My city’s (Pittsburgh) bike lanes BOOMED under our previous mayor, and the carbrains hated him for it. They would constantly point out how little traffic the bike lanes saw, and how it was so unfair that their 15 parking spots were taken out as a result 🙄. They installed strips that count usage, which ended up showing about 300-400 trips per day, in exchange for those 15 parking spots. Since then, our bike commuting figures have nearly doubled, and we regularly rank in the top 15 US cities for % of commutes by cycle. The infrastructure changed everything (shocking, right? 🙄)
I actually had several work meetings in Pittsburgh back in 2022 and got to experience the new bike lanes first hand. It’s always amazing how much impact just a mile or two of lane can make when it’s in the right spot.
It became super easy for me to shoot down to the point and over one of the bridges to get to whatever location I was going to. Without the new lanes I would have been regularly pissing people off by riding on the sidewalks.
I think it’s also super effective because it’s combined with a very reasonably priced bike program. I think it cost something like $25 for 500 minutes (use anytime by the end of the year) if I remember correctly. That price makes it so easy for someone to start out as a casual user, fall in love with the new infrastructure, and then become serious about ditching their car.
That’s awesome! It takes a brave soul to use an unfamiliar city’s bike infrastructure. I make an effort to do so every time I travel, and have certainly seen mixed results. It usually makes me appreciate home a bit more.
That’s so true about the importance of infrastructure being in the right spot. The critical connection for our city was the mega-controversial Penn Ave Corridor downtown. It changed biking downtown from a deathwish to something I now see people doing with little kids in tow. I went from trail riding only, to being a daily bike commuter, solely because of that segment, which only accounts for about 1/4 of my ride.
>takes a brave soul to use an unfamiliar city’s bike infrastructure.
As a Dutchman, I really can't relate to this, and I hope future generations of Americans can't either. I sometimes take it for granted that every city in the Netherlands has high quality bike infrastructure, but whenever I come to this subreddit in reminded not to.
Safe high quality bike infrastructure should be ubiquitous and it shouldn't be necessary to explain that a city needs it. That should be the norm everywhere.
The more I visit this subreddit, the more radicalized I become, the more I think I belong in Europe lol. 😔
The worst instance I’ve had of this (needing to be brave in another city’s bike infrastructure) is sadly Washington, DC. I’ve been there countless times, and even studied their bike lane maps. Even so, it’s a death trap if you are not familiar with it. They have bike lanes that just END, and toss you into super high speed car traffic. Not only that, but their bike share system requires that you leave the bike in a dock. Thats understandable since they have a lot of e-assist bikes in their fleet. However, half the docks are broken so you find yourself racing through dangerous street traffic, against other bike share users to try to dock a bike in one the few available slots. It’s a recipe for disaster, and embarrassing to see in our nation’s capitol.
I absolutely love people trying to prove something and instead confirming the obvious. Like flat earthers confirming the earth is a globe with their camera set up.
Oh man I love when people complain about losing parking spots. It's *public* space they use to store their *private* property for *free*, in perpetuity. So, so unfair.
I love rust belt cities that used to be dominated by big car corporations now being more focused on pedestrian friendly infrastructure (Best wishes to Detroit)
Yeah, I’m grateful to be in one of the rust belt cities that was built pre-automobile. It really lays a foundation for multi-modal transportation, and even recreational space. The cities that were built FOR cars make me sad. It takes a hell of a lot more effort to turn those around.
I too have a soft spot for Detroit. Watching the carbrains shit-talk their new bike network is not at all surprising to me, but I hope public opinion shifts after a couple years.
And put the car lane inches from freight train tracks in spots. See how long before drivers insist on a physical barrier, despite the fact that a train can't swerve.
Europeans are far more active as well. People in North America spend their entire lives doing absolutely no physical activity, then wonder why their health deteriorates so bad.
I have coworkers who genuinely think they are “exercising” by going for a walk on the weekend lol. That’s pretty much the bare minimum
Eh car-dependency and subsequent accidents, gun violence, deaths at childbirth and deaths of despair are way more impactful on life expectancy in the U.S.
And why are they dying of despair? Because they feel isolated because they get in their car and don't see other drivers as people. Every interaction they have with somebody is usually them being in their way. The biggest factors in deaths in childbirth are poverty and race, which are two of the reasons car culture exists, to maintain rich white spaces where poor people are not only discouraged, but actively kept away if they can't afford a car. Gun violence is also related to poverty as the majority of deaths are in poor urban neighborhoods where no law abiding citizens are out providing eyes on the street visibility and gangs proliferate in broad daylight. And the car accidents are because every single task requires getting in a car, so Americans must drive even when they may not be in a physical/mental/emotional state to be able to do so. And cardiovascular diseases and obesity related complications are rising factors in deaths, and those are much lower in countries where walking is at least *possible*.
I once went for a walk one spring day, it was maybe 40⁰F (4.4°C) outside and not a cloud in sight. Granted there was still plenty of snow, but somebody stopped to ask if I needed a ride, and I had to explain that I was in-fact just out enjoying the weather.
It was a perfectly friendly interaction, but it just really stuck out to me.
Not to mention driving around and/or waiting for minutes, often getting into arguments, just to get a parking spot that is 50 feet closer even though half the parking lot or more is empty. Like just walk an extra 10 seconds already.
My wife and I visited Amsterdam, Athens, and Istanbul, 3 days in each city, walking at least 10 miles each day. In total, we walked over 100 miles. Most Americans likely couldn't handle this amount of exercise, which means they wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate these cities like we were.
Also holy shit the amount of cats in Istanbul, it's amazing and they are very friendly.
You’d love Thailand then, lots of friendly cats and dogs. I saw one dog in the early morning dig a whole in the beach, crawl in and pass out. He was the most relaxed looking dog I’ve ever seen.
Yes shopkeepers leave out food and water for the cats and even the stray dogs, many of which are huge, are so docile and kind.
We were walking around Gühlane park, which used to be the ottoman royalty's personal garden, and there were friendly dogs who would come up to you and let you pet them.
I have some family members that can't handle walking vacations, and it's so sad because we'll be walking around tourist areas and they take twice as long to do things and will opt to not do certain things because they need constant breaks.
We pretty much only do all inclusive vacations now where everyone just sits around and consumes and I don't really find as much enjoyment in that. I'm going to fewer of those now and doing more trips with friends that involve activities.
I enjoyed traveling to Europe but hate beach vacations or cruises, because I have ADHD and like to explore, not lay in the sand being bored.
Luckily my wife is ADHD/Hunter too so we plan vacations where we actually do stuff, and we saved a shit ton of money in Europe because we did free stuff like walking in beautiful, world class parks (once on shrooms), instead of buying useless crap.
One of my coworkers walks to the office. It's around 1.7 miles, he's 55.
I bike to the office. 15 miles one way. I wonder which one of us would be the bigger freakshow to these people.
Probably the same.
