It's true that a bicycle is itself cheaper than a car, but housing within biking distance to job centers sure isn't. In my view this is the primary reason bicycle commuters are stereotypically rich folks. The bicycle itself isn't the expensive part; you need proximity, extra commute time, and infrastructure. That stuff just isn't accessible to many people.
What it took was a focus on good quality bike lanes outside the affluent white neighborhoods, bike accessibility at transit stations/on busses, and expansion of bikeshare to poorer neighborhoods.
The rich lycra-wearing stereotype won't go away until we invest in equitable access to bike infrastructure.
I've never been to Chattanooga, TN but once I realized I can work from home I've been curious about owning a home somewhere with gigabit fiber but without ridiculously expensive real estate within commuting distance to a Costco or Sam's Club (so clearly not Jersey City, NJ or Longmont, CO).
What I noticed just looking at Google Maps Street View was that any home within my price range lacked a sidewalk. Apparently, only the wealthy people in Chattanooga, TN need sidewalks. How do we talk about bike lanes when places lack sidewalks?
Western New York has cheap housing and older, 150+ year old urbanization that doesn't suffer as much from 20th century shortsightedness.
In most of the world, they're the default thing - before a roadway suitable for cars, before piped water, before sewers, before electricity.
That'd why sidewalks is polish. Most sidewalks I see outside of tight downtowns are useless and barely used, and they aren't free to build and they don't generate anything if no one uses them...
The poor areas are super poor and semi-distant from goods and services. Biking somewhere from the poor areas, unless you have time and energy to spare, is going to be a big undertaking most of the time, not even accounting for the hills.
As you've noticed on Google, our downtown and close-lying (expensive) neighborhoods have sidewalks and bike lanes aplenty. They're fantastic. But there's no similar facilities in older, poorer, and outlying neighborhoods (many of which were simply suburbs until the city crept in). Nor any practical connection between neighborhoods for foot+pedal traffic.
But our internet's great.
Basically, if you can be all-in on not driving, you save a lot. But once you even want to drive a little bit, the savings to driving only sometimes instead of all the time is not very large (and can in fact be negative, as you pointed out with needing closer housing with parking). Unless it allows you to go from a two to one car family.
https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/average-annual-cost-...
It probably says more about how expensive taxis were pre-Uber. I'm sure ride shares are a nontrivial part of living without a car today.
Housing isn’t abundant within 50 miles of London and other similar major cities, let alone 5.
Ok but now we’ve moved from ‘bicycling is relatively practical’ to ‘it’d be relatively practical if only everything about our politics and built environment was instantly completely different.’
The amount of on street car parking in zones 2-3 is insane. Now that actually IS a subsidy to rich people.
Interestingly, the average distance the Dutch ride is about 1.2 miles per day:
https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/best-kept-secret-dutch-b...
Having done a similar distance in the cycling capital of the world for about a year I wouldn't exactly call it "easy". I was happy to exchange it for a bus + tram combination even though it added ~15 minutes. Though I'll admit it's nice to be able to commute that distance by bike once or twice a week; but to do it day in and day out gets tiring.
Can confirm this: I'm doing a 14 km commute and yes, for the first few weeks it's really tiring. Wanted to go to sleep as soon as I got home every afternoon. However, after say 2 or 3 months, your metabolism sort of adapts to it and you do it "naturally", without thinking too much about it. The idea of taking the bus again makes me anxious, though.
General population would struggle. I used to bike commute twice that distance regularly and think that'd take me more like 25, maybe 30 now that I haven't done it for almost 2 years.
I live in a city with mediocre to poor bike infrastructure at best, and I see plenty of 50-70 year old women doing 25km/h on ebikes or 10-15km/h on regular bikes.
Granted I wasn't overweight when I started, but after 5 years of largely being a couch potato and doing office work, I averaged around 20km/h or ~12mph door to door over a commute of 10 miles on a 40lb trike.
