I commute by bike year-round and have been for three years. Every day lately I think about going back to an EV - I had a leased Leaf for commuting to my previous job.
I'm getting tired of being a second class citizen on the road, tired of near-misses with people staring at their phones while driving, and tired of not being able to carry much of anything. I have panniers but it doesn't do much good for quick trips to the hardware store or the supermarket on the way home.
Hmm, you could rent/carshare an EV and try your commute for a few days to see how it compares. I have been commuting by bike for 15 years, and any time I try to drive instead I am much more annoyed by being stuck in traffic...
There's definitely some kind of behavioral strangeness in the equation. I am unequivocally happier & feel better when I walk or bike to work. I hate, hate, hate traffic & bad stoplight timing. And yet, the lure of taking the car is always lurking in the corner of my mind.
Taking the train for a few years taught me to enjoy rush hour traffic in the same way that working crappy minimum wage jobs taught me to enjoy the BS that goes on in white collar workplaces.
You have to plan a little in advance, but I have a little Burley utility trailer that expands my ability to make trips to the hardware store. For the supermarket, the key (aside from adequately sized panniers) is to make many small trips, buying food for tonight & tomorrow instead of for the next two weeks.
I've found the added benefits of 1) not buying stuff I shouldn't eat because it takes up precious space and 2) I waste less food because I buy what I need that day/tomorrow instead of what I think I need 6 days from now.
Please, you're not a second class citizen on a bike in the US.
You're really more like third class; second class would be walking, where at least you have physically separated lanes most places and your own signals.
Bicyclists are allowed to terrorize pedestrians with impunity. And indeed, you can easily get a ticket for jaywalking, but you'll never get one for riding a bicycle against traffic, failing to stop at a stop sign, etc.
It's not. Just look at the infrastructure investment. Bikes are lucky to get an order of magnitude less money than walking, or two orders of magnitude less money than cars. Cities spend a few tens of thousands striping a handful of haphazard miles of painted bike lanes, then spend hundreds of millions widening freeways, then pat themselves on the back for how bike-friendly they are. It's absurd.
It's true that many cyclists behave poorly, but look at countries like Denmark or the Netherlands where they actually support biking, and the cyclists there behave normally. Almost like people don't respect a system that clearly doesn't respect them.
Take a Dutch person and ask them to bike in the US, and see how quickly they either adopt the aggressive habits of American cyclists or just give up entirely.
I live in one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US (according to Bicycling magazine). The behavior of bicyclists here, as far as riding safely and in a law-abiding manner, is _far worse_ than other cities I've lived in. Every day when walking down a sidewalk, I'm buzzed by one of these idiots riding by at high speed. I've seriously considered getting a "rear-view" mirror just to protect myself.
Though I've cycled thousands of miles in prior years, I no longer do, partly because I don't want to be associated with such behavior.
I have an e-bike and the difference it makes is qualitative. Instead of being slower than driving, it is faster because I skip traffic jams. Instead of feeling like a drag on days when I am tired, the bike makes me feel like Superman. If you haven't tried an e-bike, it's a game changer.
i've got good legs and can usually do that with my non-electric 2-speed road bike, even though i observe all red lights and other traffic rules. the only downside is i get slightly sweaty and have to change at the office, which adds ~5 minutes to my 20 minute bike commute.
... which takes about 2/3s of the time public transport takes, which is, again, probably slightly faster than driving to office (without counting the time it'd take to find a parking spot, which would probably double the commute).
interestingly, for me, riding at a relaxed pace is pretty much as fast as going as fast as possible, as red light luck is such a big factor.
I'm an avid cyclist, I typically ride about 50 miles a week for pleasure. But, I've been walking about 2 miles to work for the last 3 years.
I'd much rather ride my bike, but after close call after close call, and even intentionally threatening behavior, I stopped riding and started exclusively walking. Also in the US, and I follow the law very carefully when riding. Doesn't matter. I've had things thrown at me, been coal-rolled, been tailgated by large trucks honking, been screamed at by little old ladies telling me pay my taxes.
The infrastructure isn't there, and well meaning bike lanes make it worse by encouraging bad and unpredictable behaviors. There are bad cyclists out there. there are many more that try to follow the rules. There needs to be an investment in infrastructure, maintenance, education and enforcement. Until then, I'll keep walking to commute and riding for pleasure.
I appreciated the SF Bay Area for great biking access in almost any place/town there. I had a 3+ year job in SF starting in 2001 where the office was mostly a meeting place and people worked from home-or-coffee-shop all the time. I took advantage and would ride Caltrain from San Mateo to San Francisco or elsewhere several times a week and would alternate work / biking. I got to know SF, Peninsula quite well. I'd go to Berkeley / Oakland some times too. I was productive too -- biking was a perfect break to clear and open the mind. I've commuted to other jobs in SF Bay Area by bike too, but none quite a fun as that 3 year stretch.
