You're underestimating some of the speeds involved though. People will bike at speeds that feel safe to them. There's bike lanes there that are long, straight, and that have people going much faster on them than anyone can run. Amsterdam is full of life-long cyclists; some of them go pretty fast when it's safe to do so. It was quite impressive seeing some of the people on the city-style bikes hauling ass, especially when they didn't look like you'd expect them to. I do that here in NYC too; no sense in making my commute take any longer than necessary. Although I'm generally on a road bike when doing so, not a city bike!
It beats being lazy in a car and I'm very thankful that the infrastructure here in NL supports it.
I ride much slower on mixed use paths or around pedestrians, me hitting someone at 32km/h is going to hurt both of us potentially badly.
This makes no sense. You can pedal an electric bike at least as fast if not faster than a regular bike.
Some e-bikes are speed limited to cut out the assist at a certain speed, but it doesn't mean it also removes your ability to pedal hard and achieve the same speed.
Most Dutch cycle at about 25km/hour (whether or not electric) - those cyclists that easily do 30 on normal city bikes are probably the last generation that will switch to e-bikes.
There are many different types of e-bikes, and you're probably thinking of what are effective electric mopeds, with big batteries and engines and a throttle control. Those certainly go very fast. They're also not legal in many places, including here in NYC, and aren't necessarily what people mean when they're talking about e-bikes; that's usually referring to pedal-assist.
Proper road racing enthusiasts can average 35km/h including stops (the joys of a flat country).
It is almost always the car drivers who don't want to sacrifice the single lane required to make a two way, protected bike lane. Case in point, Peachtree St in Atlanta ~3 years ago.
https://www.ajc.com/news/traffic/bike-lane-plan-for-peachtre...
https://www.ajc.com/news/local/bike-lanes-peachtree-road-for...
"Vehicular cyclists" are opposed to bike lanes and are not uncommon. See elsewhere in this thread for discussion of them. I consider myself roughly 1/2 vehicular, 1/2 infrastructural. Both camps have good points.
Infrastructural cyclists can point to the obvious success in the Netherlands and some other bike-friendly cities/countries, at least.
Do you have evidence for this or is it just an assertion?
I don't think there are rigorous scientific studies into vehicular or infrastructural cycling. If the infrastructural approach is more popular it's probably because many people seem to accept the infrastructural arguments uncritically. The vehicular camp makes excellent points that I believe have greatly improved my own safety.
One point that vehicular cyclists make is that many people seem to assume that certain practices are safer, but reality is more complicated. For example, riding on the sidewalk is generally considered to be considerably less safe than riding on the road, even by many infrastructural cyclists. But it seems that most people assume that it's more safe.
As a point in favor of vehicular cycling, it seems to me that vehicular cyclists are indeed safer riders than infrastructural. Some might say this is due to experience, but that seems to be a lot of what vehicular cycling is about so I'm not sure that's an argument against vehicular cycling.
Also, I don't think vehicular cyclists are very interested in increasing the number of cyclists. I think there are major benefits to increasing the number of cyclists, and I think the "safety in numbers" effect is the biggest benefit to an infrastructural approach.
In terms of policy, it's a lot easier to build some infrastructure than it is to train drivers and cyclists. So any apparent success of the infrastructure approach may be due solely to that. Also, as I've pointed out on HN here before, not all infrastructure is the same. Most that I see in the US is awful and I would not be surprised if they made cyclists less safe. It seems that infrastructure in some European cities fixes the problems I have.
Ultimately I think both the infrastructural and vehicular camps have good points, and the best policy is a hybrid of the two.
Well, for biking numbers, there are infrastructure-oriented places like the Netherlands with very high rates of biking. I'm not aware of anywhere comparable for vehicular cycling, at least in the developed world.
> Do you have evidence for this or is it just an assertion?
Places where vehicular cycling is more common like the US seem to have worse safety numbers. I think you're right though that there aren't any in-depth studies, or at least I haven't seen them.
Admittedly, to me it seems obvious that cars being separate from bikes will be safer for people on bikes than sharing the space. Just like how everyone would uncritically accept that walking on sidewalks is safer than walking in car lanes, because it just seems really obvious.
Granted, you're looking at it as a personal style, whereas I'm looking at it in terms of public policy: which one is safer for cyclists as a whole, which one encourages more cycling. If you're saying, "well vehicular cycling policy is great except for that part where it only works for a tiny % of the populace" then that by itself means it's kind of useless.
