Ranking Bordeaux and Nantes next to Amsterdam is nonsense.
Amsterdam is miles ahead in terms of infrastructure. This ranking dilutes the most important thing to get these results : good bike lancés everywhere with no discontinuity.
Disclaimer : I've built villes.plus, an open source automated evaluation of bike lanes. 100 points, compute itineraries in "secure" mode with Brouter between these points, count the % of secured km -> score.
Amsterdam tops at 8/10. Bordeaux is at 3/10, Nantes 2/10.
I can't speak about Nantes which I haven't visited for decades but I think it is wrong to count bikes lanes as a single parameter.
Dutch urbanists have found that bike lanes are very important when streets used by cars are unaltered. Once you implement a lot of traffic calming features and cars never reach 30kph comfortably, bike lanes aren't that important and then streets can be shared across all users.
I always have a laugh when I see Copenhagen brag about its cycling infrastructure (e.g. Scandinavian Airlines declaring it bike-mecca in their flyers). I am very sorry, but it really doesn't come even close to Amsterdam, or most other Dutch cities really. There are a tonne of places where high-volume car traffic still intersects with low-speed bicycle traffic in Copenhagen, a lot of high-speed car roads with painted on lines, instead of actually separated infrastructure.
Also, the Netherlands is in its entirety covered in separated infrastructure optimized over decades. Just take a look at how anemic Denmark's infrastructure is outside the cities (https://www.opencyclemap.org/).
Things like "usage of cargo bikes", "percentage of women on bikes", "presence of NGOs", "media tone" all make for rather arbitrary outliers depending on how much they weigh in the final score.
Paris being 5th when biking there is pure chaos compared to many Asian cities makes the ranking look capricious. Paris's City hall is definitely pro bike and a lot of money and effort was poured into infrastructure, but that dosn't suddenly makes it safe or largely adopted.
More generally, infrastructure isn't everything. Tokyo small streets with absolutely no markings can be way safer and bike friendlier than a bright lane in the middle of constant car traffic.
I'll note the company doing the ranking is based on Paris, so familiarity might hide many of the flaws.
I didn't even feel particularly safe as a pedestrian in Tokyo or Osaka. Despite the good public transport, Japanese cities have cars absolutely everywhere, even in tiny streets that should really be pedestrian zones. Paris is much better in my opinion.
Tokyo fundamentally doesn't define pedestrian only zones except in very specific conditions.
I get why you'd feel unsafe, but IMHO it's the exact opposite effect: 99% of the streets don't have a sidewalk or anything specific for pedestrian, and thus are pedestrian first.
Small kids, dogs, cats, elderlies will be walking in the middle of the street. As a result cars drive way slower than they'd do in Paris and they need to be way more alert to what's happening. Every small street is basically the same as the pedestrian zone in the middle of Paris.
Came here to say that. I've lived a long time in both Amsteram and Paris, and seeing those two cities close in that ranking call the whole thing into question. For sure, cities couldn't game the metrics used by tha ranking, but I'm sure the metrics definitions have been gamed to make some cities look better.
"Usage and Reach" is ranked better for Paris than Amsterdam? But in Amsterdam I can safely and efficiently bicycle from anywhere to anywhere, including across the rings, to the countryside and even to the sea, with the kids, and no fear. In Paris, I would not dare to venture outside of the touristic city center, and even there I would keep an eye on kids.
Montreal's city leaders might be friendly. Its climate is not. Once the snow falls, the number of bicycle commuters plummets towards zero. Paris, vancouver, the netherlands ... they have stable climates condusive to bike use. At -10 it isnt the cars that will cause a crash, it is the physics of a two rubber wheels trying to navigate on ice.
Also, Quebec is not a city. The city is called "Quebec City" just as how New York and New York City are very different places.
The thing is: after a snow fall, they prioritize the bike roads/lanes before taking care of the roads used by cars.
When I was living in Switzerland, I kept a set of spare wheels with studded tires for those days with risk of ice. Riding on packed snow is perfectly fine on regular tires and ice is not dangerous when you have studded tires.
