Over the next few decades we have to change so much infrastructure to solar / electrification that we have an enormous opportunity to make it not just a question of survival but a better civilisation - more human.
Cities where every child can cycle to school on car free paths, every worker can get to work on car free paths.
Hell it even makes carbon sense to get rid of petrol cars in favour of diesel buses.
The design of our lives environments is a force multiplier for our quality of life
I think what you're looking for is a more rural existence.
Speaking for myself, absolutely not. The amount of things available in cities compared to rural areas is immense. I’ve lived in both.
Theater, music venues, libraries, restaurants, beer gardens, good food markets, schools. I have all of this writhing walking and biking distance. You don’t get that in rural areas without needing a car.
They SHOULD be better but... no.
Then again my urban experience is Minneapolis St Paul, possibly the most bike-able city outside of winter I've seen.
It's certainly not as bleak as you describe.
as for alternative roads, that really depends. generally from my experience between two neighboring villages there tends to be only one road, unless you want to make a big detour. sometimes alternate roads exist when and old main road is replaced with a new one on a different route.
The point is if there was a dedicated (about a metre wide, cut off from road traffic by a raised kerb) cycle lane not just through Londons busiest roads but ... well everywhere there is a car road.
Just say if you want a car there you should also have a bicycle.
We seem to think that the industrial revolution chnaged something - like globally there should be some kind of "profit".
I think it's just we as a species get to still be at a subsistence level, just a higher subsistence level.
NB- re london cycleways - yeah people do die. The cannon street path was opposite the LFB station and they did not have far to go to wash the blood away sadly.
Sort of agree, although an electric assist (for people who aren't in great shape, to get over hills) might be an exception. Limit it to 15mph or whatever.
It would be so nice to share most roads - but like op mentioned traveling through the historical European sites, the greenways being built here are approximating that. It is changing our city government significantly. Hope it is yours as well.
People tend to forget that while there are benefits in increasing density, they don't continue ad infinitum.
Forgive me, if your rural land is on a major interstate then I definitely agree! For every branch off that major arterial the road becomes more and more specific to a few number of people, who rarely pay the full cost of the road/utilities that service them.
> It makes no sense to further incentivize moving to cities
I'm not asking for any incentives. I'm asking to stop sending my money to highway expansion, road repair and other services to people who live very sparsely. Let them pay for the extension (and maintenance) of service themselves, and then they can decide whether they would "rather" live there.
As an aside, it's a wild stretch to pull the national park system and state beaches into "I, one person, prefer to have multiple acres to myself", as if these programs exist so that you can live X many miles away from anything, for free.
There are costs that are higher in cities too, such as public housing. There are costs that are higher in mountains and in plains, in the north or the south, on the coast or inland, for commuters and people who stay home and people with kids or without, those that have ICE or electric vehicles or bikes, etc.
Allocating taxes or fees based on service usage has a lot of negative effects: 1) It's very complicated to quantify: Those rural roads also carry goods to the city, for example, and each person in the city uses those goods at different rates. 2) It requires a metering, collection, enforcement, etc. infrastructure. 3) It's divisive: Instead of bringing the community together and saying, 'this is good; we should do this together', it becomes 'you used 10 micro-whatever more but only paid X'.
Instead of spending my energy and time on fees, I think this is a much better deal: I'm happy for my neighbors, urban and rural, to do well and have what they reasonably need, and they are happy for me to do the same.
At the same time, would you happen to know about any data or research that tries to sort out the economics of #1 above?
The front door would lead to the relaxed communal part of the neighborhood.
The back door would lead to driving and work and the rest.
strangely, I remember going to a friend's parents house in florida. They lived on the intercoastal waterway. The driveway lead to the garage and the front door. The back door lead to the backyard and a boat dock.
People will cycle longer if we need to and can do it safely.
I ride a bike every day but only on short distances; on a tour I would be afraid of not being able to pack enough things (clothes, shoes...) But it's a neat idea.
You can always start small with a weekend trip and see which of the items you packed you actually needed, and you'll find out which items you forgot to pack. If you take good note of these, you'll be a proficient and efficient packer very soon, and you'll go on trips that last for days or weeks with the exact amount of stuff you need. And at least in Europe, the next supermarket is never so far away that you can' t reach it on the next day in case you did forget something essential.
