You had me till the BuY AnOthER OnE, Pay me imaginary strawman. I do love bikes though, so do the fuckers that keep taking mine.
You have enough money for a pair of bolt cutters.
Yeah Yeah I do have some of those, where you parked again you say?
If you’re big enough, you just need money for a balaclava.
Hmmmm baklavas
Think of it that way - whoever stole your bike was probably more happy to get it than you are sad to lose it. The total happiness in the world increased. So, whatever.
There it is.
The stupidest thing I’ll read all day.
And the sun’s not even up yet.
It’s a reference to this comic https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1314087-my-bike-got-stolen-recently
Thank you; I had no idea.
I take it that the idea is that it’s supposed to be stupid?
I never know if the artist is serious or not.
I think the point was to contrast this with cars. Having your car stolen is 10x worse than having your bike stolen
10x? What car can be so cheap?
Ironically, a stole one
- kryptonite U-lock.
- locking skewers for the tires, gears, seat and handle bars.
- an ugly color
At this point, they’ll need an angle grinder to get anything valuable off the bike. It’s more expensive but so long its not the standard of ever biker, bike thieves’ll target easier bikes to steal off.
It’s true although it sucks. You could have several bikes stolen a year and it’s still cheaper than a car.
It’s, once again, comes with infrastructure. When I moved to Germany from the country with no bike infrastructure, I only thought of a bike as an expensive stuff, but here I bought a used commuter for 40 Euro and it’s fucking great. I love it, but if it gets stolen, I would be mildly frustrated and buy another one of those for 40 Euro the next day.
With trains, you don’t arrive sweaty, you can’t get run down by cars, and someone else parks it
I ride a bike to work every day. I’m never sweaty. The infrastructure to cycle exists so I won’t get run over by cars.
Where I live I wouldn’t want to bike. Too many freaking hills
Where I live (Oklahoma City), I wouldn’t want to bike for at least 5 months of the year. Between mid April and late October, we are stupid hot and humid. We had lots of days this past summer that either got uncomfortably close to or passed 40°C. Dew points in the mid 20s all summer long. You’ll break a sweat just standing outside for more than about a minute or two.
Can’t imagine what it’s like for those sorry saps in Houston or Florida.
The comfortable temp for biking is significantly higher than it is for walking, especially with the right gear. 40°C is definitely beyond reasonable tho. Planting trees and decreasing the amount of asphalt would go a long way to make it a better proposition more of the year. A societal expectation that you don’t go or do anything when weather gets that hot could bridge the difference. Unfortunately that kind of philosophy is antithetical to capitalism’s demands for productivity.
I live in a somewhat hilly city. That is why I have an electric bike. I’m never sweaty when I arrive at work
Even if the city is flat as fuck you’ll still arrive sweaty if the climate is hot. Take Phoenix for example, you will sweat even if you are in the shade and doing no physical exercise because it’s commonly 46 degrees.
Phoenix is not a great example of how we should design cities. Putting a city in a desert is a bad idea from the outset.
The desert is the only reason it is habitable, if it were less arid the humidity would make it even worse. The largest desert on earth is Antarctica, deserts don’t have to be hot, just low precipitation.
But what deserts do very well is solar potential due to lack of cloud cover and I don’t know why we can’t use solar to power electric rail for public transportation.
I have an electric bike for the hills.
Where I used to work it was downhill all the way there and uphill all the way back stupid way round of having it don’t want to get to work early.
Where I live biking to work wouldn’t be popular because it’s too cold and Americans hate exercise
Biking in the cold and wet honestly isn’t that bad. Biking is my primary way of getting around all year in the PNW. When it gets real cold I put on normal snow gear. It definitely makes going outside more of a production tho.
A lot of it has more to do with what people are used to and feel is reasonable than with the actual conditions. If people saw more folks riding and actually knew people who rode I think people would be more open to try it.
Unmanaged ice/snow, unhealthy wet bulb temperatures, and getting run over due to car first infrastructure are the most significant barriers to more people using bikes as transportation IMO. If a society chooses to, all those things can be mitigated.
My favorite part of riding is that I get moderate physical activity for free. I would not spend near as much time being active otherwise.
Hills are only the problem if you’re not biking regularly. I’m way out of shape, but after a year on living in a country with good infrastructure, hills aren’t a problem for me anymore, really. But first couple of months it was a bit brutal, for sure.
Teach me the non-sweaty ways. I love my bike, but theres no way I can arrive not sweaty. Before you say go slow, I’m not letting no bus take my god-damn glory.
E bike.
Sure, but I assume the conversation was about mechanical bikes. Personally, for a PEV I would choose something lighter and cheaper and forego the pedalling altogether, but my commute is only about 7.5 km one way.