> the number of bicycle commuters plummets towards zero
That's proof that there's either a lot of progress to be made, or the local culture just isn't as tolerant to the cold.
Cycling around -10 works just fine if the roads have been taken care of (which, in your example, doesn't seem to be case, as apparently they're covered in ice).
With decent infrastructure, the difference between cycling 10 degrees above and 10 degrees below freezing is a matter of outfit.
Ice isnt a product of cold. It is actually rare on roads in the high north. Ice requires melting and re-freezing, and gets more slippery when wet. Ice is a problem when the weather bounces back and forth around freezing. Each city will be very different, but those near the great lakes are famously impacted by ice storms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ice_storms
I still see people cycling in Chicago in the cold and snow (usually while I'm also riding my bike)
Granted in a bona fide blizzard like today, i am choosing the bus instead. But this is the biggest snowfall in several years, not exactly a frequent problem.
It's evident that people use bicycles in Montreal -- TFA itself attests this.
But if your point is that North American cities all tend to have the same downtown/suburban contrasts, you are quite right.
People who live $Downtown usually have walkable neighbourhoods and perhaps even access to underground transit. People who live outside the centre of the city mostly end up depending on a private vehicle.
Bicycles are part of the mobility culture in Montreal. But Car Cancer has the same effect everywhere.
They do. Also people who use bicycles in Montreal are disproportionately males and mostly of the certain age group. That's very apparent if you stay for ~10 minutes near Grande Bibliothèque for example or any other relatively busy piste cyclable.
If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one. Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
Interestingly that high schoolers are not biking that much in Montreal, again in comparison. Biking to school was/is an exception where I live(d) in Montreal, i.e. Le Sud-Ouest, NDG.
> If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one.
And yet it is relatively successful in Montreal (as TFA says). If we are completely honest, bicycling could be called a niche activity in most of North America.
> Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
For students, for example.
I did say, "Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal". I did not claim more, and I also said that it's a controversial topic. On the positive side, Bixi has been a relative success compared to other Canadian cities.[1]
(You know Bixi, so I'll add a link for others to read.)
Of course it helps if the city, and country in general, is completely flat. Cities in Norway or Nepal have mother nature against all form of manual locomotion.
I think Norway is more about being comfortable riding in the cold on spiked tires. The hills of Oslo don’t bother you after a couple months of riding them.
I'm in Wisconsin, and I just got the bike with spiked tires out today. Even if there's not a lot of snow, I prefer to sacrifice one bike to road salt than have to maintain my "nice" bike through the winter.
People act like I'm some kind of freak when I arrive at work on my bike in the middle of the winter. But I remind them that there are people who work all day outdoors in places like Alaska and Canada, and 20 minutes on a bike doesn't even come close.
This is how I feel about riding in the rain to work. Like yes you get wet but also are you unable to get wet? If you want, wear rain clothes so you stay dry. And if it’s really pouring just wait half an hour or take the bus if you can’t wait. Just plan to ride every day and be okay with the days when life won’t let you.
I think what happens is when people have a routine outdoor activity, they develop a sense of their local weather, that seems like a mystery if one isn't regularly immersed in it. Also, some subtle adaptations make it easier, such as wearing quick drying clothes or having an emergency change at work.
Now, I do have the luxury of flexible hours at my workplace, but (for instance) my daughter doesn't, and she manages just fine.
On my first visit to Amsterdam, my friend picked me up on a bike at Centraal Station, and I rode to his apartment in the traditional Dutch style sitting on the back rack.
On the way said "only three more mountains to go till we're home"! I asked "WTF?" and he explained that's what they call the bridges over the canals.
This is one of the intersections we went through right after one of the mountains, showing how much the local culture affects the traffic safety and bicycle friendliness as much as the geography:
For me personally charging and keeping e-bike batteries in the apartment is a source of stress. I do keep and charge my drone and FPV plane batteries at home, even DIY ones, but e-bike batteries are much bigger and harder to chuck out of the window in case something goes wrong. I actually got rid of my e-scooter because of that, I just didn’t trust it.
