I like pieces like this. City governments all over have a lot more visibility into the decision-making process than previous generations have had, and sometimes that means that good policy can get drowned in bad NIMBYism, but having a tough public administrative class means they're able to tough out criticism to let time judge them on their merits.
I have yet to hear a logical explanation for why we don't tax and licence bikes in major cities. Paying your "fair share" of road use taxes gives you an equal voice when asking for specific use lanes, and licence plates allow us to better track and punish the few that cause the problems (if I had a dollar for every time I wish I could write down a bikes plate number...).
It would be an interesting discussion as I know they license boats etc... Maybe a small tax... If you look at it proportionally, you wouldn't be taxing bikes for the big budgets required to repair freeways or road damage from cars. I think bikes are pretty low impact on the roads that need constant repair from the average 3,000 lb car or 10,000 lb truck.
Sadly involving a new license/tax on something involves government overhead that hopefully wouldn't be more than the tax they are collecting (or deter people from choosing a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to driving).
Cars are heavier and cause more wear on the asphalt, require more road space, and generate more waste and pollution than bikes do.
"Road use tax" isn't actually a thing, nor is it exclusive to car drivers - roads are paid for via the same taxes as everything else. Sales tax, income tax and property tax, distributed according to local, state, and federal budgets.
Cyclists pay their share of the taxes that build roads via sales tax, income tax, and property tax, same as everyone else does.
Most cyclists also own cars, and have paid all the relevant fees.
"Then-Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters stated on August 15, 2007 that about 60% of federal gas taxes are used for highway and bridge construction. The remaining 40% goes to earmarked programs."
Not so sure about state taxes (gas or registration) but I believe its similar depending on where you live, paying more for local roads.
Not saying its not fair but it makes some sense... people who buy gas or register pay the most (electric vehicles skirt this), people who don't drive pay some too through normal taxes as they utilize them for public transit, bikes, products they buy, or the food they eat.
Right, I definitely didn't say "drivers pay for all roads." They pay more through registration and gas taxes, that's why those programs and taxes were created...
There may not be an official "road use tax" but that's the gist of what has been implemented.
tl;dr cost benefits aren't big enough. how are you going to enforce it?
Just off the top of my head:
They don't cost enough (like cars) to have a reasonable bottle neck on purchase.
A slogged DMV would never agree to add 4x the customers by adding bicycle licenses.
safety stats: 30,000 people were killed last year in the states in car related incidents. 700 people on bikes in same were killed in car related collisions. No one (as far as I find) is killed when they're hit by a bicycle.
> They don't cost enough (like cars) to have a reasonable bottle neck on purchase.
I'm not sure I agree with this one. A decent commuter bike is going to run ~$500 new, and one can easily spend $2.5k on a bike. Obviously that's not as expensive as a car, but a nice new bike is approximately as expensive as a beater car.
What's the road impact of a bike? Nothing?
At least where I'm from roads aren't paid for through licensing and gas tax, it's from housing taxes, so I pay more than my fair share.
I ride a bike, and I pay taxes. I'm not sure what you mean by that. What is a fair share for bike riders? We don't have bike lanes on every street, and many of the bike lanes we do have aren't respected.
Drivers double-park their cars on them. They also open their car doors without checking to see if bike riders are coming first. They also swerve in and out of them while texting. They also drive onto them to get around vehicles like garbage trucks, often without looking. Drivers make turns without looking both ways, often putting us at risk.
I ride my bike to work every single day in New York. Every week, I have multiple close calls because of careless drivers, and sometimes because of careless pedestrians. I don't run red lights, and I don't even ride that fast. I ride my bike on the correct side of the street. You want me to pay extra taxes for what, exactly? My bike and myself combined are a little over 200lbs. Do I create potholes in the roads? Does my bike cause pollution?
I agree with you over all, but, 200 lbs vs 1.5 ton doesn't really matter, it's the pressure in the tires that make a difference in terms of impact to the road.
>My bike and myself combined are a little over 200lbs. Do I create potholes in the roads? Does my bike cause pollution?
What about the cost of building and maintenance of bike lanes and other associated costs that would be involved in increased complexity of cleaning/maintenance of roads due to bike lanes (more so if they are secluded from main traffic).
Do you think this cost is justified for a minuscule percentage of population who choose to bike on the roads.