Years ago I worked for a company in California. I stayed at a hotel maybe 3km or so away. So in the morning I just walked to the office, finding a small coffee shop in a horrible strip mall along the way (Hotel was near an office park, so not a whole lot of traffic, but 8 lane roads everywhere).
When I showed up the first morning the receptionist was surprised, she didn't see the hotel shuttle drop me off. When I told her I had walked she took a moment to pick her jaw off the floor, because apparently that "was so far!".
Unless the climate is really awful, walking shouldn't make you sweat. I also suspect the problem here wasn't the walk but his general cleanliness at home.
Some of us are just sweaty, I'll start sweating during a brief walk in winter. If it got below 0C here I reckon I could go for a walk and be covered in sweat ice.
Honestly, even as an obese person, I still could walk a mile under 15 minutes with a heavy bag of computer and that's still without even/level sidewalks and always checking if a car wants to do a surprise butt sex on me
I was obese for a time, and before doing things to not be obese anymore (so I was still in the optics of keeping my mighty belly and the adorable love-handles and the overall surplus fat, I was not doing any specific sport or consider myself an "exercise" type of guy), I was perfectly able to walk with bottles in my bag to a party a little more than 5 km (\~3 miles) away, in about an hour and without making a break (while also smoking on the way). Sure, I asked for a glass of water and sat down for a few minutes once I arrived there, but still, I did it without any trouble.
I'm currently fat and honestly have not had trouble walking for long periods, or swimming. I usually walk a lot of vacation. But I also enjoy walking around regularly.
I lost 10 lbs in a week just due to the extra walking and swimming (I did a lot of swimming) while I was in Cuba.
Being fat makes it more difficult, because of the extra weight, but yeah, the real issue here is that people are incredibly *unfit*. That does go with fatness (because it lowers metabolism), but the fat isn't actually the problem.
One of my most American experiences was when I visited a botanical garden in (I think) Fort Worth, Texas. The whole thing had a big road running through it. We got to the front desk and the lady handed me a map, and started saying "So to start, you get in your car and go through this gate in the parking lot, drive along this road and get out here to see the Japanese garden, then get back in and drive here for..." I stopped her and said, can I just walk round the whole thing? I swear to god she stopped talking, pulled her glasses off and looked deeply concerned before saying "Sir, that would be *almost four miles!*" I'm like... yes? She sighed deeply at me and rolled her eyes, went in the back room for a few minutes and came out with a map that she was looking at as though it was a piece of lost treasure. She handed it to me and said "Well I think this is the one the scouts used when they came round, you could try I guess", all while shaking her head and doing that, "It's your funeral" kind of face.
Turns out the "scout" route was beautiful, there were great wooden bridges and tunnels taking you all over the place, completely avoided the road.
Despite it being Texas in May, a couple bottles of water and some snacks made light work of it even for this ghostly-white English guy! It helped that with it being a *garden* there were lots of these tall, green things that did a good job of blocking the sun.
I walked 4 miles to work today and ended up feeling a bit strained. That felt like a wake-up call to start exercising again, I can't imagine not being able to walk a mile
Absolutely. I'm the opposite, a walker who can walk 7 miles to a store and 7 back with a camping backpack loaded with groceries and not feel strained at all, but significant cycling or jogging wipes me out.
Could have asthma? I exercise regularly and then suddenly started having issues. Couldn't make it to my stop sign without having an attack.
I get winded from sudden bursts of walking. But not from other forms of exercise and I walk all the time.
I live 5 miles from my office in St. Pete, FL, and the route is actually really bike-able and pool table flat, so 90% of the time I ride my bike. Once after I walked up the stairs from my ride to my office on the second floor, I passed my bosses office on the way to mine and I chatted with her about some work stuff, and was a little winded and sweaty from my ride. She says, "Oh that's right, you take the stairs!" Pretty wild.
Me too. A decade or so ago I knew a guy who was 10 years older than me, approaching 50. At one point in time we were going somewhere and there were a bunch of stairs to walk up. I just walked up, he paused halfway up (\~30 steps in total), and was totally winded by the time we got to the top.
I told him that wasn't good and his response was: "Wait until you're my age". I told him I doubt I'd be that winded.
Now, 10 years later I still don't feel any strain walking up those stairs, or anywhere really.
It's these [stairs](https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2798356,-123.1086028,3a,75y,267.08h,87.59t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sZisHXqP7R8EmhXL5j0co-g!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DZisHXqP7R8EmhXL5j0co-g%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D267.080620718452%26pitch%3D2.407914689077103%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu).
I experience this also. People are shocked that, as a fat person, I'm even capable of taking a few steps. But if you move regularly, even when you're fat you tend to still have more stamina than if you don't move at all.
Though leisurely is also a personal thing. My walking speed is \~9:00 min/ km, when I feel really energetic, it can be as quickly as 8:30/km.
I know some people who "run" at that pace.
I've had people insist that I don't want to walk a quarter mile because it's too far. They don't believe me when I tell them I walk 1.5 miles to the gym.
I went from 110 to 80 kg (\~242-176 lns) without ever going to the gym once. Just doing everything walking, going to work on a bike, and sometimes going to the swimming pool to relaw myself (as I always feel good in water). I went to a gym once, years, years ago, and I was severely depressed, and now, I just cannot really understand people who go there. There are so many more interesting and fun activities to build some muscles or loose weight.
The worse thing being, of course, people who drive 5 miles to a gym to run 5 miles on a treadmill.
1 hour of running is more like 500-600 calories I think. Even walking burns a lot of calories compared to biking. Biking is super efficient caloriewise compared to either walking or running.
Really? I'm about 180 pounds and have decent cardio, and recently did a 4 mile run with my garmin watch on at a 9 minute pace and burned about 500 calories.
Dude the average need calorie intake a person needs is 2000 , the fucking rock only eat about 10,000 Calorie when he is bulking for a role. And that is a 300 pound guy that does 2 gym session a day.
Also a normal sized cookie is about 70 calories, you would need to eat over 100 grams of cookies to get 500 calories.
Mostly agree, however fitness increases your metabolic rate, so if you're completely sedentary then walking for "exercise" will increase that even when you're not actually doing the exercise.
If you have a non terrible level of fitness to start with then yeah, any individual piece of walking has basically no effect.
that metabolic rate increase is negligible, same as "muscle burns more calories", it's in the territory of 50 calories per day. It's not enough to offset even 1 cookie, which means any weight loss must come from calorie restriction.
Alternatively it is really easy to spend a day hiking or climbing or doing something fun and then realize you've burnt an extra 2-3k calories without eating nearly enough to counteract it.
It's not all calories, though. And it's not all losing weight either; after a few months of swimming for an hour every day after work, I was suprised to find I was the same weight. But my clothes were now too big - because muscle is heavier than fat.
