For me this is very nice to see. I'm moving to the Netherlands at the end of the month and am excited to be moving to a city where cyclists own the roads rather than cars. This is a stark contrast to London where cars rule and I cycle in constant fear of being hit by a bus or an overzealous taxi driver. I think city planners have a duty to make cycling and public transport first class while deemphasising cars.
my limited experience, but corroborated by discussion with other people, is that in the Netherlands (and Belgium) cyclists actually own the road, i.e. they always seem to get right of way and give little crap about pedestrians/cars/motorbikes.
Do not mistake Amsterdam city center with the rest of the Netherlands.
In the overcrowded center of Amsterdam, the locals know and understand "the dance" (the last thing a cyclist wants to do is come to a full stop every 20 meters, because it is much more "expensive" for a cyclists than it is for a pedestrian or driver, so instead of playing by the rules of right of way we do the dance of give and take), with the exception of tourists (who don't know the dance and give off confusing and confused body language) and cars (usually from out of town) stupid enough to drive in the city center in the first place.
This is only because of the outsider perspective : everybody learns to ride a bicycle as a kid ( as early as 4-5 years ).
Also children about 11-12 years old bike to their schools unattended, sometimes 15km each day. Parents would not allow this if it was 'absolutely crazy'.
It was a light hearted comment from the outside perspective, not a genuine accusation of mental health problems ;) Cycling in the Netherlands is actually lovely. Flat land, well maintained cycle paths, and beautiful countryside. Plus the thighs! My word!
Interesting.. I mainly use a bicycle for commuting/shopping,
however, the left turns almost always scare me, to the point where I'm thinking of using pedestrian crosswalk instead. Better safe than sorry..
> The cyclists make sense, but where I live you can picture the bus with one guy on it.
That was my city around 7 years ago. Public transit was very underutilised and the general mental image people had of it was that it was for children, old and poor people. Then the city councils in the area got together and started to really put money into improving the routes and service. It was hard to justify politically because of the existing attitudes, but seven years later, almost all of the buses I see have >50% occupancy with mostly regular middle-class people, even outside of rush hour. During rush hours have to send extra buses as they fill up fast.
So I think part of it is to break out of the cycle of public transit providing shitty service, people not using public transit because of shitty service, and the service getting shittier because there's even less political will to put money into it with fewer passengers.
I use primarily bike and public transit ... but given that, if you were to measure flow, that is to say, how many people traverse a given unit distance per unit time, how would the numbers change?
I think cars may be given a more favorable score in a metric of transport as opposed to what amounts to a metric of occupancy.
But then there's parking ... and that's why I'm usually on the bike; with casual non-crazy, follow-all-the-laws riding, in the inner city, I'll beat my motorist friends by 5-10 minute margins. I often start to worry that they got in an accident or got lost because it takes them so long. It's really remarkable.
Trains might well win in that case, especially metro trains in cities. You can move at least 500 people every 3-4 minutes, less if you try especially hard.
Cars in London average 19mph (30km/h) on "major roads" and 9mph (14km/h) in Central London.
9mph? Might as well lace up a decent pair of shoes and get the heart rate up; you'd get a pace better than that down in a couple of months without worry.
What nonsense. You expect all the health improvements of exercise to be negated by poor air quality? It should be noted that both of your links were not average days. There's a reason that made the news.
Pollution in London is consistently poor. That's why the UK gov loses court cases over air quality.
> The supreme court has ordered the government to make plans for tackling the UK’s air pollution problem, which has been in breach of EU limits for years and is linked to thousands of premature deaths each year.
>Exercising in London pollution is probably a bad idea
Is not the same as:
>Yes, in this level of pollution there are considerable risks that need to be balanced against benefits of exercise.
I dispute the former, not the latter. Unless you show me some evidence that exercising in a polluted city is somehow worse than living-but-not-exercising in said city, I'm going to continue to dispute that.
Encouraging people to avoid exercise is incredibly reckless.
I'm not encouraging people to avoid exercise. I'm encouraging people to avoid exercise as part of their commute (when pollution is going to be high), in London streets (where, again, pollution is highest).
Nothing about "Don't jog to work at times when pollution is highest in places where pollution is highest" says "avoid exercise" and it's a perverse interpretation to suggest otherwise.
> Again - if you'd made these points, I probably wouldn't have commented.
> You didn't; you flat out suggested exercising in London was a Bad Idea
I've attempted to clarify any confusion. This conversation is going to be fucking tedious if you continue to refuse to accept that.
I'm struggling to see the relevance of your cycling document. It doesn't mention air pollution as a risk (perhaps I missed it?) to cyclists; it's about cycling; so it has no relevance to a discussion about the risk of running in London pollution. (As an aside: It also strongly over emphasises the benefits of exercise on mental health. That's something I know a bit about and the document getting that wrong makes it feel less truthy).
> Also, how does one commute to work in central London without exposure to air pollution?
When you exercise you breath differently. You take more air into the lungs; you take that air deeper into the lung. This means that you take a greater quantity of particulates into the lung and that you take them deeper into the lungs.
I'm really not sure why you think "don't jog through London rush hour" is such an outrageous suggestion. It's the advice given by public health officials. Here are three news reports giving pretty much the same advice (avoid the worst streets; avoid the worst times; avoid strenuous exercise)
(This article recommends not going out at rush hour, let alone doing exercise)
>> You’ll massively increase your exposure if you do strenuous physical exercise outside. It might be a good idea to skip your run today, especially if you have asthma. Indoor exercise like going to the gym or swimming at an indoor pool might make a nice change.