Have you ever been to New York? Outside of some parts of Manhattan, bike lanes aren't "built." There is some paint splashed onto the side of a street, and based on what I see, not much "maintenance" happens after that. There is no extra complexity because of that paint. Street cleaners disregard the bike lane as if it wasn't there (which I'm fine with).
Regardless, I still pay taxes just like everyone else. I used to own a car, and I didn't pay any extra taxes. Why should I now that I have a bike?
>There is some paint splashed onto the side of a street, and based on what I see, not much "maintenance" happens after that.
But that not acceptable( dangerous for both cars and bikers) like you suggested in you parent comment. Bike lanes need to be protected from main traffic which would mean more costs.
Protected bike lanes are paramount to safety. Which means regular maintenance equipment like snow plowers/slating won't work. Bike lanes here are totally useless here in winters because we don't the right equipment/training to clean/salt bike lanes.
It's possible to separate bike lanes from traffic lanes without building more infrastructure. In fact the entire article was dedicated to that concept. I suggest you read it.
In places like Amsterdam it's 15% of all trips that are taken by bike. Copenhagen is around 30%. If they could remove even 6% of the traffic (which is the goal for 2020), that would be worth it in productivity increases alone no?
Try riding the Minuteman Bikeway in the north of Boston.
It was installed in the 80's. It's not been repaved since. Bikes just don't add enough wear and tear. There are some tree root issues that have to be addressed now and then, but that's it.
Easy. The same as why you don't tax people for sidewalk use. Car infrastructure is expensive, very expensive. And the need of having specific bike lanes have been imposed by the increment in presence of cars in our roads, not by the bike needs themselves.
As for the plates, similar explanation. We don't need a plate on humans, as usually identification can be done ín-situ if required.
On top of that, you want to reinforce the use of bikes, and not reduce it. Increasing bureaucracy for bikes will not help at all.
The "fair share" / tax arguement is often paraded but does not reflect the actual reality. Most of the cost of roadways is paid by general tax revenue and not vehicle specific fees. This study shows an interesting breakdown of the costs associated with driving vs walking. page 13 has a good chart http://www.vtpi.org/whoserd.pdf
Not sure what you mean by "road use tax". Most funding for roads in the US is from the general fund and not provided by any use tax.
The potential property damage and/or physical injury (not to mention general wear and tear upon roadways) that a bicycle can produce is minuscule in comparison to the potential destructive power of the automobile. Much of the legal justification for registration/licensing and taxation of vehicles is born from these factors.
Bicyclists and pedestrians pay their fair share of the road. Actually, they pay far more their fair share than motorists do. By fair share, I mean the amount of taxes they pay for roads vs the amount of damage they cause to the roads.
Motorists under pay for the damage they cause to the asphalt. The gas tax needs to be increased.
You WANT people riding bikes. Every bike on the road is a car not on the road. Every car not on the road decreases congestion for the remaining cars and decreases pollution for everyone. It should be as frictionless as possible for people of all ages and abilities to ride bikes in a city.
Bike riders also pay taxes because they usually are able to actually live in the city where they work and ride their bike, so they're more likely to be paying property tax to the city, sales taxes to local merchants, actually being around on the evenings and weekends to patronize local business etc, instead of just commuting in during the day, creating traffic and then leaving the place a ghost town after 5pm.
In the UK, owners of vehicles that produce poisonous emissions are required to pay Vehicle Excise Duty. Bicycles do not, and are hence exempt. Motor vehicles causing crashes, being stolen, damaged etc., cause a significant cost. A crash on the motorway can result in over GBP10,000 costs just to the carriageway, let alone if five cars and a truck are involved. A bicycle involved in a crash very rarely causes such damage.
In the UK cyclists have an equal voice because the highways exist for them to use just as they exist for pedestrians, horse riders and motorists. This is enshrined in law so is a statutory right.
Trivia fact: The cost of construction and upkeep of "motorways" (roads dedicated to motor vehicle traffic) outstrips the total income from VED year-on-year. In the UK, if you use a bicycle but never a car, you are subsidising motor travel.