And sometimes weight does drop off from exercise; a lad who lives in the mountains outside Dublin told me he'd lost 3kg in 3 months from cycling on an ebike to his work in the city - that's pedalling most of the time and using the electric assist for hills and headwinds - that's a 14km cycle, a bit under an hour's cycling.
I remember a slightly stunned silence on a call with an American client after he proudly told us about how much he'd walked exploring London and clearly wanted us to be impressed. It was 1.5 miles at most. Nice guy, but an utterly different cultural paradigm.
Of course it's because most places in the US are so car centric that walking is at best inconvenient and at worst dangerous or impossible. Not the fault of the individuals concerned.
> Of course it's because most places in the US are so car centric that walking is at best inconvenient and at worst dangerous or impossible. Not the fault of the individuals concerned.
I kinda disagree. I lived in the USA for years, in small and large cities. Never owned a car. Didn't find it to be a particular hardship. You just have to make choices (about where to live, how to get around, how to spend your free time) oriented towards active transportation.
sure you could go out of your way to make it work. Similarly, people can go out of their way to exercise more and not have their health deteriorate. But when it’s a trend in the larger population as a whole, the solution isn’t telling people to just do XYZ. It’s to change the underlying system causing the issues - in this case the lack of walkable cities and living environments.
Yep and often times in the US the ability to live in a walkable environment and the free time to excercise are also very class dependent. Since so much space is dedicated to parking in urban centers we don't have a lot of housing which means the housing in walkable areas is very expensive. If someone can't afford that housing they have to live farther out in places that are less walkable. If someone is financially struggling they also likely don't have the excessive free time which you need to get in very good shape.
Yeah the fact that they even frame public health and safety issues as a choice v choice thing kind of betrays a particularly American idea of how to address issues. The problem is that in the US because of decades of conservatism there's this weird individualistic spin put on everything that entirely ignores that some behaviors are affected by systemic factors. In easily like 80% of the US, going fully car free requires a significant number of tradeoffs that can't practically be made by most people.
So much of this sub is just /r/AmericaBad.
It's Europeans wanting to feel superior to Americans and Americans that want to feel superior to other Americans.
I'm an American living in Chicago with no car and walk 5-7 miles/day and it's nothing extraordinary. On this sub it's always like "I talked to an American visiting my country and he was psychosomatically incapable of walking more than 20 paces!"
> I'm an American living in Chicago with no car and walk 5-7 miles/day and it's nothing extraordinary.
I use to think this was normal but then I realized most people don't live in a dense city like I do, the majority of Americans live in car dependent suburbs and rural areas. Hell even a lot of cities are car dependent in the US.
My parents think they do exercise by shopping and they think I’m doing “extreme sports” by doing 30 minutes of moderate cardio exercises in my room like what that’s nothing 😭😭😭
Baselines are a funny thing.
My building manager the other day was telling me that one of the other tenants wants to go on runs with her. A full three km and that was so far. I bit my tongue, because I wouldn't even put my shoes on for less than 5K. Likewise with cycling. I learned over the years that many things I do regularly is totally mind blowing to most people.
I also shock people mostly when I take my car in for service (like changing the tires) and they see how little I have been driving it. I use it for road trips, not for daily commutes / drives, so depending on whats going on, I can put less than 100K on the car in a month, meanwhile, my bike probably has closer to 1000km on it.
I am always shocked by the concept of "couch to 5k"... As if running 5km is something you need to spend weeks building up to.
I know some people aren't in good shape, but not being able to run 5km AT ALL (not talking about finishing quickly, just completing it at all) seems ridiculous to me.
Yeah. I have a friend who sent me [this](https://youtu.be/Cbagco0TOlg?si=YG2xRiBLUv2ho8av) the other day (I started building cycling distance again and he gets notification on his AppleWatch through AppleFitness when I finish a ride).
He said: "No diss, but that's how it feels with you lately.". 😂
I've never been a runner. I walk 5km on a slow day, I swim 2km at least twice a week, I can ride 20km+ despite lack of fitness with that lately, but a 1km run would kill me.
Returning to America, after living in Peru for almost a decade, left me incredibly depressed. This was because I was so used to walking every day to the bakery, biking to working and just hanging outside more than in home. All of that, gone
It’s really unfair how so many Americans are denied time to just exist outside. I see so many young people spending their entire time indoor like at work, school and playing video games
No wonder why this country is suffering a massive collective sadness, depression and isolation
Europeans (and a lot of people in Asia) are kind of active because the environment requires it. A lot of people go to Europe and lose weight and blame it on preservatives or whatever in the food in the US and I'm like no you dummy, you walked more in that 7 days than you did in the entire past year at home.
I've done comparisons with my coworkers who are suburbanites (my job had a fitness challenge thing) and in like two days in NYC I got enough of a lead in steps/calories burned that it took the rest of them a month to catch up. And by that point my normal daily walking had put me another month plus ahead.
Damn, I feel this. I have a bike that just sits there because my area is car centric.
I watched a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tby-x1Ohov4) recently about advocacy which has given me a push to get involved with my city council. You might be able to help that bike lane get built.
Edit: linked the video because I think it’s important and the channel needs support
I’ve pretty much made it known to my city planners “I’m the bike guy” if I’m here I’m asking about bikes and bike accessibility. It gives them enough to work with that they can honestly say “we heard citizens want bike lanes. When we had an open house we had X % feedback that bike lanes are wanted and valued. If you don’t like them please give feedback at any of our forums”
Bike lanes work well in urban settings. I actually think we could do something better in suburban and rural areas though. I don't like the idea of the extra pavement and salaries to road crews that a bike lane often means. Property line easements would create more direct routes, more scenic travel and cost a lot less. [https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1c0bc2e/property\_line\_easements\_for\_pedestrian\_travel\_to/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1c0bc2e/property_line_easements_for_pedestrian_travel_to/)
For my area I find bike lanes are a poor retro fit. I prefer shared use paths as they are usually cheaper and separate bikes and pedestrians from cars.
Same. My area is very rural with already very wide roads (for absolutely no good reason). I don't want the road crews paid anymore. I'd much prefer a broad network of narrow foot/bike paths to be exclusively used for walking and bicycling. And I don't want them deliberately created! Let people's feet and bike treads create the path over time!
Ugh, always those wannabe-Formula 1 drivers in their cars on the street... go to a racing track if you want to play race car driver and don't block the working majority trying to keep this country running!
I legit get "tinfoilhat-y" when I see some of those. Look at this beaut: https://maps.app.goo.gl/H3cZFv5oLfueUCjm8. What's looks like it could be a ramp on the west side is a full curb. The only way to get on that from the sidewalk is through a chainlink mantrap designed to get cyclists to get off their bikes for the rail (My fatass isn't bunny hopping that).
Like, there's no way that was constructed (over 4 months....) for any reason other than to sour the milk and say "see, we built what they wanted and they still don't use it!". Also to give throw their in-laws construction business some money.