In Germany those are only allowed to assist you up to 25kph, which means they only help you going up hills, everywhere else will be the same amount of effort
30 in Canadaz that’s enough speed for commuting.
An Ebike is extremely helpful, especially if there are hills. Wear a breathable long sleeve SPF shirt. I like hemp and some of the stuff Colombia makes. If your route is safe enough don’t wear a helmet. Shorts and sandals are also helpful. I’ve had some success with lightweight merino clothes as well but they tend to get holey in a few years of frequent use
You just don’t treat it as a competition, but as a relaxed stroll. Don’t care about any buses, just vibe with the flow.
Thats the thing though, for me the flow to vibe with is some banger tunes and pedalling as hard as I can. 😅
When I biked to work there was a YMCA right next to my office, so I would ride in early, get in a workout and a shower at the Y and then walk two minutes to work. The only downsides were 1) getting chased by pitbulls and 2) having to look at fat old judges lounging around the locker room stark naked before starting their day of sending probably-innocent black men to prison for decades (both hazards of life in Louisiana).
Obviously I can shower at work but then I need to get in 15 minutes early and then I have to blow-dry my hair and it is just a whole thing now.
You might not see the above as a problem but for me, the problem is I can for the life of me not get up earlier than I have to, I am just not a morning person. If I can manage to brew a pot of coffee and have a quick breakfast before I have to get out the door, that is a successfull morning.
Must be nice 🥲
It is.
and someone else parks it
And you don’t need to worry about driving
Only if you live at one train station and work at another.
You can also do this thing called walking. Although I am aware that in the United States that is considered suspicious behavior.
Im from europe, train stations here are a little more than walking distance apart.
The public transit isn’t that great where I live by European standards. I use a Brompton folding bike to make up the difference. It’s great for trains
This is my favorite argument from carfolk, because they’ll treat walking one block from a bus station as some cardinal sin but will happily walk four blocks from a parking spot.
Cities with transit typically have several different ways of getting around.
For my last job, som e choices were:
- express bus plus walk a couple blocks
- train and walk a mile
- train to subway and walk a couple blocks
- drive to subway and walk a couple blocks
- train to subway to another subway into basement of my building
I’m not even counting scooter and bike share but I chose each of these options depending g on what was best at the time. But my most common choice was the train and walk a mile. It was a bit of a walk but I didn’t have to deal with people or waiting and it was close enough. But maybe you prefer walking less or like the scooter or bike shares: great, make the choice that’s best for you
Edit to add: for those unfamiliar with transit - every place will be different but I paid a monthly train pass based on my distance from the city. That pass included unlimited express buses, and unlimited subway rides within the city. So much freedom and convenience! One monthly fee let me go anywhere in the city, so much cheaper and easier than dealing with a car!
It’s common to bus to the train station, and yes train stations downtown are where many people work.
I love trains but they give me so much anxiety. I have stories of facing harassment on public transport. But it’s not just me though, here’s some idea of why public transport can suck for women or other people in case my anecdotes are just that: https://www.metro-magazine.com/10111994/sexual-crime-and-harassment-on-public-transportation-a-study
California had to make a law for race-based harassment, so it’s not just a one place or just sex-based harassment issue: https://19thnews.org/2023/02/california-introduces-bill-harassment-safety-public-transit-systems/
If public transport can come without being subjected to people and whatever miserable state of mind they’re in, I’d like that. I can at least escape a dumbass in my car, but in a train they’re either right in front of me or nearby for a long time. How do we fix this?
Public transport is clean and safe when everyone uses it. In the US, the social expectation is that public transportation is for the poor. Like white flight out of US urban centers in the 60s, it’s a class thing, and owning a car becomes a self perpetuating class signifier. In most of the rest of the developed world, like London, Paris, Tokyo, etc. public transportation is for everyone, rich and poor. It’s just a question of investing in and valuing public transportation over cars.
Hmm idk about cars as a class signifier, they’re like phones now, everyone has one. I don’t disagree with you about public transport being for everyone, but I am not sure that examples of harassment and human misery will necessarily decrease because richer people are forced to commute. See for example, the price-based communal vans in Asian countries. I think it makes sense to actively work on making public transit better, but that requires an open eyed approach to acknowledging existing problems. Nothing can have perfect solutions, but an attempt needs to be made to at least acknowledge the issue and provide a preliminary solution.
