairly disingenuous.

Mostly, the article just rabble rouses a bit by pointing out connected people used their power to stop highways they didn't like. I guess that's true, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the idea that America's cities are gutted.

Of course, as you can see by my sibling comment, very few people let a little truth get in the way of populist emotional resonance.

>Nearly every city it alludes to being gutted is thriving.

What do you mean by "thriving"?

The cities that have nice walkable urban centers avoided their destruction via highway. NYC and Boston stood up to their interstate plan. SF's Embarcadero fell down in an earthquake and they wisely didn't rebuild it, which then created a desirable waterfront.

>Detroit is basically fallen over, of course, but blaming the highway system for that is fairly disingenuous.

Urban planners (the people most knowledgeable on this subject) would not call this "disingenuous". The cities that are most prosperous and desirable in this country are dense without highways cutting through them. People want walkable environments with 24/7 activity, not just buildings peppered throughout parking lots.

In Detroit's case they cut through downtown with highways to easily connect them to the suburbs. This also meant adding parking lots. When new buildings were built, the code required a certain amount of parking. This ease of mobility allowed "white flight" to the suburbs. This reduced the amount of people living downtown along with amenities, reducing rent which reduces taxes. Detroit also never annexed its suburbs, so the tax base was reduced even more.

It's basically a textbook case of what not to do. Live by the car, die by the car.

Here are some more cities:

http://iqc.ou.edu/2014/12/12/60yrsmidwest/

Though Boston did still have an ugly elevated highway separating neighborhoods that was only eliminated by the enormously expensive and disruptive Big Dig.

Wow. That seems like an utterly one-sided and simplified explanation of how we got our highway system.

The article is telling me that the auto industry hoodwinked the government into building a multi-trillion dollar highways system (in today's dollars) just to support the auto industry?

I think the situation might be a tad more complex than that.

The interstate highway system was basically designed to facilitate the movement of nuclear bombs to SAC bases and missile facilities. Why are the highway overpass heights standardized?[1]

[1] http://scm.ncsu.edu/scm-articles/article/a-brief-history-of-...

Your text here and the link you gave don't say the same thing.

As http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/interstatemyths.cfm#quest... comments, the interstate highway system was primarily civilian in naure. It was not "basically designed to facilitate the movement of nuclear bombs to SAC bases and missile facilities".

The link you gave says, "Besides the obvious economic reasons, one of Eisenhower’s goals was to improve national security". That does not imply that Eisenhower’s main goal was related to nuclear weapon transport, only that national security was one of multiple factors.

In any case, this sounds like an urban legend. Indeed, at Straight Dope's comment board, some people tried to investigate it, at http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-2955... . The military needs to transport many things, including tanks. What evidence is there that missile specifically drove the need, vs. more general military transport requirements?

I say "missiles" because the SAC connection doesn't make sense. The size of nuclear weapons or their transport systems can't be the deciding factor. The Mark 6 nuclear bomb, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_6_nuclear_bomb , was the main nuclear weapon in the early-1950s. It was much smaller than a tank, and shorter than most people. The Mark 17 and Mark 24, which were thermonuclear, were a bit bigger, but still less than two meters tall. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb . The next generation of nuclear weapons were smaller still. By 1960 we had the W47, which was 18 inches/460 mm in diameter and 47 inches / 1,200 mm long.

The first US nuclear ballistic missile was the Atlas, first launched in 1957 and planning started in 1954. Construction for the interstate system was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. It is possible, timing-wise, that the needs for the Atlas drove the size requirement for the US highway system. But it's tight, and it sounds unlikely.

To check, we see from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t1UWMiWQ2E that the Atlas was transported by truck. The best shot starts at 6:10. It does not look like it's especially large, or that the trailer was designed in order to fit into difficult space constraints. See also the images at http://www.siloworld.net/CONST/Atlas/ATE/567th/Museum/page__... .

For what it's worth, this image of a Minute Man II on transporter, http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/mimi/images/fig1... , implies that it needs no more than 5 meters of clearance. The interstate system requires that a minimum of 4.9 m clearance (except in urban areas when there is an alternate interstate around the area), so it certainly seems like the Minute Man transporter was designed for the highway system. It's not clear that the highway system was designed for the needs of the missile system.

There are many urban legends about the US highway system, such as the false belief that it was designed as an alternative landing strip for SAC bombers. This means there's a higher evidentiary standard than normal for statements like yours.

yes, the interstate system was built under eisenhower, the ex general. similar to the reconcfiguration of paris to promote military transport in the 19th c. the point being you need to improve route 66 era roads to handle modern industrial transport. the interstate system is really not a passenger-car centric piece of infrastructure in many ways.

That's a separate issue from how the interstates interface with cities. Interstates outside of city centers are fine (see European cities). The destruction of the human-scale urban fabric is the primary concern.

I thought train companies sold their tracks to car companies.

