A very important topic, but this article is almost nothing!
Regardless, this is hugely important. My wife and I have two little kids (under 5) and we really, really want them to be independent young people when they're a little older. I want them to be able to hop on their bikes and ride to the shop, school, the train/metro/bus, etc. and most of all, I want them to survive. Drivers are the leading cause of dead kids, and deaths among vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) have risen dramatically in the US in the last couple years.
There are approximately 0 places in the US meeting this bar. https://culdesac.com/ near Phoenix is interesting but 1) very small and 2) in Phoenix, which will struggle with summer survivability by the time my kids are middle ages.
I grew up in suburban Sacramento and it was basically a prison. I _did_ ride my bike when I was 14 and older, dozens of miles in some cases, but in retrospect it's shocking I lived. I was nearly killed in multiple instances.
I chatted briefly with Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes fame (maybe the best urbanist channel on youtube) and he was very reassuring about moving to Amsterdam with kids older than my own. I just got naturalised as an EU citizen and Utrecht in particular is on the short list. But I hope US cities can improve.
As someone that moved to Utrecht five years ago (and also from California)....you could not have picked a better place. Infrastructure is amazing and quality of life is superb. Of course not everything is perfect and cost of living has sky rocketed but I assume you work in tech and everything will be fine. There's quite a lot of high quality cities but Utrecht is really nice (although the Netherlands is a bit boring but that's subjective of course).
My brother recently moved to Tilburg and I've visited a couple times and had a great time there. It's a quick train ride to Rotterdam, where there is lots to do. Then there are some nice trails and towns nearby to cycle to, including in Belgium. And given the proximity to Belgium there are lots of great breweries nearby and so the beer quality in many bars is really excellent. Sure it's maybe not as alive as NYC or London but you will find life if you look and the standard of living, when considering basics like housing, transit and food quality, is unmatched to any I've experienced.
What would you recommend someone do who also wants to make the same type of move?
Currently, I’m working for a data privacy startup and have hopes that they’ll have a physical presence in the EU in the next few years and would sponsor my move.
Well..every country is different but in my experience it's super easy to get a work visa in most European countries if you're in any technical field. In general I would figure out maybe which country you want to move to first and then start looking into companies, but that's assuming you are ok to leave your current company. This is the one situation where I heavily relied on third party recruiters as they knew obviously know the scene better than I do and then on subsequent jobs I figured out on my own once I got the lay of the land.
If you look at Bruges, there's literally a cycling junction underneath a busy turnaround or cycling bridges going over busy highway roads ( those are there when your enter/exit the city)
Throughout the city, most roads are one-way, while bycicles can go two-ways. So bicycling is literally the most efficient way to cross the city.
Eg. To my work, it's a 5 minute trip with the bicycle because there is a bicycle route to it. With the car, the road takes 10 minutes ( normally 20 because of traffic). So it's x 4 as efficient for me
I adore Bruges, and Ghent for that matter, and have been a few times. The first time I went for whatever reason it felt virtually empty, weirder still since there was some kind of marathon that day. I ended up going to a centuries-old bar and having spaghetti (and beer of course) of all things.
Both of my kids grew up in Madison WI. Now they're both in college, car free, and doing fine. This isn't Amsterdam, but the bike infra and urban layout is good enough. You have to choose where to live. There are neighborhoods that are convenient for nearby shopping, and others that are more sprawled.
I don't think it has to be perfect for kids to learn good habits. More important is the parents modeling those habits themselves, and choosing activities that reinforce good habits.
Did you look at Portland, OR? I moved here from San Francisco, where I was terrified of cycling.
Here there are lots of bike trails, complete streets reserved for bicycles (“neighborhood greenways”), and even a bicycle/pedestrian only bridge for getting downtown. I can do a lot of my errands almost 100% on bike infrastructure without feeling at all unsafe.
I have even started going on bike rides for pleasure, which was never a thing I would have considered in San Francisco
I just found out about the trail that goes down the Eastside of the river and goes south, wrapping all the way to Gresham. It looks like it's all bike only. I haven't hopped on it yet but I'm gonna rent a bike maybe tomorrow or Monday and check it out.
Portland is definitely one of the more bike safe cities I've been in and it's awesome. It even inspired me to get into longboarding!
With climate change we will likely continue seeing more extreme weather events, so the point seems valid. The Netherlands isn’t exactly immune though. Utrecht also got a heat wave last year, though still about 10F less than Portland.
There’s also the risk of water management generally in NL, with so much of the country below sea level
I enjoy NJB and other similar Youtube channels (Adam Something and Oh the Urbanity! are great, highly recommended), and his opinions on transit and urbanism are really interesting and reasonable. But this "move to Netherlands" trope is slightly tiring. Its clear that NJB is enamored and I'm happy he's in love with the place -- and the city seems great! -- but "move to Netherlands" is hardly practical for most people, right? I don't even mean literal "most people in the world", but even the select audience of such channels probably can't (and doesn't want to) just move like that.
Some of the angstier videos are a bit hard to watch and come out like "look how great this and how awful anything outside Europe is". I recently relocated from Brazil to Canada, and some of that angst is almost comical to me (first world problems!). With that said, again, he is spot on about car-centric vs human-centric cities and all that. I lived in Europe for a while and most of the cities felt "more human" than up here.
True, but a lot of people _can_ move, but are afraid.
In Ireland half the people I know have lived in Canada, Aus, US, etc, at least for a while, and it's no big deal, but a lot of US-ians think moving abroad is basically moving to Mars.
Current Carmel resident and can confirm that it’s a pretty good option. There is a well maintained rail trail (the Monon) that bisects the city and lots of other paths that connect to it. You can get to most of the places in the city you’d want to go on the existing trails. And you can even get all the way to downtown Indianapolis on the trail.