The reason you’re not afraid of being in public in any other circumstances are in public transportation is exactly, precisely because public transportation in US is shitty and stigmatized and the expectation is that only the poor are using it. This is the source of the problem, and the way to fix i is to improve it so everyone is using it, and the crowd in public transport will be the same as everywhere
The examples listed as better public transport still have the harassment and human misery issues. I don’t think it’s simply a matter of “get more people using it”. For one I think people who engage in harassment of any form should lose the privilege to use public transportation for a period of time, like we do with drunk drivers and their licenses. Or get them to go to classes like we do for road rage people. Maybe other countries are already doing this.
No, good public transportation will not eliminate all the misery in the people’s lives, but also it isn’t suppose to, and nothing will. Good public transportation however helps with making it the same level of misery as anywhere else, and usually even more. The particular issue of harassment isn’t an issue in a good public transportation, because there are people there, there are structures, there are authorities and systems that can help. And besides, it’s not like people just decide to harass other people the second they go into metro.
, because there are people there, there are structures, there are authorities and systems that can help.
Bystander effect is real, plenty of people have been harassed without the harasser facing any consequences. I think one improvement over our current system would be to disallow harassers the use of public transport for a period of time, or provide them with mental health help? I am not sure if it’s the best solution, but it’s kind of similar to what we do with people who drive drunk, or those who have to get anger management classes after road rage. Fines would also be a good idea.
An anecdote: there was a lady once on a subway platform who was yelling about colored people. She wasn’t bothering anyone in particular, though. There was at least one incident of someone stabbing and killing someone for defending minorities. These interactions are not safe for people and defenders alike. Moreover, you cannot react fast enough in some instances if someone wants to hurt you. For example, people have been pushed off train platforms. Regarding getting police help, if someone is walking around wearing a poster of “Christ hates gays” or something, the police might not do anything because of free speech laws (or because they agree sometimes).
These things are all kinda related, better housing policies lead to less homelessness and less instability, and therefore people with less mental issues. I don’t think simply having more efficient public transportation will make using public transport safer. Perfect solutions don’t exist, so at the very least I hope there are also anti-harassment policies like fines, losing privileges for a reasonable and proportionate amount of time, or having to take mandatory classes or providing mental health help for the harasser.
I want good public transportation as well, but for me the definition of good also includes having adequate safety measures.
That said, I really appreciate the passion some community members display for their topics of interest. What gets annoying for me though is what appears to be an utter lack of empathy or consideration for an alternative view. I think I am done, honestly—some people will think I am inconsiderate regardless of what I say. Whatever.
Here’s some news from places with great public transportation which supports my point that efficient does not equal safe:
-
from Japan: https://tankenjapan.com/how-common-is-chikan-unwanted-touching-on-trains-in-japan/
-
From 6 days ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8829ked1x3o
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on buses, https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/bus-crime-statistics
-
from Germany: https://www.thelocal.de/20230301/which-german-train-stations-have-the-highest-crime-rates
Note that I am not using one-off incidences as examples, but what you’d expect to be routine crime on a given day.
-
Wouldn’t it be great if we could each have our own private pods?
Yes actually, not sure if sarcastic.
Not sarcastic. It would be such a relief.
ITT: Carbrains
As soon as bicycles are mentioned, everyone suddenly has to transport their washing machine 200 miles in sub zero temperatures.
I think it’s more that when someone is suggesting something as a perfect thing, people naturally try to challenge that by finding faults in it.
It’s blindingly obvious cycling is not a panacea for all transport and no one is suggesting it is. Yet here they are, all pointing out what everyone knows in response to a statement that was never made.
I think you’re getting too upset about that. That’s just how people argue online.
Glad that my city has a cargo bike renting program for 10€/day or 25€/week up to 4 weeks (selection from 17: 15 electric, 2 acoustic)
I would take the acoustic, then I wouldn’t have to supply my own cards to put in the spokes every time!
Seriously though cargo bike rental sounds like a pipe dream, too bad they roads where I am wouldn’t be able to handle such a thing by design!
Every time someone mentions acoustic bikes I habe to laugh and it will still be as hilarius the next time.
Both directions and against 100 km/h headwinds
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Can’t tell if satire
Poe strikes again.
Every time I see this kind of post I just wish they would try to go to work in a +40 degree Celsius environment.
It must be nice to work in a place that won’t mind if you arrive drenched in sweat.
Edit: I love the hive mind
It would be one thing if all employers offered locker rooms and adequate time to get ready along with safe storage.
adequate time to get ready
But doesn’t that depend on you? If you arrive earlier you have more time
I don’t get paid to arrive earlier, so it’s gonna depend on them for me dawg
I would’ve figured work starts once you’re ready for work. If that includes showering and you need more time for that, you should come earlier so you can shower.
To me it’s no different from taking the time to shower at home. You can sleep later if you don’t shower but I take the time. No pay for that though.
