In Belgium there is a small movement promoting bikes and there are all kind of hipsters, bobo and 50 years old grey hair vegan on fake vintage bikes riding without helmets and without any sense of road conduct. Good bikers wearing yellow jackets and helmets are really rare ; I am beginning to think the formers are ruining the latters's image.
Why should a bicyclist be required to wear a yellow helmet & jacket to be called "good"? Certainly reasonable road conduct should be demanded from all road users, but first from automobile drivers, who cause the vast majority of injuries & deaths on the streets.
1. First of all, it is mandatory in my country.
2. Wether the accident is the biker's fault or the car driver's fault or anything else you are way better wearing a protective helmet if you fall off your bike. Head trauma is not something to be dismissed on the basis that wearing an helmet isn't mandatory or - gasp - fashionnable.
3. Regarding the yellow jacket: without it most bicylists are simply invisible in night traffic. In broad daylight there are easier to see and thus one can be more cautious around them. Remember that cyclists are "weak" road users.
4. > Why should a bicyclist be required to wear a yellow helmet & jacket to be called "good"? Certainly reasonable road conduct should be demanded from all road users, but first from automobile drivers, who cause the vast majority of injuries & deaths on the streets.
Wearing a helmet and yellow jacket are really good signs that the biker knows what he is doing. Especially in a country (mine) where it is mandatory. Especially in a country (mine) where car culture is overtly agressive towards cyclists.
There is absolutely no reason not to wear protective gear when riding a bike (especially in a city).
Even if there were no cars on the road.
edit: removed personnal rant
You don't need fancy clothes and a fancy bike to commute to work, in fact those are often a liability.
Pretty much the only people in Copenhagen that wear helmets are racers. Yet the fatality rate in Copenhagen for cyclists is an order of magnitude less than it is in North America, where a good percentage of cyclists wear helmets.
Much of continental Europe is cooler than the US, northern Europe even more so.
The yellow jacket is really only useful in low-light conditions. Bright flashing lights are a much better form of identification than this, imho, and it's one piece of safety equipment nobody in DC ever seemed to own, though their fashionable bike safety apparel was quite solid.
I find that "road conduct" is not something most bikers have until they've been hit by a couple cars. At that point they become aware of the fact that cars either don't see them or ignore them, and they become much safer cyclists.
Think such a thing doesn't exist? Well think again: http://www.hovding.com/en/how/
What is the advantage of no gear? Well, I can get on my bike and get to and from the store in 5 minutes (I live in a safe country, I don't even lock my bike up most of the time). Five minutes. The roads around my home are so complex and steep that it is nigh on impossible for a car to travel faster than a cyclist. Having an arbitrary requirement would only act to discourage people from cycling.
For the record, I routinely cycle around 80km a week, mainly commuting. I am only on a road for 30 seconds in the entire trip (basically, the last part to my house). With practically no enforcement (I've never seen police on bike paths or talking to cyclists) cycling is safer and easier than what I have experienced elsewhere. When the main risk is to your own wellbeing, most people are sensible enough to not kill themselves without the nanny state holding their hand.
http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-m...
and one feature of bicycling in Minneapolis and its suburbs is an ongoing effort to make regional bicycle trails, some by converting old railroad railbeds into bicycle trails, including bicycle superhighways.
http://blogs.citypages.com/dressingroom/2012/07/midtown_gree...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Lake_Trail
My wife regularly bicycle commutes (she is doing so as I type this) and our whole family takes recreational trips into neighboring towns along dedicated bicycle trails. We reduce our car driving by hundreds of miles per year by using the city trail system (combining mostly walkers, and in winter skiers, with quite a few year-round bicyclists) and the regional trail system (combining mostly recreational bicyclists with some year-round bicycle commuters and some walkers).
The regional trail system is becoming more and more extensive
http://www.minnehahamedia.com/gw/twin_cities_reg_trails/inde...
and is projected to ring the entire metropolitan area with dedicated bicycle trails in the next decade.
Denmark seems to have built the "superhighway" from scratch, which is pretty cool. It also seems to have only cost $1.5 million. Since the average freeway costs about $1 million per mile, WHY DON'T WE HAVE MORE BIKEWAYS!?
sorry, lost my composure there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Greenway
The East Coast Greenway, or ECG, is a project to create a nearly 3,000-mile (4,800 km) urban path linking the major cities of the Atlantic coast of the United States, from Calais, Maine, to Key West, Florida, for non-motorized human transportation.
I can attest that the part near Raleigh, NC is very nice.
I don't live there, but my solution in a similar situation revolved around the exercise club two blocks from work. On bike days you only use the club for its shower, on non-bike days (winter, etc) you exercise at the club (lift weights, mostly).
Also, hard as it might be to believe, bicycling more energy efficient than walking at the same speed, so once you're in shape, going slow and enjoying the ride is not sweaty, its possible to go slightly faster than walking while generating less heat than a normal walk. Depending on your local weather, a leisurely walk outdoors often results in no sweating at all.