I live in Davis. Biking is great here, but it’s not perfect.
The network of bike trails has been poorly maintained. The asphalt is badly cracked, which makes for a very bumpy and uncomfortable ride.
There are plenty of bike lanes on most streets, but almost no protected paths. Biking amongst cars is always stressful.
Most residents in town don’t actually bike that much. UC Davis students are forced to bike because most live off campus and obviously there’s little car parking available there. But I don’t see a remarkable amount of biking around town. I wouldn’t be surprised if more people in SF bike for day-to-day activities per-capita, such as shuffling kids around and picking up groceries.
All of this said, it’s still a nice place and biking here is nice. But it could be better.
sacramento is a incredibly bikable city. i don’t understand when people say america isn’t good for bikes. european bike cities usually have 2 characteristics. bike paths and high density. the paths we obviously have less of here. but not none. and it’s less important here because our cities usually have more than 1 main way to get somewhere and you just ride on the small street, not the 6 lane wide one
and the density thing is different. utrecht is a good example, if you bike more than 2-3 miles you’re in the country side. farmland. sacramento you can keep going. sacramento has good bus routes and ones that you can put your bike on. the bay area is a great mix of density and other transit supplanting it like awesome bus and train system to get you farther
i think you should do a little more research of this first hand and not just look at death numbers. they don’t tell the whole story. phoenix area is a massive pre planned grid with 45mph expw all over. people live far apart. you might have destinations 30 miles away. and it’s hot. i wouldn’t call it bike friendly at all even if it has paths
> Phoenix is interesting but 1) very small and 2) in Phoenix, which will struggle with summer survivability by the time my kids are middle ages.
I'm generally in favor of long term planning but in this case isn't #2 kind of going overboard? Their middle ages are ~35 years in the future. A better childhood will probably be worth them having to move 30+ years later. Heck, there is already only about a 50% chance [1] that an adult is living in the area where they grew up and that's just due to the normal ebb and flow of the economy.
[1] the surveys on this vary a lot. 50% looked like a reasonable average of several that showed up when I Googled.
My point is that when kids grow up they often move away from where they grew up. If, on the off chance that yours don't move away for college or career before they are raising their own kids, just as you are considering moving to find a better childhood for your kids they too can move to find a better childhood for their kids if Phoenix turns out to be a sweltering summer hellhole (or rather more of one than it already is).
Outlier events like last summer will become more frequent, but I think you will be hard pressed to find a better climate refuge than the PNW. The problem with climate change is that it eventually becomes a problem in one way or another for the entire globe. PNW is one of a handful of places that, while impacted, will be impacted less than most.
I will say, not all bike lanes are created equal. In the Netherlands, a lot of bike lanes are built as proper infrastructure. They're separated with a curb, nicely paved, free of debris, heck they often have their own traffic lights. In many US cities, they just slap some paint on the ground and call it good.
Having ridden on both types, the Dutch style bike lane feels much safer.
Paint is not infrastructure. I regularly cycle to work clocking up about 200km a week. Entitlement, aggression and abuse by motorists has a major impact on the numbers of people cycling. Segregated cycle routes are essential.
I first became a US urban biker in 2003 before urban bike infrastructure really existed in the US, and I always felt and still feel safest riding on streets that have lots of traffic and no bike lane. Most US bike lanes are just paint between the parking spaces on the curb and the travel lanes. As such you can never predict if cars will enter the bike lane. I personally feel less safe in these unprotected bike lanes than I do riding in the normal travel lane because I find it less predictable. In the US if a car can physically get into a space, a driver will eventually go there.
This works for fit people with the wherewithal to approximate average speeds on the choked roadways. Bike lanes are towards the low end of what constitutes bicycle infrastructure, but they do give a great number of people the confidence to get out on their bikes. This is good for all cyclists, as all evidence points to “more bicycles; better average safety.”
Look to parents with kids in tow as an indicator species for the health of a bicycling ecosystem.
That said, I am personally wary of bike lanes for the reason I suspect you are: I’m constantly needing to be hyper vigilant about cars turning right across the bike lane. When I’m clipping along in traffic, I’ll move left in the lane at intersections to prevent this. Bike lanes can make this maneuver harder, especially if they have a painted buffer that is littered with tire-shredding debris.
I suspect, but haven’t seen research, that the right hook scenario is lessened for slower moving bicycles (i.e. the kind that are perhaps more drawn to bike lanes). There is a longer span of time for an overtaking vehicle to observe a slower bicyclist in the bike lane, which I’d guess reduces the risk of the driver turning across. Add to that, a slower moving bicyclist isn’t going to run into the side panel of a car turning across the bike lane with as much force.
This segregated kind of infrastructure is what it would take for me to consider riding a bike. The typical US painted bike lane is just way too dangerous.
The Dutch-style infrastructure is safer. It's important to mention that earlier bike lanes in the Netherlands weren't initially implemented in their current form; they, too, started out as painted lanes. It's when the roads they were on required resurfacing that they were then properly separated from automotive lanes.
Worse still is having to merge in/out of traffic to avoid parked vehicles. In the state of Oregon, you are legally entitled to the same rights as any other vehicle on the road, but that also means you are legally obligated to move over when possible so faster vehicles can pass. In practice, this means swerving into the lane of car traffic to get around cars parked on the curb, and then moving back into the "bike lane", repeatedly. It's frightening, even if drivers here tend to be very considerate to pedestrians.
There is probably an exception for safety — you don’t have to merge into the rightmost lane if it is not safe. (You’re describing a scenario where it isn’t safe.) I know WA cycling law has such an exception, but I don’t know about OR specifically.