I moved to Winston Salem, NC 5 years ago and thought that I would in no way do bike commuting here. I actually tried it though starting in March this year and I've been surprised it's actually worked out OK -- drivers are a lot more considerate than I'd expected, and I haven't had many close calls. The law is quite explicit on clearance for bikes. From home to my co-working space is 9 or 10 miles. I'm hanging out at Camino Bakery downtown right now working, and will bike to my daughter's ballet lesson soon. Bike commuting isn't hugely popular here but it's growing, and the Bird scooters have really caught on around downtown and the several universities in the area, so I think there will be increasing awareness of alternative commuting modes here. I think for some motorized e-scooters will be more practical than bikes.
... I'd just like to see the "Idaho stop" legalized.
I commuted by bike all the time my entire adult life, save a period of three months with no alternative. Then I got tired of getting screamed at and nearly being killed all the time, as well as hearing coworkers joke about murdering cyclists, and changed country. But that's one less bike commuter in the US.
That's mostly a function of New York's extremely high transit usage. New York doesn't often split out walking from biking or taxis, but the mode share of biking + walking + other looks pretty similar.
Which of your two cities are you claiming appalling bike infrastructure?
I just moved to the Seattle area, and the bike infrastructure doesn't seem bad (my path includes Bainbridge Island and Colman Dock -> SLU). Bainbridge doesn't have great infrastructure on my path, but it has low traffic and bike aware drivers. Downtown has slow drivers, generally bike aware, and a pretty good amount of bike lanes, although some were thoughtfully put on the curb side of parking, which means unaware passengers get out without noticing me, and intersections mean I'm coming into the stream of traffic that might be turning right, but the parked cars make it hard for both of us to see each other. I didn't bike to work in the bay area, because my commute would have been on high traffic, high speed streets with frequent traffic lights and poor bike infra.
I haven't experienced New York though -- maybe you're saying its bike infra is appalling?
New York has many parking protected lanes, so even though the driving culture is much more aggressive, I find it doable.
Seattle has a great trail system, which is wonderful until you're trying to get off the trail. East-west travel within Seattle is particularly appalling. There's a lot of painted bike lanes, which I don't feel very comfortable in, particularly in Seattle where the driving culture is passive-aggressive and unpredictable (as opposed to New York, where it's aggressive but pretty predictable, so avoiding negative consequences is pretty easy)
Parking protected lanes seem pretty bad if there are frequent intersections or driveways. It's pretty nice going upwards on Western Ave (by Pike's Place), because there's not much reason for cars to turn there, and it ends at an all-way stop sign that always requires caution. However, the other one I run into, on 9th ave going north between Harrison and Republican is really hard to navigate.
On the one hand, people's dogs run into the street to urinate, on the other hand, I have to slow down every time I approach the intersection, because I have no visibility of the flow of traffic because of the parked cars; and the flow of traffic has no visibility of me because of the parked cars, so I can't even get upset at drivers who are ready to make a right turn there and don't give me space.
9th and Western aren't parking protected; parking is on the inside of the bike lane, between the curb and the bike lane. Parking protected lanes have parked cars between the roadway and the bike lane. https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/mayor/news...
Parking protected would be something like 2nd, where the parking is on the outside of the curb; similar configurations can be found on part of Broadway, and Dexter south of Mercer St.
Western Ave is parking protected going north up the hill by Pike place [1]; actually on closer look, a lot of that isn't allowed to park on, but it starts with parking and then they disallow parking later. 9th Ave has one terrible block where it's parking protected going north just north of Denny [2] -- google imagery is a bit inconsistent here, it looks like they changed this between July 2017 (looks like a configuration I would like) and September 2017 (current configuration).
In general, New York tends to having parking protection go up until the intersection, where it is usually replaced by a right turn lane. Which is not the worst; it avoids the pitfalls you describe by "daylighting" the intersection. New York does the same near driveways, but there aren't that many driveways in Manhattan for fairly obvious reasons.
Seattle, on the other hand, has way more driveways than I'm used to; they also tend to be so close to the curb, with poor lines of sight coming out of the driveway, that they have to have those blaring sirens warning about cars pulling out.
IMO, a bunch of several-thousand-pound cars is much more in terms of protection than the flimsy flexposts you see around Seattle. I just don't feel as comfortable biking around here.
Not in Stockholm. The western part of town saw a 19% increase this summer. The central parts had a 16% increase[1]. This I believe has to do with massive investments in infrastructure. Bike lanes have become more crowded, but I must say that it's a joy compared to cramming yourself into an overcrowded subway train.
I commute by bicycle. I used to love it but I getting harder in the Bay Area. Between skate boarders, gig economy taxis, scooters, and zombie pedestrians and vehicle drivers face deep in their phone compounding danger upon danger I'm finding it less appealing as time passes.
Disregarding vehicle drivers I actually think the boom in pedestrian transportation (powered skateboards, scooters etc) is a huge plus for bikers. People on these forms of transportation get a taste of what bike commuting is like and will become allies for voting for improvements in infrastructure for themselves and cyclists.
As a cyclist, this makes me think you're part of the problem. If a pedestrian seriously endangers you, 9 times out of 10 it means you fucked up. Maybe they fucked up too, but it wouldn't have been a problem if you were paying attention.
If nothing else, we have a lot more experience noticing and avoiding pedestrians than they do with us. If we want to improve bicycle awareness and acceptance, we all need to behave responsibly.