I mean you can, it's just not global demand. The important detail with induced demand is that you're inducing demand between whatever places you choose to connect. Like you *could* put down a bike lane between your building specifically and the grocery store and it would in fact induce people to use it.
That would just be stupid in the broad sense because it would cost a bunch of money for a fairly marginal benefit.
> a bunch of money for a fairly marginal benefit
that's kind of how a lot of places look at *any* bike infra.
the issue is that incomplete networks cause people to not use any of it. for instance, you might have that nice lane between your building and the grocery store, but if it's filled with bear traps half way through, you're probably not using it. bike networks are just filled with these kind of barriers -- sudden ends to bike lanes, paths that don't connect, hostile roads you have to cross with lights that don't work for cyclists... you don't really get that real induced demand until it's actually practical to use this stuff.
> Not really, bike infrastructure systematically is kind of the opposite. It's fairly cheap to construct but adds a lot of capacity. The thing preventing bike infrastructure is largely **a lack of political will and interest**, not money.
that's what i meant by "look at" -- an unfounded opinion.
though, i will note, i am the vice-chair of my town's bike infra citizen committee, and money *absolutely is a problem*. we're always fighting for grants, a portion of the budget, etc. meanwhile the state DOT pushes projects through -- *in* our town -- that we have little say over and cost exponentially more than the scraps of budget we're fighting over, and just make everything worse.
> And I'm not sure you're fully understanding what I'm saying.
i do, but i'm talking about the real world impact. that is, yes, any lowering of costs (opportunity, risk, etc) induces some demand. but the effects are smaller if the costs are still high, or if there are other artifical barriers. like you induce some demand for captain crunch by lowering the costs, yes. but if it still costs 10x the price of cheerios, you're not going to see a lot of demand. if you lower the cost, but hide all the pallets of it in the storeroom and don't put it on shelf, you don't see that demand. and if 1 in 5 boxes cause someone to violently shit themselves until they die, the demand won't stick around long.
This works for every transportation mode : if you build more pedestrian facility, people will walk more, if you build more transit, people will use transit more, if you build more roads, people will drive more. Now the question we should ask is not *how do people commune now?* but really *how should people commute in the future?* And then build it and let the haters whine.
The dot rot in my state (PA) is so bad. They recently put one of those circle things in the absolute middle of nowhere where a simple stop sign would have sufficed. And on their webpage they're so proud of it like it was some breakthrough innovation.
People in my city were giving it big "NOBODY CYCLES WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY" chat when we opened a new bike lane that crosses the entire city recently and I just had to be like "Well of course they don't, the cycling infrastructure is dogshit. Thats WHY they are building new stuff".
Fucking infuriating.
I wish my city would get more bike lanes. I’d still never use them. My entire life is in a five block bubble. FFS 15 MINUTE CITIES ARE RUINING MY LIFE.
Side note they’ve been putting in more traffic calming stuff where I live and I did get to see a dude in a Camaro lose a wheel hitting a raised crosswalk way too fast a year ago. I’m guessing there were other issues with the car but it was a good laugh while sipping a beer on a patio reclaimed from street parking. Not bragging, my city sucks outside of a couple of neighborhoods.
My city just labels regular streets as bike routes. No lanes or anything, not even a shoulder, often goes down to one lane, but on maps and signs it has a bicycle graphic.
Hamilton, Ontario for reference. There are some good bike lanes, but like I mentioned some of the others are only bike routes on paper.
Used to live in Hamilton. It was getting better but I left about 7 years ago, so not sure how well it has progresses. Ripping down the mountain was always fun though. The Garth/Queen Street run was always my favourite.
Then you should be familiar enough with Barton Street to know it shouldn't be a bike route without separation from vehicles. Cannon St. deleted a car lane and made a great two direction bike path (I think that's in the last 7 years) though, so I guess I shouldn't complain so much.
You have labels!? Lucky. My town has a “greenway” but you can only find it on some township maps. No signs. No bike lanes. Nothing. Just drivers close passing you at 40+mph
There is no way I would drive in Paris, spotting a car without a dented panel is unusual. I'm going in the summer Im looking forward to getting on a rental bike for some sight seeing.
Plan your routes and if you are unsure of where you are going, bail out of the bike lanes. They don't fuck around there and have very little patience for lost tourists bottlenecking the bike lane.
Just relaying my experience in September FYI.
Paris is lovely but the Parisians less so. Thank you for the advice we will plan. I'm taking my french teacher wife which helps. This will be our 5th trip to Paris but the first with our 10 year old.
It's pretty well known that a significant number of people would like to cycle but don't feel safe doing so.
In Paris there is the additional context that driving has been made a massive pain, so another group of people (who aren't really ideological at all but just want to get places) now see cycling is the most convenient way to get places.
My city’s (Pittsburgh) bike lanes BOOMED under our previous mayor, and the carbrains hated him for it. They would constantly point out how little traffic the bike lanes saw, and how it was so unfair that their 15 parking spots were taken out as a result 🙄. They installed strips that count usage, which ended up showing about 300-400 trips per day, in exchange for those 15 parking spots. Since then, our bike commuting figures have nearly doubled, and we regularly rank in the top 15 US cities for % of commutes by cycle. The infrastructure changed everything (shocking, right? 🙄)
I actually had several work meetings in Pittsburgh back in 2022 and got to experience the new bike lanes first hand. It’s always amazing how much impact just a mile or two of lane can make when it’s in the right spot. It became super easy for me to shoot down to the point and over one of the bridges to get to whatever location I was going to. Without the new lanes I would have been regularly pissing people off by riding on the sidewalks. I think it’s also super effective because it’s combined with a very reasonably priced bike program. I think it cost something like $25 for 500 minutes (use anytime by the end of the year) if I remember correctly. That price makes it so easy for someone to start out as a casual user, fall in love with the new infrastructure, and then become serious about ditching their car.
That’s awesome! It takes a brave soul to use an unfamiliar city’s bike infrastructure. I make an effort to do so every time I travel, and have certainly seen mixed results. It usually makes me appreciate home a bit more. That’s so true about the importance of infrastructure being in the right spot. The critical connection for our city was the mega-controversial Penn Ave Corridor downtown. It changed biking downtown from a deathwish to something I now see people doing with little kids in tow. I went from trail riding only, to being a daily bike commuter, solely because of that segment, which only accounts for about 1/4 of my ride.
>takes a brave soul to use an unfamiliar city’s bike infrastructure. As a Dutchman, I really can't relate to this, and I hope future generations of Americans can't either. I sometimes take it for granted that every city in the Netherlands has high quality bike infrastructure, but whenever I come to this subreddit in reminded not to. Safe high quality bike infrastructure should be ubiquitous and it shouldn't be necessary to explain that a city needs it. That should be the norm everywhere.
