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Of Course You Can't Bike to Work (jalopnik.com)

submitted 11 months ago by HallowellNash@lemmy.world to c/fuck_cars@lemmy.ml

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Another great piece from Jalopnik.

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[-] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 56 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The site found that despite millions being invested in cycling infrastructure across America, the number of people regularly riding to work has fallen by 75,000 compared with pre-pandemic levels.

This is such bullshit. If you follow the links it does lead to a number or even a lot of investment. Some cities improving stuff but they are also counting people buying e-bikes, and entire cities buying bike fleets. You can spend billions on buying bikes if you want, that's not "infrastructure".

"Millions" across the US is a laughable investment. European cities individually spend more than that, because it's cheaper than maintaining roads for cars, adding more lanes of highways, and climate change.

I bet you the amount of money being poured into new highways is 100x was is being done for bikes.

[-] njordomir@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

I latched onto the same stat, but for a different reason. What percentage of those 75,000 don't ride to work because they are now working from home?

I don't ride to work anymore, but I put in more miles than ever. 30 miles round trip to grab a beer with a friend on Saturday afternoon, hell yeah! Sometimes I go out on my lunch breaks to wake up and re-energize myself.

[-] Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I bet you the amount of money being poured into new highways is 100x was is being done for bikes.

You're a orders of magnitude off. Let's assume "millions" means 10 million. I'm also going to generously assume 10 million per year, rather than the more likely 10 million over a couple years.

With those figures highway and street spending is 13,000 more.

Edit: I just reread and saw NEW construction. I don't have that figure.

Edit 2: on secons look, that 130 $bn spending nust be new roads; that looks like insufficient maintaince for the 161,000 mi of highways in the USA, let alone all other roads.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Indeed. How much money per mile of 4-lane stroad with a center turn lane? Is it a million dollars a mile?

[-] InevitableWaffles@midwest.social 52 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I'm about five miles from my work with OK bike infrastructure to get there. My problem is every dickhead rolling coal on a lifted F350 seems to think I'm worth 500 points. Until they either protect the biking infrastructure or hit these people driving massive vehicles with some real pentalities for driving like idiots, I'll have to keep using my car for safety.

[-] Num10ck@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

i wonder if the self-driving cars will make bicycling safer or more dangerous? the recent shrug and pray approaches to the software aren't reassuring enough

[-] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago

Physically separate bike paths (like not connected to roads. A.k.a multiuse paths) and bike first intersections are going to be the safest way forward.

Self-driving cars can be safer in some ways, but not always.

[-] InevitableWaffles@midwest.social 2 points 11 months ago

Given the fact they are still running over pedestrians, I wouldnt hold a lot of hope.

[-] Sagethefolxhero@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 11 months ago

biking to work for me means 35 miles of hilly country roads full of speeding trucks. wish I could lol

[-] Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml 8 points 11 months ago

I started with a 15min commute to the train, 40 lin train ride, 35min bikeride up some KNARLEY hills...but on the way home it was downhill... Then moved cities and was 10min away, which became 1hr 25min training (I'm just commuting i told my brain)...then gota promotion and that was 75mi, 2-3.5hr commute in LA. Pretty soon after we moved away feom all that, live 5min walk from our restaurant & 500m from the med. I hated riding in the US...City bus drivers were THE WORST.

[-] TheMusicalFruit@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

Aside from the problems cited in the article, I also find the routing of bike lanes in my area to be confusing as a cyclist and driver. Going from the shoulder, to between a traffic lane and parking lane, to even splitting the center lane with minimal barriers. The transitions from one lane position to the next almost always feels dangerous. If we could get some consistency it would help a lot. Don’t even get me started about the bike lanes that just suddenly end and require a merge with traffic without any signage.

[-] OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

I just want affordable bicycle enclosures so I can bike somewhere without getting destroyed by weather. I'll figure out the parking after.

Or public transport sadness

[-] Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

I wonder why commuting percentage is higher in Canada, the infrastructure is no better here

[+] quindraco@lemm.ee -20 points 11 months ago

No way, New York City is a shitty place to live? Next you'll tell me water is wet or something. Mind blown.

[-] TheFriar@lemm.ee 19 points 11 months ago

It’s not for everyone, but “shitty place to live” isn’t at all true.

[+] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works -25 points 11 months ago

Yes it is. You pay a fortune to live in a hovel and have to share the sidewalk with drug addicts and gangs. Breathe deep and appreciate that smell of sewage everyday.

[-] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Different strokes for different folks. Instead of shitting on something, we can simply say "it is not for me because of X and Y".

[+] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works -9 points 11 months ago

The problem is there's a lot of people that want to push that lifestyle on every single human being. They want to pretend every person wants to live in a city. They want to pretend cities have no problems.

[-] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The problem is there’s a lot of people that want to push that lifestyle on every single human being

I suspect you misunderstand what these people want. Let's use myself as an example, I am as opposed to suburbs as they come. Does it mean I am opposed to you living in a suburb? No. I am opposed to:

Zoning laws forcing large residential developments to contain only single-family homes, rather than allowing mixed-use medium density communities. You wouldn't want your preferred type of development to be banned, either.
Our streets where we live being designed with the primary goal of maximizing the number of cars passing through them, like they are today. You wouldn't want heavy car traffic in front of your home, either.
My children wasting 100 minutes of time every day commuting to school because our city planners did a terrible job, when their school should be within a safe 15 minute bicycle ride. You wouldn't want your kids to be wasting their life in traffic, either.

We largely want the same things. The main difference I see is that I'm looking for ways to improve my lifestyle in a way that doesn't automatically decrease the quality of life of other people, such as driving my car in front of their homes at all times of the day or making their neighborhoods unwalkable.

Car-dependent city planning is causing all these problems.

[-] uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago

Theres a lot of people that pretend the opposite, as well. We are all biased towards the thing we like. Its obvious cities are popular, because they are expensive. Its also obvious suburbs are popular, because they alsoare axpensive.

What people mostly wish is that more city could be built, becausethe demand forcity living is still highar than that for suburbs.

[-] TheFriar@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Lol have you…been to New York? Because it doesn’t sound like it.

[-] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works -4 points 11 months ago

I go there twice a week. Into the boroughs though. Haven't been on Manhattan in a few years.

[-] TheFriar@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

So you know how absurd your comment was. MAYBE you could say what you said about parts of Manhattan, but the boroughs are entirely different. South Brooklyn you have beach front property—and varied styles of neighborhoods at that, north Brooklyn you have dense urban centers intercut with quiet, tree lined neighborhoods and clean brownstones, queens you have a lot of places that feel like you’ve left the city entirely for more dense suburban living, bronx, yeah it’s very dense urban, like Manhattan but entirely different, and then Staten Island is like an entirely different state.

So again, I really don’t know what you mean. You can find so many different types of areas throughout the five boroughs. Yeah, you can find loud, dense and dirty areas, but you can find the exact opposite—or really almost anything.

this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023

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