>> On high-pollution days, the advice for older people and those with lung problems is to reduce strenuous physical exercise. But even healthy people can experience discomfort such as sore eyes, a cough or sore throat, and are warned to consider decreasing outdoor exercise if they do. On days with very high levels of pollution – such as we experienced last month – everyone is advised to cut down their physical exertions.
It turns out that driving in london or using public transport (bus at least) is noticeably less healthy than walking [1]. I imagine if you could fit in a run through some less busy and/or green spaces you might be overall better off??
Hardly. Average speed for the Paris marathon is about 6mins/km or 10kph. And that's people fit enough to be able to actually run a marathon, most of whom have substantially trained for the event, so not the average joker off the street that prepped for "a couple of months".
The fastest female runners are running at 18kph. That's Olympic standard. The average female marathon runner runs at about 9.3kph.
Only competitive male runners would be capable of beating that pace.
Edit: Disclosure - female, and I run a half marathon in two hours That's 10 minutes faster than the average woman and around about average for the entire field. To achieve that time I play an active sport, and train for longer running events (I'm the fastest long distance runner in my sports club). In kph I manage a bit less than 11, which is a long way off 14kph.
In european center cities, car mean speeds are usually <= 12mph (<20 km/h). You can get faster on a bike if you are made confortable enough to do this (it boils down to bike infrastructure).
For some locations and travel distances I'd not disagree with you, but there is more to factor in here.
What distance is that 9mph over? My running ability has jumped from "can't even face 2km" to "5km in less than 23 minutes most of the time" (PB:21m53s) in about six months due to a new found attitude to health+fitness, but that is still less than 9mph so that sort of rate is going to be a short distance sprint. My 10Km pace (PB:46m21s though minutes or two more than that us more usual) is below 8mph. While I'm sure most average people could match or better my achievements here, I doubt most would want to bother!
What about recovery afterwards? When I run into the office there is a cool down period (basically walking about or lounging until I stop actively sweating) followed by a shower and getting dressed. They don't want me in the office caked in sweat and smelling as you'd expect from that! If I take the 10KM-ish route that makes the whole affair more like 75 minutes than then the less-than-50 I'm running and for my 5KM-ish route the recovery and shower time is longer than the running time so effectively halving my pace without even considering any warm-up time before I hit the pavement with a vengeance.
Also running every day is not recommended unless you are only doing a short distance, unless you are trying to wreck your joints, no matter how good your shoes are. Of course you could switch "run+recover+shower" for just walking the distance both ways every day and use up about the same amount of time, and for many people that might beat the car or public transport based commute if they gave it a try.
Cycling (including the public cycles that exist in London, depending how the hire costs compare to the op-front and running costs of your own kit) are probably a better idea than running though some of the above would count for many people there too.
man, i really hate cars. i use my bikes everday and i just wonder about the inefficiency and wastefulness of cars.
i understand that certain groups of people really depend on cars workwise, but for the average joe a personal car is just silly.
whole rivers of cars trolling down the streets with only one person in it and i wonder - car sharing - no, why, it's my personal right and as long as I can afford it, fu*k it ...
a hyperbole of the idea of freedom, questionable whether a force for prosperity.
I don't hate cars. I have on myself and it is simply a major and wonderful invention. That being said, I vastly prefer the bike for commuting and the way cars are used in certain areas/countries is just infuriating to me - after all cars are very bad for the environment, using them to drive to a highway just to go stand in line there is silly and governments actually subsidizing (by making it interesting for companies to lease cars for their employees, as is the cae in e.g. Belgium) this whole principle is just insane.
Compare a country to a company. Suppose part of the company's production process is getting stuff from A to B. I doubt an engineer would stand up and figure out the best way to do this is put money into a transportation process which makes a super inefficient use of space, where the transport mechanism is seriously overrated for the weight it actually has to transport and where the mechanism pollutes the environment.
In many parts of the US the average joe has to have a car to do anything. There is no safe passage to anywhere without getting in a car. Pedestrian and Bikes are discouraged, and there is no practical public transportation.
The land use favors the long trip. It's not just about cheap land. You have to pay for more infrastructure per person. More roads, pipes, lines, pumps, delivery miles, per person etc. All subsidised.
Zoning as well, following car ubiquity much of US zoning is euclidian which is completely fucked up with respect to livability (it strictly separates residential and commercial zones and encourages endless suburbs with huge strip malls few and far between)
This really is a catch-22. Cars are the only way to do anything because our cities are setup for the convenience of cars. The best way to push back on that without changing the layout would better public transport. The thing is I feel that sometimes buses and train funding is actively fought in the US, and I don't understand why.
From my personal perspective - taking a bus to work would take at least an hour each way, usually more depending on the traffic. Add standing at unheated bus stops in winter = no thank you. By car I get to work in 15-20 minutes. At the temperature I like, listening to music I like.
That easily saves me a good few hours each week for other activities - learning, relaxing, family time.
I could cycle, like I did while I was at uni - but that leaves a problem of getting sweaty, can't really cycle in a shirt, and cycling in winter is miserable.
Am I an "avarage joe" going to work from 9-5, or am I being wasteful? You tell me. I know what I'm going to continue doing :-)
which usually could be solved in at least two ways. In a better world your employer would supply showers so you could at least clean yourself. Secondly, unless you have some condition or your way to work exists solely of tour-de-france-like cols, it should be possibly to commute that without or with a minimum of sweating. Key is training and cycling below the threshold you start sweating. What I ususally do is ride to work at an easy pace (about 5km/h slower on average than what I usually do) which results in no or a just a little bit of sweating, while when riding home again I ride at my usual pace or faster if I feel like it - that is the training part.