Winston Churchill opposed the Road Fund, saying: "It will be only a step from this for them to claim in a few years the moral ownership of the roads their contributions have created"
In general, we don't tax and license people who use the roads. There is no licensing pedestrians, for example. And there was no licensing ox-carts in the 19th century. Similarly, when the safety bicycle was invented and popularized in the 1890s, there was no licensing for it.
The change came with the automobile, which has huge mass and travels at high speed. The danger of the automobile to all other road users was so profound and unique that the need to license motor vehicles soon became quite clear. And even with driver licensing, cars kill thousands of people every year.
Bicycles simply do not pose much of a threat to other road users, that would require cyclist licensing.
Similarly, a 250-lb cyclist does not cause much wear and tear on the roads compared to a 2,500-lb motorist. Roads are more expensive because they have to be built for cars.
Only 50% of road maintenance is paid for by drivers via gas and registration taxes, the rest is covered by town and city taxes. So assuming that cyclists cause less than 50% of road wear, they are already paying more than their fare share of maintenance costs via town and city taxes.
As a Dutchman, the first two paragraphs were quite infuriating to read; a list of arguments similar to the now-classic "Schödinger's immigrant"-joke ("simultaneously too lazy to work and stealing your job").
> Well, no wonder: Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes.
Well good to see that the 1920s auto-industry propaganda[0] still has it's firm grip on American society! Roads were not made for cars, the cars claimed the roads once they got on the scene. You can choose to design them in a way that accomodates all[1].
The only reason I'd hate leaving the Netherlands is because no other country comes close in bike-friendliness at the moment (simply put: good bike infrastructure is so common it's barely noticed by the locals, because it's the norm[2]). I do hope that changes soon.
>Well good to see that the 1920s auto-industry propaganda[0] still has it's firm grip on American society
I am curious do you guys typically have showers at work ?
One of the reason I don't bike to work is that we don't have showers at work. Most of days in this part of US are hot and humid and I don't feel like sitting at work drenched in sweat.
Not always, but I've seen a few places that had it. But over here you don't really sweat when biking to work - it's not really an exercise, more like going on a very fast stroll to work.
It would be unfair to pretend the Netherlands don't have a huge geographic advantage when it comes to bike-friendliness; it's a flat, small country with bad weather (read: neither hot nor humid).
"Thats not the case most parts of the world. Summers get really hot even in cold parts of the country here in the US."
And yet places with boiling hot summers can have a high bike mode share. Davis is not exactly pleasant in August.
It's not ALL auto industry propaganda, but a lot of it is. Much of what started out as auto industry propaganda is now deeply engrained cultural bias. People talk about jaywalking, but how many people talk about jaydriving???
For all of human civilization streets were for people, horses, carts, etc. They were used for recreation by children and this was accepted as a normal use. They were gathering places. But the car showed up, started killing everyone in its way, and we decided "well that's that, it's a cars-only zone now and anyone else who wants to use the street is a special case!"
I don't think he was arguing against bike popularity, just that there are obstacles in parts of the world the Netherlands clearly doesn't have. I personally would not bike to work if I could not shower; I show up with my t-shirt soaked when I do bike.
From what I've seen in Holland, it's simple etiquette there that an office commuter is expected to keep his speed low enough to avoid breaking a sweat. And since the prevailing speed in the bike lanes is set by middle aged office workers, everyone winds up adhering to the rule.
Even here in Boston, I'd expect the same norm to work, though right now the prevailing norm in the bike lanes is set by speed demons like myself.
>Summers get really hot even in cold parts of the country here in the US.
That's a really good point. Most Midwestern states can get down to -30F (-35C) in winter and above 90F (32C) in the summer. Whenever I hear people say "winter doesn't stop the Dutch from biking", I always think of the climate in Amsterdam. The record low for the city is still above 0F. The average low is still above freezing, even in the dead of winter. The average low for my Midwestern city is close to -10F in January. The average high in summer is 10F warmer.
We have some really extreme temperatures here, you can't discount the effect it has on modes of transportation without built-in climate control.
My mom puts on her winter tyres and drives her bike to work through the winter, in Finland. She's almost 60. A few of my coworkers do as well.
It doesn't quite get to -35c, but -20 isn't uncommon and it's below freezing for two to three months.
I'm not quite as tough, I ride to work the 9 months when there's no ice on the roads. I might try winter cycling but O don't have the equipment yet (mostly clothes but tyres etc too).