After getting fitter I'm about the same speed but a shower and change of clothes at the other end is optional now even on a 32C day rather than being drenched.
Your experience can only be due to bike hostile infrastructure or laws. If you had to stop three times for 2-5 minutes a piece at each intersection in a car while the empty lane for bikes and pedestrians got a green light on the off chance they showed up, you'd probably be complaining about how inconvenient driving was.
No, I'm just a person with very little natural fitness who happened to enjoy riding a bicycle.
If you commute in rush hour that is actually a lot faster than going by car, so biking is the fastest option available.
Edit: And that was at a leisurely pace, similar to the effort of walking.
Google maps calculations are decided by Google and take into account padding plus some degree of inclination calculation
I do a 4.8-mile trip on a class 3 ebike (28 mph) consistently in 14 minutes in San Diego north county.
_Averaging_ a 12mph pace with signal lights, traffic, and stop signs is an entirely different story, especially in a busy cities.
I agree it's easy if you're fit though. But I know it can be a pain for people who don't do sport at least weekly.
I think the worst part is a stop sign every block.
I used to commute by (ordinary) cycling and this is a huge part of it. It's stressful navigating on urban roads through taxis and vans who seem to see you as the equivalent of a preachy vegan on wheels and drive like complete arses as a result. I've been literally run off the road by people who either can't be bothered to check their mirrors or have some creepy notion that cyclists "deserve" to be scared off the road by their aggressive driving. The only deterrent seems to be wearing a camera because they know it's the only way they'll ever have a chance of facing prosecution for it.
I'd never dream of telling someone else how to live their lives, I'm not one of those moral crusaders who endlessly harrass people about giving up their cars in favour of bikes. I just don't want to get mowed down by Billy Big Bollocks because he's too important to wait ten seconds to overtake safely.
I could go for "often doable".
That’s a pretty uncharitable reading of their comment. It is obvious we are talking about people that are already physically capable of riding a bike and are discussing a specific distance for a commute.
Even so, I tried to find common ground by merely softening the "trivial" language to "often doable" rather than contradicting. Because clearly it will sometimes be "trivial".
So, I disagree with your assessment of "uncharitable". And I am taken aback that there is so much bitter contention over this issue when it seems to me as though the important thing is that e-bikes have made commutes much easier in general.
Stereotypes are only useful to the extent that they contain a kernel of truth, and this one is just false. The largest group of American bicycle-to-work riders lies in the $20-30k/year income group, i.e. poor people. With each increase of $10k/year income there are fewer riders.
https://i2.wp.com/cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/201...
For example check out the restaurants in Mountain View, CA patronized by affluent employees of Google and LinkedIn. Walk around back and you'll see a bunch of cheap bikes.
For these reason and I’m sure others, bicycles for commuting are more popular outside of North America.
Perhaps in some places (where the major newspapers are?), but there area I grew up in has residential, industrial, and commercial all mixed up in a way that solves that issue: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/50.8285/-1.0276
(Likewise Berlin, though Berlin also has much better public transport).
Meanwhile, for $2,000 a month in the upper midwest you can rent a house with multiple bedrooms and bathroom on 40 acres of land, or a nicely remodeled house with a small yard and river views in a town if you prefer. Or, with enough for a minimum down payment saved up, you could also buy a small house on 5 acres in a forest.
Granted, you'll pay more for owning a car, but... deciding between studio, or a prime house for $300 less per month, and the car doesn't sound too unreasonable.
Probably do that in rural CA, too (certainly you can get a nice single family home in many CA suburbs), and not be as far (but probably still too far) from the job the individual in question has that enables paying $2,000/mo in the first place. And similar work closer (to either rural CA or the upper Midwest) would pay less.
If you went really rural, you would be able to get much more for your money.
The thought that biking is only for the rich is especially galling when I hear it said about NYC cyclists. The person saying this is thinking of the lycra'd-up dentist riding a Pinarello Dogma. The Manhattan Bridge had 180,000 bike trips on it this June. Williamsburg had 230,000.[1] Cycling is much more prevalent than non-cyclers think.