He looked at me and I looked at him, didn’t seem spooked at all.
Being able to ride the quietest country roads regularly makes me really happy that I don’t live in a city.
But just like you did, I kinda feel like cross country road trips would be excellent on back roads via motorcycles. In a car, it's a bit disconnected and insulated. On a bike, it just seems way too slow and tiresome.
Only things I'd want in a cross country motorcycle is: a machine that's under 50 pounds, has a max speed of 50 mph (I'd prefer to keep it at 20-30 mph), goes 300 miles per gallon, and costs under $3000. SO I GUESS I WON'T BE TAKING THAT CROSS COUNTRY MOTORCYCLE TRIP EVER THEN.
They don't make those anymore, but they were incredibly fun to ride (and at the time, it cost 6000FF new, which translates to maybe €1000-1500 today).
On a bicycle, you'll be a lot closer to nature. A lot of paths I use are closed to motor traffic and you can't ride with a motorcycle.
On the motorcycle, you can cover more ground and see a lot more different places in the same time. Also, cars don't feel as dangerous, so you can ride roads with lots of car traffic that I wouldn't ride on a bicycle.
I've ridden motorcycles since I was 16, and everyone always sees me as the daredevil. Yet, I still think bicycle commuters are the true madmen. Zero protection, can't keep up with traffic, your very presence is a psychological irritant to motorists which causes them to wish you harm, etc.
But don't take my word for it: https://youtu.be/wM8Xli2KTzI
My only advice to cyclists: put your bike on your car's bike rack, take to a bike path and enjoy. If you want to get on a road on two wheels, buy a motorcycle and wear every piece of protective gear you can afford. You (and your family) can thank me later.
If you did, one of the things you'd learn is the extent to which serious cyclists minimize the risks, from route choice to gear to behavior. E.g., the first bike tour I did was about 150 miles. I found a mailing list of local riders and people were happy to discuss my route and how to handle safety issues.
In any case, you're wrong on the facts. Motorcyling is more dangerous. Deaths per 100m miles traveled is circa 25 for motorcyclists [1], while it's between 4 and 13 for people on bicycles [2]. Given that recommended touring distances for motorcyclists seem to be around 300 miles per day versus 50 for bicycles, bike touring is going to be much safer. Which only makes sense; if I'm riding at 10 mph vs 50 on a motorcycle, that's 25 times the kinetic energy that needs to get dissipated if something goes wrong.
[1] https://www.motorcyclelegalfoundation.com/motorcycle-acciden... [2] https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/
At a social event which happened to include many members of the local bicycle club, I observed: Almost everyone I know who bicycles regularly has been hospitalized due to a bicycle-car accident. Is that true? Yes, they all agreed, that's about right.
IME, they don't minimize risks well. There's no safe way to ride in traffic unless it's moving near bicycle-speed. However, there are side streets, etc., so that risk could be minimized if they wanted to do it; you can cut exposure to cars by 90% easily.
Next time you drive a car, notice where you look. Consider where a bicycle would have to be in order to noticed if you are in a hurry, distracted, trying to figure out where you are or where to go, not expecting them, etc.
Also, you learn hearing the difference in sound a car makes as it moves over to give room.
In short, I’d wager that < 0.5% of all people that have done any sort of serious biking would prefer to ride against traffic.
Yeah relative speed goes hand-in-hand with head-on collision and less reaction time and expectation that I mentioned. I do bike a fair amount, but not on major roads. I am coming to realize that going with traffic is safer, despite it being hard to see cars coming from behind you. I also didn't realize that it's illegal in most places to bike against traffic https://roadbikebasics.com/ride-with-or-against-traffic/
Bicycle mirrors aren't comparable to automobile mirrors: Car mirrors are stable in alignment - your body is in a relatively fixed position in the driver seat and so are the mirrors relative to you and the car. On a bicycle, your handlebars are moving frequently as is your head. The whole bicycle vibrates far more than a car, sometimes making the mirrors unusable. Cars have space for more and bigger mirrors.
