Bike lanes are fine as long as we don't get rid of roads in the process. Living 10 miles from a city, terrible public transport and chronic pain means I'm not about to use my bike for actual errands. Before we say "just fix public transport" there is a balance of how much it will cost vs how much it is worth and no, I don't think it will be worth fixing
Fuck Cars
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Always check twice whenever someone claims "it's simple math"!
Right? If it’s so simple, show me the damn math! I’m happy to check your work, it being so simple.
If it is simple, it is often an oversimplification
"It's simply meth"
They're still on xitter, and they paid for blue checks. Who cares what opinion they hold on literally anything?
I'm anti bike lane. Roads should be for bikes and pedestrians. Cars should get their own single separated lane on the occasional road.
Bike lanes are car infrastructure. They are not needed unless you consider the entire street to be for cars by default.
Also dave is an idiot. Maximum capacity would be a cycle and transit only street because those have the highest throughput per lane. Cars are incredibly space inefficient.
Relevant not just bikes about the streets in Tokyo that prioritise pedestrians: https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U
Slight disagreement there. Streets are for pedestrians and bikes and trams and the occasional car (in a dedicated car lane). Roads (as in large arterial roads in very limited areas, meant for fast travel between faraway zones when trains are inconvenient, or highways between cities) can be considered as intended for cars, and even those should have pretty good space dedicated to bike lanes and pedestrian sidewalks.
I’m stealing this.
Vehicular cyclists are the fucking worst. I find that they fall into two groups:
- "The John Forrester", generally oldhat nerds festooned with side mirrors and blinking lights and fluoro vests who are basically at the point of cosplaying as a car.
- "The Dentist", young and middle-aged guys with money for whom cycling is purely a sport and nothing else, who annually dump $20K into prebuilt bikes and clothing like it's nothing.
Either way they're almost 100% athletic white men who for some reason never picked up on the fact that cycling in a car culture is a near-perfect analogy / example of what it's like to be a marginalized minority and a first-hand demonstration of privilege. Instead they're defenders of the status quo - By way of their own athletic, gender, or monetary privilege - All the way to their bloody meat crayon deaths. They're that one asshole who shows up to the community board meeting about a new bike lane that will make cycling accessible for children, the elderly, and any person in between who is more risk-averse or less athletic than they are in order to speak against it "As a cyclist". Because to them battling for your life in traffic, being on the bleeding edge of death, breathing in truck exhaust from the shoulder of a stroad is a gatekeeping measure. They're masochistic elites, they rake pride in the danger that they put themselves in so much that they'd deny accessibility to anyone else unwilling to accept that danger.
Gordon Ramsey is an example of someone in the dentist group. A few years ago he very nearly got meat crayoned by a car while cycling in the US. He didn't provide the details of the crash but it was obvious from his injuries that he'd been hit from the side by a car or truck and likely went over the hood. His public plea in revealing this wasn't that the US needs to make roads safer for cyclists, or more accessible to people who don't have a group of equally wealthy friends to peloton around a foreign country with, maybe separating cars from cyclists so that the two may never conflict. His one and only adamant request was that we all wear a helmet. Cycling is wasted on these myopic asshats.
Oh bother, I've gone and ranted again.
I'm living proof that a helmet will do nothing to protect your pancreas; sure it coulda been worse, but as an 8yo kid I had a tough recovery because they wouldn't give pain medications until the last minute, but I guess that's just another rant for another place and time.
Cause and effect. When you make cycling a challenge, the only cyclists will be the most radical/motivated. If we had the infrastructure to make cycling safe and easy, many more casual cyclists would exist. Europe proves that
“If you build it they will come”
As it is, building it doesn’t even work so well because we are so starved for opportunity that so many “bike paths” are overwhelmed by pedestrians that also never had options
Hey I get it though, bike lanes are expensive new infrastructure. So pro-bike, anti bike lane just means all roads are now for bikes, cars not allowed. Ban cars and you don't need expensive new infrastructure! Sounds great!
Sorry but I will not take infrastructure advice from someone with the last name "carr".... /s
who the fuck said anything about novelty?