Worse still, the fact that few are using the bike lane to nowhere is used as a justification for not building any more of them and completing the network.
Although it is a first step, most bike lanes in Brazil are put where they won't take space from cars and tend to be just some paint (not very good paint at that) on a few disconnected paths or in places of leisure because, you know, bikes aren't serious transportation.
With proper education and driver training you can pretty much limit that to a few scratch marks here and there. There are plenty of cycle-gutters painted on the road here in places where the preferred path for cyclists is not that path with parked cars next to them as you describe, yet accidents rarely happen and are almost never serious. Though they can be completely avoided with proper separation .
Yeah, I'll take a proper (i.e. well-maintained surface, free of debris, etc.) separated bike road if there is one. If it's badly maintained, or just painted some part of the road that could be spared, I prefer riding in a proper "car" Lane.
Same in my area. Sometimes the lane is cut every 400m and changes sides. But even then, a bad bike lane is often safer than no marking at all, which signals car owns the road.
I bike in Chicago year round, and have done so for the past decade. What Chicago has done well:
* Curb and bollard protected bike lanes (Elston and Dearborn are examples)
* Large areas painted green at the front of intersections, giving bikes a dedicated place to stop at the head of traffic.
* Connecting trails and bike lanes to form a network of paths
* Dedicated bike ways like the 606 and the Chicago river flyover
* Adding more lane capacity on the Lake Shore Trail
* The parks district does a great job keeping essential commuting routes on trails clear of snow and maintained
* Continuing to invest in the rollout of Divvy and add more e-bikes to the fleet
That being said, there are still too many sharrows and painted lanes with no buffer zone (getting doored sucks). There are still too many heavy commuting routes like Clark St where the bike lanes disappear in many sections (near the zoo is still awful). Bikes are still very much de-prioritized for cars, especially when there's construction. We've had significant snow the past few weeks and many bike lanes will just be wastelands of ice and slush until the weather gets warm enough for it to melt.
But we have multiple cargo bike and e-bike dealers in the city, and the more families and non-competitive cyclists we get on the road the better things will get. It really helps normalize cycling as a form of essential transportation, instead of being viewed as recreation and sport.
I don’t bike, but I’d love to see some enforcement for the ubers and delivery vehicles that block bike lanes (and alleys and so on). But it’s Chicago so I’m not holding my breath.
Creepy municipal surveillance cameras are everywhere in my city, ostensibly for our security. If they were used for the enforcement you describe, my opinion of them would change completely.
Yeah, in Chicago the police don’t care much for these kinds of minor offenses, so I don’t think camera footage would help. I regularly see people blow hard red lights in front of a sitting squad car and nothing happens. You call 911 because someone is getting the shit beaten out of them in broad daylight and a squad car might roll out in 20 minutes or it might not show up at all.
(To be clear, I’m not anti-cop and I doubt this has anything to do with individual officers rather than explicit or implicit policing policy, but it really sucks)
And when the city tries to solve traffic problems with automation, some politician always figures out how to weaponized it against the citizenry—for example, the speeding cameras which are only supposed to be placed near parks and schools get placed near cemeteries and random patches of grass (especially in poorer neighborhoods) and you don’t get your warning or tickets for a month or more (giving you lots of time to accrue more offenses and defeating the purpose altogether). And the cherry on top is the “appeals process” policy is to deny all appeals.
Ultimately, bike infrastructure may be the only thing Chicago does passably. :’)
Of course as soon as I move away they convert Milwaukee ave to a protected bike lane. I'm not crazy about the midwest overall, but I thought Chicago was one of (if not the most) bikeable city in the country. The combination of bike lanes, lakefront path, and grid layout make it very easy to get around on a bike. Damn now I miss that city :(
I spent my childhood and young adulthood living in rural/suburban zones in Appalachia where cars were a requirement for living. No car means no groceries, no socialization, and not even any recreation, because even to safely walk or bike I had to drive somewhere to do it. I actually find driving to be somewhat fun and meditative, but I hate being forced to drive. I want to walk to places, and I want to bike to places. I sold my car and moved to a bike-friendly city, and I'm determined to never again live anywhere that requires me to own a car to survive. Of course, rents are higher here--I pay $910 a month--but given that the average TCO of a car in the US is $950 a month, I'm actually saving money by living somewhere that I can get away with not owning a car (to be fair I should try to estimate the TCO of my bike, which might generously be $200 per year). I'm thrilled that my city keeps investing in more and more bike infrastructure, and it makes me proud to live here. I'm not even opposed to the possibility of owning a car again someday, but now I have a choice rather than an obligation.
> but given that the average TCO of a car in the US is $950 a month
FWIW, the average TCO of a car reflects what the average person can afford, not the minimum. I’m also pretty skeptical of that figure because my brand new Tesla payment + insurance + electricity costs about that much. So (1) I don’t think the average car is as expensive as a brand new Tesla and (2) even for my Tesla, the monthly TCO will be far, far lower because the payments for the car would need to be amortized over its lifetime.
I’m sure you’re probably saving money by cycling, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near $950/month unless I’m mathing wrong.
Note also that rideshare, car rental, delivery services, etc also cut into your savings. Further, if the car is shared between several people (e.g., a family) switching to cycling + supplementary services might not make sense.
> So (1) I don’t think the average car is as expensive as a brand new Tesla and (2) even for my Tesla, the monthly TCO will be far, far lower because the payments for the car would need to be amortized over its lifetime.
These are somewhat contradictory: someone spending less upfront on an internal combustion engine will be paying considerably more for maintenance and fuel. It's also a bit of a challenge to talk about this since it's a distribution — the _average_ new car bought in the United States was $47,000 which is more than the Tesla Model 3's base price of $40k:
The other big thing to remember is that taxes, insurance, parking, and tolls add up quickly. If you bought a Model 3 at $40k you're probably not getting the cheapest tier of insurance.