(Also, isn't it risky attaching anything to your helmet? In an accident, as far as I know, it can both change the helmet's performance properties and also get jammed into your head.)
A lot of people consider it a cute gadget before they tried it and regard as essential safety tool once they did. It certainly depends on your use case - in busy cities it's useless since you'll be alerted to cars constantly. However in my area I ride on countless long stretches of road with little to moderate traffic. Cars will surprise you on these kind of roads. Sometimes you don't hear or notice them.
With the Varia radar I'm much more aware of my surroundings. I can take up the middle of the road until a car approaches. I won't be surprised by cars I fail to hear due to strong winds or other noise. I know when it's safe to slalom around obstacles on the street. Or when to do a left turn (I'd still look but I'm not sure if the radar ever missed a car - it's very reliable). These days I'd feel almost naked without my radar.
Plus, don't forget that it's also a very good rear light which you can control from your head unit. Don't underestimate the importance of daytime lights in order to be noticed by cars - that is the single most important measure to avoid accidents on a bike.
Let's change the rhetoric from "cycling is dangerous" to "driving a car is a serious responsibility".
> I've ridden motorcycles since I was 16, and everyone always sees me as the daredevil. Yet, I still think bicycle commuters are the true madmen. Zero protection, can't keep up with traffic, your very presence is a psychological irritant to motorists which causes them to wish you harm, etc.
> But don't take my word for it: https://youtu.be/wM8Xli2KTzI
Whatever one might think about the general premise, but this video is absolute rubbish. All the little example videos he puts in is of people riding on crazy tuned e-bikes or downhill bikes etc.. On the other hand the few instances of motorcycling videos show him just riding along in traffic, a bit disingenuous.
> My only advice to cyclists: put your bike on your car's bike rack, take to a bike path and enjoy. If you want to get on a road on two wheels, buy a motorcycle and wear every piece of protective gear you can afford. You (and your family) can thank me later.
Considering that the article points to bike paths off general roads your post is a bit redundant.
I would still question your premise. You ride a motorbike beside the fact that motorcycle deaths and serious injuries outstrip cycling ones by quite a margin (it's right there in the video you posted). So I guess safety is not your main priority. Moreover, if we consider overall health benefits you will live longer if you commute by bike, so if health is your priority you should absolute bike.
The answer to that problem should not be pushing weaker participants off the road.
Seemingly, car traffic is just straight up dangerous in the US (to everyone). It's normalized how dangerous car traffic is, there are plenty of car crashes every day that kill and maim, yet we feel so comfortable driving we hardly pay diligent attention and have very absurdly low standards for who can get and keep a drivers license.
That doesn’t get to you?
I run cycle.travel, a touring-focused bike routeplanner (based on OpenStreetMap data, of course) which aims to find these roads. It generally won't find as direct a cycle route as some of the bigger names, but by and large the route should be quieter and less stressful. https://cycle.travel/map - always happy to hear comments/suggestions!
One thing I’ve noticed is the routing’s great aversion to hills. As someone who doesn’t mind them I would sometimes like to be able to toggle that. (It’s not a big problem, cycle.travel is beyond anything I’ve tried, it certainly beats the 1:200 000 maps of old.)
I suggest you show input validation hints before submitting forms, e.g. for the user name.
Normally I plan my tour routes offline using downloaded OSM maps (something like velomap.org) in QMapshack. One thing I like doing on there is having POIs I can turn on/off with things like UNESCO World Heritage Sites, National Trust Sites, World Wonders from the Civilization games etc. so I can tweak my route to connect a few of those dots if it goes near them.
When bicycle touring in this country, you don't usually (almost never, in my case) do bike touring on roads that carry heavy traffic. You ride on mostly empty roads that have very low traffic counts. Every state compiles Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) statistics. There are roads where you might see one or two cars an hour.
Those are the roads to ride on.
I did a few multi-day charity rides here in California. Some of those included stints on a stretch of 101. You realize how shitty our roads can be.
I can't speak for everywhere but in Europe (where most of my experience is) I think you would be able to find plenty of routes without much traffic (checkout places like https://www.opencyclemap.org/ ) and ironically those routes would probably have much more to see on them than the routes that did have the cars and trucks on.
https://www.google.com/maps/@63.3222885,10.1328111,3a,75y,34...