While I was mostly joking with my comment and the context of having to bike to work in a hot climate.
I agree with you initially, that works starts when you’re ready to work. I think that definition of ready is a little subjective.
As far as I’m concerned the moment I deviate from my normal non-working behavior is when I am starting work.
Realistically I feel that begins at the commute to work for me, I have some personal bias here since I have an hour long commute when I do. I work from home a lot of the time, so again that also skews my perception of when I “start” work.
Well that sucks.
Figure it out.
Oh I have it figured out.
You probably should do the same.
Excellent👍
There is a way to get all of this and more
It must be nice to work in a place that won’t mind if you arrive drenched in sweat.
coughs nervously in works-from-home
But yeah, it’s more weather dependent for sure
Remote jobs are unironically super good for environment, aside from all other amazing advantages they offer.
BuT WhAt aBoUt cOlLaBoRaTiOn? - some boomer executive somewhere
Where do you live that it’s 40+ degrees at ~8am in the morning, the entire year round?
Or could you simply be looking for an excuse?
Australia
Also Brazil
Edit: not to mention the flash-flooding thunderstorms, tree-shattering winds, and so, so many hills.
Not everyone lives in sunny California, some people live in the perpetual 100% humidity tropical climate.
Also screw second and third shifters, right?
I live in a ‘perpetual 100% humidity tropical climate’. 8am would be 20-22 degrees. Afternoons would be hot though.
So let’s build more urban heat islands and parking lots. Exactly what a +40 C environment needs. Biking might be unpleasant in 40 C weather, and the cyclist might get a bit sweaty, but all of the positives are true. And cars are just going to make the planet hotter.
Here in Palestine people drive bikes the most in the hottest city, Jericho. It reaches 40 degrees there. An ebike would make you get less hot from exertion. In combination with good urban planning with small streets and trees and buildings creating lots of shade it’s workable. It’s not sustainable to have air conditioned cars transport people everywhere. This is what living in a hot climate means.
But Texas exceptionalism!
Honestly, no matter the mode of transportation, I’d arrive drenched in sweat in a 40° environment.
I would probably not even step outside unless absolutely necessary. At that temperature I would already suffer indoors, and if I stepped out I’d faint if I stayed out there for longer than thirty minutes.
Or underdeveloped infrastructure that forces you to bike on the road. There’s this road near my house thats like a quarter mile long and its 40mph and people usually speed up to 65mph.
Trying to get to work on my bike with that is fucking suicide, and my work is only a mile away.
Even walking is excrutiating. The weather is very cold, which is fine since it’s only a mile, but the busy roads you need to cross make you wait so damn much. Waiting for the signal to walk is about 5 minutes. There are 5 busy crosswalks that turn my 10 minute walk into a 35 minute walk in the freezing fucking cold.
Yeah you could jaywalk but you can be arrested and trying to jaywalk a road with cars going 60 is like Russian roulette.
Yeah you could jaywalk but you can be arrested
How?
and trying to jaywalk a road with cars going 60 is like Russian roulette.
So, 60 units of imperialism is about 96 units of true freedom. How the fuck your city allows it?
In most places jaywalking is a civil infraction resulting in only a fine (I can impede traffic and increase potential for injuries). In those places you cant be arrested.
In others you can be arrested then charged with criminal misdemeanor. If very serious (not sure what defines that) you can also get a felony.
Either way it’s punishable, and I don’t want to do that when most of the crosses are within line of sight of the local police station.
About that road Im not really sure why the limit is specifically 40, since roads that cross it are 20, and also that it has no sidewalk but leads to residential areas. You can’t even walk on the grass there’s a bridge that forces you onto the road.
There is another road but it’s half a mile longer (1.1km) and also it has the busiest street near my house. I swear to god the pedestrian walk lights are broken because I sat my freezing ass next to that damn thing for 20 minutes before just jaywalking anyways (also scared cause that roads also a 40mph).
I really wish I could walk, for my health for the environment but ironic as it would be I’m not gonna die for my health lol.
While taking your kid on a 10km detour to the only child care center thats anywhere near your home or work that has availability. And dont forget to swing by the shops and grab milk on the way home.
Sounds like a purposeful car dependent design
Well what do you want me to do about it?
That’s an urban planning problem. My dad’s detour to drop me off at daycare when I was little was a 10 minute bike ride. When I was old enough to go to school, there was no detour because it was on the way to his work. Shops are also on the way or at most a 5 minute detour.
While taking your kid on a 10km detour to the only child care center thats anywhere near your home or work that has availability.
Imagine living in ex-USSR country. Daycares everywhere.