Also, I don't know any place where vehicular cycling is particularly common. It seems to be enthusiastically practiced by a relatively small group of people. As I said, though, those people are the safest cyclists I know. There's no evidence that their practices are detrimental to safety best I can tell. Their practices might seem counterintuitive, but they have good reasons for what they do.
> Admittedly, to me it seems obvious that cars being separate from bikes will be safer for people on bikes than sharing the space. Just like how everyone would uncritically accept that walking on sidewalks is safer than walking in car lanes, because it just seems really obvious.
Again, what seems obvious is not necessarily true. I recommend that you look at websites like this one: http://bicyclesafe.com/
The author of that site seems to be neither in favor of pure vehicular cycling or infrastructure, though I think he's more in favor of infrastructure than I am. You can look through the most common types of crashes and see that most infrastructure does little to nothing to address those problems. And dooring, for example, is unavoidable in some infrastructure.
The infrastructure approach seems to implicitly assume that most crashes (or perhaps the most severe crashes) are due to cars rear-ending cyclists, but that's not true. The vast majority are at intersections. A lot of infrastructure I've seen amplifies the intersection risk by, for example, making cyclists less visible by placing parked cars between the main traffic lane and the bike lane. Those arrangements absolutely increase the number of conflicts at intersections. Yet people keep promoting this sort of infrastructure. (Yes, infrastructure done well can help. See other comments in this thread for more information on that.)
> you're looking at it as a personal style
No, I'm interested in my personal safety and also public policy. I'm not opposed to all bike infrastructure, just bad infrastructure, which is the vast majority of what I've seen. Given the choice between no infrastructure, bad infrastructure, and good infrastructure, my choice is good infrastructure. Most people can't tell the difference between good and bad infrastructure.
Edit: I can see from your other posts that you live in Germany. The infrastructure you see is probably biased towards good. I live in the southern US, and the infrastructure I see (if it exists) is biased towards bad. Keep this in mind.
Unfortunately most people are not going to ride when they have to mix with cars. I'm willing to do it on low speed city streets, and in unprotected bike lanes at up to highway (55MPH) speeds when I have to, but the great majority of people won't, and won't allow their kids to do it either. Protected bike lanes are the gold standard, and that's what we should be aiming for.
I'm aware of this, but the infrastructural camp tends to assume that it's obvious these effects outweigh the problems with infrastructure. I'm not certain. I think a hybrid between the vehicular and infrastructural approaches is necessary to get the benefits of both with minimal downsides. This means recognizing the problems with infrastructure and avoiding them.
This is a really interesting point. One of the things about where I live that I think I've taken for granted is that biking is pretty common. Not as common as driving, but at any given time you are very likely to see at least one bike on the road.
And, in general, cars do keep an eye out for bikes -- and they even do things like slow down to make room for bikes when the road gets narrow.
It does? I've never assumed that. When I got hit, once was being t-boned, the other was a right hook.
> I'm not opposed to all bike infrastructure, just bad infrastructure, which is the vast majority of what I've seen. Given the choice between no infrastructure, bad infrastructure, and good infrastructure, my choice is good infrastructure. Most people can't tell the difference between good and bad infrastructure.
> Edit: I can see from your other posts that you live in Germany. The infrastructure you see is probably biased towards good. I live in the southern US, and the infrastructure I see (if it exists) is biased towards bad. Keep this in mind.
I live in Germany right now, but I've lived in a handful of different parts of the US, most of which I biked in, including Alabama (not entirely by choice). You're right, biking in the South sucks. It sucks bad.
As you say, a lot of bike infrastructure is bad, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the discussion. If a city really half-asses its bus program so that it's nearly useless, we don't declare that the fault of public transportation generally. You get what you pay for and all.
I'm not anti-infrastructure. I'd consider myself about 1/2 vehicular, 1/2 infrastructural. (See my other posts in this thread; I've repeated this several times now.) Both sides have good points. The problem is that most infrastructure in the US is bad, often considerably worse than no infrastructure at all.
It all boils down to the parts where these lanes intersect with car traffic. There is no use in adding a few lanes here and there, you need to have a concept and micromanage every intersection between cars and cyclists to get something that really pays off. Often this is prevented by the unwillingness of motorists to loose space to park or drive on and this results in pseudo-solutions that are more dangerous than having all cyclists using the middle of the road.