That is a very reasonable concern. My apartment has 8 sprinklers so I park my e-bike right beneath one. You can get a e-bike with a removable battery and store it in a fireproof box
In Copenhagen, the vast majority of people park their bikes on the street using only a cafe lock (frame mounted, immobilizes the rear wheel). The bikes are generally nothing special, old rusty junkers, with one or three gears. E-bikes flatten terrain but also you need an indoor place to store it and they become a magnet for theft. A cheap bike you can ride to the Metro and leave in the elements is versatile in a way e-bikes are not. (I say all this as a massive e-bike fan living in a very hilly US city who recently visited Copenhagen and adored its bike culture.)
We once rented bikes in Copenhagen, they all looked like they were fresh from the junk yard. We had to try several to find ones where at least one of the brakes was still working. It was a horrible experience, and we tried several different places. That was after we found out that the public bikes that were supposed to be available all over the city had all been stolen.
No, but I think it’s because e-bikes have only come into widespread use in the last decade. It takes decades to build high quality infrastructure and those countries are the ones that could make bikes work for the general population before e-bikes were available.
Oh The Urbanity! just did a great episode on Victoria, B.C. The city is too small to make this list (pop. ~100K), but the video is worth checking out if you want to feel a little better about the progress of bike infrastructure in N.A. cities:
They hold themselves in high regard but Copenhagen doesn’t hold a candle to most Dutch cities. And for that matter, very few cities can compare themselves to the Dutch biking infrastructure, without even mentioning the cultural aspects and acceptance by other traffic participants.
I've cycled the SF South Bay Area, Davis, Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Bruge, and Antwerp.
Austin TX plants random, worn out, unpainted, leftover, camouflaged concrete shapes that serve no discernible positive purpose in the middle of city streets frequented by motorcycles, pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and skaters. That's how much of a shit they give about anyone not in a truck or a rented Slingshot.
The biggest hurdle to biking for me is parking safely. Unless I can park it behind locked doors I have an anxious feeling that it may not be still there when I return. This is no problem when bicycling to work, but for arbitrary errands it is. A good lock helps of course, but it still feels like a gamble.
This is the ultimate American urbanist conundrum. Bikes are pretty useless for transportation in American cities because of rampant theft. Locks get cut in the broad daylight and even if the thief is too inept to steal an angle grinder, or already ran out of batteries for today, they will still rip off parts (wheels, saddle, brakes, group, they will even rip out lights from the mounts, just because). But they also cannot demand the law enforcement against it because the thieves are the precious "unhoused" (which is very easy to check by visiting any encampment and observing all the bikes and bike parts there). So we get this strange situation when cities build bike lanes and bike parks which are empty because, at most, you can only commute on your bike if your place of work has a secure storage.
Enforcing the laws against bike thieves would be 100x more effective in promoting biking than building anything.
This is ridiculous. Bike thieves are prosecuted here, and parts theft is nowhere near as common as you're implying. Nobody I know here (Chicago) has ever really had a problem with it (bikes entirely being stolen, yeah that happens, but CPD is absolutely not refusing to investigate someone on account of being homeless, that's patently absurd)
So you are arguing that people you know only had their whole bikes stolen and not wheels/saddles/etc ? I don't think it's a good argument, tbqh. Even if the people you know made a meaningful sample of Chicago population (they don't) they still get bikes stolen and it still means the law is not enforced well enough.
And CPD can investigate all they want, CPD, like any other police department, cannot put people in prison. The DA has to press charges and prosecute in the court, which won't happen with any DA in any major city against homeless (otherwise all homeless would have been already in prison).
No, nobody I know has had their bike stolen. I am acknowledging that bikes are sometimes stolen. CPD has a bike registry and does actively investigate bike theft.
And no, the DA does not withhold prosecution for theft based on ones housing status.
(Since you seem unaware: being homeless is not illegal)
>No, nobody I know has had their bike stolen. I am acknowledging that bikes are sometimes stolen.