Sounds like you live in a car dependent city. Imagine if it were built for walking or biking. Everything you need within 15 minutes walking rather than 15 minutes driving. Just try imagining it.
+40? I wonder why…
Have you considered, that different places need different infrastructure?
I might also remark, that your houses are utterly unprepared for the -5C where I’m at currently, but that would be stupid.
Screw that. I love paying for car insurance, gas, oil change, tires, and random bolts maintenance. There is also the thrill of driving in traffic, and dealing with road rage. There is plenty that makes the car the ideal transportation mode loved by the masses.
My personal favorite is how if someone bumps you and you get the smallest scratch or dent on your door, you now have to be late for whatever you were doing, pull over (impacting other traffic) exchange insurance info deal with possible hostility for that and ultimately have a crappy day because of it.
Don’t forget punished for literal years by your insurance company
How about the fact that cars are so complicated now that working on them yourself feels next to impossible but you also have to somehow find mechanics that you trust to fix your vehicle when you really have no objective way to know if the mechanics are just bullshitting you or are actually genuinely investigating the problem, not just tossing away what you are saying with a mental note that you are clueless. Fixing a bicycle on the other hand is almost comically simple in comparison.
Also can’t forget the thrill that it only takes a second or two of distraction at the wrong moment to kill yourself and other innocent people and irrevocably send your life down a worse path. To be clear, this experience is happening when you are tired, grumpy and stressed about getting to work or getting back from work. It’s a nice little detail that we aren’t all driving boats around or something where hitting other boats requires a bunch of really stupid choices chained together, all we have to do in a car is go slightly in the wrong direction for 3 seconds and boom just murdered somebodies kid.
Moved to the suburbs in my 30s. Got a new bike to hit the nearby bike trails. First bike ride turns into agonizing ordeal as it literally feels like someone ripped open my knees and poured broken glass in them. Diagnosed with arthritis in my knees.
There are plenty of reasons people don’t use bikes, and health reasons are one of the main ones.
Going less than ten miles away? Sure
Going 30+ miles away and no rail links exist? Fuck you, I guess
back in my day if you werent rich and had a horse, we WALKED everywhere. UPHILL. BOTH WAYS. IN THE SNOW
WITH NO SHOES
Did you fight a lion on the way to school on one foot while the other foot was starting a business?
One lion? I longed for the days when there was only one lion.
For the uninitiated: The Bad Old Times
This is why I love TRAINS!
I was gonna argue, but we really are filled with out of shape people here. Even so, biking is easier than walking.
Bruh I live 26 miles from where I work by car, and 21 miles by biking per Google Maps. And most of it is highway travel. It would make my commute over 1.5 hrs.
It is the dream if/when we can move closer though.
if entire cities were designed around these the way they are with cars, everyone would be fine with it and you would live less than 6 miles from where you work.
Public Transport
EDIT: looking back it seems I replied to wrong comment
You may live in a place that is the result of building car dependent infrastructure. To achieve a “bike city” op is describing, it would take decades, if not a century in your area for it to make sense to just bike everywhere. It takes time.
That’s why you start small, and work up incrementally. Bike lanes are the first step: just make it possible. Next is paths that cut across town to allow bikes (and pedestrians) to avoid roads altogether. Just put them in wherever you can. Eventually you can start connecting them, and gradually it starts to make sense to say “let’s just walk there” or “I’ll meet you there on my bike.”
It’s literally just paint and gravel, and micro zoning. But it helps every step of the way, and it adds up quickly.
Oh it is. It’s exploded like CRAZY in the past 10 years and it just keeps expanding outward instead of upward. City planners definitely designed this place to be the epitome of “urban sprawl”.
For real though, if I had it my way, we’d live within 5-8 miles of where I work and I’d bike every day it wasn’t raining.
Next duty station though! We’re gonna buy/rent closer to the base, wherever that is!
An excellent bike city is a long process but there’s a lot of simple stuff that could help folks cut down on car trips. Imminent domain a few side yards and put in walking and bike paths to make neighborhoods more walkable. Knock down some houses to put in corner stores with apartments on top. If you build dedicated bus lanes, light rail, and bicycle paths you’re on a road to a safer and more connected city.
Already fairly interesting how you can still manage to save five miles by bike in a system designed for cars.
Biking would add two miles onto my commute.
That’s more like it.
Mine would be identical because its just the same roads.
Since we’re just sharing anecdotes: I save some time when commuting to my gym, because there’s a path through a bunch of greenery in some public back lot community…greenery area type…thing. Anyway, it’s nice, and the city just put it up a few years ago! I didn’t care at first, but now I take it several times a week.