Now, if we look at used cars it's cheaper but that's still $28k and since a used car is going to need more maintenance you're definitely looking at a substantial amount of money:
In all cases, a lot of this is going to come down to where you live. In a city or area with high car theft rates, insurance is going to be steep even if you're a low-mileage driver and the cost of parking can easily hundreds of dollars a month. If you live and work in less dense suburb or rural area, you probably don't have to worry about paying much for parking but you're also almost certainly racking up the mileage.
> These are somewhat contradictory: someone spending less upfront on an internal combustion engine will be paying considerably more for maintenance and fuel.
Yes, but the salient bit is that the average car isn’t brand new nor high end (my Model Y cost $62k). The payments and insurance for a mid-range used car will certainly be a lot lower, and the difference should more than make up for fuel and maintenance costs.
> It's also a bit of a challenge to talk about this since it's a distribution — the _average_ new car bought in the United States was $47,000 which is more than the Tesla Model 3's base price of $40k:
But the average car certainly isn’t a new car?
> The other big thing to remember is that taxes, insurance, parking, and tolls add up quickly.
I factored in insurance already, parking and tolls vary widely (most places these aren’t an issue)
> Now, if we look at used cars it's cheaper but that's still $28k and since a used car is going to need more maintenance you're definitely looking at a substantial amount of money:
That reflects the chip shortage. Per your own article, that figure is 42% higher than December 2019 ($20k). And again, this is the average cost, which reflects what the average car buyer can afford—it doesn’t indicate the entry level.
> In a city or area with high car theft rates, insurance is going to be steep even if you're a low-mileage driver and the cost of parking can easily hundreds of dollars a month.
I have name brand insurance in Chicago and my coverage (brand new, high end car) is only $130/month. Plenty of car theft here, and I haven’t bothered to cost-optimize my insurance yet. Agreed that parking, tolls, etc vary widely depending on where you live (certainly biking in the city is a much more practical choice than in a rural or exurban environment).
Sure, but wasn’t your objection based on spreading out the car payment over the lifetime of the vehicle? That’s what the AAA study shows.
Depreciation and maintenance and length of life factors are going to bring the differences between new cars and used cars close together. Some of the TCO costs don’t depend on new vs used (fuel, insurance, taxes & fees)
Edmunds has a TCO calculator for used cars. https://www.edmunds.com/tco.html It doesn’t seem that far off from AAA’s numbers for car models that are less than 10 years old (which is the majority of used car sales).
> Sure, but wasn’t your objection based on spreading out the car payment over the lifetime of the vehicle? That’s what the AAA study shows.
Depreciation is non-linear, so if you buy a used car your $/mile will be lower than buying new.
Regarding that Edmunds calculator, I’m guessing it’s taking into consideration the chip-shortage-inflated cost of used cars (42% higher on average than 2019 figures).
Yes, depreciation is non-linear. Used car lifetimes are also shorter, so used car purchase expenditure averages out to a higher per year percent of the purchase price than with a new car.
> 42% higher on average than 2019 figures
Are you saying that your skepticism is justified now because you were right 3 years ago?
> Are you saying that your skepticism is justified now because you were right 3 years ago?
I'm saying it doesn't make sense to make generalizations based on anomalous figures.
> Yes, depreciation is non-linear. Used car lifetimes are also shorter, so used car purchase expenditure averages out to a higher per year percent of the purchase price than with a new car.
Right, that's what "non-linear" refers to here. A car that's already 20% of the way through its lifetime has already depreciated by 50%. So you only pay 50% but get 80% of the miles.
It’s really not speculation. Much has been written about the chip shortage and the automotive market. You’re welcome to read up on it. There may be some disagreement about whether prices will return to normal in late 2022 vs sometime in 2023, but economists pretty much all agree that the current situation is abnormal and they will decrease.
Indeed, back when I was required to own a car I paid as little as I could get away with; I bought used, I got the cheapest insurance, I deferred maintenance as long as possible (though that may arguably be more expensive in the long run), I minimized start/stop driving to save gas, I ignored parking meters and hoped for the best (a single $400 tow ultimately made that a losing strategy)... and as a result I my annual TCO was on the lower end. But rent wasn't that much lower (roughly half), and I'm still paying less in combined rent and transport costs overall. And the psychological cost of driving a beater is nonzero, too. Stereo broken? Guess I'll just drive in silence now. Some jagoff sideswipes me while I'm parked? Guess that door panel is just ruined now. The seat breaks so that it's permanently reclined? Guess I'll wedge a pillow behind my back and deal with it.
> Note also that rideshare, car rental, delivery services, etc also cut into your savings.
I actually get away without almost any of these. I only get rideshare to go to the airport, but that's only if my flight's outside of public transit hours. And public transit is only necessary if I can't walk or don't feel like riding my bike somewhere, which is rare. I don't need anything delivered, I've got a low-cost grocer a five-minute walk away, and a full supermarket a ten-minute walk away, and any speciality shops I may need are well within biking distance. YMMV, of course.
Personally I would spend $15k (ignoring the temporarily inflated prices of the used car market) on something like an old but gently-used Camry (say, 50k miles). If you can by as a cyclist, it means you probably don’t need to go far—10k mi/yr seems generous. Camries can get 300k miles pretty easily if they’re properly cared for, so you can probably get 25 years of service out of that car. $15k/25 years is $600/year. 10k miles at 30mpg (this is what my old Camry got) and $3/gallon is $1k/yr in gas. Insurance is probably $800/yr. Maintenance is probably ~$500/yr (this includes the occasional insurance deductible). So far we’re at about $240/month. Parking is going to vary widely depending on where you live—most places it’s free but in cities it can be expensive.