My worst cycling injury (separated shoulder) is due to an oblivious pedestrian stepping directly out in front of me from between parked cars. For years I've wished I had just run her down instead of dodging and taking the impact myself.
In learning to drive, particularly the "hazard perception test" in the UK (watch a video and click if there's a potential hazard), I became a safer cyclist.
If I saw a small boy 50m away pulling at his mother's arm it used to be that I'd stop pedalling. Now, I'll also consider moving further into the road, I'll cover the brake, glance behind and potentially slow down.
I think it'd be interesting to see the distribution of commute distances over the period in question. Anecdotally the #1 reason people tell me they don't commute on their bike is that they're busy and it just takes so much longer than driving because their workplace and home are so far apart.
My suspicion is that a part of the drop is due to the slow shift away from suburbs. Bike commuting from a suburb can be great (I've been a year-round commuter for over half a decade). However, the exurbs are too far away for bicycles, and inside urban areas you often have lots of other choices for getting to the office.
There's definitely a distance correlation for biking in the USA, where e-biking hasn't seen the explosive growth yet that is happening in Europe.
That said - the car is not necessarily faster than biking, especially in the city. Anecdotal example: I live about 1.5 miles from my workplace. Biking is about twice as fast as driving during rush hour because of traffic. So I bike!
That's really close! At that distance, traffic could be bad enough that walking might be faster!
Congratulations on arranging your life well, though. I think back fondly to the times I was 2-4 miles from work. Actually for about six months I was a few blocks away. That was great.
This doesn't match my experience. I see bikers mainly in the city bikeways, just not in the most crowded and well-transit-served downtown core. In suburds the miles add up too quickly and take up too much time. It may depend on how dense your cities are.
Biking looks time consuming, but if you use it as time for exercise and sunshine-time you would otherwise be doing on your free time, it's almost 0 marginal cost.
It definitely depends. The time of my commute itself is about the same, whether I bike or drive. However, there is about a 10 minute difference from additional activities that are not needed when driving. When I bike (~80% of the time), I need to account extra time for strapping my bag to my bike, attaching/removing easily stolen accessories, donning/removing reflective vest, and changing from biking clothes to business casual after arriving.
Thankfully, my commute is short and summers aren't too hot, so I don't yet need to add an additional 10-15 minutes for showering after arriving.
This is the case for me. I live about 6.5 miles from my office. Congestion is so bad (I'm in the Seattle area) that it can take upwards of half an hour to get to work -- yes, that's an average speed of 13 miles an hour in a car. Miserable.
However, on the bike I can average nearly 15 miles an hour, so I actually save time! In all fairness that time is more than eaten up by the additional steps (don bike gear, load bike, etc.) but it's nearly a wash.
Not in São Paulo. The trend now is to use e-bikes for commuting, specially in financial and technology districts, mostly because of our warm weather and hilly city.
I wonder if some of this is the way the data are collected. The survey asks about primary mode of commuting. In the DC area at least, I think (from observation) there are a lot more multi-modal commuters using bikeshare, uber, or e-scooters depending on circumstances, weather, etc. These commuters may not classify themselves as bike commuters as a primary mode, which would impact the numbers.
I bike to a nearby bus station and bus from there to work. I love it. Makes me feel great, but there really is no place for bikes where I live. We have bike lanes, but not on the main roads. We have sidewalks, but I don't want to bother pedestrians. We have some really fun trails, but again those are hard to share with pedestrians. So that leaves me in with the cars, which stinks.
I don't know what would drive the national trend, but here in Portland, which is a relatively bike friendly city, commuting by bike is [for a lot of people at least] a commitment and not a convenience. It takes longer, requires more prep before you leave, recovery time at your destination (shower, change clothes, whatever), etc. And in the winter when it's very cold and wet, it is especially unappealing. But ... we are a mid-size city, and the same people who have the luxury of commuting to an office by bicycle frequently also have the luxury of choosing their hours to avoid traffic. Figure in the recent surge in EV adoption and maybe a lot of folks who biked because it was the greener option are now feeling less guilt about using their car.
I work downtown and most everyone I know who bikes from out west just skips the road altogether for the hill and takes MAX between the Zoo and Goose Hollow. I can't imagine trying to bike that every day :)
>requires more prep before you leave, recovery time at your destination
I don't understand these as a dane. Almost all that commutes by bike goes without showers when they arrive. Just ride a little slower. Also why would it take longer to leave? Taking on a pair of rain pants is about 40s.
It is unappealing to ride in the winter though, nothing is going to change that.
This is probably extremely variable by region. Everyone I know at our office who commutes takes a shower on arrival and most wear different clothes when riding that they pack with them.
So everyone rides in lycra bike wear? Here people commutes in their daily wear. Even in skirts and high heels.
Maybe the mean commute distance is very different.
Yep, everyone here (small sample size, completely anecdotal of course) wears some form of bike-specific clothes. Couple of the guys actually wear lycra, some just wear sport clothes appropriate for the weather.
Portland is not a very dense city except in a small number of residential blocks in and around downtown. There are many neighborhoods of mostly single-family (or small apartment complexes) in the <10 mile distance which accounts for the majority of bike commuters in my experience.
Just looked up some stats. Apparently the mean length of a bike commute here is 4.5km. The bulk of all bicycle rides (for transportation) are under 7km.