This argument makes even less sense then. You proclaim that stealing bike parts is an absurd idea and never happens based on the people you know, yet now you say that you don't know any people whose bike was stolen? If you believe things that don't happen to people you know are absurd and don't happen, then should not you be consistent and believe that bikes don't get stolen? Or, if you admit that bikes get stolen, even though not from the people you know, then should not you also be open to the idea that bike parts get stolen too, even though not from the people you know?
>And no, the DA does not withhold prosecution for theft based on ones housing status.
That could be very true and DA does not charge any bike thieves regardless of their housing status, but still the effect is the same - homeless bike thieves are never charged and convicted (using "never" statistically, probably there are some convictions but nowhere close enough to make bike theft dangerous for the criminals). Since you seem unaware: drive around and observe homeless riding bikes and guiding another one or two. Sometimes you can even see bolt cutters on them. Do you think they do this on the way from their bolt-cutting job to the bike-valet job?
Bike theft is rare, parts theft is even rarer. Idk what you don't get.
Bike thieves are charged, regardless of housing. Why would their housing affect that?
I can't say I've ever seen a homeless person riding a bike with other bikes in tow. There are plenty of homeless people i see around, though, so I'm not convinced you're describing a real problem.
It's also very unsettling that you won't refer to them as homeless people.
eta: even the rabid inner-suburb Facebook boomers here who never shut up about the homeless people in my area have never brought up the things you're describing, I've never seen any such information in local media, which is always happy to say anything and everything negative about homeless people. I have zero reason to think homeless people are more likely to steal bikes, nor less likely to be prosecuted for doing so; far as i can tell, neither do you
Also Chicago (Oak Park, really, but lots of Chicago experience too).
Bike theft is in fact pretty common? Bike thieves are charged when police luck into catching the thief like a block from the scene, but the police will be the first to tell you you aren't getting your bike back. I have friends who've had trackers on their bike, could pinpoint the actual location of the bike, and zero help from the police.
I agree with you about the connection to homelessness.
I agree with you about (2) but not with (1). In fact, for a lot of my bikey friends, theft is a huge consideration for which bikes they'll take where. I think the big point you're trying to make here is well taken! I just wouldn't want to create the impression that CPD is going to do anything meaningful about bike theft. :)
Yeah but those people haven't chosen not to bike entirely because their bike might be stolen, they won't take their nicest bike to sketchy areas. To me that's a meaningfully different thing than what the person arguing is claiming.
Don't get me wrong, I'd never wanna give anyone the impression CPD is ever going to do anything useful at all lol :)
>Bike theft is rare, parts theft is even rarer. Idk what you don't get.
Source for these claims. "People I know" is not really a source.
>Bike thieves are charged, regardless of housing. Why would their housing affect that?
Bike thieves are not charged, why do you believe they are? How do you explain massive bike chop shops operating in the open in homeless camps? Do you think they bought all those bikes and just disassemble and reassemble them as a hobby? Should not they be able to afford rent if they can afford $10K+ bikes they sometimes have?
>so I'm not convinced you're describing a real problem.
That's a given, you are a part of the problem this is why you can't see it. Who do you think steals all the bikes? Where do homeless get all their bikes? Do think for 1 minute, it will come to you.
I have seen with my own eyes police reports of bike thieves being charged. Bike chop shops have been notably caught and charged in Chicago while I've lived here. I know for absolute fact that bike thieves are charged on a regular basis in Chicago.
I've never seen a report of a bike chop shop in a homeless encampment in Chicago.
I'm not aware of a great number of homeless people who have bikes. I've certainly never seen anyone on a $10k bike on the city streets, regardless of housing status.
The bikes that are stolen are largely stolen by organized rings, and "scrappers" who drive up and down the alleys grabbing any scrap metal not tied down. They're not cutting bikes off racks, but they're taking ones that aren't locked up. I don't know any homeless people that own trucks, so you?
They're not being stolen by homeless people. I mean I'm obviously not saying no homeless person has ever stolen a bike, I'm saying that it's not a significant source of bike theft.
Why do you use homeless as a noun, and not an adjective? Do you also refer to Black people, gay people, or Jewish people this way?