As a bike commuter who rides as far down as 10F (-10C), I can say the cold itself really is the problem. The problem is that for too many routes, either the traffic is so crazy that if you wipe out on black ice the cars will run you over, (i.e. many, many main streets around Boston) or there is no traffic and you won't be seen (e.g. the Minuteman Trail, where a fucking coy-dog wanted to eat me when I met some black ice.)
But on a typical not-quite-main street around Boston, winter biking is easy. There's enough traffic to make sure you will be seen, and it's slow enough you won't be killed.
> Blaming it all on 'auto industry propaganda' is not fair.
I'm not "blaming it all" on anyone (I'm not sure what "it all" is even supposed to refer to in this context). If anything I'm defending cyclists from being accused of "asking for it".
The only thing I said was that auto industry propaganda is responsible for the blatantly wrong idea that roads exist purely for cars. That's not the same thing as discussing why bikes are or are not popular (although there is overlap).
> One of the reason I don't bike to work is that we don't have showers at work. Most of days in this part of US are hot and humid and I don't feel like sitting at work drenched in sweat.
Microfiber towel and a change of clothes?
I typically wait the 30-45 minutes needed for me to physically cool down in my air conditioned office. Then I towel off and change and I'm good to go.
Probably wouldn't work for everyone, but it works for me.
Pro-tip: body odor is a result of bacteria on the skin that breaks sweat down into various compounds. Sweat itself doesn't actually stink.
So what's a great way to remove that bacteria? Showering (with plenty of soap).
So showering before you exercise, toweling off quickly after exercise, and following with deodorant, is a very effective way of eliminating body odor as a result of exercise, as that combination a) removes bacteria on the skin, b) removes the food they feed off of before odor compounds can form, and c) staves off further odor production as a result of additional sweating and bacterial growth.
Try it. You might be surprised.
Additional tips: adjustments to diet can make a huge change in body odor. Thinning or removing body hair is also helpful, as bacteria tend to thrive in those areas.
You could also try using disinfecting wet wipes as part of a post-exercise clean-up routine, in addition to simply toweling off.
Bravo! A pithy comment that adds much to the discussion. Surely this has never occurred to anyone without it being pointed out to them. You provide a valuable service.
Sweating is OK though, it's not dirty. Wipe the surplus with a tissue/towel.
This is a sad culture that everything has to be hysterically aseptic... A bit of body odor is not unhygienic nor rude. People complaining would be the rude ones. Happy to pollute to preserve their delicate olfactory senses.
I have a gym membership to a gym near work and shower at the gym after cycling in. Obviously that won't work for everyone, and it's not overly cheap, but I use the gym for other stuff too, so it works out.
It makes me sad that (in the UK) so many people don't realise that the roads are there for people, not for vehicles that people are permitted to use on license. So we had to build "pavements" - areas dedicated to the refuge of people. Now people park their motor vehicles on the pavement, they cycle on them, they obstruct them. So once again, the person on foot is displaced :-(
I treat most highways in America like the highways described in Farenheit 451.
Thankfully, I live in a rural area which means there are tons of standard roads that are very unpopulated, but even then... "sharing" a road between a 2-ton metal cage and anything else is terrifying for anything but the automobile (2-ton metal cage).
The common criticism though, is that biking in the US is much harder logistically. Many people commute for over an hour at 60mph+ to get to work. This would be implausible on a bike.
I really enjoyed the bike infrastructure in the Netherlands.
I also almost got hit head on by a vehicle that decided to use the bike path (it was segregated) to overtake. It wasn't some huge highway either, it was the main street through a village, a few hundred meters from a stop light.
So I guess I probably was unlucky, but I probably would have died if I hadn't swerved over into the grass between the street and path, so the experience sticks with me.
> Well, no wonder: Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes.
Roads are made for human beings.
Where did this idea come from that we should build infrastructure for our inanimate property, anyway? Roads are for humans, however humans choose to use them.
> "Where did this idea come from that we should build infrastructure for our inanimate property, anyway?"
As the comment you're replying to points out: the car industry.
On the Wikipedia page for Jaywalking:
> Origin of the term
> The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1917. The term's dissemination was due, in part, to a deliberate effort by promoters of automobiles, such as local auto clubs and dealers, to redefine streets as places where pedestrians do not belong.