The source is not in English:
www.modelcenter.transport.dtu.dk/-/media/Centre/Modelcenter/2017-Faktaark_cykeltrafik_180523.ashx?la=da
It could simply be explained by sampling variability. The OP refers to American Community Survey, bicycle commuters are just 5.5 out of 1000. The OP does not list margins of error for the reported rates of commuting.
Cycle commuting is probably at least a bit of a fad over the past decade, maybe a fading fad. I say this as a dedicated cycling commuter for about 10 years. So I think this might explain part of a decline, assuming it is statistically significant.
While many US cities have made some efforts to increase cycling, I think they focus too much on new infrastructure and too little on quality infrastructure and enforcement against dangerous drivers.
Just look at illegal parking in the bike lane to know how important cycling is to the city. In Austin, nothing has changed with regards to this in the 5 years I have lived here. The reason is clear to me: the city is happy to give cyclists lip service, but anything that might involve actual effort or possibly making drivers irritated doesn't happen (unless it's new construction).
I always stop, and as I recall I got a thumbs up from one cop on bike to work day.
In contrast I have never run into any of the enforcement efforts against drunk or distracted driving. I am confident such things occur, as I have asked the police about it before and they explained their procedures. But I get the impression that drunk and distracted driving are not taken as seriously as they should be. Based on what they said, I should periodically run into the distracted driving enforcement near schools (so they can write double price tickets), but I am still waiting 4 years later.
I also was assaulted by a driver once while riding in a lane marked for bikes. (Physical assault; they did not hit me with their car.) I called the police, who to their credit showed up promptly and took my statement. They didn't do anything else, though. A cop later told me that if I wanted anything to come of this, I'd have to file at municipal court and pay a fee. I talked to a lawyer who said nothing would come of this, even though I have the entire incident on my helmet camera. The city police chief in the past said they take complaints from cyclists at municipal court seriously: https://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1511
But I am not seeing it. Why would I make what is effectively a $100+ donation to a police department who only cares enough to give me lip service? If they actually wanted to get more cyclists to report bad drivers, they'd reduce or waive the fee for cyclists.
A lot of progress needs to be made in the US to make cycling a better option.
One explanation might be that the jobs are being added in places that are inaccessible to cycling because of lack of infrastructure.
Example: Downtown San Francisco is largely inaccessible to cycling from the East Bay as there is no cycle lane on the old part of the Bay Bridge and insufficient capacity on BART and Ferries for large number of bikes.
Anecdotally I've seen many people stop biking because its not safe and the risks become apparent to them over time. 5 people I know have been seriously injured biking in San Francisco. When you consider the risk of getting door-ed at 15mph or getting haplessly mowed down by blind merging open-wheel trucks, it's quite physically dangerous. Until we have a broad deployment of protected bike lanes, its just not worth the risks.
I'm a long time bike commuter who's stopped recently for those exact reasons. My biggest axe to grind is that American cities keep investing in bike share programs and other "bike friendly" initiatives that have no impact on rider safety.
American cities keep investing in bike share programs and other "bike friendly" initiatives that have no impact on rider safety.
That a broad generalization based only on your specific experience.
Chicago, for example, continues to build bicycle lanes separated by concrete medians, bollards, and in the case of the big new developments in the South Loop, bike lanes separated from traffic and sidewalks by trees.
The biggest downside to cycling in Chicago is the winter. Not just the cold and wind, but the fact that snow from the sidewalks is often shoveled into the bike lane.
I'm sure there are other American cities doing the same thing.
I think the one advantage unprotected bike lanes have is that they're easier to maintain. Re-paving is simplified. And you don't have to invest in tiny bike lane snowplows.
> Until we have a broad deployment of protected bike lanes, its just not worth the risks.
And unfortunately this likely won't happen. Despite a large coalition of biking advocates in SF, the SFMTA won't lift a finger. It's a corrupt, incompetent organizations that won't green light anything other than useless pork projects. And once the moneys in...the execution is irrelevant to them. Just look at the Van Ness BRT, Central Subway, Transbay Center construction.
Protected bike lanes in the US are far too often built in ways that increase risk.
In Austin, I basically refuse to use the two most significant protected bike lanes near where I live and work because drivers far too frequently turn into the lanes at intersections without looking. The city put signs up telling drivers to look and yield at some intersections, but the signs don't seem to have had any effect other than covering the ass of the city.
Well built infrastructure would be preferred. But ultimately we need more than just infrastructure. Drivers need to change their dangerous behavior too.
It kind of sucks. Most places in the US don't have any infrastructure for it, and American drivers are kind of assholes with regard to bikes (perhaps also true elsewhere, I don't know). Plus, rush hour/commute time has to be the absolute worst and most-dangerous time to ride a bike. And I say this as a resident of one of the most bike-friendly cities America has.
It's because US cities are poorly planned, crumbling shit-holes with 4 lane highways criss crossing them. People are extremely hostile to bikers in most US cities, and there are literally no consequences to killing them much of the time.
American cities are so unpleasant to exist in on the ground level people prefer the safety of their smog machines at all times, even if you are going half a mile down the road for a carton of milk.