1: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bike-counts.sh...
That's not bad at all, close to 10% of car traffic, based on old numbers.
Public transportation and city bike rental systems should be free to ride. We all pay taxes to keep roads maintained, we should all pay taxes to keep public transportation maintained.
Not charging would help busses keep their schedules with less queuing and waiting, tourists would be less likely to rent a car, and it could help that chicken and egg problem. The problem with charging people with riding public transportation is you are taxing the very people we should be rewarding. The people who are committing to taking up less space on the road and living with a smaller carbon footprint are being penalized for their hugely beneficial decision to society not to drive. Making public transportation better and free are the two things that can transform a city and make it more equitable. Poor people would have more money and more places available to spend it. Every city benefits from its people having more money to spend and more places to spend it.
This would depend on first fixing the poverty and homelessness that make theft, vandalism and antisocial behaviour so common. These things cost money to protect them from the impact desperate people otherwise have on them.
Now, I’d be thrilled to help pay for that to all happen, but the order should be respected; making trains and buses free isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Also because when you are in separate cars, you can't get sick from, or harassed by, or groped by, other drivers. If another driver is bothering you, you can usually just speed up or slow down to increase distance.
To get true mass adoption of public transit in the US, as the parent comment said, you need to fix "the poverty and homelessness that make theft, vandalism and antisocial behaviour so common," or at least work around it. Maybe trains with a hundred doors leading to a hundred isolated seating areas would convince people.
How convenient for the car lobby that their luxuriously subsidized travel mode already excludes the poor, making them immune from this line of reasoning!
It might be expebsive, but it's definately as simple as it sounds.
I do not see how vandalism will be any different than it is today
Most bike thiefs are not homeless, especially high end bikes.
Not to many homeless have a bolt cutter in their worn packs, nor do they have a way to sell, or part out.
In my liberal wealthy enclave, it's middle class guys doing the stealing, or gangs.
(This whole blaming the homeless needs to stop. Most don't have the savy to steal a locked bike. Plus--riding a nice bike is a cop calling card. I know homeless guys who are afraid to carry their own prescriptions in their pack because they frisked so frequently.)
Yup. Bit like how it's hard to argue for building a bridge by the number of people swimming across the river.
It's even worse since the bridge will be built with connecting roadways on both sides so it will be instantly popular.
But often a few bike lanes will be constructed in isolation,t then people will complain "Look, we built these expensive bike lanes to nowhere and no one is even using them!" It takes a rich network of safe bike infrastructure to get average riders to use bikes. At least eBikes make hills less of an impediment.
Key example [0], the difference between the north and south entrances to the Sydney Harbour Bridge cycleway, which are under different local governments. The North Sydney council is actively fighting an upgrade [1], whereas on the south side it's smooth access expanding into a network of bike paths.
In my city, the major conflict points are all short stretches of busy narrow road, while paths are going in elsewhere.
[0] https://bicyclensw.org.au/a-tale-of-two-sydneys/ [1] https://architectureau.com/articles/sydney-harbour-bridge-cy...
My South Bay commute has nice bike paths part of the way, but they stop just short of a major highway-freeway intersection. Sure, it would be tough to build a good bike lane through this busy, high speed intersection. So there isn’t one. So the bike path just… stops. And you have to navigate this scary section to proceed. So almost nobody does.
It’s such a shame since we have among the best bike-weather in the world, and a fairly flat basin to ride in. A little more infrastructure would help a lot. And e-bikes have their place for people going more than 20 mins and need to arrive feeling presentable.
Here’s a theory: road cycling is more available to those who live reasonably close to work and have time to spare, and that is relatively rich people. Poorer people literally cannot afford not to have a car because they have to travel long distances to work, and their areas are not well served by public transport.