I dunno about that, southern California remains a desolate hellscape full of people who joke about murdering me and my fellow cyclists like it's nothing at all.
Interesting perspective. Driving through Cambridge, Mass. recently, I noticed some nice bike lanes[1] that seem pretty nicely separated from both cars and pedestrians.
I'm hoping that this approach will gain in popularity. What we lose in slightly narrower roads and more restrictive sidewalks, we gain in a safer separation of fast moving cyclers from both peds and cars.
This is the future of urban transportation -- mixed use thruways that eventually must accommodate Segue-type vehicles, as more people (especially 20-somethings) appear to be moving away from motor cars.
> "...And bike lanes are a dangerous lure, giving would-be riders a false sense of security that it’s safe to ride on streets"
Proponents of vehicular cycling would state that the safest place to be is in the street. Bike lanes are dangerous because they give cyclists the impression that it's safe to ride in bike lanes.
And a lot of the UK "cycle lanes" I've ridden next to are preposterously narrow. I know of one that is narrower than my handlebars. As a result, motorists think (subconsciously or otherwise) that they can drive aside the cyclist, up to the line, instead of the advisory two meters when passing.
I give these such a wide berth that most motorists realise that I'm blatantly avoiding such a lane and rarely give me grief. I assume they can see why!
Not too long ago, a cyclist in my town who was standing parked on the sidewalk was killed by a truck that tipped over. I was suprised by how many people said he had it coming -- that was the first comment on the local news website, and I heard elsewhere as well.
Well, I can take a hint.
I've largely stoped bike commuting because other people hate it. I have never been yelled at, harrassed, scolded, or bullied so much while using any other form of transport.
I follow the rules and try to act humble; you just can't win when your doing something so unpopular and are at such a physical disadvantage to other road users.
If I ride in the road drivers get mad and I'm risking my life, if I ride on the sidewalk pedestrians get mad and I'm breaking the law, and if I ride on the shoulder they both get mad and I can't turn or change lanes.
Walking is a little better because you're mostly segregated from other road users so it's harder for them to retaliate. Drivers often don't yield to crosswalk signals or to pedestrians on sidewalks in my neighborhood, but they can't generally drive onto the sidewalk just to harrass me. On a bike people can sneak up behind you and honk, encroach on your lane, and get in front of you and brake aggresively, or just curse at you and run away. Things like this happen fairly often when I bike and there's not much I can do to avoid it except not bike.
I see a few drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians breaking the law all the time, but for some reason, I don't see anyone claiming that this means all drivers deserve to die, only the other two things.
I kind of wish that different users of different modes of transport could just call truce and stop picking fights with each other, but I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not interested in getting killed over it.
I'm glad this is getting better in NYC but where I am it still sucks.
When I was there it was actually one of the more friendly and cool communities I'd lived in. It's a bummer to think that it could have gone so downhill as to be hostile to cyclists, given the demographic.
Yes. Impressions probably depend on who you know and where you are. I think Cornel people are much friendlier to cyclists than the average resident, but I don't live very close to campus.
I should add that in general I think it's a great place, this is one sore point for me.
Copenhagen is one of the most wonderful cities to get around I've seen. Many of the bike lanes are separated and raised from vehicle street level by a small curb, which does not stop a determined vehicle (or out of control vehicle) from invading the lane, but does wonders for the psyche of the bicyclist. The feeling of gliding through the city via your own network of paths is incredible. There's often plenty of bike parking too.
In my opinion, all densely populated cities with reasonable climates should be built that way. If San Francisco had similar dedicated lanes throughout the city, and more bike parking, I'd absolutely wager that car ownership (and all of those cars laying fallow on the street) would drop significantly.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadSadly involving a new license/tax on something involves government overhead that hopefully wouldn't be more than the tax they are collecting (or deter people from choosing a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to driving).
"Road use tax" isn't actually a thing, nor is it exclusive to car drivers - roads are paid for via the same taxes as everything else. Sales tax, income tax and property tax, distributed according to local, state, and federal budgets.
Cyclists pay their share of the taxes that build roads via sales tax, income tax, and property tax, same as everyone else does.
Most cyclists also own cars, and have paid all the relevant fees.
Pick whichever argument you like the best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
Not so sure about state taxes (gas or registration) but I believe its similar depending on where you live, paying more for local roads.