For the rest: yes cycling in winter can be a quite unpleasant experience and sbarre's comment is very well put
I think the problem is that, because of historical quirks and social norms, cars are much bigger than they should be. It wouldn't be such a big deal if those single-person cars were as big as a scooter, for example; but cultural norms tell us that a real man must have a "real car": 4 seats, a huge engine you'll never really need, an empty boot, and projecting an image of power and superiority (mostly through size).
People have the right to make journeys privately and in comfort, but they don't have the right to waste space and energy just because of outdated cultural norms. Enlightened cities would promote extra-small cars, segregating other cars and trucks in congested lanes "for security". It can be done relatively easily, but there is a very hard cultural battle to fight with the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and his viewers.
I think the problem is that, because of historical quirks and social norms, cars are much bigger than they should be.
That doesn't explain their popularity throughout the world, even the third world. As wasteful as cars are, they get you where you need to go faster than anything else, with the exception of dense city centers. If it was only about status, the poor wouldn't bother with them, since they are expensive to maintain. Owning a car allows you access to areas you wouldn't normally have access to. Jobs 70 miles away. Visiting your cousin's family three states over. Driving your father to the hospital because you don't have insurance and can't afford an ambulance.
It can be done relatively easily, but there is a very hard cultural battle to fight with the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and his viewers.
You're delusional if you think Top Gear viewers are the reason cities are clogged with cars. Car fans like clear, open roads with little traffic. The more bends the better. They also only take their performance cars out on the weekend once or twice a month and that's when the weather is nice. The rest of the time, they sit in the garage. My grandmother (of all people) is a huge fan of classic Chevrolets. Has a mint condition cherry red 1960 Chevy Impala. It sits in her barn on the farm. I've only seen it on the road once in my lifetime, for one last ride before my grandfather died. The rest of the time she drives a beat up truck. She works on a farm; she actually uses the truck to haul things every day.
> That doesn't explain their popularity throughout the world
Dude, sorry, you're going completely off on a tangent here. I'm not saying cars should be abolished; I'm saying cars are, on average, bigger than they should be, because of rich-world cultural constructs. In the third world, for example, cars are much smaller on average, exactly because function is preferred over form. That's perfectly fine. The roads of Asian cities are full of small one-person vehicles that simply cannot be replaced, that's fine. What is not fine is first-world metropolis being clogged with suburban 4-seaters with huge empty boots and powerful underused engines just because of cultural constructs.
Honestly, you're arguing a strawman -- I've never said cars are bad, I said big wasteful cars are bad. I never said you should take the bus, I said that the vehicle you take to the city should be space-efficient.
> with the exception of dense city centers.
Which is what we were talking about.
> You're delusional if you think Top Gear viewers are the reason cities are clogged with cars.
I picked Top Gear but I could have picked a lot of other examples. What I meant is that there is a certain entrenched culture that despises small cars for no good reason. Consider the typical Clarkson line "would you pick up <some supermodel> in this car?" -- that's pushing a cultural view where you need a big-ass car to be successful and get laid. Why couldn't you pick up a supermodel in a cool and space-efficient city-car, why does it have to be a wide-ass affair? Because that's what "real men" do. That becomes a subliminal message that will work when you go and buy a car: you'll likely get the biggest one you can afford, because that's what real men do (not that women are oblivious -- they react to it as well, buying oversized SUVs "for protection" or huge sedans "for ambition").
I honestly don't care what goes on in the countryside; we are talking about efficiency in metropolitan settings here, where outdated cultural norms are clearly keeping us back.
Thanks for calling me silly. It may not be efficient, but I tell you what. If it weren't for the ability to drive by car, public transport would more then double my daily commute.
Driving by bike in a very rainy environment would about tripple my commute.
I really love having my own home with a garden and can't stand the idea of living in these cramped loud dirty inner city dwellings.
And driving has one real great upside for me:
It takes care of my mental state, as I really hate these idiots inside these cramped busses/tube-cars, that smell like chemical shit (having forgot to shower and doing deodorant en masse) or listening to their music over shitty headphones, so that everybody get's noise polluted.
Not having run amok during my public transport commutes over the last 5 years (before I switched back to driving 'cause of a new job) was really sometimes hard.
People are obnoxious, loud, smelly and egomaniac. Having to endure public transport showed me, how bad humanity really is. At least here in Hamburg, Germany.
So tl;dr:
Being an ambivert i really need the quite time of my private car commute to function well in this society.
I'm thinking of a possible regulated solution to this... What would be the inconvenients of banning car circulation inside cities?
EDIT: Well, it would be much harder to carry "big" amounts of personal property. Maybe only allow a taxi-like van service? Or taxis.
> What would be the inconvenients of banning car circulation inside cities?
Depends how the city is setup. Most major metropolis and almost all US ones are designed mostly if not solely for cars, banning cars requires significant improvements to the transportation infrastructure in general, both adding public transport and making existing ways more walkable and cyclable. Even in non-US cities the transition tends to be rocky (e.g. I believe Paris is progressively making the inner city less drivable and further improving public transport, the transition phase is no fun as driving becomes very tough but not-driving is not a great option).
You also have to figure out stuff like deliveries and garbage collection, which generally require trucks going through.