As to living near the urban core, inner cities have a lot of relatively poor people. Roommates and HUD style affordable housing add another dimension to housing that’s not obvious to most people. Twenty to Thirty percent of the units have been set aside for low or middle-income residents, which means the monthly rent is affordable to low or middle-income households and those households must qualify at the outset. https://www.residenewyork.com/faq/how-many-units-are-allocat...
Not necessarily. There is often less traffic at night, for example. It depends on how well-lit the route is.
I use this set (with the 1000 lm):
It’s like dealing with serious lap swimmers.
It does not matter whose job it is. If increasing speed improves safety for the cyclist, in this case by reducing the incentive for car drivers to overtake, then a good number of cyclists will do it.
There's no road I commute on (including 25 mph city streets) where a 30mph bike would keep up with traffic, riding a skinny tire 40 lb bike at 30mph in the road shoulder that passes for bike lanes around here sounds hazardous.
If I wanted to keep up with car traffic so I can ride in the road, I'd get an e-scooter or e-motorcycle that's designed for higher speed. But then I couldn't ride in bike lanes.
Bike lanes do not exist in most places. The poster had said that their comment was about:
> areas where the bike infrastructure is poor or nonexistent
If there are bike lanes, then being overtaken by cars is not as much of a problem. But in most places, cyclists have to use the same lanes as motorised traffic, so it is more important to be able to keep up.
They should, but OMG cars don't
I have to say though being able to keep up with cars when I can't have a bike lane is pretty nice.
https://www.electricbike.com/cheap-electric-bike/ http://myelectricbikemotor.com/category/30mph/ https://www.amazon.com/Folding-Electric-Bike-Adults-Enduranc...
Right now there is no way to identify a speeding bicycle, no matter how fast its going. You could be doing 50 in a 40 zone and there is no way to issue a fine.
Where in the Bay Area are bells required? I've never heard of police there ever enforcing equipment requirements, not even lights at night.
Overall it’s hard for different physical capabilities to share a resource. If the pandemic taught me anything, it’s that peoples perceptions and ability to act in the common good are wildly inconsistent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflicts_involving_Critical_M...
Critical Mass helped spur NYC’s bike lane growth. If you’re against direct action that’s fine, but it’s hard for me to see what works better in initiating long term transformation than direct action protests like Critical Mass.
I don't think it is just safety. Most people understand an e-bike is going to be more dangerous, but they are popular anyways.
The other factor is distance. e-bikes increase the distance that can be covered by a significant amount, which changes a lot of commutes from "too far" to acceptable. The only people who can afford to be within a bike commute are at least above-average income-wise.
Even satire news sites have caught onto this: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2020/09/i-bike-everywhere-brags...
No. The income bracket most likely to bike to work makes less than $10k/year.
https://i1.wp.com/cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/201...
I rode a bike to school when my limited money would buy a very bad car or a nice bike. So I opted for the bike and had to ride it because that's all I had. I did that for a couple of years - even in the cold and ice. My commute distance varied in my biking days, from 6 to 20 miles.
I always obeyed all the traffic laws, though occasionally in the early AM I'd find lights that would not turn green for a bike no matter what I did.
I had people scream at me to get off the road, and otherwise be exceptionally rude. I occasionally had bike lanes and appreciated them, sought them out because it provided better spacing. But the busses on those routes were frequently in the bike lane and were, frankly, slower than I was. But navigating them was always a pain until I got well past them.
On slower roads (20-25 mph) with no bike lane I would take a lane to myself and keep up with traffic but only when I could reasonably keep up.
In the end, safety won out, and I abandoned the practice.
Now, as a driver, I am appalled at the behavior of cyclists. With my experience I take interest in and carefully watch their behavior.
Running red lights and not stopping for stop signs is the worst. And it's pretty universal.