Not saying its not fair but it makes some sense... people who buy gas or register pay the most (electric vehicles skirt this), people who don't drive pay some too through normal taxes as they utilize them for public transit, bikes, products they buy, or the food they eat.
There may not be an official "road use tax" but that's the gist of what has been implemented.
Just off the top of my head:
They don't cost enough (like cars) to have a reasonable bottle neck on purchase.
A slogged DMV would never agree to add 4x the customers by adding bicycle licenses.
safety stats: 30,000 people were killed last year in the states in car related incidents. 700 people on bikes in same were killed in car related collisions. No one (as far as I find) is killed when they're hit by a bicycle.
I'm not sure I agree with this one. A decent commuter bike is going to run ~$500 new, and one can easily spend $2.5k on a bike. Obviously that's not as expensive as a car, but a nice new bike is approximately as expensive as a beater car.
And those expensive bikes are what percent of the bikes on the road everyday? Less than 2% I bet. But there's no way to tell as far as I can figure.
Drivers double-park their cars on them. They also open their car doors without checking to see if bike riders are coming first. They also swerve in and out of them while texting. They also drive onto them to get around vehicles like garbage trucks, often without looking. Drivers make turns without looking both ways, often putting us at risk.
I ride my bike to work every single day in New York. Every week, I have multiple close calls because of careless drivers, and sometimes because of careless pedestrians. I don't run red lights, and I don't even ride that fast. I ride my bike on the correct side of the street. You want me to pay extra taxes for what, exactly? My bike and myself combined are a little over 200lbs. Do I create potholes in the roads? Does my bike cause pollution?
I don't think you ride a bike.
What about the cost of building and maintenance of bike lanes and other associated costs that would be involved in increased complexity of cleaning/maintenance of roads due to bike lanes (more so if they are secluded from main traffic).
Do you think this cost is justified for a minuscule percentage of population who choose to bike on the roads.
Regardless, I still pay taxes just like everyone else. I used to own a car, and I didn't pay any extra taxes. Why should I now that I have a bike?
But that not acceptable( dangerous for both cars and bikers) like you suggested in you parent comment. Bike lanes need to be protected from main traffic which would mean more costs.
Protected bike lanes are paramount to safety. Which means regular maintenance equipment like snow plowers/slating won't work. Bike lanes here are totally useless here in winters because we don't the right equipment/training to clean/salt bike lanes.
It was installed in the 80's. It's not been repaved since. Bikes just don't add enough wear and tear. There are some tree root issues that have to be addressed now and then, but that's it.
umm..
http://www.thebedfordcitizen.org/2015/09/15/minuteman-bike-t...
https://twitter.com/bikeminman/status/537666905260433409
https://twitter.com/bikeminman/status/535105465123078146
As for the plates, similar explanation. We don't need a plate on humans, as usually identification can be done ín-situ if required.
On top of that, you want to reinforce the use of bikes, and not reduce it. Increasing bureaucracy for bikes will not help at all.
The potential property damage and/or physical injury (not to mention general wear and tear upon roadways) that a bicycle can produce is minuscule in comparison to the potential destructive power of the automobile. Much of the legal justification for registration/licensing and taxation of vehicles is born from these factors.
Bike riders also pay taxes because they usually are able to actually live in the city where they work and ride their bike, so they're more likely to be paying property tax to the city, sales taxes to local merchants, actually being around on the evenings and weekends to patronize local business etc, instead of just commuting in during the day, creating traffic and then leaving the place a ghost town after 5pm.
In the UK cyclists have an equal voice because the highways exist for them to use just as they exist for pedestrians, horse riders and motorists. This is enshrined in law so is a statutory right.
Trivia fact: The cost of construction and upkeep of "motorways" (roads dedicated to motor vehicle traffic) outstrips the total income from VED year-on-year. In the UK, if you use a bicycle but never a car, you are subsidising motor travel.
The change came with the automobile, which has huge mass and travels at high speed. The danger of the automobile to all other road users was so profound and unique that the need to license motor vehicles soon became quite clear. And even with driver licensing, cars kill thousands of people every year.
Bicycles simply do not pose much of a threat to other road users, that would require cyclist licensing.