But some cities are planning it, Hamburg is trying to become car-free within 20 years for instance. Freiburg also has the "pilot" district of Vauban which was laid out with peripheral car parks (owners must buy a parking spot or sign a declaration of no car ownership) and following filtered permeability (the further in you go the less convenient cars become, and the more convenient walking or cycling). There are also no parking spot inside the neighbourhood. Cars are not outright forbidden (they're allowed "at walking pace" for pickup or delivery) their absence is mostly a consequence of social consensus.
In Hamburg we now have an IKEA in a shopping street, where most customers come without cars. It sure is possible to build car free cities. Yes, you have to allow transporters and garbage collection and buses, but that still is an significant reduction of car traffic, changing the air, atmosphere and sound of the city. Germany has prepared infrastructure to disallow old cars from city centers - maybe just eCars in some years?
Paris is gradually phasing cars out, in several ways, but even today most Parisians are non-drivers, especially the younger ones, and not-driving is a great choice. Of course people who live in the suburbs need a car but even there, public transportation is slowly catching up.
There is an ongoing general effort to make cars painful to use, that had been unfolding year after year over the last decade. I think that's a great strategy to kick the cars out of the city.
- Remove parking spots. Every year, hundreds to thousands of parking spots are removed throughout the city. (Shared bikes and cars have been great for this as they took an astonishing amount of space from regular parking and made use of it instead of just forbidding parking)
- Add bus and bike lines at the expense of regular car lanes.
- Regularly hike parking prices. This year parking went up 15%, and residential parking went up 200%.
- Hike fines for parking infringement Today fines are 17/33€, there are talks to increase them to 60/135 next year.
- Slow down cars overall. 90% of the city is to be limited to 30kph soon (regular city limit is 50). Many areas are limited to 20kph.
- Add speed traps and red-light traps all over.
- Entire districts are planned to go car-free in the next few years.
Taken together, these changes really do add up and, as we already have good public transportation, there are fewer and fewer reasons to own a car in Paris. I think the good approach here is to start by removing cars in the city center, then gradually kick them out of the outer boroughs as infrastructure allows it.
Yes you're right my comment comes across as way overly negative with respect to the liveability of not driving in Paris, even though I almost never drove there (and hated every second of driving I had to do). Thank you for the expansion and details.
My girlfriend lives in Singapore and travels exclusively by public transport. She recently moved across the city and how she did this was by incrementally moving things. Moreover, when I visited her, I noticed she was good at being light, only packing the essentials when she goes out, which is something I try to do too, since I bike exclusively.
Essentially, it comes down to changes of habit. You learn to cope with not having a huge cart to carry things around with. With the loss of convenience you get better health, less traffic, less noise pollution, etc.
We've already tried various solutions to this problem and the one that seems to work best is to gradually degrade the road experience for motorists as demands on the space go up. First we take away street parking and left turns. Then we take away stopping / idling. Then we make carpool / high occupancy vehicle lanes and bike lanes. Then we convert lanes into transit lanes only. Then we completely prohibit cars / motored deliveries during rush hour. The last one is usually the hardest politically to get through because it is a major disruption to many businesses, but it is quite effective and usually leads to a great number of people switching to mass transit and bike lanes.
London has its "congestion charge", which is an extra charge of about $15 to drive in the core of the city. It's still pretty congested. It also has plenty of public transport options which are also congested.
Some cities in China, as well as Manila IIRC, only allow cars in the city on certain days based on their license plate numbers. Even, then odd, back and forth. Of course this means rich people just buy two cars, so it doesn't quite have the intended effect.
Yup, the man / car / space requirement relation is completely insane. Sadly, this won't stop car traffic. Human psychology dictates that we'd rather be in control presiding over our own demise in dire traffic accidents than be much safer with other transportation means but less in control and more exposed to unwanted company.
It's a bad thing if you wanted to minimise environmental impact (and space requirement is a part of that) or maximise transport security. You are free to make any tradeoff you want, but in this case the environment has to suffer the consequences of your choice. Externalising costs doesn't make them go away.
Although I love cars the noise, smell, and space they take are pretty significant. This month in staying in a small town with no cars (they stop about half a mile outside) and the peacefulness is very pleasant.
I'm not a cyclist, rarely use buses or cars and sometimes find it stressful dealing with the unpredictability of cyclists, but if I had to choose the best of the three images it's the one with bikes. A bus moves along a single route so it's inflexible. It might be able to carry all of the cyclists, but only if they're all taking the same route.
If we break it down to range vs flexibility, while the bus is long range its delivery capability depends on the proximity of stops to destinations. The shoe, certainly the most flexible delivery mechanism, has a very low range for most people. A bicycle has a good blend of range and flexibility. Cars have excellent range yet space to park them comes at a premium, sometimes eliminating any temporal advantages that they offer as you search for a spot and then travel to your intended destination by foot.
Looking at latency - as in time to start moving, of course if you're living in a regional area or the outer suburbs with a long commute the car is king. Buses can be few and far between in these areas and while shoes and bikes have low latency, range is the major limitation.
Our local (and deficient) bus system at least has bike racks as part of the bus, so you can take your bike to the nearest stop, and change over to the bike to finish your trip.
A bike isn't flexible in that I can't work while using it, I can't use it whilst intoxicated, I have to find somewhere to secure it. I have to be fit to use it. I can't use it when I'm sick or too told.
The analogy could go from car:bike:bus to another photo of [miles of single family houses]:[a handful of apartment buildings]:[one high rise apartment with a park around it]. Perhaps in an ad campaign for SF redevelopment?