Also driving a car to the gym only to get on a stationary bike or treadmill there just feels hilariously braindead to me.
Bikes + Metro would be the ideal
But that would require politicians who aren’t in the pockets of oil billionaires
Space. Scooters + Metro.
Please. Skate shoes + metro.
Meh
Yeah but the hypothetical is if there was better biking infrastructure and I suppose that would include not expecting people to travel so far to work.
Again if it was better public transport infrastructure you could take public transit and wouldn’t need the car the problem is that these improvements have never been made.
Well yeah that’s for a big ol artery - that’s never going away, but within-region is different.
Like I’m not going to take a bike to go visit my brother in the town over. That’s just not appropriate use of the tech
Distance. An hour commute or a 20 minute trip to the grocery store. We killed walkable neighborhoods so now here we are. Trapped.
But we can’t have 15 minute cities because…that’s tyranny somehow?
Too much democracy! Tyranny of the majority!
Start yelling at your city legislators then. Force them to change how the city zones so things are closer together. It will take a couple decades of work, but you have to be apart of that change for it to happen.
Oh I do but for as much as conservatives whine about California it’s not really a progressive state. More like a solid liberal bastion of performative politics. Where they’ll talk about banning guns from state property like it’s going to solve firearms deaths and just don’t look at how we’re treating homeless people…
That’s fair - I wish you luck in your town hall meetings and marchs. Local change is always the fastest.
Open your own grocery store. Or allow others to do so.
I would if I could. But I can’t beat Walmart prices an hour away on Transit.
That’s why you don’t see 15 minute cities anymore. Capitalism already figured out that a few large stores allow you to hire more efficient numbers of employees, buy more for less, stock better variety, pass along some of the savings to customers and still make more profit than building lots and lots of repeated commercial infrastructure throughout residential areas. A return to that model would require more employees in low paying service jobs, and would sacrifice lower prices and better variety. Ironically, it would be far faster to use a car to skip from store to store to look for the best deals and the specific brands you want. I suppose we could also get rid of capitalism at the same time, but I’m not holding my breath. As much as I like the idea of walkable infrastructure, it comes at a cost that I am not sure many would be willing to pay.
It’s very weird that it works all over Europe, but for some reason it’s too expansive for America. It’s almost like it’s not an inevitable course of actions really actually.
Might have a wee something to do with the cost and availability of large parcels of land in and around cities in Europe versus North America. If Walmart thought this was a cost-effective approach, they’d be doing it, else they would likely be sued by their shareholders. To be clear, I am not making a value judgement on whether this should be the case.
Yeah, it is indeed a good approach for Walmart. They get to crush the competition due to their size and the economy of scale, be effectively a monopoly, and convince everyone that it’s not only logical and inevitable, and the result of something normal, but good actually.
The question is, is it good for people who aren’t Walmart shareholders?
If transit gets dense enough then isn’t it walkable in an indirect manner?
I suppose, but then it isn’t really any different than what we have now in the best of our cities worldwide. Unfortunately, it seems very few cities actually have the resources and the political capital to make that work.
Yeah. But until we deal with the affordability problem walkable cities aren’t going to be a thing because it will be too expensive.
It’s the other way around. Cities in US are expensive now because there is not a lot of those compared to the amount of people who would like to live in them. If you allow builders to build more walkable cities they will become more affordable. And the scale is only part of it, the fact that city brings revenue to the government and suburbia isn’t is a big part too.
A car cuck utopia
You can do what I did and move to another country. It just takes a lot of time, work, and money to get there (though money can accelerate the former two, in some cases).
I’d love to. And the brain drain is already beginning. College is cheaper and just as good over seas. That’s always the first stage because you never get all the kids back.
Does not protect you from weather
Cannot haul anything
Takes forever to get anywhereThats what your jacket is for.
You can get bike trailers.
Infrastructure issue rather than the bike itself.
What are you hauling anyway?
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Let me present to you:
I’m gonna look like a moron here, but I genuinely have no idea what I’m looking at or how it works haha. Is the bar across the top used as a handlebar…? It doesn’t look like the front wheels turn…
Where the hell do you feet go?I think I can see pedals, they’re just lined up with the frame so I didn’t catch them at first.These are all over the place in Denmark. Look up Christiania Bikes
Don’t even need that. My parents used to have a kid seat on the front and the back of the bike so they could take us both. When you’re getting too big to fit on the seat, you learn how to ride a bike yourself.
What in the world, how do you see anything behind that… thing?
You sit the way your head is above, so you see the road.
Seen such things in Amsterdam.
Seems annoying tbh.
And honestly looks a little awkward, including IRL.
