The idea that you can have transit extend the range of walking distance without embracing bikes as a transportation utility, in the sprawling american suburbs, is just delusional. But it's the delusion that most of our city budgets and plans are built on. Biking in Portland is faster than walking+transit for most values of A to B but I can nearly guarantee you need to elbow your way through car traffic somewhere on that trip. Land use and transit need bikes for glue.
@enobacon Gondolas are the only alternative to bikes I can come up with for suburbs, but they are expensive. The problem with bikes is they take up too much room on transit - (those bikes racks on the front of the bus won't hold enough bikes for my family, and there should be more than me on the bus). That means you need bike parking at each bus stop and bike rental of some sort when I get to the other end (mostly needed for Christmas/Easter when I'm having dinner with extended family)
@bluGill yes exactly like the Netherlands does it, secure bike parking and bikeshare at every transit hub. The biketown service area needs to be metro-wide but we haven't invested anything in it and the corporate provider just wants profits.
Here's an example from southwest Portland to Sherwood - 11.5 miles but 15.2mi by bike unless you're willing to bike on #BarburBlvd and similarly hostile conditions, then it's 11.5 and might take 45min or less with an e-bike / 28mph downhill through Tigard. Why can't the bus do it in 30? (Because nobody wants to bike on or around Barbur enough to allow for less-frequent stops or even express buses.)
We talk about bikes a lot, spend money on transit somewhat, but at the end of the day, we give most of the #transportation money to ODOT and #Portland looks like this to most people. #ODOTGTFOpdx
I mean, somebody at ODOT should just get fired for every single day that google maps refuses to route bikes down this block of Barbur, what is wrong with you people?
ten control points later (google really wants to get you off Barbur) I can say it's 11.6 miles, 440ft up, 656ft down, maybe 40min on a fast e-bike, i.e. half the time it takes to bus there or ride the confusing windy hilly back way to avoid cars. Half. Give us the bus lane road diets dammit.
I'm not saying everybody is going to ride 30mph down Barbur on any kind of protected infrastructure, but it definitely better be wider than 6ft between curbs, and if bikes aren't allowed to do 30 then why is the car lane posted so high? The infrastructure needs to adjust on both sides but we need e-bikes to be competitive with driving in terms of time and also comfort. Maybe velomobile/scooter as a design vehicle is the thing we need to aim for in this moment though, in recovering #stroads.
Which, if we re-purpose the outside lanes of all four-lane #stroads, as bus/turn-only lanes along a painted bike lane, the traffic is much calmer, you can photo-enforce with cameras already on the bus, you can ride pretty fast even in a velomobile and maybe never have a bus pass you, would need some floating bus stops to avoid that stop conflict. We could gradually get rid of stops too, eventually fully separated bikeway in some places, actually complete low-stress bike network in the meantime.
@pleaseclap there's actually a lot of good reasons beyond #ClimateChange and #CarbonEmissions for cities to invest in bikes as #transportation, geometrically the #HousingCrisis needs more density because multi-level streets for cars are extraordinarily expensive and we've maxed out the drive-and-park model that much of the US grew and developed under. #GeometryHatesCars so the only way out of traffic #congestion, also solves #AirPollution, #VisionZero is viable alternatives to driving, is bikes
@pleaseclap and not just "bikes may use full lane" but like imagine a real network where someone's elderly parents wouldn't all scoff at you if you suggested they could bike a couple miles, or that a kid could go on her own at 8yo across the neighborhood. And I think the only way US cities can afford to reach all of the other goals in urbanism/transit is to start with (e-)bikes. The city could also just fail and people leave, traffic solved, bikes work fine again -- that's the one other way.
@pleaseclap and I didn't even bikes making the city a buck or two richer with every mile instead of 10x as much poorer that cars do, but you know all this I think. I'll stop. I get your point on govts just sucking at it though, some of that needs technical reform in the voting/elections/representation, participatory budgetting...
@enobacon That's exactly it: if it were just about the knowledge and engineering, the project could have started 50 years ago and the plans would have been pretty much that: dense, bikeable neighborhoods connected by rail to denser urban cores
Even the idea of banning cars from city centers is almost as old as cars
@pleaseclap yeah at this point though it is more like picking a lock, we have to figure out what movements are possible in policy and elected positions, and which sequence of changes unlocks the action of actually changing, and iterating toward an urbanist density. Some is bike lane design, some is bike tech, some is political mechanisms. Cities may have to gradually learn that they need to scrap the current cars-first plans and that whole project delivery model.
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