The biggest problem with this is quiet often public transport is poor quality and expensive and bike lanes non existent. I'm lucky enough to cycle to work which takes 15 minutes, due to where I live taking a bus would mean doing a massive V across the city taking over an hour to a job I could walk to in 30/40 minutes, there is no incentive for me to use public transport at all and I see that mirrored a lot where I live. 10 mile journeys that would take hours by public transport but 20 minutes in a car, can I then judge people for driving, of course not.
Whether intended or not, these images and their derivatives are a daft oversimplification of a complex problem.
What's the problem we're trying to solve here? Is it that our city streets are too narrow for cars? I guess not, I'm assuming that the problem is the more general one: how best to organise transportation, particularly commuting. The picture seems to imply "cars are big, and therefore bad", which is facile, because it looks at a single parameter in isolation within a very complex problem.
Here's some other factors that need to be considered: routes (Do people originate from the same points? Do they head to the same destination?), city planning (we can shape the commutes that people have to make), government policy, the need to be present in the workplace, the time of working shifts, the relative economic cost of oil, environmental issues, transport subsidy, investment, political ideology, cultural norms, social cohesion, the education system, weather, inequality, health, physical geography (hilly? wet? cramped?), population density, network effects, communication between commuters, mechanisms for sharing public spaces...and so much more.
I use public transit all the time, but for the love of god let this meme die.
Did you list 'speed' in there? Because that's the biggest fallacy. Its not just about square feet; multiply that by how long the space is occupied per journey. Bicycles can be 1/3 to 1/10 the speed of a car.
Then add in the congestion factor. Bicycles on the road impede cars. We like to ignore that, bicyclist can be militant about their right to use roads. But the sad fact is, they get in the way of cars. Which reduces cars to the speed of bikes in city driving. That's just a tremendous waste.
I know, everybody should be on bikes. But in the mean time, the most efficient vehicles in terms of road use Min(sq ft X time spent on the road) are being squandered. I mean cars.
There's a caveat here: in urban journeys, the average speed of just about everything is 'teen mph. The speed argument applies when traffic is free-flowing, but not during congestion.
Absolutely. But as bicycle use increases we hit, not a sweet spot, but a 'crap spot' where nobody wins. Need a transition plan. Separate bicycle lanes might work.
In my town (Toronto), we have bike lanes on some streets. On the days when I ride to work, I zip right past cars that are standing still, gridlocked. But only during “rush hour.”
The rest of the time, cars are way faster than bikes on streets with bike lines, and honestly, outside of rush hour they’re just fine on streets where they have to share the road.
My observation is that sharing the road with bikes is not a problem for cars, it’s that once the amount of traffic exceeds the capacity of the road, cars go from ziiiiip to standing still.
At those moments when drivers are fuming about traffic, I’m sure sharing the road with bikes is very annoying. But then again, I observe that many drivers don’t like sharing the road with buses that go just as fast as cars, or street cars, or other drivers.
Let’s face it: During rush hour, cars impede each other to such an extent that nobody is happy. Outside of rush hour, it’s a different story, and things like bike lanes, High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, &c. are huge wins for everyone.
No, I didn't, nor distance, but it's a good point.
I'd like to hear how people go about solving these problems. I once knew a computer scientist working for a city council, she spent her days simulating the effects of changes to transport infrastructure. It was quite enlightening to hear that adding a bus stop could have a knock-on effect that would cause gridlock elsewhere in the city. It was a very hard problem.
Hate to say it but sadly a bike is almost impossible to integrate into my normal routine. I live almost 1.5hr from my workplace by car on a motorway, riding is simply impossible. Sadly, the majority of the Sydney work force is in the same boat, living out west and driving in every day, such a waste but public transport is a joke. I ride a motorbike whenever possible but some days theres just too much stuff to carry in with me, laptops, samples etc. to make it practical full time.
You Australians brought it on yourself, living in a big ring around the edge of your continent! Has to be the most difficult public transportation situation possible.
I love how these threads are always full of people who spend 3 hours a day commuting and treat the fact that they chose to live 90 minutes from work as other people's problem.
I'd like to see this picture redone with dumptrucks and semis. My commute each day forces me onto a road clogged with shipping routes and truckers with little regard for a tiny 2-door Honda. They take excessive space, excessively pollute, and contribute excessively to congestion and it's only getting worse [0]. They're unfortunately necessary, but I'm hoping that in the future the driverless truck will be programmed to stay out of the left lane.
Each mode of transport is just optimised to a different metric. Nobody ever claimed cars were the most space efficient mode of transport, so this argument is very much a strawman. They are however much faster, easier and have longer range than bikes and walking, and have more spatial and temporal freedom than public transport. This is why they are so popular.
91 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadEvery motorist also drives his bicycle every now and then and so he knows what it is like and will accommodate.
Which city BTW?
I'll be in the Amsterdam area. Probably end up actually living in Hoofddorp.
In the overcrowded center of Amsterdam, the locals know and understand "the dance" (the last thing a cyclist wants to do is come to a full stop every 20 meters, because it is much more "expensive" for a cyclists than it is for a pedestrian or driver, so instead of playing by the rules of right of way we do the dance of give and take), with the exception of tourists (who don't know the dance and give off confusing and confused body language) and cars (usually from out of town) stupid enough to drive in the city center in the first place.
Of course, it doesn't help that I'm blind on my left side and the only Dutch I know is "Sorry, ik sprek gein Nederlands".
This is only because of the outsider perspective : everybody learns to ride a bicycle as a kid ( as early as 4-5 years ).