Everything is designed to funnel you out of the city into your extremely inefficient suburb so you can stop by taco-bell and wal-mart on your 50 minute commute home.
But hey, the answer is more roads right? Not incentivizing people to have less roads on the highway?
Aside from your last line, I basically agree with you. I walk on sidewalks, or drive. Biking in the city is just not my thing.
Conversely, I love cycling. I've been a bike mechanic, and my wife and I ride mountain bikes all the time. to me, it's just not worth going out on the street. The mindset is somewhat like, "if I'm going to get hurt cycling, it might as well be fun, and my own fault".
One point that you miss, at least in SF, is the considerable expense of having your bike stolen all the time. friends that commute either bring their bike into a dedicate secure area for work, or expect to have parts/the whole thing stolen. I used to cycle to the gym on a beater bike in a low traffic area, and when that beater bike got stolen, I gave up on any cycle commuting for anything.
On Friday I decided to count the number of drivers running reds, since everyone gives cyclists a hard for doing so.
My commute in San Francisco involves crossing 16 streets. It's not very far, about 2.5 miles.
On Friday I observed 35 cars run red lights--not even "it's yellow and time to speed up because drivers don't give a single flying crap about safety" but literally the cross traffic lane is green.
Cars are a terrible unsustainable mess, ruining the environment and ruining city livability. It's not surprising that the risks they impose on the rest of the world are resulting in less people willing to bike
Definitely not the UK, but there's enough cultural similarity between the UK and Ireland (where I live) that your comment shocked me. People don't care _at all_ about red lights here and run them constantly. Taxis are especially bad offenders. They also park on the footpath, blocking prams and wheelchairs.
The Netherlands is generally the best or second best place in the world to get around, though, is it not? I've considered moving there just for the bike infra (Utrecht comes up a lot in conversations with my wife, and Zwolle).
My daughter is 1. By the time she starts school I want her to be able to ride a bike to school without dying.
Utrecht is a really nice city with a great atmosphere. Give me a PM if you'd like to know more. I am from Amersfoort, which is a bit smaller, but still a nice city. Taking the bicycle from home to work is 20 minutes (7 km) straight into the centre, with 90% separated bicycle lanes. The remaining 10% is really safe to drive as well.
Articles [0][1] cite a study [2] that people driving cars and bicycles admit to breaking the law at the same rate. I've just now found the study itself, so will be reading it's additional findings.
Exactly. One of those types of vehicles cause hundreds of deaths per day. The other causes a miniscule fraction of that. Further, when running a red light, one of those vehicles has greatly-reduced visibility, and greatly-increased consequences for being wrong.
The question is: shouldn't one of those vehicles be held to a higher standard?
My commute is down market st, 4th to Castro, which is particularly bad. I bike. What happens is that at _every_ major market st crossing, cars will run their red (actual red, not yellow), and then stop just before the crosswalk due to pedestrians beginning to cross. They'll remain stopped in the middle of cross lane traffic for essentially the entirety of the light (Hey, if they didn't get to go why should anyone get to?!) , though sometimes they'll try to wedge themselves through pedestrian traffic, because driving a car turns people into assholes and necessitates neglecting the safety of others. It is possible that pedestrians might not notice this nearly as often, due to being much less impacted by it. It's also a significantly worse problem during typical commute hours.
Due to the number of aggressively awful drivers in the city, I've ordered a dashcam for my bike, so I'll likely have some footage to demonstrate this soon. (Well, I hope not, but.)
My theory is that traffic is getting worse in most major cities as more and more people are choosing to live their. Having more cars on the road makes biking less and less safe therefore people fall into the "if you cant beat em join em" mentality.
It would be interesting to see if there is a corresponding trend in overall commuting distances. If people are commuting further for some reason, than bike commuting becomes less of an option. One reason could simply be labor market churn, and the fact that it might be easier to change jobs than to change housing.
I've been a year round bike commuter, but am fortunate to have worked the same job for 20 years. Likewise for my spouse. But that's pretty rare.
I doubt that I could justify bike commuting on solely practical grounds. I gain a great deal of enjoyment from it, and it's my main source of exercise.
I have no numbers, but it's not my experience in Minneapolis, where I see more people riding, at least some of the time. (And most don't ride all year here, although winter bike commuting is also more popular in my experience.)
There certainly are bad drivers, but I don't encounter things other commenters have mentioned, like people yelling. In fact I've noticed better behavior by drivers in the last ten–15 years, like people in cars much more willing to yield when I'm crossing a road from a bikeway.
More recently the city has been adding more protected bike lanes, and is now working on better maintenance in the winter, which is ok now but the biggest downside.
I'll add my experience as a primary bike commuter for 5+ years in the US. I do own a car and drive it maybe twice a week, mainly for transporting things that would be difficult on my bike or when the weather is bad.
I perceive people behind the wheel to be increasingly reckless, entitled, and disrespectful. A lot of the reasons for this are already mentioned so I won't rehash the issues of distraction by smartphone, "sharing economy" de-professionalization of shared transportation, and driver resentment towards anybody not in a personal automobile claiming their lawful space on the road.