The price of electricity is a quarter that of gasoline per mile (fuel being the largest expense), so I think this number will be a lot lower as EVs become more prominent.
To be clear, I’m not arguing about your choice to cycle versus drive, I’m just running the figures for the low end of driving as I see them.
> I actually get away without almost any of these. … YMMV of course
Agreed. This will vary a lot from person to person.
I want to say that that $950/month figure is largely a function of the initial cost of the car and the lifetime of the car.
My current car is a 2009 Honda Insight that I got in September of 2009 (149 months ago). Its original price was about $19,000. Since then, my total expenses for it have been $13,022.22 for it - including gas.
This gives $215/month. In the before times, my average milage per day was 39/day and I currently have 144,998 miles on it.
Car insurance is a bit hard to pin down since its part of my general insurance. Let's call it $150/month though its probably lower... that only brings us to $365.
There are people who get much more expensive vehicles, and there are those who treat them poorly or feel the need to get a new one more frequently than I do or have other considerations that makes that car insurance much higher.
I would still claim that the $950/month is a bit high.
The numbers that differ most for me on that are the car insurance and finance payments. I purchased my car without financing - it was completely paid off on day 1 - that means that the interest costs of financing aren't factored in. My car insurance is less. The gas price that it uses of $145/month is closer to $80/month... and I haven't had any parking fees (which appears to be largely city dependent).
Indeed, feel free to scrutinize my numbers, I just did a quick search for the statistic (and looking at your link it's entirely possible that it was showing me a number in Canadian dollars, oops!). Even still, I've broken even from moving to the city and selling my car; a lot of the "cities are too expensive" arguments overlook the possibility that if you can get away with not owning a car (which, maybe you can't, I don't know your situation) then that can easily offset the sticker shock of urban rents. Plus, for me there psychological benefits; I used to drive for an hour every workday while commuting, and the drudgery was killing me with a daily infusion of dread; these days I would voluntarily take time out of my schedule just to bike for an hour.
Anecdotally, as an Austin, TX, resident and cyclist — this city is so far away from adequate cycling infrastructure that it’s inclusion in this piece taints the rest of it for me.
Clearly this piece is light on meaningful details. One example is how the increase includes areas that are completely unsafe to ride — for example adding lanes that are essentially storm drain run offs which are generally unfinished - so you have to bike in the road.
Our local news has a great example of a lane with an electricity pole right in the middle of it… :facepalm:
I live in Austin and largely stopped cycling after a motorist tried to run me off the road on trinity south of MLK. I was going straight and had taken the lane a little early to pass a bus that was stopped in the bike lane and to avoid that dangerous spot closer to the intersection where the bike lane crosses _through_ the right turn lane, with plenty of room behind me and open lanes to the left.
This guy was not having it. Got maybe 2 inches from my rear wheel, then jerked around to the left, sped up, and then swerved right into my lane when he was even with me.
This is all maybe 100 ft from the intersection, where there was a red light. I passed him less than ten seconds after all this, since he was sitting in the more congested right turn lane and I was going straight.
I live in Austin. The bike infrastructure varies a lot depending on what part of town you’re in. No doubt that’s true for most places — including around the University of Texas. I’ve ridden many trips up and down Dean Keeton Street without any trouble from motorists.
The electrical pole story is ridiculous — someone didn’t know what they were doing. But readers should not assume the entirety of Austin’s bike lanes are like that.
That’s fair feedback! I found my OP started to meander with my calling out the bits of Austin that aren’t bad; but clearly in culling those my piece made it sound like a terrible-to-cycle-in-city. It’s not… Except in the summer obvi, when anything outside sucks ^_^
I guess my main schtick with the Axios piece is that it lacks any form of nuance; starting percentage increases as uniformly good.
Taking cars out of some urban areas is such an upgrade. Once in a while I revisit a street in a city I didn't visit for long, where the road has been appropriated for pedestrians and sitting area. Just like that, the street transforms – from a passage through which to go – to become the go-to attraction.
My little town did this, and it’s wonderful. Downtown is now constantly packed with people. All I can say is, I hope this is the beginning of a long term turn towards human-scale cities in the US.
When I tell people in my city they could instantly double their property values by greatly restricting car traffic and parking on their street, they look at me like I'm crazy.
What is very prevalent in America and I believe less so in more bike-friendly countries is that places are designed to keep others out.
This has longstanding racial undertones (google why bridges are too low for buses to pass under in Queen, NY) but the same desire to keep the 'other' out has a grounding in class as well.
Where I live, you can't visit unless you have a car _and_ a place to park it, so visitor traffic is minimized, by circumstance that has become design.
There was an almost comedic example of that around here a couple of years back: people were publicly claiming that expanding a bike path to their suburb would cause increased crime, by which they meant the possibility of black people riding the trail out from Baltimore. Meanwhile, the actual robbers drive because you can't fit enough on a bike to be worth the risk but oddly there's no call to stop building roads.
True (although electronics are getting harder as manufacturers increasingly use cloud services which can brick a stolen device) but I think the bigger point is just that most crime happens relatively locally — nobody bikes 20 miles to steal an XBox. I think you’re right that the value density is going down, too - nobody is breaking in to steal CDs and DVDs any more.
My city wants to support bikes but it is poorly executed. Ideally you have a street for cars and trucks, then outside the lanes you have parking for vehicles separating the traffic from the cyclists, and beyond that a sidewalk for pedestrians and wheelchairs.
What we have is a shoulder that is now painted and has plastic guards that separate the cars from bikes. What that results in is you now have a painted bike path inaccessible to the street sweep that accumulates glass and debris and is very slick during rain which is often. There is no signage except for the main path either. Everything remains a grassroots effort with citizens making signage and apps for maps.