Also children about 11-12 years old bike to their schools unattended, sometimes 15km each day. Parents would not allow this if it was 'absolutely crazy'.
There's quite a few interesting videos on traffic design in the Netherlands, junction design is a big topic, as well as separating lanes.
Videos like these might be fun to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA
If it piques your interest, there's more comprehensive videos too like this one which is still only 5 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpQMgbDJPok
That was my city around 7 years ago. Public transit was very underutilised and the general mental image people had of it was that it was for children, old and poor people. Then the city councils in the area got together and started to really put money into improving the routes and service. It was hard to justify politically because of the existing attitudes, but seven years later, almost all of the buses I see have >50% occupancy with mostly regular middle-class people, even outside of rush hour. During rush hours have to send extra buses as they fill up fast.
So I think part of it is to break out of the cycle of public transit providing shitty service, people not using public transit because of shitty service, and the service getting shittier because there's even less political will to put money into it with fewer passengers.
I think cars may be given a more favorable score in a metric of transport as opposed to what amounts to a metric of occupancy.
But then there's parking ... and that's why I'm usually on the bike; with casual non-crazy, follow-all-the-laws riding, in the inner city, I'll beat my motorist friends by 5-10 minute margins. I often start to worry that they got in an accident or got lost because it takes them so long. It's really remarkable.
Cars in London average 19mph (30km/h) on "major roads" and 9mph (14km/h) in Central London.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-33536989
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32233922
> The supreme court has ordered the government to make plans for tackling the UK’s air pollution problem, which has been in breach of EU limits for years and is linked to thousands of premature deaths each year.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/29/supreme-c...
> You expect all the health improvements of exercise to be negated by poor air quality?
Yes, in this level of pollution there are considerable risks that need to be balanced against benefits of exercise.
Is not the same as:
>Yes, in this level of pollution there are considerable risks that need to be balanced against benefits of exercise.
I dispute the former, not the latter. Unless you show me some evidence that exercising in a polluted city is somehow worse than living-but-not-exercising in said city, I'm going to continue to dispute that.
Encouraging people to avoid exercise is incredibly reckless.
Nothing about "Don't jog to work at times when pollution is highest in places where pollution is highest" says "avoid exercise" and it's a perverse interpretation to suggest otherwise.
I think you'll find that the benefits outweigh the negatives[1]
Also, how does one commute to work in central London without exposure to air pollution? I'm curious what your alternative suggestion is.
[1] https://intranet2.bham.ac.uk/collaboration/cycling/documents...
> You didn't; you flat out suggested exercising in London was a Bad Idea
I've attempted to clarify any confusion. This conversation is going to be fucking tedious if you continue to refuse to accept that.
I'm struggling to see the relevance of your cycling document. It doesn't mention air pollution as a risk (perhaps I missed it?) to cyclists; it's about cycling; so it has no relevance to a discussion about the risk of running in London pollution. (As an aside: It also strongly over emphasises the benefits of exercise on mental health. That's something I know a bit about and the document getting that wrong makes it feel less truthy).
> Also, how does one commute to work in central London without exposure to air pollution?
When you exercise you breath differently. You take more air into the lungs; you take that air deeper into the lung. This means that you take a greater quantity of particulates into the lung and that you take them deeper into the lungs.
I'm really not sure why you think "don't jog through London rush hour" is such an outrageous suggestion. It's the advice given by public health officials. Here are three news reports giving pretty much the same advice (avoid the worst streets; avoid the worst times; avoid strenuous exercise)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/how-to-stay-s...
(This article recommends not going out at rush hour, let alone doing exercise)
>> You’ll massively increase your exposure if you do strenuous physical exercise outside. It might be a good idea to skip your run today, especially if you have asthma. Indoor exercise like going to the gym or swimming at an indoor pool might make a nice change.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/aug/05/air-poll...
>> On high-pollution days, the advice for older people and those with lung problems is to reduce strenuous physical exercise. But even healthy people can experience discomfort such as sore eyes, a cough or sore throat, and are warned to consider decreasing outdoor exercise if they do. On days with very high levels of pollution – such as we experienced last month – everyone is advised to cut down their physical exertions.
http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-06-05/pollution-warning-...
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2014/aug/12/lon...
The fastest female runners are running at 18kph. That's Olympic standard. The average female marathon runner runs at about 9.3kph.
Only competitive male runners would be capable of beating that pace.
Edit: Disclosure - female, and I run a half marathon in two hours That's 10 minutes faster than the average woman and around about average for the entire field. To achieve that time I play an active sport, and train for longer running events (I'm the fastest long distance runner in my sports club). In kph I manage a bit less than 11, which is a long way off 14kph.
What distance is that 9mph over? My running ability has jumped from "can't even face 2km" to "5km in less than 23 minutes most of the time" (PB:21m53s) in about six months due to a new found attitude to health+fitness, but that is still less than 9mph so that sort of rate is going to be a short distance sprint. My 10Km pace (PB:46m21s though minutes or two more than that us more usual) is below 8mph. While I'm sure most average people could match or better my achievements here, I doubt most would want to bother!
What about recovery afterwards? When I run into the office there is a cool down period (basically walking about or lounging until I stop actively sweating) followed by a shower and getting dressed. They don't want me in the office caked in sweat and smelling as you'd expect from that! If I take the 10KM-ish route that makes the whole affair more like 75 minutes than then the less-than-50 I'm running and for my 5KM-ish route the recovery and shower time is longer than the running time so effectively halving my pace without even considering any warm-up time before I hit the pavement with a vengeance.