Similarly, a 250-lb cyclist does not cause much wear and tear on the roads compared to a 2,500-lb motorist. Roads are more expensive because they have to be built for cars.
Well, property taxes pay for specific-use auto lanes even if one doesn't own a car, and nobody seems to mind that (well I do, but I'm weird).
That being said, I would be THRILLED to pay for tolled bike lanes that were kept free of cars and other threats.
I pay my city $40 a year for the privilege of owning a car and living here. That's barely enough to cover salting in the winter.
The rest of my city's road expense comes entirely from property tax and sales tax. So why add a tax for bikers?
These figures are from 2010: http://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/01/23/drivers-cover-just-51-...
> Well, no wonder: Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes.
Well good to see that the 1920s auto-industry propaganda[0] still has it's firm grip on American society! Roads were not made for cars, the cars claimed the roads once they got on the scene. You can choose to design them in a way that accomodates all[1].
The only reason I'd hate leaving the Netherlands is because no other country comes close in bike-friendliness at the moment (simply put: good bike infrastructure is so common it's barely noticed by the locals, because it's the norm[2]). I do hope that changes soon.
[0] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA
[2] https://www.youtube.com/user/markenlei/videos?flow=grid&view...
I am curious do you guys typically have showers at work ?
One of the reason I don't bike to work is that we don't have showers at work. Most of days in this part of US are hot and humid and I don't feel like sitting at work drenched in sweat.
It would be unfair to pretend the Netherlands don't have a huge geographic advantage when it comes to bike-friendliness; it's a flat, small country with bad weather (read: neither hot nor humid).
Thats not the case most parts of the world. Summers get really hot even in cold parts of the country here in the US.
There are many factors at play here. Simply installing bike lanes is not enough. Blaming it all on 'auto industry propaganda' is not fair.
And yet places with boiling hot summers can have a high bike mode share. Davis is not exactly pleasant in August.
It's not ALL auto industry propaganda, but a lot of it is. Much of what started out as auto industry propaganda is now deeply engrained cultural bias. People talk about jaywalking, but how many people talk about jaydriving???
For all of human civilization streets were for people, horses, carts, etc. They were used for recreation by children and this was accepted as a normal use. They were gathering places. But the car showed up, started killing everyone in its way, and we decided "well that's that, it's a cars-only zone now and anyone else who wants to use the street is a special case!"
Even here in Boston, I'd expect the same norm to work, though right now the prevailing norm in the bike lanes is set by speed demons like myself.
That's a really good point. Most Midwestern states can get down to -30F (-35C) in winter and above 90F (32C) in the summer. Whenever I hear people say "winter doesn't stop the Dutch from biking", I always think of the climate in Amsterdam. The record low for the city is still above 0F. The average low is still above freezing, even in the dead of winter. The average low for my Midwestern city is close to -10F in January. The average high in summer is 10F warmer.
We have some really extreme temperatures here, you can't discount the effect it has on modes of transportation without built-in climate control.
It doesn't quite get to -35c, but -20 isn't uncommon and it's below freezing for two to three months.
I'm not quite as tough, I ride to work the 9 months when there's no ice on the roads. I might try winter cycling but O don't have the equipment yet (mostly clothes but tyres etc too).
But on a typical not-quite-main street around Boston, winter biking is easy. There's enough traffic to make sure you will be seen, and it's slow enough you won't be killed.
I'm not "blaming it all" on anyone (I'm not sure what "it all" is even supposed to refer to in this context). If anything I'm defending cyclists from being accused of "asking for it".
The only thing I said was that auto industry propaganda is responsible for the blatantly wrong idea that roads exist purely for cars. That's not the same thing as discussing why bikes are or are not popular (although there is overlap).
Microfiber towel and a change of clothes?
I typically wait the 30-45 minutes needed for me to physically cool down in my air conditioned office. Then I towel off and change and I'm good to go.
Probably wouldn't work for everyone, but it works for me.
So what's a great way to remove that bacteria? Showering (with plenty of soap).
So showering before you exercise, toweling off quickly after exercise, and following with deodorant, is a very effective way of eliminating body odor as a result of exercise, as that combination a) removes bacteria on the skin, b) removes the food they feed off of before odor compounds can form, and c) staves off further odor production as a result of additional sweating and bacterial growth.
Try it. You might be surprised.