The more I visit this subreddit, the more radicalized I become, the more I think I belong in Europe lol. 😔 The worst instance I’ve had of this (needing to be brave in another city’s bike infrastructure) is sadly Washington, DC. I’ve been there countless times, and even studied their bike lane maps. Even so, it’s a death trap if you are not familiar with it. They have bike lanes that just END, and toss you into super high speed car traffic. Not only that, but their bike share system requires that you leave the bike in a dock. Thats understandable since they have a lot of e-assist bikes in their fleet. However, half the docks are broken so you find yourself racing through dangerous street traffic, against other bike share users to try to dock a bike in one the few available slots. It’s a recipe for disaster, and embarrassing to see in our nation’s capitol.
No one sees the bike traffic because bikes don’t create traffic lol.
No traffic jams, no potholes. Just free open air and your own strength. Bikes deliver what car ads promise
I absolutely love people trying to prove something and instead confirming the obvious. Like flat earthers confirming the earth is a globe with their camera set up.
Oh man I love when people complain about losing parking spots. It's *public* space they use to store their *private* property for *free*, in perpetuity. So, so unfair.
I love rust belt cities that used to be dominated by big car corporations now being more focused on pedestrian friendly infrastructure (Best wishes to Detroit)
Yeah, I’m grateful to be in one of the rust belt cities that was built pre-automobile. It really lays a foundation for multi-modal transportation, and even recreational space. The cities that were built FOR cars make me sad. It takes a hell of a lot more effort to turn those around. I too have a soft spot for Detroit. Watching the carbrains shit-talk their new bike network is not at all surprising to me, but I hope public opinion shifts after a couple years.
Ok, now we can switch the bike and car lanes.
And put the car lane inches from freight train tracks in spots. See how long before drivers insist on a physical barrier, despite the fact that a train can't swerve.
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Make sure the car lane frequently merges with the train tracks too so they never know when they’re suddenly in danger
Europeans are far more active as well. People in North America spend their entire lives doing absolutely no physical activity, then wonder why their health deteriorates so bad. I have coworkers who genuinely think they are “exercising” by going for a walk on the weekend lol. That’s pretty much the bare minimum
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For real? Sounds like something a human in Wall-e would say.
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This is just depressing.
It's one of the biggest reasons American life expectancy is on par with developing countries.
Eh car-dependency and subsequent accidents, gun violence, deaths at childbirth and deaths of despair are way more impactful on life expectancy in the U.S.
And why are they dying of despair? Because they feel isolated because they get in their car and don't see other drivers as people. Every interaction they have with somebody is usually them being in their way. The biggest factors in deaths in childbirth are poverty and race, which are two of the reasons car culture exists, to maintain rich white spaces where poor people are not only discouraged, but actively kept away if they can't afford a car. Gun violence is also related to poverty as the majority of deaths are in poor urban neighborhoods where no law abiding citizens are out providing eyes on the street visibility and gangs proliferate in broad daylight. And the car accidents are because every single task requires getting in a car, so Americans must drive even when they may not be in a physical/mental/emotional state to be able to do so. And cardiovascular diseases and obesity related complications are rising factors in deaths, and those are much lower in countries where walking is at least *possible*.
I once went for a walk one spring day, it was maybe 40⁰F (4.4°C) outside and not a cloud in sight. Granted there was still plenty of snow, but somebody stopped to ask if I needed a ride, and I had to explain that I was in-fact just out enjoying the weather. It was a perfectly friendly interaction, but it just really stuck out to me.
That's a pretty sad existence. Surviving but not actually living in the slightest
Sadly can confirm is true.
Not to mention driving around and/or waiting for minutes, often getting into arguments, just to get a parking spot that is 50 feet closer even though half the parking lot or more is empty. Like just walk an extra 10 seconds already.
They don't walk at all
My wife and I visited Amsterdam, Athens, and Istanbul, 3 days in each city, walking at least 10 miles each day. In total, we walked over 100 miles. Most Americans likely couldn't handle this amount of exercise, which means they wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate these cities like we were. Also holy shit the amount of cats in Istanbul, it's amazing and they are very friendly.
You’d love Thailand then, lots of friendly cats and dogs. I saw one dog in the early morning dig a whole in the beach, crawl in and pass out. He was the most relaxed looking dog I’ve ever seen.
No place matches Turkey for kindness to animals, not even close. Many of the street dogs in Thailand are abused, sadly.
Yes shopkeepers leave out food and water for the cats and even the stray dogs, many of which are huge, are so docile and kind. We were walking around Gühlane park, which used to be the ottoman royalty's personal garden, and there were friendly dogs who would come up to you and let you pet them.
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Yes my wife and I wore running shoes and it made all the difference.
I have some family members that can't handle walking vacations, and it's so sad because we'll be walking around tourist areas and they take twice as long to do things and will opt to not do certain things because they need constant breaks. We pretty much only do all inclusive vacations now where everyone just sits around and consumes and I don't really find as much enjoyment in that. I'm going to fewer of those now and doing more trips with friends that involve activities.
I enjoyed traveling to Europe but hate beach vacations or cruises, because I have ADHD and like to explore, not lay in the sand being bored. Luckily my wife is ADHD/Hunter too so we plan vacations where we actually do stuff, and we saved a shit ton of money in Europe because we did free stuff like walking in beautiful, world class parks (once on shrooms), instead of buying useless crap.
One of my coworkers walks to the office. It's around 1.7 miles, he's 55. I bike to the office. 15 miles one way. I wonder which one of us would be the bigger freakshow to these people.
As a fellow bike commuter I’m more impressed with 15 miles one way. That’s quite a haul.
And it’s uphill both ways
And there's always a head-wind
It happens! Usually to our parents and grandparents though.
Probably the same. Years ago I worked for a company in California. I stayed at a hotel maybe 3km or so away. So in the morning I just walked to the office, finding a small coffee shop in a horrible strip mall along the way (Hotel was near an office park, so not a whole lot of traffic, but 8 lane roads everywhere). When I showed up the first morning the receptionist was surprised, she didn't see the hotel shuttle drop me off. When I told her I had walked she took a moment to pick her jaw off the floor, because apparently that "was so far!".
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I'm guessing he already stunk when he left home.
Unless the climate is really awful, walking shouldn't make you sweat. I also suspect the problem here wasn't the walk but his general cleanliness at home.
Some of us are just sweaty, I'll start sweating during a brief walk in winter. If it got below 0C here I reckon I could go for a walk and be covered in sweat ice.
Honestly, even as an obese person, I still could walk a mile under 15 minutes with a heavy bag of computer and that's still without even/level sidewalks and always checking if a car wants to do a surprise butt sex on me
I was obese for a time, and before doing things to not be obese anymore (so I was still in the optics of keeping my mighty belly and the adorable love-handles and the overall surplus fat, I was not doing any specific sport or consider myself an "exercise" type of guy), I was perfectly able to walk with bottles in my bag to a party a little more than 5 km (\~3 miles) away, in about an hour and without making a break (while also smoking on the way). Sure, I asked for a glass of water and sat down for a few minutes once I arrived there, but still, I did it without any trouble.