It's as if the designers just went with the very first idea they had, without any reflection on its pros and cons. How does this kind of thing happen? How did they not do even the smallest bit of research into all the possible options and successful examples that are out there? It's so frustrating how short-sighted and incompetent these efforts tend to be.
I share your frustration but it's unfair to look at it this way. If you attend some city planning meetings you'll see how entrenched and irrational the opposition is to any cycling infrastructure that could be perceived as affecting car traffic or parking. It's like pulling teeth, and I agree it's a tricky compromise, but we should consider any ground gained a success.
I love ebiking around Seattle, we’ve determined it’s faster than our car for 2 mile trips too. Also feels like cheating because you can always park right outside wherever you’re going. The “utility” ebike with cargo basket was the game changer since we can now do all our grocery and errand runs comfortably by bike.
I've found the same for my city, except the parking. There's only one shopping strip I goto that has grocery, pet supplies, hardware, etc that has a proper bike rack. Everywhere else, it's a game of finding something suitable to lock by bike against.
As an avid cyclist in multiple biking disciplines: MTB XC, Road, Gravel, and Enduro, I hate bike lanes. By far, they are the most lethal place to ride a bike. Being 3ft from 45mph traffic with no protective barrier is not safe by any stretch of the imagination. All it takes is one drunk or high driver or someone posting selfies on instagram to kill me. You are safer careening down a mountainside over rocks and roots than you are in a bike lane.
What is much safer for cyclists are dedicated bike paths [like streamway buffer paths], bike lanes separated by barriers, and Bentonville, Arkansas is the pioneer in Mountain Bike trails as local transportation.
Unprotected bike lanes are stupid idea postured by the media with 0 scientific thought into their safety.
Even in Davis CA which prides itself on being a primier bike friendy city and most people have bikes, it's similar to what I'm reading in the comments: bike lanes are painted in and irregular. Bikers second class citizens. Every few years a biker gets killed by an automobile.
That says there are beautiful greenbelts which can get you around the outskirts of the city with no cars in sight.
I find the increase in popularity of the pro-pedestrian / pro-bike / anti-car sentiment interesting. It seems like it increased 10x in the last few years.
I think it is, at least to some extent. The younger you are, the more likely you'll be the ones dealing with the effects of climate change, and car-dominance is a big part of that. It's pretty top-of-mind for a lot of us.
The sentiment is mostly popular in dense city centers where it does make a lot of sense. Manhattan NYC has always been "anti-car", as has London UK. The car will still be king in less dense areas.
There are plenty of small-to-medium-sized cities (25K–250K) with sufficiently intact city cores and higher-density corridors where it's still very reasonable to imagine increased cycling uptake if the infrastructure were just put in place. It's not about making every person ride a bike on every trip, it's about making more bike trips possible for more people. Obviously someone who lives in Montana five miles from the nearest stoplight isn't going to be using a bike for their primary transportation, but there's a big spectrum in between that and midtown Manhattan.
In all fairness, improved cycle infrastructure is also great out in the "middle of nowhere" far from stoplights -- even if you're not road cycling, it's a great way to get out, see the countryside, and get some exercise. Where my parents live, it's absolutely brutal to try to get outside and get some exercise, because the roads are unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists. Improving that setup would let my parents do activities without hopping in a car -- even more valuable as they get older and less capable of driving a multi-ton pile of steel at 60MPH everywhere they want to go.
This article resonates with me. The city where I work built a road that makes my commute 20% shorter, and they made this road very bike-able. As soon as I could I rode my bike to work, then covid came shortly after and I started working from home. But I've tried to maintain the habit of walking to the grocery store and things like that.
I'm considering moving back to Boston after a decade away. COL aside- I'm curious how much actual progress has been made with respect to proper bike infrastructure. Last time I lived there you were really risking your safety. The layout of the city just isn't conducive to cycling from what I remember.
I am immensely impressed at the degree to which Boston and Cambridge have improved their bicycling infrastructure in only the past few years. It's not Dutch-level, but relative to the US it's a dream. Get on street view and check out the new bike lane around the Common, which when paired with the footbridge over Storrow and the car-free Washington Street means you can get from the Charles River Path nearly all the way to Haymarket without sharing a lane with cars:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/LXHJaEcaqnWbzt9E9
It's definitely improved noticeably since '16, when I moved out here. Which Washington Street? I live by North Station, and biking to the Charles River Path is a little scary, but once you're on the path, it's pretty easy to get to most of Back Bay/Fenway without too much of the way shared with traffic. There are still big gaps, but the number of grade separated paths in the West/North End, at least is heartening.
Seaport could be much better if enforcement was there at intersections. I've tried to use 311 to report drivers sitting in their cars at them.
Agreed that there's a ton of spotty areas that make me wary to bike around, especially in your neck of the woods. I'm willing to go far out of my way to stick to the places with good bike lane coverage. If only there were any way at all to get to the airport...
Ah, yeah, I cross by that in my route from the West End to Seaport (I think it's Winter/Summer Street?). About as much paint as grade seperated spots and a share row on Cambridge St. is the fairest spot until you get to South Station.
I’ve moved here roughly when you moved away, it seems. For Boston proper, it seems like things are finally picking up again after kinda falling off a cliff during the Walsh years. Wu ran on a campaign that prioritized transit, biking etc so we’re seeing some big, quick projects implemented (the temp Mass Ave bridge bike lanes for one).
Add that to the cycling ordinance in Cambridge and a cyclist mayor in Somerville and it feels like we have a chance for a comprehensive regional cycling network coming into reality.