Regardless: bike theft is not a part of the calculation for people to ride a bike, at least here. #1 reason is "riding in traffic is too scary." Reducing bike theft does nothing for those people; it's already not even on their minds when making the decision. (That's your claim, btw, so back it up if you feel like it)
Police reports do not include charges, DA office charges, police reports just describe what happened...
What you experience now is called "cognitive dissonance" - the thing you want to believe is proven to be not true and you are making things up to keep believing it.
What evidence do you have to support your claims that people choose not to bike because of theft, and that theft isn't prosecuted based on housing status?
Why do you use homeless as a noun to refer to people?
Really? After finding out that the police reports you have also "seen" do not actually include charges you now have seen the DA pressing charges while strolling through the court house and walking into random arraignment hearings, I presume? And you probably did not catch any names of the perpetrators, right?
>What evidence do you have to support your claims that people choose not to bike because of theft
Talk to people perhaps? I figure you don't bike and people you know don't either, so, instead of a court house how about hanging at an LBS and asking people working there and the customers?
>and that theft isn't prosecuted based on housing status
That's not something I claimed, I said that bike theft is not prosecuted period. But homeless also are not charged with the whole bunch of crimes they commit regularly: trespassing, public intoxication, traffic violations, disturbance of peace etc. You can ask a local PD or inquiry your DA office about that.
>Why do you use homeless as a noun to refer to people?
So there. I can prove the DA is willing to charge bike thieves, you have a bunch of conjecture scapegoating homeless people and denying reality.
> Talk to people perhaps
I talk to people at bike shops, i talk to my coworkers, i talk to people at the bars, i talk to my friends. Unlike you, i live here, i bike nearly everywhere, and follow local media/social media. The problems you're describing aren't real and you've done nothing to prove they are.
>It's strange, and i don't think it's unintentional.
How do people call the homeless in Chicago? I've lived on the West Coast, in the South, and in the Midwest (not in Illinois though), and people called them "homeless" everywhere. It's obviously intentional because I am referring to the homeless and it would be strange to call them something else.
>Anyway, i know for absolute fact that bike thieves have been charged by the Chicago DA. Here's proof
Wow, a story from more than a year ago. It does seem you are correct, bike theft is so rare in Chicago and the police is vigilant, the last bike thief they caught was probably that guy and they did not have any bikes stolen since lol
As I said, bike thieves are never charged statistically. Surely there are some unlucky ones like that individual, who probably stole from somebody connected to the police. But, again, visit an encampment and observe hundreds of bikes and parts there. Those are not bought in stores.
> Unlike you, i live here, i bike nearly everywhere, and follow local media/social media. The problems you're describing aren't real and you've done nothing to prove they are.
Right, you bike everywhere and yet you never had bike stolen and don't know anybody who had a bike stolen. In Chicago, no less.
> Right, you bike everywhere and yet you never had bike stolen and don't know anybody who had a bike stolen. In Chicago, no less.
This is correct.
1. You said theft is the main reason people don't bike. Prove it.
2. You said homeless people aren't prosecuted for theft. Prove it.
We refer to "homeless people" as "homeless people," we don't just say "homeless" as if they're something different than a person (and don't be sly, you never said "the homeless," you said "homeless," alone, using the adjective as a noun, which seems intentionally degrading)
I always kept my bicycle inside my office. I also found out that if you ask politely, many shops allows you to enter with your bike provided there is enough space.
That strongly depends on the city and the places you park your bike. I've never needed to chain my bike, although I do it for new bikes because insurance demands it.
There are neighborhoods in cities like Amsterdam where bicycle theft is pretty much expected to happen no matter how many locks you buy, but in smaller towns there's barely a need to lock your bike at all during the day.
I went to Copenhagen this summer. I was quite disappointed in the bicycle infrastructure, I felt like it was on par with what we have in Stockholm. Rented bikes and biked around for two days. It was nice!
Not sure how this index is being calculated (site breaks a lot), but my general feeling was that Denmark is just better at marketing than actual infrastructure when comparing to Stockholm at least
It is currently -1 to -3 in Montreal and -2 to -7 in Quebec (city).