Also running every day is not recommended unless you are only doing a short distance, unless you are trying to wreck your joints, no matter how good your shoes are. Of course you could switch "run+recover+shower" for just walking the distance both ways every day and use up about the same amount of time, and for many people that might beat the car or public transport based commute if they gave it a try.
Cycling (including the public cycles that exist in London, depending how the hire costs compare to the op-front and running costs of your own kit) are probably a better idea than running though some of the above would count for many people there too.
i understand that certain groups of people really depend on cars workwise, but for the average joe a personal car is just silly.
whole rivers of cars trolling down the streets with only one person in it and i wonder - car sharing - no, why, it's my personal right and as long as I can afford it, fu*k it ...
a hyperbole of the idea of freedom, questionable whether a force for prosperity.
Compare a country to a company. Suppose part of the company's production process is getting stuff from A to B. I doubt an engineer would stand up and figure out the best way to do this is put money into a transportation process which makes a super inefficient use of space, where the transport mechanism is seriously overrated for the weight it actually has to transport and where the mechanism pollutes the environment.
"The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred."
I could cycle, like I did while I was at uni - but that leaves a problem of getting sweaty, can't really cycle in a shirt, and cycling in winter is miserable.
Am I an "avarage joe" going to work from 9-5, or am I being wasteful? You tell me. I know what I'm going to continue doing :-)
Of course no one is going to (or should) stop you, but you could at least own your actions and their consequences, and not act unaware.
Arguably both ;), but then i'd blame a broken system for coercing you into those choices :).
I'm sure, even in only a semi-enlightened world, you wouldn't need to wear a shirt to work, assuming you even needed a job?
which usually could be solved in at least two ways. In a better world your employer would supply showers so you could at least clean yourself. Secondly, unless you have some condition or your way to work exists solely of tour-de-france-like cols, it should be possibly to commute that without or with a minimum of sweating. Key is training and cycling below the threshold you start sweating. What I ususally do is ride to work at an easy pace (about 5km/h slower on average than what I usually do) which results in no or a just a little bit of sweating, while when riding home again I ride at my usual pace or faster if I feel like it - that is the training part.
For the rest: yes cycling in winter can be a quite unpleasant experience and sbarre's comment is very well put
People have the right to make journeys privately and in comfort, but they don't have the right to waste space and energy just because of outdated cultural norms. Enlightened cities would promote extra-small cars, segregating other cars and trucks in congested lanes "for security". It can be done relatively easily, but there is a very hard cultural battle to fight with the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and his viewers.
That doesn't explain their popularity throughout the world, even the third world. As wasteful as cars are, they get you where you need to go faster than anything else, with the exception of dense city centers. If it was only about status, the poor wouldn't bother with them, since they are expensive to maintain. Owning a car allows you access to areas you wouldn't normally have access to. Jobs 70 miles away. Visiting your cousin's family three states over. Driving your father to the hospital because you don't have insurance and can't afford an ambulance.
It can be done relatively easily, but there is a very hard cultural battle to fight with the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and his viewers.
You're delusional if you think Top Gear viewers are the reason cities are clogged with cars. Car fans like clear, open roads with little traffic. The more bends the better. They also only take their performance cars out on the weekend once or twice a month and that's when the weather is nice. The rest of the time, they sit in the garage. My grandmother (of all people) is a huge fan of classic Chevrolets. Has a mint condition cherry red 1960 Chevy Impala. It sits in her barn on the farm. I've only seen it on the road once in my lifetime, for one last ride before my grandfather died. The rest of the time she drives a beat up truck. She works on a farm; she actually uses the truck to haul things every day.
Dude, sorry, you're going completely off on a tangent here. I'm not saying cars should be abolished; I'm saying cars are, on average, bigger than they should be, because of rich-world cultural constructs. In the third world, for example, cars are much smaller on average, exactly because function is preferred over form. That's perfectly fine. The roads of Asian cities are full of small one-person vehicles that simply cannot be replaced, that's fine. What is not fine is first-world metropolis being clogged with suburban 4-seaters with huge empty boots and powerful underused engines just because of cultural constructs.
Honestly, you're arguing a strawman -- I've never said cars are bad, I said big wasteful cars are bad. I never said you should take the bus, I said that the vehicle you take to the city should be space-efficient.
> with the exception of dense city centers.
Which is what we were talking about.
> You're delusional if you think Top Gear viewers are the reason cities are clogged with cars.
I picked Top Gear but I could have picked a lot of other examples. What I meant is that there is a certain entrenched culture that despises small cars for no good reason. Consider the typical Clarkson line "would you pick up <some supermodel> in this car?" -- that's pushing a cultural view where you need a big-ass car to be successful and get laid. Why couldn't you pick up a supermodel in a cool and space-efficient city-car, why does it have to be a wide-ass affair? Because that's what "real men" do. That becomes a subliminal message that will work when you go and buy a car: you'll likely get the biggest one you can afford, because that's what real men do (not that women are oblivious -- they react to it as well, buying oversized SUVs "for protection" or huge sedans "for ambition").
I honestly don't care what goes on in the countryside; we are talking about efficiency in metropolitan settings here, where outdated cultural norms are clearly keeping us back.
Driving by bike in a very rainy environment would about tripple my commute.
I really love having my own home with a garden and can't stand the idea of living in these cramped loud dirty inner city dwellings.
And driving has one real great upside for me: It takes care of my mental state, as I really hate these idiots inside these cramped busses/tube-cars, that smell like chemical shit (having forgot to shower and doing deodorant en masse) or listening to their music over shitty headphones, so that everybody get's noise polluted.