As others have said, it has improved a lot. I started cycling in Boston/Cambridge in 1997 and they've put a ton of work into infra since then. However I now live in a northerly suburb and the inattentive drivers combine with a near-total lack of bicycle infra to terrifying effect. I still go for long rides on the weekends in nice weather, but I don't let my oldest kid bike the 1.5 miles to middle school. Too dangerous.
I vaguely remember learning to bike when I was 8, what they say is true! I bought a bike a few weeks ago and decades later I could still ride.
But a few obstacles I had:
- At least right now, I can bike at best 2 miles round trip without getting too tired. That's not far enough in most US cities, can't even bike to the nearest walmart/target/whole foods just to a convenience store.
- even with bike lanes, cars are scary, especially when the bike lane runs into puddles of uknown depths and isn't flat/stable.
- Is it allowed to bike on roads without a bike lane? If so, that's even more dangerous.
I think converting sidewalks into wider bike trails would please everyone. Pedestrians (rare) can walk on right side and less risk of some inattentive driver steering just over the lane killing you.
> Is it allowed to bike on roads without a bike lane?
Yes! You should probably educate yourself a bit about biking laws in your area if you don't know this. In the vast majority of the US, you have as much right to the road as any other vehicle -- though of course some car drivers don't respect that right.
I regularly bike 40 miles or more for day trips around my area to go to breweries, coffee shops, and parks. I also enjoy exploring new towns and cities by bike -- I've done 100 miles in a day before, just exploring a few towns with great bike infrastructure. Keep biking and that will become easy for you too!
>At least right now, I can bike at best 2 miles round trip without getting too tired.
If you do it regularly then that will soon become very easy.
>Is it allowed to bike on roads without a bike lane? If so, that's even more dangerous.
I do it in the UK and it's mostly OK although I did have a very close pass at speed last week. It was clearly malicious as the driver was gesticulating out of his window. That's the first time I've had something quite so egregious in the last five years of e-biking.
As an intermediate step toward real biking infrastructure, one thing I'd love to see in addition to painted lanes is some sort of tactile affordance to remind drivers they've left their lane and are now driving in a space reserved for bicycles. Cat's eyes or the like would do the trick.
" Compare that with the Netherlands, where 27% of the country commutes by bike.
The difference is infrastructure."
Well, infrastructure is certainly one big difference, but it's not _the_ difference. The Netherlands is quite flat. Some parts of the US (for example Austin, Texas where I live) is rather hilly in spots. Biking is getting more widely used anyway, but it's not irrelevant that it is much easier to bike on flat terrain.
I'm also surprised to see absolutely no mention of electric scooters (Bird, Lime, etc.). Those unwilling to bike could still add to the critical mass needed for support of infrastructure, if bikes and scooters share that infrastructure. If they're arguing that the other should not be allowed in their lanes, however, I think neither is numerous enough to get support.
>Well, infrastructure is certainly one big difference, but it's not _the_ difference. The Netherlands is quite flat
Ground in the Netherlands is flat, but bike paths also go over bridges. And what the Netherlands also has is the North Sea, with its winds, which turn cycling on nicely-paved flat terrain into rather serious physical exercise. Sometimes I wish I wasn't that cheap and got pedal-assist as an option.
People who argue against bike infrastructure in the U.S. are always quick to bring up the lack of hills in the Netherlands, but they never make the connection with the strong winds there (doubly ironic, given the romantic affinity we all have for Dutch windmills). It's frustrating, but I think e-bikes will finally be the death knell for this meme. (I've also heard that some infrastructure in NL actually takes wind into account by providing windbreaks for cyclists.)
The Dutch Headwind Cycling Championship is tomorrow for example (expected 7 to 8bft so it will be tough). There is a good cycle path where they will hold it and people regularly cycle there, it's almost never below 4bft there.
Also there are plenty of hilly parts of the Netherlands which have the same cycle infrastructure and usage. The fairy tale of "but it's flat" has been around for a while and used plenty of times by opponents without actually looking into it.
I wouldn't commute by bike over the Filbert Street Steps, that's true. But I don't think the hilly argument against cycle infrastructure is a great one. E-bikes, in particular, pretty much nullify the issue, and efficient cycle routes probably wouldn't traverse hills in many cities, anyway. SF is an extreme example, but in most places roads tend follow the terrain rather than try to conquer it.
Maybe not 8 months out of the year, but certainly 6 months, one is going to be a sweaty mess upon arrival. On the other hand, rarely do we get snow, so perhaps that cancels out.
My knowledge about biking infrastructure is lacking but doesn't it make sense to allow/promote biking on the sidewalks as a start? Once biking gains more acceptance, allocating more budget for proper biking lanes would become much easier.
I get around a lot by bike. Riding bikes on sidewalks is dangerous. You're not visible to cars when you're crossing driveways or going through intersections. Likewise, mixing with pedestrians is pretty unpleasant for everybody. You won't make a lot of friends that way. Sidewalks are safe when you're moving at the speed of walking.
When I'm on a sidewalk with my bike and there are pedestrians around, I hop off and walk.
My city has some master plan for bike infra, but really it's a matter of waiting until a road or intersection has to be rebuilt (frequently due to hard winters) and thinking about bike traffic at that point. There's also a network of sleepy neighborhood streets that are used by cyclists including myself.
This is allowed in many areas but it's a bad compromise: in much of the country, there aren't many sidewalks and they're not safe — e.g. you'll have a sidewalk in front of a strip mall but then it just ends on a busy road, driveways are often blocked by cars and are high risk zones with people flooring it as they leave or pulling in without slowing down much, there are random barriers and obstacles between properties, it's not cleared of trash effectively, etc. — and they're often _much_ longer trips. The last time I went to PyCon I was disappointed to see that the path from my hotel to the conference was like 0.7 miles in car and almost 2 on foot because there was a gnarly freeway bridge which forced pedestrians to walk around some unsafe roads.