So yes folks literally freezing. It will remain so (down to -35) for the next 4 months.
According to Wikipedia, the mean daily minimum of Helsinki in January is -5.6°. In Quebec City, it’s -17.7°. Not the same, at least according to Wikipedia.
Bike paths don't have to be dry though, you can sweep them and it's fine. If you use studded tires, you can ride a bike in places where you can't even walk. Source is I used to do this when I lived in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. I agree with you that infrastructure is key though. The temperature doesn't really matter, if you're good to go on a walk, you're also good to go for a ride.
I see bikes in the summer here. I dont see almost anybody biking in the winter here. Like 100:1. The winters here are not mild (like in vancouver). This is basically artic-like weather. People also tend not to walk. The very poor take the bus. Most drive.
In Vancouver this mostly works because it is cold but not cold enough. There are only a few days where it is very sketchy. The rest of Canada is not like this.
Studded tires. This is an investment but it works. Caveat is you need space to store them on a second set of wheels or bike because you don't want to ride them all year long so it is not for everyone.
'space to store them on a second set of wheels' This probably explains everything about this discussion. I think im dealing with very poor people (Europeans).
I think I have space in my pool shed or my other shed. Worst case I will put them in one of my many empty rooms.
Again, if you'd just look at the example provided: the coldness really isn't the issue. I checked a few major Canadian cities, and Oulu was similar or colder, looked like, and it has plenty of biking going on.
Investment is the issue. Cities and countries largely aren't willing to invest anywhere close to the same money into bikes the same way they do cars, and then everyone feigns surprise that this somehow makes biking harder and less popular.
Ah well that settles it then! Im going to tell the female lawyer I know to stop taking her car and instead buy gear and a bike so she can bike in the freezing cold for 20 minutes to get to her job where she also has to dress as a lawyer. No problem just pack a bag of clothes in a pack + all other workthings and then don artic style gear. So much fun!
My gf is a doctor and rides year-round. In the winter I swap wheels with studded tires onto her bike (it takes a couple minutes). Where there's proper infrastructure, it's far safer to go out on a bike in poor conditions than it is an automobile. Plus you accumulate tremendous health benefits from not being sedentary. I'd work that into your pitch (of course, my gf is lucky to observe this first-hand at work every day, which an attorney might not).
People dont live like this here. We would view this as hardship for peasants of another ancient time.
This is not to say it must be cars. It can be other forms of transit like bus/subway. Of course standing in an unsheltered area waiting for a bus is also highly undesirable. The windchill makes this literally dangerous.
Perhaps there is a cultural barrier here? or perhaps you are not familiar with real winter.
I'm not surprised to see Utrecht in the first place, but quite a bit surprised to see the other Dutch cities so low. No offense, but Rotterdam or The Heague is 100x better than Paris from safety and convenience point of view. I'm curious why is the ranking like this.
How did you even manage to see the page? I just clicked on it and got to WPAdmin install page, asking to setup the admin account.
Completely agree with you, I've traveled with my bike to many cities in Europe, the Netherlands in general has a fantastic bike infrastructure, not even sure why it's called "Copenhagenize" since I go to Copenhagen quite often and compared to Dutch's bike infrastructure it's still not on par to it. It's definitely great but the Dutch have it ahead.
"Welcome to the famous five-minute WordPress installation process! Just fill in the information below and you’ll be on your way to using the most extendable and powerful personal publishing platform in the world."
yes, seems the site is completely broken and I suspect someone is in the middle of a panicked reinstall or reconfigure of WP. I feel for them.
[edit] back up now, it seems.
Amsterdam is miles ahead in terms of infrastructure. This ranking dilutes the most important thing to get these results : good bike lancés everywhere with no discontinuity.
Disclaimer : I've built villes.plus, an open source automated evaluation of bike lanes. 100 points, compute itineraries in "secure" mode with Brouter between these points, count the % of secured km -> score.
Amsterdam tops at 8/10. Bordeaux is at 3/10, Nantes 2/10.
https://villes.plus/cyclables/Amsterdam?id=271110
https://villes.plus/cyclables/Nantes.8
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