It's not as good as a shower, but I don't smell and I don't feel sticky after. I also feel great and refreshed and not in need of a cup of coffee to wake me up.
I was in HS, so my solution for the shower thing was:
1) Gym showers at school (duh)
2) Anywhere else, I usually had a friend within a mile of it, since so much is mixed zoning, that would let me use their shower.
For examples of 'safe' use of a mobile phone while cycling, see http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/
Relative to their width people on bikes move a lot more side-to-side than a car does - it's not uncommon to see a person on a bike weaving a couple of feet in either direction as they pedal. If cars did this the lanes would have to be 2-3 times the width of the car on either side to accomodate the movement.
Further, having one hand off the handlebars massively diminishes your ability to react safely and accurately.
Granted, the worst that might happen in a bike-on-bike crash is a broken bone or concussion, but for people who aren't at peak health (or who just get really unlucky) this could be a significant, even life-changing event.
- texting
- holding up an umbrella. Very common.
- smoking (exercising is good for you, I guess it cancels out the health hazards of smoking...)
- "walking" (cycling?) a dog with a leash.
And once I saw a guy leisurely riding on the road while reading a manga. God, I wish I had taken a pic.
ps Don't answer your phone in the pelaton at the start of a Tour de France stage!
Danes are not that much more interested in protecting the environment than the rest of the world -- we just can't afford cars.
I've been reading these discussions on the internet for a while and I've been seeing a willingness and perhaps even a desire to excuse the status quo as a large factor. Bring up the stereotypical Copenhagen and Amsterdam and immediately people post reasons why North America can't be like that: the hills and the climate and the distances and so on.
It strikes me as very un-American in a way - challenging land and climate and large distances haven't stopped Americans from expanding into the desert southwest or paving interstate freeways through the Rockies or building air force bases in Alaska tundra but they do apparently stop people from getting around on a bicycle. For every hilly Seattle and San Francisco there's a flat Midwest town (or a flatter route through a hilly city that could benefit from infrastructure even if other routes are not feasible) and for every location with a hot summer and cold winter there's mild northeast and northwest. By some of the criteria advanced, small towns in New England should be bike infrastructure havens, which they are decidedly not.
It's one thing if you consciously don't want bike infrastructure, it's another to throw up your arms and declare it'll never work there without trying.
Secondly, climbing the Rockies on a bike is beyond most people's level of fitness. I would say only experienced road riders would be able to accomplish that.
Thirdly...crossing the Alaskan tundra on bike would be nearly impossible without specialized gear. Standard bike tires would not be able to cross the snow/ice without sinking. Also the consistent freezing temperatures necessitate specialized clothing which is not conducive to riding.
I can easily see why those three landscapes might "stop people from getting around on a bicycle".
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/03/3689756/kansas-city-b-c...
In Denmark, it's not so bad actually. While winters tend to be miserable in their dark grayness, they're rarely very cold. The risk of rain is higher, but any day throughout the year could be wet. In other words, with a bit of gearing up, especially with a shower at your destination, year-round bike commuting in Denmark is completely feasible.
Not that cycling in freezing rain doesn't objectively suck.
You have to be willing to live fairly near to work of course. For me it would probably take about the same amount of time to drive to work. It takes me about 13 minutes to cycle and rush hour traffic will slow a car down.
If I want to go longer distances I can catch a train (and take the bike for the other end) or take a bus. Occasionally hiring a car is also possible for rare occasions.
So for me using a bike is completely feasible for living in a city.
They never expect 'riding the bike to work' as answer.
I had the privilege of being able to reach work by a very, very nice ride through a park, along a river. No cars. Showers provided in the office. In Germany I used to drive 1.6km to work with a car and I usually got up around 10. In Israel I drove 6.5-7km on a bike and usually just fell out of bed around 7:30-8:00. The quality of life that this tiny change added is mind blowing.
I'm an Israeli currently living in Vienna, I don't bike myself but it's very common here & there are many bike paths. Also - everybody I know in Israel owns a car, and almost nobody I know in Vienna does.
Yep, there are lots of issues still, but I think that Tel Aviv is actually a decent place to bike (try not to get killed on the roads..) and constantly improving.
Cologne is - worse (bike lanes suck, underground that actually runs overground in places, on the street -> dangerous for bikes because you can easily end up in the tracks, usually rainy and some time of the year brings ice and potentially snow, work places aren't used to offer a shower because .. no one needs one).
My stepfather works for the U.N., he's currently in Vienna.
When he was in Canada he had a gas-guzzling SUV, here in Uruguay he had a diesel BMW, but now in Vienna for the first time he doesn't own a car.. because he doesn't need one.
The person didn't change, the environment did.