Additional tips: adjustments to diet can make a huge change in body odor. Thinning or removing body hair is also helpful, as bacteria tend to thrive in those areas.
You could also try using disinfecting wet wipes as part of a post-exercise clean-up routine, in addition to simply toweling off.
I'll agree on the 'bit' part, but lets not overdo it.
Thankfully, I live in a rural area which means there are tons of standard roads that are very unpopulated, but even then... "sharing" a road between a 2-ton metal cage and anything else is terrifying for anything but the automobile (2-ton metal cage).
The common criticism though, is that biking in the US is much harder logistically. Many people commute for over an hour at 60mph+ to get to work. This would be implausible on a bike.
Really depends on where you are. Freeways are emphatically not for anything but high-speed vehicles.
I also almost got hit head on by a vehicle that decided to use the bike path (it was segregated) to overtake. It wasn't some huge highway either, it was the main street through a village, a few hundred meters from a stop light.
So I guess I probably was unlucky, but I probably would have died if I hadn't swerved over into the grass between the street and path, so the experience sticks with me.
Roads are made for human beings.
Where did this idea come from that we should build infrastructure for our inanimate property, anyway? Roads are for humans, however humans choose to use them.
As the comment you're replying to points out: the car industry.
On the Wikipedia page for Jaywalking:
> Origin of the term
> The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1917. The term's dissemination was due, in part, to a deliberate effort by promoters of automobiles, such as local auto clubs and dealers, to redefine streets as places where pedestrians do not belong.
I'm hoping that this approach will gain in popularity. What we lose in slightly narrower roads and more restrictive sidewalks, we gain in a safer separation of fast moving cyclers from both peds and cars.
This is the future of urban transportation -- mixed use thruways that eventually must accommodate Segue-type vehicles, as more people (especially 20-somethings) appear to be moving away from motor cars.
1. https://goo.gl/maps/CkaLVGpeCbk
> "...And bike lanes are a dangerous lure, giving would-be riders a false sense of security that it’s safe to ride on streets"
Proponents of vehicular cycling would state that the safest place to be is in the street. Bike lanes are dangerous because they give cyclists the impression that it's safe to ride in bike lanes.
(http://bicyclesafe.com/ outlines some of the dangers)
I give these such a wide berth that most motorists realise that I'm blatantly avoiding such a lane and rarely give me grief. I assume they can see why!
Well, I can take a hint.
I've largely stoped bike commuting because other people hate it. I have never been yelled at, harrassed, scolded, or bullied so much while using any other form of transport.
I follow the rules and try to act humble; you just can't win when your doing something so unpopular and are at such a physical disadvantage to other road users.
If I ride in the road drivers get mad and I'm risking my life, if I ride on the sidewalk pedestrians get mad and I'm breaking the law, and if I ride on the shoulder they both get mad and I can't turn or change lanes.
Walking is a little better because you're mostly segregated from other road users so it's harder for them to retaliate. Drivers often don't yield to crosswalk signals or to pedestrians on sidewalks in my neighborhood, but they can't generally drive onto the sidewalk just to harrass me. On a bike people can sneak up behind you and honk, encroach on your lane, and get in front of you and brake aggresively, or just curse at you and run away. Things like this happen fairly often when I bike and there's not much I can do to avoid it except not bike.
I see a few drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians breaking the law all the time, but for some reason, I don't see anyone claiming that this means all drivers deserve to die, only the other two things.
I kind of wish that different users of different modes of transport could just call truce and stop picking fights with each other, but I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not interested in getting killed over it.
I'm glad this is getting better in NYC but where I am it still sucks.
When I was there it was actually one of the more friendly and cool communities I'd lived in. It's a bummer to think that it could have gone so downhill as to be hostile to cyclists, given the demographic.
I should add that in general I think it's a great place, this is one sore point for me.
In my opinion, all densely populated cities with reasonable climates should be built that way. If San Francisco had similar dedicated lanes throughout the city, and more bike parking, I'd absolutely wager that car ownership (and all of those cars laying fallow on the street) would drop significantly.
Ninth Street: http://imgur.com/kc3IqM8
Grand Street: http://imgur.com/8nzlYys
Kent Ave, Williamsburg: http://imgur.com/bscl26i
Prospect Park West: http://imgur.com/WiLvOyE