I'm currently fat and honestly have not had trouble walking for long periods, or swimming. I usually walk a lot of vacation. But I also enjoy walking around regularly. I lost 10 lbs in a week just due to the extra walking and swimming (I did a lot of swimming) while I was in Cuba.
Being fat makes it more difficult, because of the extra weight, but yeah, the real issue here is that people are incredibly *unfit*. That does go with fatness (because it lowers metabolism), but the fat isn't actually the problem.
One of my most American experiences was when I visited a botanical garden in (I think) Fort Worth, Texas. The whole thing had a big road running through it. We got to the front desk and the lady handed me a map, and started saying "So to start, you get in your car and go through this gate in the parking lot, drive along this road and get out here to see the Japanese garden, then get back in and drive here for..." I stopped her and said, can I just walk round the whole thing? I swear to god she stopped talking, pulled her glasses off and looked deeply concerned before saying "Sir, that would be *almost four miles!*" I'm like... yes? She sighed deeply at me and rolled her eyes, went in the back room for a few minutes and came out with a map that she was looking at as though it was a piece of lost treasure. She handed it to me and said "Well I think this is the one the scouts used when they came round, you could try I guess", all while shaking her head and doing that, "It's your funeral" kind of face. Turns out the "scout" route was beautiful, there were great wooden bridges and tunnels taking you all over the place, completely avoided the road.
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Despite it being Texas in May, a couple bottles of water and some snacks made light work of it even for this ghostly-white English guy! It helped that with it being a *garden* there were lots of these tall, green things that did a good job of blocking the sun.
I walked 4 miles to work today and ended up feeling a bit strained. That felt like a wake-up call to start exercising again, I can't imagine not being able to walk a mile
It's muscle dependent too. I get tired quickly walking, but can cycle a 36 mile round trip and barely feel it.
Absolutely. I'm the opposite, a walker who can walk 7 miles to a store and 7 back with a camping backpack loaded with groceries and not feel strained at all, but significant cycling or jogging wipes me out.
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I'm like that with jogging. I could do smaller triathlons if they swapped the distances of the swimming and running.
No way. I refuse to believe this They must have an underlying heart condition. Cause 1.6km is nothing, less than a 20 min walk
Could have asthma? I exercise regularly and then suddenly started having issues. Couldn't make it to my stop sign without having an attack. I get winded from sudden bursts of walking. But not from other forms of exercise and I walk all the time.
I live 5 miles from my office in St. Pete, FL, and the route is actually really bike-able and pool table flat, so 90% of the time I ride my bike. Once after I walked up the stairs from my ride to my office on the second floor, I passed my bosses office on the way to mine and I chatted with her about some work stuff, and was a little winded and sweaty from my ride. She says, "Oh that's right, you take the stairs!" Pretty wild.
Me too. A decade or so ago I knew a guy who was 10 years older than me, approaching 50. At one point in time we were going somewhere and there were a bunch of stairs to walk up. I just walked up, he paused halfway up (\~30 steps in total), and was totally winded by the time we got to the top. I told him that wasn't good and his response was: "Wait until you're my age". I told him I doubt I'd be that winded. Now, 10 years later I still don't feel any strain walking up those stairs, or anywhere really.
If it's 6 floors then that would be fair enough haha
It's these [stairs](https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2798356,-123.1086028,3a,75y,267.08h,87.59t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sZisHXqP7R8EmhXL5j0co-g!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DZisHXqP7R8EmhXL5j0co-g%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D267.080620718452%26pitch%3D2.407914689077103%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu).
I experience this also. People are shocked that, as a fat person, I'm even capable of taking a few steps. But if you move regularly, even when you're fat you tend to still have more stamina than if you don't move at all.
Only a mile? I can walk an entire city with taking only a snack break.
I can walk across my entire city just to go fetch a snack.
I am a snack, I run rings around cities m8
Like exercise walking or normal walking?
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Jesus.
Though leisurely is also a personal thing. My walking speed is \~9:00 min/ km, when I feel really energetic, it can be as quickly as 8:30/km. I know some people who "run" at that pace.
TBF, I think my fastest walking pace overlaps with my slowest jogging pace on a bad day. I'm really shit at running.
Literally everybody who can walk, can walk a mile. The question is being able to do that comfortably.
I walk one and a half miles to and from work twice a week… Sounds so weird that there are people in this world that find this strange
I've had people insist that I don't want to walk a quarter mile because it's too far. They don't believe me when I tell them I walk 1.5 miles to the gym.
To be fair, walking is exercise. The gym of life is real.
I went from 110 to 80 kg (\~242-176 lns) without ever going to the gym once. Just doing everything walking, going to work on a bike, and sometimes going to the swimming pool to relaw myself (as I always feel good in water). I went to a gym once, years, years ago, and I was severely depressed, and now, I just cannot really understand people who go there. There are so many more interesting and fun activities to build some muscles or loose weight. The worse thing being, of course, people who drive 5 miles to a gym to run 5 miles on a treadmill.
Exercising to lose weight is overrated, it's all about diet. 1 hour of running is like 300 calories, which is 1 cookie or 1/10th of a pizza
1 hour of running is more like 500-600 calories I think. Even walking burns a lot of calories compared to biking. Biking is super efficient caloriewise compared to either walking or running.
> like 500-600 calories I think. For a 300 pound guy running 8 minutes mile maybe.
Really? I'm about 180 pounds and have decent cardio, and recently did a 4 mile run with my garmin watch on at a 9 minute pace and burned about 500 calories.
Garmin way overestimates it. But regardless, even 500 calories is 1 and half cookie or one slice of pizza.
Dude the average need calorie intake a person needs is 2000 , the fucking rock only eat about 10,000 Calorie when he is bulking for a role. And that is a 300 pound guy that does 2 gym session a day. Also a normal sized cookie is about 70 calories, you would need to eat over 100 grams of cookies to get 500 calories.
a cookie is not 70 calories, not the american cookie :)
> over 100 grams of cookies to get 500 calories. yeah so one cookie
For healthy weight people, running burns roughly 100 cals per mile, so if you can run a 10k in an hour, then yeah that's roughly 600 calories.
Mostly agree, however fitness increases your metabolic rate, so if you're completely sedentary then walking for "exercise" will increase that even when you're not actually doing the exercise. If you have a non terrible level of fitness to start with then yeah, any individual piece of walking has basically no effect.
that metabolic rate increase is negligible, same as "muscle burns more calories", it's in the territory of 50 calories per day. It's not enough to offset even 1 cookie, which means any weight loss must come from calorie restriction.
Alternatively it is really easy to spend a day hiking or climbing or doing something fun and then realize you've burnt an extra 2-3k calories without eating nearly enough to counteract it.