Somebody needs to mention that each and every person who drives a car is contributing to undeniable, irreversible climate destruction, and plausibly a future earth that won't be able to support human prosperity. EVs really are not much better than ICE vehicles - replace some fossil fuel consumption with enormous mineral extraction and it's a toss-up at best.
There are also a lot of (in)equity issues in our current transportation system that need to be sorted out. Cars reinforce the wealth gap by virtually ensuring economic success for those who can afford them while leaving those who can't out in the cold. Eisenhower's "drive" (pun intended) to build the US interstate system adopted and encouraged common, preexisting local policies that carved up any neighborhood where minority communities could begin to take hold, replacing them via eminent domain with freeways for white suburban commuters.
In sum, cars are bad. But they're so deeply seated in the collective USA brain stem that I'm not sure we will be able to do much to improve the situation.
when lived in Beijing used to commute by bike 3.5km to work, could make it in 15-18 minutes including 3-4 major junctions beating the bus even without counting waiting time, Beijing or Bangkok are perfect cities for biking in theory, completely flat as pancake plus in Beijing with bike lane separated by small fence, sadly pretty much every ride end up being angry about electric courier/freight tricycles using bike lane or blocking it, ebikes riding dangerously, cars blocking it, driving there to beat traffic jam or straight driving there in wrong direction against me and many other dangerous situations, it's miracle i didn't have accident even when following laws because most of the other people just don't do that
now in Prague with pretty much zero bike lanes and hilly terrain so i don't really bother even trying to bike here, people in general respect rules more, but there are still plenty BMW/audi/Mercedes drivers who think laws are only for poor people
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadI'm getting tired of being a second class citizen on the road, tired of near-misses with people staring at their phones while driving, and tired of not being able to carry much of anything. I have panniers but it doesn't do much good for quick trips to the hardware store or the supermarket on the way home.
(edit: I am in the US)
You're really more like third class; second class would be walking, where at least you have physically separated lanes most places and your own signals.
It's true that many cyclists behave poorly, but look at countries like Denmark or the Netherlands where they actually support biking, and the cyclists there behave normally. Almost like people don't respect a system that clearly doesn't respect them.
Take a Dutch person and ask them to bike in the US, and see how quickly they either adopt the aggressive habits of American cyclists or just give up entirely.
Though I've cycled thousands of miles in prior years, I no longer do, partly because I don't want to be associated with such behavior.
... which takes about 2/3s of the time public transport takes, which is, again, probably slightly faster than driving to office (without counting the time it'd take to find a parking spot, which would probably double the commute).
interestingly, for me, riding at a relaxed pace is pretty much as fast as going as fast as possible, as red light luck is such a big factor.
I'd much rather ride my bike, but after close call after close call, and even intentionally threatening behavior, I stopped riding and started exclusively walking. Also in the US, and I follow the law very carefully when riding. Doesn't matter. I've had things thrown at me, been coal-rolled, been tailgated by large trucks honking, been screamed at by little old ladies telling me pay my taxes.
The infrastructure isn't there, and well meaning bike lanes make it worse by encouraging bad and unpredictable behaviors. There are bad cyclists out there. there are many more that try to follow the rules. There needs to be an investment in infrastructure, maintenance, education and enforcement. Until then, I'll keep walking to commute and riding for pleasure.
I moved to Winston Salem, NC 5 years ago and thought that I would in no way do bike commuting here. I actually tried it though starting in March this year and I've been surprised it's actually worked out OK -- drivers are a lot more considerate than I'd expected, and I haven't had many close calls. The law is quite explicit on clearance for bikes. From home to my co-working space is 9 or 10 miles. I'm hanging out at Camino Bakery downtown right now working, and will bike to my daughter's ballet lesson soon. Bike commuting isn't hugely popular here but it's growing, and the Bird scooters have really caught on around downtown and the several universities in the area, so I think there will be increasing awareness of alternative commuting modes here. I think for some motorized e-scooters will be more practical than bikes.
... I'd just like to see the "Idaho stop" legalized.
EDIT: Idaho stop
Moving from New York to Seattle, the biking infrastructure there is appalling.
Manhattan - https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/tran...
Downtown Seattle - https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/tra...
I just moved to the Seattle area, and the bike infrastructure doesn't seem bad (my path includes Bainbridge Island and Colman Dock -> SLU). Bainbridge doesn't have great infrastructure on my path, but it has low traffic and bike aware drivers. Downtown has slow drivers, generally bike aware, and a pretty good amount of bike lanes, although some were thoughtfully put on the curb side of parking, which means unaware passengers get out without noticing me, and intersections mean I'm coming into the stream of traffic that might be turning right, but the parked cars make it hard for both of us to see each other. I didn't bike to work in the bay area, because my commute would have been on high traffic, high speed streets with frequent traffic lights and poor bike infra.
I haven't experienced New York though -- maybe you're saying its bike infra is appalling?
Seattle has a great trail system, which is wonderful until you're trying to get off the trail. East-west travel within Seattle is particularly appalling. There's a lot of painted bike lanes, which I don't feel very comfortable in, particularly in Seattle where the driving culture is passive-aggressive and unpredictable (as opposed to New York, where it's aggressive but pretty predictable, so avoiding negative consequences is pretty easy)
On the one hand, people's dogs run into the street to urinate, on the other hand, I have to slow down every time I approach the intersection, because I have no visibility of the flow of traffic because of the parked cars; and the flow of traffic has no visibility of me because of the parked cars, so I can't even get upset at drivers who are ready to make a right turn there and don't give me space.