Maintenance is also a big problem: a sidewalk which is cracked or full of snow / puddles is unpleasant even if it's relatively safe to ride through. One indicator you can use are the number of people riding motorized wheelchairs on the road shoulders — we generally have decent sidewalks here in DC but a lot of the neighboring suburbs added bike lanes during the pandemic and every time that happens you'll notice a ton of people using wheelchairs and strollers there because it's so much better than bumping around over broken concrete and dealing with random poles in the middle of the sidewalk.
The single most important thing which needs to happen is thinking about connectivity: what a lot of places do is make a couple of bike lanes which don't connect places people live/work/shop and then say nobody's using them without recognizing that the miles of unsafe streets on either end are probably the explanation.
Unfortunately, no. Sidewalks are for pedestrians. Mixing in bikes makes them unsafe for foot traffic. It's also dangerous for a cyclist to ride across an intersection in a crosswalk because drivers turning through it may not be able to see them before they're able to stop. Furthermore, sidewalks are irregular and not conducive to biking.
In, for example, Austin (my home), most sidewalks allow biking. There's a city code that lists which sidewalks are NOT allowed for biking, and it mostly amounts to "any sidewalk that people actually use for walking" (which is a small minority).
I think one issue is that motorists notice bikes on the road or bike lane more than they notice bikes on sidewalks, hence more likely to hit them when turning. But I agree it's a way to bootstrap up.
Even ignoring the fact that sidewalks end at every intersection and the potholes others mention, the relative speed difference is too large. Pedestrian: 5km/hour, cyclist (conservative) 15km/hour. For cars inside big cities 30km/hour seems reasonable (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/cities-where... claims 19km/hour in inner London).
There is no mention of traditionally car-centric sprawling cities such as LA or Phoenix and their biking infrastructure or lack thereof. Anyone living in such a city seeing progress on biking infrastructure?
I lived in LA from 2016 to 2021. There were improvements made, but as far as I could tell, most of it was in Downtown LA, which is already fairly walkable and the place with the most transit. Outside of Downtown, it's mostly a nightmare. Even within Downtown, I would say progress was fairly slow, but the changes were typically much more involved than simply painting the road. The biggest change was probably on Figueroa Street, though the infrastructure doesn't span much distance, as is the case with most of the improvements.
If you're interested in keeping up with this kind of stuff, Streetsblog is a good resource: https://la.streetsblog.org/
I grew up in LA and OC and the bike situation is very uneven. It is certainly wrong to say "its a nightmare outside of Downtown". There is substantial, protected bike infrastructure along all the major waterways. You can ride from downtown to Newport Beach without touching a street. Venice beach and in general the beach cities are quite bike friendly. The places that could use some bike TLC are places like Echo Park or Silverlake, where there's a lot of demand but no infra.
I lived in Venice Beach a few years ago and it definitely did start up open up and become more bike friendly. The rest of LA outside of downtown is a mix of non-existent to horrendous cycling infrastructure.
Well, there's no one L.A.. right? Until I had to move in 2019, I used to ride long commutes from the Valley and Santa Clarita to Pasadena, Burbank, and Westlake Village. I was able to ride very bike-friendly routes most of the way. Of course, riding longer distances is often easier to route than shorter distances so there you go. Didn't do much riding south of the 101 so I'm just a data point.
There are many such organizations that are active at a city or county level (eg https://sfbike.org/) and there are others at state level and even one or two at national level (https://www.bikeleague.org/). In my experience the most resources and most effective advocacy happen on the local level. I’d love to see national or state level organizations get more resources though.
What burgeoning bike cities? The sparse article only mentions cities that were already favorable toward bicycles with the possible exception of Austin.
The article discusses bike infrastructure in the context of cities. Population density of U.S. cities is comparable to those in the Netherlands. Some are much more dense, some are less. I'm unsure what point you're trying to make.
Parts of it do, and they don't see nearly the cycling mode-share as places in the Netherlands with equivalent density. The difference is infrastructure.
i guess you're trying to be snarky here, but, the density of the US as a whole has nothing to do with supporting urban cycling infrastructure. nobody here is talking about facilitating long-haul inter-urban bike routes.
That's an odd take considering bicycles are among the most efficient machines ever invented, quiet, environmentally-friendly, a great excuse to exercise, capable of carrying cargo, and allow people to easily cover ground too far to travel on foot. Why can't we have both?
Regardless, this is hugely important. My wife and I have two little kids (under 5) and we really, really want them to be independent young people when they're a little older. I want them to be able to hop on their bikes and ride to the shop, school, the train/metro/bus, etc. and most of all, I want them to survive. Drivers are the leading cause of dead kids, and deaths among vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) have risen dramatically in the US in the last couple years.
There are approximately 0 places in the US meeting this bar. https://culdesac.com/ near Phoenix is interesting but 1) very small and 2) in Phoenix, which will struggle with summer survivability by the time my kids are middle ages.
American Fietser - https://twitter.com/AmericanFietser - has been beating the drum for Carmel, Indiana, which apparently has made great strides in their downtown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94-kxjgOtdU&feature=youtu.be
I grew up in suburban Sacramento and it was basically a prison. I _did_ ride my bike when I was 14 and older, dozens of miles in some cases, but in retrospect it's shocking I lived. I was nearly killed in multiple instances.
I chatted briefly with Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes fame (maybe the best urbanist channel on youtube) and he was very reassuring about moving to Amsterdam with kids older than my own. I just got naturalised as an EU citizen and Utrecht in particular is on the short list. But I hope US cities can improve.