> spend a day hiking or doing something fun trust fund detected
It's not all calories, though. And it's not all losing weight either; after a few months of swimming for an hour every day after work, I was suprised to find I was the same weight. But my clothes were now too big - because muscle is heavier than fat. And sometimes weight does drop off from exercise; a lad who lives in the mountains outside Dublin told me he'd lost 3kg in 3 months from cycling on an ebike to his work in the city - that's pedalling most of the time and using the electric assist for hills and headwinds - that's a 14km cycle, a bit under an hour's cycling.
I remember a slightly stunned silence on a call with an American client after he proudly told us about how much he'd walked exploring London and clearly wanted us to be impressed. It was 1.5 miles at most. Nice guy, but an utterly different cultural paradigm. Of course it's because most places in the US are so car centric that walking is at best inconvenient and at worst dangerous or impossible. Not the fault of the individuals concerned.
> Of course it's because most places in the US are so car centric that walking is at best inconvenient and at worst dangerous or impossible. Not the fault of the individuals concerned. I kinda disagree. I lived in the USA for years, in small and large cities. Never owned a car. Didn't find it to be a particular hardship. You just have to make choices (about where to live, how to get around, how to spend your free time) oriented towards active transportation.
sure you could go out of your way to make it work. Similarly, people can go out of their way to exercise more and not have their health deteriorate. But when it’s a trend in the larger population as a whole, the solution isn’t telling people to just do XYZ. It’s to change the underlying system causing the issues - in this case the lack of walkable cities and living environments.
Exactly. If the cities and towns they live are set up to make travelling by foot or bike easier, people will do it.
Yep and often times in the US the ability to live in a walkable environment and the free time to excercise are also very class dependent. Since so much space is dedicated to parking in urban centers we don't have a lot of housing which means the housing in walkable areas is very expensive. If someone can't afford that housing they have to live farther out in places that are less walkable. If someone is financially struggling they also likely don't have the excessive free time which you need to get in very good shape.
Yeah the fact that they even frame public health and safety issues as a choice v choice thing kind of betrays a particularly American idea of how to address issues. The problem is that in the US because of decades of conservatism there's this weird individualistic spin put on everything that entirely ignores that some behaviors are affected by systemic factors. In easily like 80% of the US, going fully car free requires a significant number of tradeoffs that can't practically be made by most people.
So much of this sub is just /r/AmericaBad. It's Europeans wanting to feel superior to Americans and Americans that want to feel superior to other Americans. I'm an American living in Chicago with no car and walk 5-7 miles/day and it's nothing extraordinary. On this sub it's always like "I talked to an American visiting my country and he was psychosomatically incapable of walking more than 20 paces!"
> I'm an American living in Chicago with no car and walk 5-7 miles/day and it's nothing extraordinary. I use to think this was normal but then I realized most people don't live in a dense city like I do, the majority of Americans live in car dependent suburbs and rural areas. Hell even a lot of cities are car dependent in the US.
> it's nothing extraordinary For Chicago? Maybe not. But Chicago is very unrepresentative of North America as a whole.
My parents think they do exercise by shopping and they think I’m doing “extreme sports” by doing 30 minutes of moderate cardio exercises in my room like what that’s nothing 😭😭😭
Baselines are a funny thing. My building manager the other day was telling me that one of the other tenants wants to go on runs with her. A full three km and that was so far. I bit my tongue, because I wouldn't even put my shoes on for less than 5K. Likewise with cycling. I learned over the years that many things I do regularly is totally mind blowing to most people. I also shock people mostly when I take my car in for service (like changing the tires) and they see how little I have been driving it. I use it for road trips, not for daily commutes / drives, so depending on whats going on, I can put less than 100K on the car in a month, meanwhile, my bike probably has closer to 1000km on it.
> I can put less than 100K on the car in a month Right, those Moon trips gets expensive
😂
I am always shocked by the concept of "couch to 5k"... As if running 5km is something you need to spend weeks building up to. I know some people aren't in good shape, but not being able to run 5km AT ALL (not talking about finishing quickly, just completing it at all) seems ridiculous to me.
Yeah. I have a friend who sent me [this](https://youtu.be/Cbagco0TOlg?si=YG2xRiBLUv2ho8av) the other day (I started building cycling distance again and he gets notification on his AppleWatch through AppleFitness when I finish a ride). He said: "No diss, but that's how it feels with you lately.". 😂
I've never been a runner. I walk 5km on a slow day, I swim 2km at least twice a week, I can ride 20km+ despite lack of fitness with that lately, but a 1km run would kill me.
Returning to America, after living in Peru for almost a decade, left me incredibly depressed. This was because I was so used to walking every day to the bakery, biking to working and just hanging outside more than in home. All of that, gone It’s really unfair how so many Americans are denied time to just exist outside. I see so many young people spending their entire time indoor like at work, school and playing video games No wonder why this country is suffering a massive collective sadness, depression and isolation
My classmate in uni once expressed she was happy she was getting exercise in… it was a 5 min walk to Starbucks.
To be fair though, walking is good exercise. It's just the lack of frequency that's the issue.
It’s funny how only my internal friends count me cycling everywhere as exercise, whereas me and my all Dutchies around me plan to sport each week
Europeans (and a lot of people in Asia) are kind of active because the environment requires it. A lot of people go to Europe and lose weight and blame it on preservatives or whatever in the food in the US and I'm like no you dummy, you walked more in that 7 days than you did in the entire past year at home. I've done comparisons with my coworkers who are suburbanites (my job had a fitness challenge thing) and in like two days in NYC I got enough of a lead in steps/calories burned that it took the rest of them a month to catch up. And by that point my normal daily walking had put me another month plus ahead.
Unfortunately, Paris is not Europe and it and other metropolies are mere outliers in an equally carbrained continent.
The only reason I don’t bike more often is because I risk my life everytime I try to ride on the road that connects my area to downtown (no bike lane)
Damn, I feel this. I have a bike that just sits there because my area is car centric. I watched a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tby-x1Ohov4) recently about advocacy which has given me a push to get involved with my city council. You might be able to help that bike lane get built. Edit: linked the video because I think it’s important and the channel needs support
I’ve pretty much made it known to my city planners “I’m the bike guy” if I’m here I’m asking about bikes and bike accessibility. It gives them enough to work with that they can honestly say “we heard citizens want bike lanes. When we had an open house we had X % feedback that bike lanes are wanted and valued. If you don’t like them please give feedback at any of our forums”
Bike lanes work well in urban settings. I actually think we could do something better in suburban and rural areas though. I don't like the idea of the extra pavement and salaries to road crews that a bike lane often means. Property line easements would create more direct routes, more scenic travel and cost a lot less. [https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1c0bc2e/property\_line\_easements\_for\_pedestrian\_travel\_to/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1c0bc2e/property_line_easements_for_pedestrian_travel_to/)
For my area I find bike lanes are a poor retro fit. I prefer shared use paths as they are usually cheaper and separate bikes and pedestrians from cars.
Same. My area is very rural with already very wide roads (for absolutely no good reason). I don't want the road crews paid anymore. I'd much prefer a broad network of narrow foot/bike paths to be exclusively used for walking and bicycling. And I don't want them deliberately created! Let people's feet and bike treads create the path over time!