But some still drive those and feel fine
Kids can ride bikes in soccer gear…
There’s these things called “bikes for kids”. There’s over a million Dutch people who do soccer (out of 17 million people), and almost all of them go by bike.
Football soccer is the main sport where I live, everyone walks with their stuff just fine with one of these, if that even.
Do you guys carry the grass around or something?
What are you hauling anyway?
Robotics to Jita
Oh Jesus. I haven’t touched that beast in years. Don’t think I’ve seen a reference to it in about as long
I was away for 10 years but got sucked back in
They say that you never truly quit the game. I played for a week or two when COVID started, before that it’d been maybe a year or two. So ~5-6 years with little to no contact.
I think that means I’m due.
Even online still going strong
Indeed it is :)
I have winter cycling gear, btw. It doesnt make it not suck.
I’m not hauling a car, motorcycle, toolboxes, tires, materials, etc. with a bike trailer.
My bad for having a job, apparently.
Oh no, it can only do 99% of my transportation needs instead of 100%
Ironically also the reason people shit on EVs with 200 mile real world range
More like 10% but you do you fam
Wear a raincoat or winter jacket, much cheaper than a car.
I have a trailer that can hold 40 kilos. That’s enough for anything I need regularly. I rent a moving van for the once in a couple year big item hauls.
Cars spread things apart making places take long to get to not using a car.
When you say takes long to get anywhere by bike, it is a self report you don’t live anywhere meaningful with anything fun around you
Wear a winter jacket
This reads like someone who doesn’t live somewhere that it gets cold
it is a self report you don’t live anywhere meaningful with anything fun around you
What a weird thing to criticize someone for
Living on the border with Canada, I tell you now that I bike during the winter. It is in fact as simple as wearing the right layers. Even some of the coldest regions in the world have bike commuting.
I don’t think the second part is a criticism. It’s pointing out that you live in a place who’s infrastructure has been completely fucked by car-centrism. Were it designed with walking, biking, or even just public transit of any kind as a priority, the distance between points would actually be short (public transit benefits from shorter distance between stops by having shorter routes Which cuts fuel and maintenance costs).
In order for cities to have changes in their structure, mixed-use zoning needs to be allowed, along with various other reforms to current infrastructure law - laws which disinsentivise driving (car-centric people label it as ‘punishment’ when it’s more just revokal of massive amounts of privilege). It takes several decades, but overtime city footprints would shrink and become much more walkable - and safer - and more quiet.
Except that youre blaming the victims of car-centric city designs. Good one.
Not sure what you’re meaning by “… blaming the victims of car-centric city designs.” Is this going back to the comment before saying it’s a “weird thing to criticise someone for.”
Since you didn’t quote a portion of my comment, I have no idea which portion you are saying is blaming people for car-centric city design.
“You should ride bikes, bro”
“It sucks”
“Well yeah, your infrastructure is designed for cars!”
That about sum it up?
I think you’ve misenterpretted these convos. I am not blaming those people for not riding a bike, I literally pointed out the amount of effort and time needed to make their cities more walkable. That’s not coming from a place of judgment, I’m just disseminating information I’ve gathered over time.
The post explicitly states “if entire cities were designed around [bikes] the way they are with cars, everyone would be fine with it”, and I think it’s important to keep that in mind.
The top of this comment thread states bikes don’t protect you from the cold, among other things. The following comment says just to wear a jacket. There’s a reply stating the guy saying ‘wear a jacket’ hasn’t lived in cold climate. I then chimed in stating that in-fact, you just need the proper layers to bike in winter.
All of that above is one convo going on parallel to the other.
During this, the original comment also says bikes don’t get you anywhere. The second person points out that the original commenter must live in the middle of nowhere, away from anywhere important. That’s why I stated I don’t think the comment was criticism. I think its just observation.
The reason someone can be in the situation is because A) they live rurally, which is a minority of people globally - or B) they live in/near a car-centric city. I detail the work they’d need to do to change that, and they changes they would have to allow. That isn’t blaming them, it’s giving a roadmap.
This person is seriously shitting on me for living 20 minutes from my job. What an moronic ciriticism.
Biking during Finnish winters sucks for sure and bike and public transport is slower than car, but it’s a tradeoff. Owning a car here is fairly expensive and has downsides of its own.
For hauling bigger stuff I can rent a van or see if any of my friends with one are up to it.
HVAC and shelter.
ain’t gonna survive sleeping in your bike for a few years scraping by on the few places willing to hire you under the table.while all the shitstain hiring managers complain “nobody wants to work anymore” as they fucking shred your application over and over and over again.