Our city implemented a pretty solid network of dedicated lanes downtown a couple years ago, much to the chagrin of angry drivers and the main benefit isn't the real estate that was given to cyclists so much as it is the real estate that was taken from cars. There's just less traffic, drivers are more attentive because they have more hazards to deal with, and they're moving slower. The traffic calming effect is, for me, the main benefit to having dedicated bike lanes.
I won't go so far as to say that I'm opposed to them outright, but when there's a choice between a street with a protected lane and a quiet street without one that runs parallel, I'll almost always choose the street without.
If we’re going to use up a lane, let’s do it in a socially responsible way and make it a dedicated bus lane, which is what most people in need in Atlanta use to get around.
Because the cyclists, too, are part of the public? It's not like that public money is solely sourced from automobile drivers. Many people I know who live and work and pay taxes in Atlanta cycle and drive, depending on where they're going. Are you really suggesting auto-drivers are more important citizens whose convenience matters more than the safety of others? Should Atlanta also start de-prioritizing safe sidewalks and crosswalks so people who are walking all over Midtown and downtown don't inconvenience the drivers? Suggesting the many people who aren't traveling along on 4 or more wheels should be ignored for the sake of convenience to those who are seems awfully silly.
Because the cyclists, too, are part of the
public? It's not like that public money is
solely sourced from automobile drivers.
If you want a lane all to yourself isn't only fair that you pay your fair share toward the building, maintenance and repair of the lanes? Why should you get to use them free of cost?
Don't act like my bike puts as much wear and tear on the road as your 3 ton SUV or the 18-wheelers and delivery trucks.
It is easy to get carried away with these hyper arguments in favor of public transit, bicycling everywhere and for everyone, high density living and removing parking wherever possible.
It is helpful to bear in mind that just because a small canal-ridden city of 800,000 people ( Amsterdam has an area of 85 square miles while even NYC is 302 and Chicago is 234 ) has a high density of cyclists doesn't mean we shape policy for much of the Western world based on that small city of homogeneous people with homogeneous values and neighborhoods.
The one thing that debunks that argument is the fact that people aren't replacing their cars with motorcycles.
Not true in Houston, which is pretty much the same. (I couldn't find data for Atlanta, unfortunately.) https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs1676/f/files/2015/1...
Huh? In the city center, speeds are greatly reduced for cars and bikes, but getting between metropolitan areas, both speeds can climb. You do know there's a whole bike highway system in the Netherlands, right?
I think the, "bikes as fast pedestrians" model is a bit outdated. I don't want to be seen as a very fast person on foot, while on my bike. I can hit 30+mph in a sprint, and go many hundreds of miles in a week.
Some people ride slow, and some ride fast, and it's facetious to conclude that average biking speed is slow.
Also as a jogger, I wouldn't every try running on a busy sidewalk somewhere downtown, but I will need to bike home in rush hour.
The other issue is that pedestrians do not typically follow traffic rules while walking. That is, they won't keep to one side of the path, they won't signal their intention to change direction in advance, etc. This makes it much more difficult to ride among them compared to riding in traffic where drivers do generally follow the rules.
I'd rather stay on the right, if traffic is too bad I would get off the bicycle and walk the intersection until traffic clears.
My commute while I take the kids to the daycare in a trailer takes me about 20 minutes one way. My ride to work takes me another 6 minutes. If I walked the same route, it would take me over an hour to get to daycare and another 30 minutes to get to work from there.
Bicyclists are not fast pedestrians. They're riding on vehicles that have similar dynamics to any other 2 wheeled vehicle like a moped or motorcycle. The only difference is that they're slower, but when going downhill, they can easily match motorized traffic speeds with little effort (I've managed to get up to 35 mph going down some steep grades).
Infrastructure designed for pedestrian speeds is not really suited for cyclists who ride for transportation.
What does this mean? Why not slow motorcycles?
Cycling at 10mph at all times would feel pretty slow.
The safest engineering solution is to separate heavy motorized vehicles from human scale things.
The way to get THAT inside of major cities involves lots of adapter IO at the edge of the city, and a much more (Azimov's) Cave of Steel like transit infrastructure inside.
I just checked my bike computer, and it tells me that my average speed is around 10 MPH, which means that roughly half the time I'm going faster than that.