Bad spacing in the lane, little to no accommodation for drivers when they could provide a bit more space for a comfortable pass. Sometimes they can't help it, and I get it, but when they can and don't... I always tried to be crystal clear about my messaging to the cars around me. I'm taking the lane here for my safety because there are parked cars in the bike lane or otherwise on the shoulder. I'm done now and look, I'm providing lots of space for everyone to safely pass me.
So the rude behavior I encountered was finally somewhat understood.
I really appreciated having good bike lanes. But cyclists do themselves no favors in how they conduct themselves, which will hurt them when pining for better road accommodations.
Even the cost factor is complicated. Everyone factors in the cost per mile of the bike, which is excellent, but the input calories are non-trivial and if you're not running the numbers on just ramen noodles it turns into quite a significant financial cost.
There are definitely health benefits.
Car-oriented transport infrastructure has been a terrible mistake. Don't blame the cyclists for trying to salvage something from the wreckage.
I don't blame them for trying to salvage/use something from what exists, I've been there. I found the behavior of ignoring established traffic law as if it were optional to be dangerous and selfish.
Don't they pay income tax? I think I read that most of the cost of roads in the USA is raised from income tax and sales tax.
> I found the behavior of ignoring established traffic law as if it were optional to be dangerous and selfish.
A lot of car drivers are out there too running lights, breaking speed limits and driving under the influence. People are the problem, not their transport.
Strong Towns also have some good examples of how car-oriented infrastructure can also be economically unsustainable in that it encourages low-density neighbourhoods with a lot of roads, so long term cities can't afford to maintain the roads without cross-subsidising it from new developments. So if the city stops growing, it often can't sustain the infrastructure it has! Whereas somewhat more dense areas (especially where retail and small business tenancies are mixed in with housing) can have much more property tax income per unit area as well as less road infrastructure to maintain which can tip the balance to being economically sustainable in itself.
It seems likely that cars actually hindered average GDP growth from '45 to today, rather than helping it.
Hong Kong is not car oriented and it develop just fine…
In Australia, bikes are required to follow the same rules as cars when on the road.
I have used a bike as my primary transportation for 15 years. The majority of rides are in traffic - there's very little dedicated bike infrastructure (painted sharrows or gutters don't count)
Trust me when I say, in the US, an intersection is the most dangerous place to be. You are a sitting duck if you aren't moving when clear.
A lot of drivers straight up don't pay attention at lights, due to phones or spacing out, and don't give you space when coming up behind you. Mix in right-on-reds, unprotected left turns, and the general drivers failure to negotiate turns - if it's clear I'm going. It's also safer for me to stay at a relatively consistent speed for predictable passing than accelerating in mixed traffic with very different acceleration curves.
At the same time, it takes a cyclist far longer to start off from being stopped, so every time they stop when they didn't really need to, it puts them in a vulnerable position for much longer time than was necessary. So apparently it turns out a lot safer to let cyclists slow at stop signs but not have to fully stop if it's safe to continue.
If all the give way signs on my commute were replaced with stop signs, I'd sure feel like rolling through them.
> Running red lights and not stopping for stop signs is the worst. And it's pretty universal.
Some areas have a yield at stop signs law for bikes so the stop signs could be legal, but I think a major driver of this kind of behavior is bike hostile infrastructure. If you've stopped for your 20th red light that prioritises non existent car traffic and that won't turn green today, or you're going past your fifth intersection that requires crossing at signals 3 times, waiting 2 minutes a piece on an empty road with visibility 500m in each direction it starts seeming pointless. Once someone is in the habit of disobeying clearly pointless (or in the case of many stop signs, actively unsafe because there is no visibility at the sign and accelerating up hill from a stop rather than 2mph causes you to spend far more time in the danger zone) signals and signage I can see it being easy to start ignoring others.
Respect works both ways, and when your city and laws clearly disrespect someone you shouldn't be surprised they stop respecting you.
Seems to me that it's a very bad idea to disrespect in ways that actively make your own life less safe. Especially on something as fragile as a bicycle. Regardless of the disrespect heaped your way.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/43060/coal-rolling-teen-that-h...