Nobody should be forced to live in a car in the first place though. That’s a separate problem altogether from transit, which could be solved with reform to labour rights and housing provision.
yes, it would be nice if this were not the shape of the world we lived in
where vacant homes are piggybank tokens for foreign billionaires and their real estate holdings firms while families are left vagrant on the street.
where all the currency liquidity of our market has pooled at the top like a brain hemorrhage and our entire economy goes through seizure after seizure as we watch pieces of it die.
where basic human rights and necessities for life are commoditized, gatekept, and sold at a premium, to the extent that some people can’t afford to livebut unfortunately, one must make do with the tools one can access…
Metaphorically speaking, our civilization is flooded and we are traped underwater.
It is indeed a problem that we are trapped underwater.
People are drowning every day.Yes, no one should have to need SCUBA gear.
Yes, it sucks that we’ve built our entire infrastructure around facilitating the use of SCUBA gear.
Let us not mislead ourselves, however, into thinking that criticism of SCUBA gear would ever change the fact that we are trapped underwater,
or that someone would be any less likely to drown down here if we took their SCUBA gear away.
Just think of what you will save in car payments! /s
What about the people who can’t even afford a car they are even worse off? Society should not waver on its social services, or sociietal norms to only meet the needs of unhoused people with cars. Many managers won’t hire housed people who don’t have a car, or even share a car with a spouse. Societally mandated car ownership just makes everyone more poor and hurts those who cannot afford a car.
No need for parking
Yeah, just look how Nederlands or Belgium looks like xD
Rookie numbers.
Have you ever seen a walmart parking lot in person? You can fit the Netherlands and part of Belgium in one.
I’m Dutch and live rural. Used to cycle to school daily, 22km per day.
Never again. I need a car for work as I visit clients alot. I think cities could use bike friendly environments, like we have. But rural, no way. Good luck cycling 2 hours to get somewhere decent if you can drive that in half an hour.
It simply costs too much time, and with the amount of wind and rainfall we had past year is absolutely no fun.
Yeah, rural areas will pretty much always need cars or something similar - not just for traversing the massive gaps between places, but also because most rural homes are their own logistics for most things.
It also doesn’t help that this conversation itself is a pretty America-centric one. In the US and Canada, dense urbanism does not exist outside of major cities. NotJustBikes on YouTube has many videos talking about just how car-centric and space-inefficient it is here.
We have some big parking areas and garages specifically for bikes, especially at train stations, schools, city centres, etc. But at home, you don’t need a lot of parking space
At least in Finland apartment buildings have “parking” for bikes in the sense that there’s bike racks in front of staircases and usually a storage room specifically for bikes. “No need for parking” seems incorrect, even though it takes much, much less space than cars
Pretty much no one parks their bikes inside in the Nerherlands, I’m guessing that’s a climate thing. It takes like half a square meter outside.
The indoors bike storage room is for winter (and other longer term) storage so you don’t have to leave them out in the elements and don’t have to bring them inside the apartment either. It can be handy.
It takes like half a square meter outside
It does add up in bigger apartment buildings. Nothing compared to cars but if you don’t factor it in during construction it can be annoying as shit.
Now imagine if all those bikes were cars.
(You definitely do need bike-specific parking when you get to those numbers though. And other good infrastructure, though it’s rather the other way around: you need the good infrastructure to get to those numbers.)
All I’m saying is nobody ever got a great ass because they drove a car a lot.
Or erectile dysfunction for that matter.
The opposite of that, actually, prolonged sitting on your ass without much movement linked to all sorts of problems down there
Here is another reason. I can’t afford a reasonable sized apartment that can house my family near my work. So I have to travel further. Bikes are great for cities if you can afford to live in the city.
Also, what happens when it snows and you gotta get to work? Snow chains?
MUCH slower, no protection from the elements, most can only support one person at a time. Great for shorter distances, but that’s about it.
A velocycle basically solves all these problems.
There are lots of multiple person bicycle type vehicles.
Like this magical invention
most can only support one person at a time.
As a Dutchie, that’s bullshit. Three at the least.
Maybe three Dutchies but certainly not three Americans.
Maybe Americans should ride bikes more and this wouldn’t be an issue.
If you’d been to America you would know why they can’t ride bikes. I live 20 miles from work, and 25 miles from any public transportation down a road that goes 60mph with no shoulder, and no bike lane and hilly sandy soil. Biking would kill me within the week.
I live in America. What you describe is a problem that can be fixed.
3 Americans as well. If you don’t go for an ultra-light sport bike, but a steel one.
Hmmm, maybe we should add a few more seats, more wheels, some protection from the elements, somewhere to put your luggage… oof this got heavy. Maybe something to power it as well?
Horses!
Don’t use those for fuel, they are inefficient.