In general, it makes a lot of sense to reuse existing right-of-ways if those right-of-ways aren't needed for their original purpose anymore. (Though they are sometimes wide enough that additional transportation modes can added along-side.) But to your point, if you look at old maps a lot of railroad lines are now highways (a few are rail trails) although in some cases current rail lines and highways co-exist.

The sad thing is that I'm not sure America even has many cities, at least, not real ones. Perhaps I'm biased by having lived in southern California too long but it seems like everywhere but the densest parts of downtowns are just vast seas of parking with a building sprinkled here and there. It's pathetic. I lived in Dublin for a few years and if it were built like a US city half the downtown would be surface parking for the two major sports stadia. Of course, it's not, because European cities aren't pathetic dumps.

(Usual exceptions made for cities that existed before the car like SF and NYC, though even SF is surrounded by suburban hellscape).

It reminds me of the bike-only lanes in China before. There were also blocks between bike lanes and car lanes in the cities. So it was very safe for cyclists.

Once I biked 2.5 hours from the northwest corner of Beijing to Tong Qian, a small town at the east outskirt of Beijing, to visit a friend. She already left due to some urgent matter before I got there. She couldn't contact me because mobile phones were a rarity at that time. So I biked another 2.5 hour back. It was a good trip, though, biking under nice weather, with warm breeze.

There's still plenty of bike lanes in China. Except they are also scooter lanes, motorcycle lanes, pedestrian lanes, parking lanes...

Similar concept relating to how cars were normalized and displaced pedestrians: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797

Really simple way especially in Australia to solve the lack of bike friendly roads.

BUILD BIKE LANES NEXT TO RAIL ROADS!!!!

I was cycling between Delft and The Hague in the Netherlands yesterday. I headed out without a route planned. The infrastructure even outside of major cities in the Netherlands are just so extensive that with the help of some occasional road signs, I was able to make it there.

It does help that the space between Delft and The Hague is literally the size of a golf course.

As a kid I used to bike from the South West of The Hague to the center of Rotterdam. It's basically just one big urban area with some big parks.

So the iron horse replaced the horse and the auto replaced the bike? I wonder how many miles of horse roads they had before bikes became to be the preferred toy of the rich in LA back at the turn of the xix century.

This reminded me of the tour de france... http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-%20225515122/mikaeellewis/pho...

That isn't snow in the picture is it? Just black and white photo making sand/light dirt look like snow?

It's crushed limestone, which was originally used instead of asphalt to line the bike path.

In a few years when all the cars are computer controlled it should be possible to ride your bicycle like a total madman and not get hit. Even if the computers have to slow down to 10mph while bikes are near it won't be too annoying for passengers lost in VR. Dynamic bicycle only highways would be easy, but even better is not needing them. Going to be fun!

Unless those cars will also come with inertial dampers, that would still be pretty dangerous.

Or fancy adult car seats :P

Still a danger for the biker. Autonomous highway traffic isn't likely to be allowed to travel ~10mph everywhere just in case a pedestrian or bicycle happens to be nearby, that just wouldn't be feasible. Creating unpredictable hazards for vehicles that can't stop on a dime isn't a good idea, be they human controlled or computer controlled.

All the cars are cooperating. Sensors everywhere. The position of every moving object on the road is tracked to within a meter. Any car that enters the bicycle's safety zone gradually slows down to 10mph long before there's any chance of contact. It would probably cause a very minor delay for cars, and none in cases where the cars can route around the bicycle. Or whatever... There are probably a thousand safe ways to make it so bicycles can go nuts in a world with 100% computer controlled cars.

If that's the case why do you think bicycles won't have the same sensors and controllers?

I'm guessing cost. It would be like asking people walking to only do so with a specific piece of hardware. The issue is as much to do with creating segregated space for walking, cycling, and motorised vehicles. Ideally you do not want them to mix. A bicycle is a very powerful way of "enabling" kids to get around, but you need to provide safe transport networks that connect communities to schools etc.

That describes a perfect system in which visibility is always optimal, and there is never any such thing as inclement weather, network delays, mechanical failure, proprietary software, manufacturers cutting corners, blind spots or false echoes or any of the thousands of ways things can also go wrong with a system as large, complex and interconnected as that might be.

Sort of like the way "cyberspace" was described in sci-fi as sort of like virtual reality or augmented reality or Project Xanadu, while in practice what we got is is a document layout format with a half-assed Scheme tacked on to spite Microsoft, what gets implemented is usually always the minimum viable product.

I don't think you're paying attention! Many millions of us have been interacting in 3d combat/flight/driving simulators for years. With < 20ms internet latency and high frame rates it's a pretty amazing experience. We call them 'video games' like they're similar to what NES games were like, but they're everything people dreamed of for VR. Now we have head mounted displays, completing the picture.

Not 10mph, 20mph. That's the speed limit where if you get hit, you probably don't die. You break some bones, but you don't die. Quite successful in Sweden; Google for Vision Zero. I expect it to spread to other countries.

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