>Coal-Rolling Teen That Hit Cyclists Charged With Six Felonies
>The 16-year-old was not arrested after the incident, but has now surrendered to authorities.
>On September 25, a group of cyclists riding near Waller, Texas, were hit by a Ford Super Duty driven by a 16-year old youth. Reports from witnesses indicated the driver had been "rolling coal" on the group immediately prior to striking six cyclists, four of whom were hospitalized due to injuries sustained. Now, news out of Texas is that the teen driver is finally in custody according to the District Attorney of Waller County, over a month after the incident occurred.
>[...] Cyclist Chase Ferrell, who saw the events unfold, told Fox 26 at the time that the crash happened "because [the driver] was accelerating to blow more diesel fuel on these cyclists," adding that the driver "ended up hitting 3 people before his brakes even started." Ferrell noted that the teen remained at the scene after hitting the cyclists, and spoke to police. However, the driver was not arrested in the wake of the crash. "I don't understand, if it was me who had struck someone else, I would be in jail," noted Ferrell.
https://www.thedrive.com/article/9930/colorado-bans-rolling-...
>Colorado Bans Rolling Coal: Hallelujah!
>It doesn't matter that it will be nearly impossible to enforce: this legislation is more than welcome.
>For those not in the know, rolling coal is the name for blasting black smoke out the exhaust of a diesel-engined vehicle. It is done by modifying the air and fuel mixture in forced induction diesel engines to make the engines run rich, the result of which is a cloud of soot blowing out the tailpipes. This is done for the childish sake of annoying people, typically anyone that a coal-roller doesn't like, which includes but is not limited to hybrid drivers, convertible drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, and anyone who so much as looks like they don't attend the same evangelical megachurch. Why do people do it? Nobody one can say for sure, though it has been suggested that it has its roots in anti-environmentalism.
Majority of America is overweight, staring down at their phones day and night, and dread physical activity. They also like to flex their position and wealth to others, one of the reasons why pickup trucks and big SUVs sell in great numbers. These people are in no hurry to transition to riding bikes.
The only way biking might work is if some popular celebrities on social media or otherwise started doing it, since many Americans just like to imitate what's popular.
The issue was that she and 4 years old walked 20minutes to preschool and back. That is it, 40 min total walking time was assumed to be beyond 4 years old capabilities.
I think there would be an increase in biking if the celebs did it, but I say this imagining a new generation of Americana growing up watching a bunch of them doing it, not just one or two starting tomorrow and the nation follows suit.
I'd disagree on the looking suave bit, it might just be because so many riders are clueless (and this perception being reenforced by selection bias), but someone on an escooter always looks far sillier to me than someone on a dutch style or folding bike, or even someone in lycra.
Regarding lycra - we can disagree on whether you look suave while riding, but a huge advantage of the e-scooter is that you don't need special clothing - don't even need to tuck your pants leg into your sock. You wouldn't turn up to a date clad in lycra - but you can ride an e-scooter to one.
Apologies, I was trying to say that the brompton was the horrifically expensive option.
Upsides is they are a bit better for carrying cargo, can handle slightly rougher terrain, are a little more comfortable at long range and are a little more compact than the more capable escooters.
Both have their place, I was just trying to mention another option that hadn't been included.
Which I think is misguided pushback btw (which I think you agree with based on the context).
I see it as a chicken and egg thing. The roads are unsafe for bikers, so the only people who bike are those who are super dedicated to it. Then when people ask for the roads to be safer, it gets pushed back as "only biking enthusiasts use the roads now".
Safer roads means more people will bike, which means biking will stop being seen as an elitist thing.
Edit: to add on, bikes are like 1-2 orders of magnitude cheaper than cars too, both in upfront and ongoing costs also. It’s super unfortunate that it still gets the stereotype as a “rich white people” activity when it’s really so much more financially accessible than a car.