- I hate the traffic in Tel Aviv. It works, it's bearable, but coming from a German Autobahn it's just messy, slow, loud and unpredictable
- I had the fortune of choosing an apartment with an excellent connection to work (and < 100m away from the beach), by accident (I didn't explore the way to work before signing the apartment contract)
- Lots of light, warm weather 11 month of the year (locals would disagree, I've seen gas powered heaters outside of restaurants when it was 18-20 degrees aka "t-shirt and shorts" weather), rain only in 1-2 month of the year: Perfect for bikes
- There _is_ no usable public transportation, so bikes are actually quite important and well-used (taxis are ~cheap~ and there are bus lines, but those won't run on shabbat and are .. special)
How is it possible to build 14 miles of this bike highway for this little money? (I'm an American). Here, you'd spend this amount just on "feasibility study" and buying off the inevitable opposition.
One of the comments on the linked danish article is a woman who says she's been doing that commute for years - a long a different route that is shorter and worked very well for her, so she doesn't really see the point.
Edit: Also, I think that was one source of funds, not the total cost of the project.
As another data point, a somewhat similar but larger project -- about 100km bike highway in an urbanised region -- in Germany is probably not going to happen due to costs of >110 million EUR. That's approximately 10x as expensive per km as the project in Copenhagen, if the $1.4 million is the total project budget after all.
You also save a lot of money because the road does not have to handle 80 mph speeds. Car roads get destroyed when wheels slam into small bumps or holes in the asphalt at very high speeds.
So while it may all look like the same asphalt bike roads are much much cheaper to both build and maintain.
Therefore, even if you never get on a bike you should be making your city build bike roads because, if other people chose to bike instead of driving, this will mean lower costs to the city and less taxes for you.
* Which, I should mention, has a bit of a tradition of cheaping out on the construction. Why worry about the higher maintenance costs when that's going to be your successor's problem? Better to kick that can down the road and brag about how much taxpayer money you're "saving". Ahh, the beauty of the spoils system.
You bid out the construction to the cheapest contractor with strict penalties for late completion. But the same company then gets the contract for repair and maintenance for the next 20years!
Politicians were shocked when their brand new freeway closed for resurfacing within a month of opening.
A lot of the expensiveness of freeways also has to do with completely grade-separating it from other traffic. This route has several grade crossings at busy intersections.
Pay anything toward public/alternative transport and it's taxpayers money being lavished on subsidies. But spend a $Bn on a highway that just creates bigger traffic jams and it's vital infrastructure improvements.
Here they just voted themselves a big property tax hike to pay for a new $Bn freeway bridge after it became clear that the tolls wouldn't even cover the interest. But the express bus route that was going to use the bridge has been cut to save money.
It's also the argeument behind "cyclists don't pay toward the roads" when the majority of massively expensive road building is for stuff that cyclists can't use (freeways/tunnels) and they do pay for these in tax.
In NYC I always thought they could benefit from real, separate bike paths and not just the bike lanes created by stripes painted on the avenues.
But honestly, I am not sure the idea of biking is going to pick up in America. Biking is popular in Denmark and the Netherlands where temperatures rarely fall below 20-25 degrees in the winter and where summer temperatures above 77 degrees is something experienced 5-10 days a year. Most American cities have much warmer summers and much harder winters - even if they had bike lanes it wouldn't be comfortable to use a bike as means of transportation.
I think LA is a perfect city for bike streets. There are underground gangs of byciclist in LA that periodically take over large streets by swarming them with thousands of bikes and completely shutting down car traffic. I am sure they do this to give city planners a clue, but the clues are slow to come.
That said, Danish cycle paths are first class to begin with.
It's still better value than most government adverts telling you to do something!
I don't think most cities have so much elevation gain that biking to work isn't practical for most people. There are definitely exceptions, but I'm pretty sure a person of average fitness could bike to work without too much trouble in the vast majority of cases.
The majority of bikes sold have multiple gears, so hills should be even less of an issue.
More of this please.
The Stevens Creek trail (an old rail bed in parts) is a good example of an urban trail. And of course highway 85 before they officially opened it, it was like four lane bike trail and exceptionally awesome.
OT: The Des Moines Register's Annual Great Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) starts this Saturday. Anyone who's ever participated in this event can appreciate the morning commute with 10,000+ of your closest friends to get pancakes and breakfast burritos in the first town.
Among them, a dedicated bike lane/walking system that loops around most of the city.
http://www.streetfilms.org/lessons-from-bogota/
http://thisbigcity.net/photo-essay-bogota-and-the-bicycle-a-...
“Do we dare create a transport system giving priority to the needs of the poor? Or are we really trying to solve the traffic jams of the upper income people? That is really the true issue that exist?”
“God made us walking animals – pedestrians. As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy.”
He is quite a character, featured in the maker of Helvetica's "Urbanized"
We have another problem however, which is that the inner city is very crowded in rush hour. I hope the expand the high traffic lanes to become even wider at some point. Currently all lanes are double-lanes, but triple lanes would be really nice in choke-points. This might sound stupid to someone which doesn't even have bike lanes in their city, but this is an actual problem in Copenhagen. It's not so much about being able to go fast, but also about safety.