Another point - directly breathing all fumes from thousands of cars every day, lorries, buses and other diesel marvels. More than compensating a healthy activity with equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes.
Fanatics always propagate their sports/activity as next coming of jesus, but as with everything there are pros and cons. Biking on standard roads has massive cons.
Agrigultural roads that you'd never bother (or even want) to take your car down. Residential streets that only the residents would drive on.
I'd guess that on the average 5 day cycling tour in the UK and Europe, I'd see less than 1000 cars total, and often go for many hours without seeing any. Its glorious.
Any side road advantageous to a cyclist (good pavement quality, shorter distance) will have cars, unless it's brand new and nobody knows about it.
You have to find the good side roads which are not usable to drivers, due to, say, obstacles that a cyclist can get around easily. If it's not obvious from the entrance to that road, you will need local knowledge.
There is always a risk that if you go down some random side road, you may be backing out to where you started.
Riding on roads outside of city limits isn't such a big deal that you'd bother, in the first place. It depends on the exact conditions. What is the visibility like? (Curve with rocky wall on one side, precipice on the other? Or field?) How wide is the paved shoulder? What are the speeds like?
Everywhere else, the pyrennes, the alps and company are a spiderweb of tiny towns with tiny quiet roads between them, in a ratio of about 5:1 against the larger main roads. I've cycled them, traffic isn't a problem.
As for paving, on a tour I'll take a hard pack, unpaved surface with no traffic over a main road all day every day.
And knowing where the roads go? That's route planning! Have a little look at where you plan to go before you set out each morning. Strava's heat maps are really useful, though understand that road racers do prefer the highway, and they cycle a lot!
I do this every year, and traffic just doesn't come in to it except at the large terminal cities where we get the international trains or ferries from...
The A-C road may not be any different from the A-B one in terms of A-B being "main" and A-C being a "secondary" road, and the path will likely be longer.
A road actually going to a neighboring town is a strawman example of a side road.
He is talking about cycling for travel, exploration, sport and leisure - not about commuting. I have just done the same last week, a 5 day tour and can confirm, I planned everything around secondary, tertiary and country / farm roads. It was mostly empty, and a pleasure. (despite being longer than the "main" road)
The Great Salt Lake in Utah is the size of Lichtenstein. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is longer than the Italian boot is wide. England is the size of Alabama.
It can be harder to find a safe route somewhere in the country, I'll give you that.
The US is not like that. There are only a few routes in the west because the west is more than a thousand miles of mountains and deserts nearly all above 1500m and much of it above 2000m.
It is hundreds of miles between north south routes in Arizona because of the Grand Canyon. And the eastern route goes from vast remoteness to vast remoteness, Navajo nation to the Great Basin (an internal drainage the size of France).
I am not a general fan of American exceptionalism. But for geography, it holds. The average height of the Colorado Plateau is about 2000m…almost as high as the highest point in Australia. And the plateau is larger than Germany.
I am glad it works on your machine.
This is vaguely similar to Australia, which has gigantic deserts with terrible roads through them as most of the landmass, but geographically bikeable population centres where everyone actually lives.
Sounds like you live in a large city or something. I can ride 100 miles on rural country lanes where I live, and only see a handful of cars all day.
Please don't comment on subjects about which you know nothing.
Also, rural roads aren't exactly known for their alert drivers. Drunk driving is far more common due to lack of taxis/ubers.
What stops someone doing the same thing with the car, motorcycle or scooter?
For the car:
> In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
> On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.
* Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
* https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/313360-in-a-car-you-re-alwa...
You stop at a sign or light, and you put your foot down. You have the wind at your face, the sun on your back. No radio, no cell phone beeping at you. You wave to motorcyclists coming from the opposite direction.
Not that riding is without its dangers or downsides, to be sure, but it can be wonderful.
The speed and physical inertia of a car seem to translate into a psychological speed and inertia. Again, I can't justify this on utilitarian grounds. I find myself driving faster than I would go if I'm on my bike. As angry as drivers get when they're stuck behind my bike at 12 mph, imagine how angry they'd get if they were stuck behind my car at 12 mph for no apparent reason.