Parking protected would be something like 2nd, where the parking is on the outside of the curb; similar configurations can be found on part of Broadway, and Dexter south of Mercer St.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6082691,-122.3410045,68m/dat...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6220637,-122.3397978,3a,75y,...
Seattle, on the other hand, has way more driveways than I'm used to; they also tend to be so close to the curb, with poor lines of sight coming out of the driveway, that they have to have those blaring sirens warning about cars pulling out.
IMO, a bunch of several-thousand-pound cars is much more in terms of protection than the flimsy flexposts you see around Seattle. I just don't feel as comfortable biking around here.
[1] https://www.stockholmdirekt.se/nyheter/rekordmanga-har-valt-...
As a cyclist, this makes me think you're part of the problem. If a pedestrian seriously endangers you, 9 times out of 10 it means you fucked up. Maybe they fucked up too, but it wouldn't have been a problem if you were paying attention.
If nothing else, we have a lot more experience noticing and avoiding pedestrians than they do with us. If we want to improve bicycle awareness and acceptance, we all need to behave responsibly.
If I saw a small boy 50m away pulling at his mother's arm it used to be that I'd stop pedalling. Now, I'll also consider moving further into the road, I'll cover the brake, glance behind and potentially slow down.
My suspicion is that a part of the drop is due to the slow shift away from suburbs. Bike commuting from a suburb can be great (I've been a year-round commuter for over half a decade). However, the exurbs are too far away for bicycles, and inside urban areas you often have lots of other choices for getting to the office.
That said - the car is not necessarily faster than biking, especially in the city. Anecdotal example: I live about 1.5 miles from my workplace. Biking is about twice as fast as driving during rush hour because of traffic. So I bike!
Congratulations on arranging your life well, though. I think back fondly to the times I was 2-4 miles from work. Actually for about six months I was a few blocks away. That was great.
Biking looks time consuming, but if you use it as time for exercise and sunshine-time you would otherwise be doing on your free time, it's almost 0 marginal cost.
Thankfully, my commute is short and summers aren't too hot, so I don't yet need to add an additional 10-15 minutes for showering after arriving.
However, on the bike I can average nearly 15 miles an hour, so I actually save time! In all fairness that time is more than eaten up by the additional steps (don bike gear, load bike, etc.) but it's nearly a wash.
I don't understand these as a dane. Almost all that commutes by bike goes without showers when they arrive. Just ride a little slower. Also why would it take longer to leave? Taking on a pair of rain pants is about 40s.
It is unappealing to ride in the winter though, nothing is going to change that.
Portland is not a very dense city except in a small number of residential blocks in and around downtown. There are many neighborhoods of mostly single-family (or small apartment complexes) in the <10 mile distance which accounts for the majority of bike commuters in my experience.
The source is not in English: www.modelcenter.transport.dtu.dk/-/media/Centre/Modelcenter/2017-Faktaark_cykeltrafik_180523.ashx?la=da
While many US cities have made some efforts to increase cycling, I think they focus too much on new infrastructure and too little on quality infrastructure and enforcement against dangerous drivers.
Just look at illegal parking in the bike lane to know how important cycling is to the city. In Austin, nothing has changed with regards to this in the 5 years I have lived here. The reason is clear to me: the city is happy to give cyclists lip service, but anything that might involve actual effort or possibly making drivers irritated doesn't happen (unless it's new construction).
I have gone through cycling stop sign enforcement efforts twice, once on bike to work day! http://www.kut.org/post/austin-police-ticket-47-campus-area-...
I always stop, and as I recall I got a thumbs up from one cop on bike to work day.
In contrast I have never run into any of the enforcement efforts against drunk or distracted driving. I am confident such things occur, as I have asked the police about it before and they explained their procedures. But I get the impression that drunk and distracted driving are not taken as seriously as they should be. Based on what they said, I should periodically run into the distracted driving enforcement near schools (so they can write double price tickets), but I am still waiting 4 years later.
I also was assaulted by a driver once while riding in a lane marked for bikes. (Physical assault; they did not hit me with their car.) I called the police, who to their credit showed up promptly and took my statement. They didn't do anything else, though. A cop later told me that if I wanted anything to come of this, I'd have to file at municipal court and pay a fee. I talked to a lawyer who said nothing would come of this, even though I have the entire incident on my helmet camera. The city police chief in the past said they take complaints from cyclists at municipal court seriously: https://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1511
But I am not seeing it. Why would I make what is effectively a $100+ donation to a police department who only cares enough to give me lip service? If they actually wanted to get more cyclists to report bad drivers, they'd reduce or waive the fee for cyclists.
A lot of progress needs to be made in the US to make cycling a better option.
Example: Downtown San Francisco is largely inaccessible to cycling from the East Bay as there is no cycle lane on the old part of the Bay Bridge and insufficient capacity on BART and Ferries for large number of bikes.
That a broad generalization based only on your specific experience.
