I wish that cycling and public transport was funded as much as the roads and car industry. Fuckcars
It’s mad to look at train lines that as being too expensive short term, yet it’s a 150+ year investment, and has so many improvements, not least of which it increases the value of land around the station (something that isn’t captured in most countries assessments of rail income, though is in Japan)
Yes and I’m sure trains work out as the cheaper option when you look at the number of passengers they carry vs the upkeep vs building a new road every few years.
I lived in London during a period when commuting by bicycle was becoming more popular and you can really notice that as drivers get more accustomed to cyclists it becomes safer to cycle (even when the actual infrastructure for it is a bit of a joke, such as all the “Boris cycling lanes” beyond zone 2 in London which were nothing more than tiny signs every 500m on the side of otherwise unchanged roads with a white on blue drawing of a bicyle) which in turn pools in more normal people to cycle (rather than the more hard-core, dressed like they’re in the Tour de France, crowd).
Granted, it’s a lot more effective with a real push for it as seems to have been done here, my point is that in my experience there is a networking effect of having more cyclists pulling in more people to cycle, bot directly (they see others do it and consider doing it themselves) and indirectly such as by cycling becoming more safe the more drivers get used to sharing the road with cyclists.
With ebikes the range becomes less of an issue, and the cost is low. Cars with expensive maintenance and high travel and parking costs (after looking for a spot). Your bike you just chuck in front of the store.
Bike bags and good clothing and you can easily travel the city while getting in some exercise.
Added, cities become cheaper in maintenance and way prettier and fun to live in.
This is true even in the states. I bought an electric scooter and sold my car a year ago and haven’t looked back. The more I ride, the more people I see doing the same. The only downsides are weather and dodging cars.
To a point. If you are the only rider, your risk of dying is very high, because no one around is expecting it. Sometimes the right choice is to keep driving until the infrastructure finally makes things safe.
This is a valid point. People indeed aren’t looking out for unusual vehicles going 20mph. It’s the same reason motorcycle lane splitting works fine in California but would be a disaster in say Florida. People aren’t expecting it.
I think it’s inevitable though that more and more people will be using electric bikes/scooters in the coming years simply because people can no longer afford cars.
That is exactly the foresight our planners luckily had in the Netherlands. Build it and they will come. Now after more than 50 years of adding on the infrastructure is so accommodating.
The dodging cars can be resolved by the Council making actual protected bike lanes. Not a bicycle gutter, if they strip a lane of a stroad on each side it can be replaced with a wider pavement, bike lane, grass strip with trees… Safety, shade, nature…epic win for everyone.
Road - parking - green buffer - bike lane - sidewalk - stores.
Where there is parking the green buffer is narrow and where there is no parking the green buffer is wide. Alternatively the parking is covered by PV panels.
Then the road would be much more narrow and drivers would find it harder to fit their ever larger penile-compensation vehicles in it, not to mention their egos!
A decent E-Bike costs at least 3k Euro, and they get stolen. Not if, when. I say: use your legs. It’s healthy. And that tells you a fat German (who loves and uses his bicycle - which was btw stolen last week)
Decent is less, used is fine too and less than 1000. For 3k you get a proper bike, new. And with ebikes you can consistently move at 20+kph. So further away becomes feasible for many. Especially on the commute. But you do you. Non ebikes are great too especially an old bike if you have to park it publicly cause theft is an issue.
I’ve lived and worked in several large european cities, commuting in most of them by bicyle, and the most I ever spent on a commuting bicyle was €250 and generally it was more like €100 because I usually bought them used.
Finding a cheap bicycle was definitelly easier in The Netherlands, but I also got some nice cheap second-hand ones in London and Berlin.
Absolutelly, those things get stollen (which is why you get a lock, but even then, all it takes is a mistake and it’s likelly you’ll never see that bicycle again), which is why you don’t pony up for a brand new carbon fibre bicycle for commuting unless you’re planning on making a big involuntary charitable donation to a random bicycle thief.
I’m not even against you advice to walk - were I am it’s quite dangerous to cycle (here in Portugal drivers are some of the worst in Europe) plus I live in a small city nowadays, so unlike most people here I refuse to buy a car and mainly walk - it’s just that human-powered cycling is a more natural alternative to E-Bikes than walking in places were drivers aren’t quite as bad.
Wouldn’t 3k Euro be essentially the luxury sedan of ebikes? My first was a class 1 aimed at tourist rentals that cost around $1.5k CAD ($1k Euro). I considered that entry level at the time, though there are cheaper ones out there now. My current one is a $2.5k CAD ($1.7k Euro) class 2. It is pretty much everything I could want in a bike. I can’t see myself spending more. Well, maybe a cargo model would cost more?
I get what you’re saying about theft though. I am lucky in that I have indoor parking both at home and work. A coworker of mine lives in a condo where he can’t park a bike indoors. So while it was thankfully never stolen, he was sufficiently nervous about it that he eventually sold his and replaced it with an escooter.
bought my ebike a year ago for 600 usd, lock it up in a good place and its jist as likely to get stolen as anything else. i wouldnt be cycling to work daily if i had to push my bags up the hills to work, the motor helps my little legs get stronger without killing my motivation
I also would like to see the numbers… This article links to another one that supposedly goes into more detail (I see graphs at least) but it’s in French so hard to say. I’d love some absolute numbers rather than percentages as percentages can give the wrong impression depending on what numbers we’re dealing with.
That graph shows the average cyclists per hour through 128 counting points. You can see it doubles for almost every hour every day of the week, the max peak going from ~130 to ~260 cyclists/hour.
I put my Duolingo to the test and attempted to read the Le Monde article. As far as I could tell it’s mostly just percentages too; the only absolute numbers I could find were these:
Sur l’avenue de Flandre, le boulevard Voltaire et le boulevard Magenta, la moyenne ne dépasse jamais 384 véhicules motorisés à l’heure sur la partie centrale de la chaussée, contre 537 vélos sur les pistes cyclables en septembre et en octobre.
Translation:
On Flanders Avenue, Voltaire Boulevard and Magenta Boulevard, the average never exceeds 384 motor vehicles per hour on the central part of the roadway, compared to 537 bicycles on the bike trail in September and October.
I think that’s discussing a particularly extreme example, but still, if bike traffic is actually exceeding car traffic anywhere that’s pretty damn good!
Good, but not really surprising. The Netherlands is the best case example of what good bike infrastructure means in its "consequences" (no negative connotations). That's why I get terribly annoyed when I see people constantly argue against it, or wanting to do a couple hundred more feasibility studies and whatnot for every single street, or even just parts of it. It's exhausting how humankind keeps working against its own self-interest.
I've looked at the Le Monde article, my French is super basic but what you can see in the chart (the number that's doubled) is the average number of cyclists through 128 counting points, with a peak on Tuesday evening with more than 250 cyclists/hour. And before someone tries to just multiply by 128 to get the total number, no, you can't. There's not enough information.
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