Not having run amok during my public transport commutes over the last 5 years (before I switched back to driving 'cause of a new job) was really sometimes hard.
People are obnoxious, loud, smelly and egomaniac. Having to endure public transport showed me, how bad humanity really is. At least here in Hamburg, Germany.
So tl;dr: Being an ambivert i really need the quite time of my private car commute to function well in this society.
Depends how the city is setup. Most major metropolis and almost all US ones are designed mostly if not solely for cars, banning cars requires significant improvements to the transportation infrastructure in general, both adding public transport and making existing ways more walkable and cyclable. Even in non-US cities the transition tends to be rocky (e.g. I believe Paris is progressively making the inner city less drivable and further improving public transport, the transition phase is no fun as driving becomes very tough but not-driving is not a great option).
You also have to figure out stuff like deliveries and garbage collection, which generally require trucks going through.
But some cities are planning it, Hamburg is trying to become car-free within 20 years for instance. Freiburg also has the "pilot" district of Vauban which was laid out with peripheral car parks (owners must buy a parking spot or sign a declaration of no car ownership) and following filtered permeability (the further in you go the less convenient cars become, and the more convenient walking or cycling). There are also no parking spot inside the neighbourhood. Cars are not outright forbidden (they're allowed "at walking pace" for pickup or delivery) their absence is mostly a consequence of social consensus.
It's easy if you try :P
There is an ongoing general effort to make cars painful to use, that had been unfolding year after year over the last decade. I think that's a great strategy to kick the cars out of the city.
- Remove parking spots. Every year, hundreds to thousands of parking spots are removed throughout the city. (Shared bikes and cars have been great for this as they took an astonishing amount of space from regular parking and made use of it instead of just forbidding parking)
- Add bus and bike lines at the expense of regular car lanes.
- Regularly hike parking prices. This year parking went up 15%, and residential parking went up 200%.
- Hike fines for parking infringement Today fines are 17/33€, there are talks to increase them to 60/135 next year.
- Slow down cars overall. 90% of the city is to be limited to 30kph soon (regular city limit is 50). Many areas are limited to 20kph.
- Add speed traps and red-light traps all over.
- Entire districts are planned to go car-free in the next few years.
Taken together, these changes really do add up and, as we already have good public transportation, there are fewer and fewer reasons to own a car in Paris. I think the good approach here is to start by removing cars in the city center, then gradually kick them out of the outer boroughs as infrastructure allows it.
Essentially, it comes down to changes of habit. You learn to cope with not having a huge cart to carry things around with. With the loss of convenience you get better health, less traffic, less noise pollution, etc.
If we break it down to range vs flexibility, while the bus is long range its delivery capability depends on the proximity of stops to destinations. The shoe, certainly the most flexible delivery mechanism, has a very low range for most people. A bicycle has a good blend of range and flexibility. Cars have excellent range yet space to park them comes at a premium, sometimes eliminating any temporal advantages that they offer as you search for a spot and then travel to your intended destination by foot.
Looking at latency - as in time to start moving, of course if you're living in a regional area or the outer suburbs with a long commute the car is king. Buses can be few and far between in these areas and while shoes and bikes have low latency, range is the major limitation.
What's the problem we're trying to solve here? Is it that our city streets are too narrow for cars? I guess not, I'm assuming that the problem is the more general one: how best to organise transportation, particularly commuting. The picture seems to imply "cars are big, and therefore bad", which is facile, because it looks at a single parameter in isolation within a very complex problem.
Here's some other factors that need to be considered: routes (Do people originate from the same points? Do they head to the same destination?), city planning (we can shape the commutes that people have to make), government policy, the need to be present in the workplace, the time of working shifts, the relative economic cost of oil, environmental issues, transport subsidy, investment, political ideology, cultural norms, social cohesion, the education system, weather, inequality, health, physical geography (hilly? wet? cramped?), population density, network effects, communication between commuters, mechanisms for sharing public spaces...and so much more.
I use public transit all the time, but for the love of god let this meme die.
Then add in the congestion factor. Bicycles on the road impede cars. We like to ignore that, bicyclist can be militant about their right to use roads. But the sad fact is, they get in the way of cars. Which reduces cars to the speed of bikes in city driving. That's just a tremendous waste.
I know, everybody should be on bikes. But in the mean time, the most efficient vehicles in terms of road use Min(sq ft X time spent on the road) are being squandered. I mean cars.
The rest of the time, cars are way faster than bikes on streets with bike lines, and honestly, outside of rush hour they’re just fine on streets where they have to share the road.
My observation is that sharing the road with bikes is not a problem for cars, it’s that once the amount of traffic exceeds the capacity of the road, cars go from ziiiiip to standing still.
At those moments when drivers are fuming about traffic, I’m sure sharing the road with bikes is very annoying. But then again, I observe that many drivers don’t like sharing the road with buses that go just as fast as cars, or street cars, or other drivers.
Let’s face it: During rush hour, cars impede each other to such an extent that nobody is happy. Outside of rush hour, it’s a different story, and things like bike lanes, High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, &c. are huge wins for everyone.
I'd like to hear how people go about solving these problems. I once knew a computer scientist working for a city council, she spent her days simulating the effects of changes to transport infrastructure. It was quite enlightening to hear that adding a bus stop could have a knock-on effect that would cause gridlock elsewhere in the city. It was a very hard problem.
[0]http://www.tstc.org/reports/thetrucksarecoming.pdf