Chicago, for example, continues to build bicycle lanes separated by concrete medians, bollards, and in the case of the big new developments in the South Loop, bike lanes separated from traffic and sidewalks by trees.
The biggest downside to cycling in Chicago is the winter. Not just the cold and wind, but the fact that snow from the sidewalks is often shoveled into the bike lane.
I'm sure there are other American cities doing the same thing.
I think the one advantage unprotected bike lanes have is that they're easier to maintain. Re-paving is simplified. And you don't have to invest in tiny bike lane snowplows.
And unfortunately this likely won't happen. Despite a large coalition of biking advocates in SF, the SFMTA won't lift a finger. It's a corrupt, incompetent organizations that won't green light anything other than useless pork projects. And once the moneys in...the execution is irrelevant to them. Just look at the Van Ness BRT, Central Subway, Transbay Center construction.
In Austin, I basically refuse to use the two most significant protected bike lanes near where I live and work because drivers far too frequently turn into the lanes at intersections without looking. The city put signs up telling drivers to look and yield at some intersections, but the signs don't seem to have had any effect other than covering the ass of the city.
Well built infrastructure would be preferred. But ultimately we need more than just infrastructure. Drivers need to change their dangerous behavior too.
American cities are so unpleasant to exist in on the ground level people prefer the safety of their smog machines at all times, even if you are going half a mile down the road for a carton of milk.
Everything is designed to funnel you out of the city into your extremely inefficient suburb so you can stop by taco-bell and wal-mart on your 50 minute commute home.
But hey, the answer is more roads right? Not incentivizing people to have less roads on the highway?
Conversely, I love cycling. I've been a bike mechanic, and my wife and I ride mountain bikes all the time. to me, it's just not worth going out on the street. The mindset is somewhat like, "if I'm going to get hurt cycling, it might as well be fun, and my own fault".
One point that you miss, at least in SF, is the considerable expense of having your bike stolen all the time. friends that commute either bring their bike into a dedicate secure area for work, or expect to have parts/the whole thing stolen. I used to cycle to the gym on a beater bike in a low traffic area, and when that beater bike got stolen, I gave up on any cycle commuting for anything.
My commute in San Francisco involves crossing 16 streets. It's not very far, about 2.5 miles.
On Friday I observed 35 cars run red lights--not even "it's yellow and time to speed up because drivers don't give a single flying crap about safety" but literally the cross traffic lane is green.
Cars are a terrible unsustainable mess, ruining the environment and ruining city livability. It's not surprising that the risks they impose on the rest of the world are resulting in less people willing to bike
My daughter is 1. By the time she starts school I want her to be able to ride a bike to school without dying.
[0]: https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-18/survey-finds-bicyclis... [1]: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/03/16/busting-the-myth-of-t... [2]: https://jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/871/875
The question is: shouldn't one of those vehicles be held to a higher standard?
If I had to guess, I'd say that I've seen at most 35 cars run red-lights in the last year.
Am I just not noticing them? Are we counting "running a red-light" differently? I'm having a hard time figuring out why our numbers are so different.
Due to the number of aggressively awful drivers in the city, I've ordered a dashcam for my bike, so I'll likely have some footage to demonstrate this soon. (Well, I hope not, but.)
I've been a year round bike commuter, but am fortunate to have worked the same job for 20 years. Likewise for my spouse. But that's pretty rare.
I doubt that I could justify bike commuting on solely practical grounds. I gain a great deal of enjoyment from it, and it's my main source of exercise.
There certainly are bad drivers, but I don't encounter things other commenters have mentioned, like people yelling. In fact I've noticed better behavior by drivers in the last ten–15 years, like people in cars much more willing to yield when I'm crossing a road from a bikeway.
More recently the city has been adding more protected bike lanes, and is now working on better maintenance in the winter, which is ok now but the biggest downside.
I perceive people behind the wheel to be increasingly reckless, entitled, and disrespectful. A lot of the reasons for this are already mentioned so I won't rehash the issues of distraction by smartphone, "sharing economy" de-professionalization of shared transportation, and driver resentment towards anybody not in a personal automobile claiming their lawful space on the road.
Somebody needs to mention that each and every person who drives a car is contributing to undeniable, irreversible climate destruction, and plausibly a future earth that won't be able to support human prosperity. EVs really are not much better than ICE vehicles - replace some fossil fuel consumption with enormous mineral extraction and it's a toss-up at best.
There are also a lot of (in)equity issues in our current transportation system that need to be sorted out. Cars reinforce the wealth gap by virtually ensuring economic success for those who can afford them while leaving those who can't out in the cold. Eisenhower's "drive" (pun intended) to build the US interstate system adopted and encouraged common, preexisting local policies that carved up any neighborhood where minority communities could begin to take hold, replacing them via eminent domain with freeways for white suburban commuters.
In sum, cars are bad. But they're so deeply seated in the collective USA brain stem that I'm not sure we will be able to do much to improve the situation.
Now I work from home that ratio. When I do go to the office it’s at a much lower % than previously because the habit provides a boost.
now in Prague with pretty much zero bike lanes and hilly terrain so i don't really bother even trying to bike here, people in general respect rules more, but there are still plenty BMW/audi/Mercedes drivers who think laws are only for poor people