In the car, I don't stop to notice "little" things. To do so requires getting the car off the road, finding a place to park (if there is one) getting in and out. On my bike, I can come to a complete stop and be off the road and parked, virtually anywhere, in about 15 seconds. I get priority parking at the supermarket. ;-)
I admit that I've become somewhat anti-tourist, perhaps influenced by the experience of a driving vacation in the British Isles with my family. It seemed like every coastal or scenic road was jam packed with cars and tour buses, and every square foot of space filled with parked cars. It's possible to find less-touristy places to visit, but now those places are getting crowded too.
These days when my family goes on a vacation, we like to find a destination where we can ditch the car, and hop on our bikes. I actually miss my bike when I'm on a trip without it.
and everything just whizzes by too fast to appreciate anything
I love biking but I don't love lugging tons of stuff around.
An example of a breakfast I was having on my last trip was: 2 croissants, yoghurt with chocolate coated peanuts mixed in, a banana and some fruit smoothie (which seemed on offer a lot this trip) and I might stop for second breakfast/early lunch and get a couple of pasties at the next town with a bakery (handy because you can eat these while cycling). In Italy you might instead be eating things like focaccia from local bakeries (perfect size for my handlebar bag), the landscape of what you eat changes with region, season and mood. You might be surprised though just how good very simple food (bread/cheese) can taste when you are doing exercise all day.
One thing I would advise is that it is a lot kinder on the body to attach the bags to the bike if possible rather than carry on your back. I tour relatively heavy and I think my bike/bags together weigh about 40-45kg, just about liftable at a push if I need to, for example, get a small boat for pedestrians (though usually I'd take a couple bags off to make it easier). It's very possible to travel a lot lighter than this though, particularly if not camping, some people just take a change of clothes and a credit card.
Of course it’s a car centric argument, that’s what I’m advocating for.
I hear what you are saying - if you love bikes long journeys are wonderful. I imagine motorcyclists or long distance runners could get the same buzz.
> It may not be for everyone but I want to live in a world where that experience feels accessible to as many as possible.
But let's not kid ourselves that this is a viable option for most people. And if you mean that we should get rid of even more roads for bike lanes, you are actually going to restrict people engaging with distant relations and friends.
That is utter bullshit. You could dedicate half the secondary roads to non motorized traffic and add a separates bicycle path alongside every highway and fluidity of the cars traffic wouldn't be affected at all. It would even improve.
We should re-evaluate what? The reality that the system we find ourselves in, means that families are distributed? Would you force people back together into the same region?
Some people (but by no means everyone) are better off away from their family and the town where they grew up.
Imagine that you are the fourth generation to move far away from your patents, as I am. There is not some community in which I have generational roots…and it was the prospect of conscription by the Tsar’s army that started it all. Not capitalism.
For me, employment someplace far away was the way out of where we weren’t from and that wasn’t for us.
Some people have a reason to stay. Those reasons are sometimes the reasons for other people to leave.
If you only ever travelled long distances by highway/rail/air it could be hard to appreciate how much richer the world feels travelling by bicycle. Instead of a dreary bubble between generic transportation hubs you are generally travelling along the old routes that connect all the places where life has been for millennia, the amount of history (in Europe at least), scenery and humanity you stumble across just in the course of a typical day covering maybe 50 miles is huge.
The typical question people ask is "how long did it take?" but the experience itself is more fulfilling, this is very much not what it's about (and you can speed up with trains etc. if you really need to get somewhere). It's one of the only ways I manage to properly disconnect from the ongoing background stress weight of running a startup. I'll eat 5 meals a day, everything tastes amazing and come back healthier and lighter (in more ways than one). I'll be living cheap (though the large amount of food can start to add up) and free under my own power and direction and carrying everything I need to stay so along with me. I'll be meeting people along the way and connecting with their humanity and kindness in a way that just doesn't seem to happen quite the same when you aren't travelling by bicycle.
It may not be for everyone but I want to live in a world where that experience feels accessible to as many as possible.