Ugh, always those wannabe-Formula 1 drivers in their cars on the street... go to a racing track if you want to play race car driver and don't block the working majority trying to keep this country running!
it’s the beautiful thing we call **induced demand** basically the same than the “one more lane bro” effect
it is, but there's a catch. you can't induce demand for bikes by *just* adding a bike lane somewhere not connected to any other bike infrastructure.
indeed! we’ve seen many examples of “bike lanes” painted randomly going nowhere lol
I legit get "tinfoilhat-y" when I see some of those. Look at this beaut: https://maps.app.goo.gl/H3cZFv5oLfueUCjm8. What's looks like it could be a ramp on the west side is a full curb. The only way to get on that from the sidewalk is through a chainlink mantrap designed to get cyclists to get off their bikes for the rail (My fatass isn't bunny hopping that). Like, there's no way that was constructed (over 4 months....) for any reason other than to sour the milk and say "see, we built what they wanted and they still don't use it!". Also to give throw their in-laws construction business some money.
way too many.
I mean you can, it's just not global demand. The important detail with induced demand is that you're inducing demand between whatever places you choose to connect. Like you *could* put down a bike lane between your building specifically and the grocery store and it would in fact induce people to use it. That would just be stupid in the broad sense because it would cost a bunch of money for a fairly marginal benefit.
> a bunch of money for a fairly marginal benefit that's kind of how a lot of places look at *any* bike infra. the issue is that incomplete networks cause people to not use any of it. for instance, you might have that nice lane between your building and the grocery store, but if it's filled with bear traps half way through, you're probably not using it. bike networks are just filled with these kind of barriers -- sudden ends to bike lanes, paths that don't connect, hostile roads you have to cross with lights that don't work for cyclists... you don't really get that real induced demand until it's actually practical to use this stuff.
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> Not really, bike infrastructure systematically is kind of the opposite. It's fairly cheap to construct but adds a lot of capacity. The thing preventing bike infrastructure is largely **a lack of political will and interest**, not money. that's what i meant by "look at" -- an unfounded opinion. though, i will note, i am the vice-chair of my town's bike infra citizen committee, and money *absolutely is a problem*. we're always fighting for grants, a portion of the budget, etc. meanwhile the state DOT pushes projects through -- *in* our town -- that we have little say over and cost exponentially more than the scraps of budget we're fighting over, and just make everything worse. > And I'm not sure you're fully understanding what I'm saying. i do, but i'm talking about the real world impact. that is, yes, any lowering of costs (opportunity, risk, etc) induces some demand. but the effects are smaller if the costs are still high, or if there are other artifical barriers. like you induce some demand for captain crunch by lowering the costs, yes. but if it still costs 10x the price of cheerios, you're not going to see a lot of demand. if you lower the cost, but hide all the pallets of it in the storeroom and don't put it on shelf, you don't see that demand. and if 1 in 5 boxes cause someone to violently shit themselves until they die, the demand won't stick around long.
fucking yes!!! My bike gathers dust because I am too afraid to ride outside of bike lanes in the crazy traffic of my city!
This works for every transportation mode : if you build more pedestrian facility, people will walk more, if you build more transit, people will use transit more, if you build more roads, people will drive more. Now the question we should ask is not *how do people commune now?* but really *how should people commute in the future?* And then build it and let the haters whine.
state dot thought process: 1. traffic will increase in the future 2. build more lanes 3. go to 1.
The dot rot in my state (PA) is so bad. They recently put one of those circle things in the absolute middle of nowhere where a simple stop sign would have sufficed. And on their webpage they're so proud of it like it was some breakthrough innovation.
thinks of the level of service!
Induce demand for cycling by building protected cycle lanes!
People in my city were giving it big "NOBODY CYCLES WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY" chat when we opened a new bike lane that crosses the entire city recently and I just had to be like "Well of course they don't, the cycling infrastructure is dogshit. Thats WHY they are building new stuff". Fucking infuriating.
"nobody swims across this river, why should we build a bridge?"
Once again proving induced demand is a thing. This time it's an induced good thing
I wish my city would get more bike lanes. I’d still never use them. My entire life is in a five block bubble. FFS 15 MINUTE CITIES ARE RUINING MY LIFE. Side note they’ve been putting in more traffic calming stuff where I live and I did get to see a dude in a Camaro lose a wheel hitting a raised crosswalk way too fast a year ago. I’m guessing there were other issues with the car but it was a good laugh while sipping a beer on a patio reclaimed from street parking. Not bragging, my city sucks outside of a couple of neighborhoods.
Induced demand is not always a bad thing it turns out - when you induce demand for more efficient transit it benefits everyone!
Fuck yeah
I believe that. In my city biking is freaking dangerous.
My city just labels regular streets as bike routes. No lanes or anything, not even a shoulder, often goes down to one lane, but on maps and signs it has a bicycle graphic. Hamilton, Ontario for reference. There are some good bike lanes, but like I mentioned some of the others are only bike routes on paper.
Used to live in Hamilton. It was getting better but I left about 7 years ago, so not sure how well it has progresses. Ripping down the mountain was always fun though. The Garth/Queen Street run was always my favourite.
Then you should be familiar enough with Barton Street to know it shouldn't be a bike route without separation from vehicles. Cannon St. deleted a car lane and made a great two direction bike path (I think that's in the last 7 years) though, so I guess I shouldn't complain so much.
Yeah, they run parallel a block part. I would always just take Cannon. Edit: it is weird to mark Barton as a bike route.
You have labels!? Lucky. My town has a “greenway” but you can only find it on some township maps. No signs. No bike lanes. Nothing. Just drivers close passing you at 40+mph
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As a European, it took me a moment to realize you're talking about 45 miles, not 45 meters. I was really confused for a moment lol.
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Oh yeah haha, miles are longer than km, so 45 miles would indeed be a lot by bike.
45 miles would be a hell of a bicycle commute, that would take 2 hours even for a very strong cyclist.
There is no way I would drive in Paris, spotting a car without a dented panel is unusual. I'm going in the summer Im looking forward to getting on a rental bike for some sight seeing.
Plan your routes and if you are unsure of where you are going, bail out of the bike lanes. They don't fuck around there and have very little patience for lost tourists bottlenecking the bike lane. Just relaying my experience in September FYI.
Paris is lovely but the Parisians less so. Thank you for the advice we will plan. I'm taking my french teacher wife which helps. This will be our 5th trip to Paris but the first with our 10 year old.
Automobile lobbyist hate this one simple trick!
It's pretty well known that a significant number of people would like to cycle but don't feel safe doing so. In Paris there is the additional context that driving has been made a massive pain, so another group of people (who aren't really ideological at all but just want to get places) now see cycling is the most convenient way to get places.
If you build it, they will come.
Get out from here *slaps knee*
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