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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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Bicycles
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The common argument against building cycling infrastructure is that "nobody is using them!".
Of course, when you look at REAL WORLD examples from Paris, Amsterdam, or even Montreal, you can clearly see that pretty much any and everyone will ride bikes when the infrastructure supports them.
The increase in cyclists in Paris directly correlates to the efforts made by their leadership to make cycling more common (and cars of a necessity).
Meanwhile... Ontario, Canada has just announced that they'll be widening the 401 highway (again), just so you can cram more people in gridlocked traffic! What better way to burn away hundreds of millions of dollars! /s
The thing about NYC is that even when the infrastructure supports it, the cars are just overbearing. And a constant threat. Just last week I was riding down the protected bike lane in park slope (bike lane separated from the street by unbroken line of parallel parked cars). Well, some idiot turned right into the bike lane right in front of me. I went over the hood.
The cops in the report called both of us victims because I damaged his car, blamed my “high rate of speed,” and noted how he wouldn’t have been able to see me. Fucking nonsense.
We've induced a demand for cars by spending most of our transport budgets on widening highways and designing our cities for cars. As they say, build it and people will use it. Most people don't care how they get around as long as it's convenient and we've made the least efficient means of transporting people the default.
I agree, and I would also argue that focusing on car travel makes every other form of travel less convenient.
Because you have to battle the collateral damage that car infrastructure causes: grid lock, unsafe intersections, parking in bike lanes, the massive space required for parking lots, the noise and air pollution, the excess wear on infrastructure, danger to pedestrians and cyclists, etc...
Lessening car dependency makes other forms of transportation safer and more convenient as a side-effect.
That's the big caveat.
In my city, even driving on the congested streets during rush hour, it took my wife 35-40 min to get to her old job by car, or almost 2 hours by bus.
It's no wonder fewer people take the bus when those are the choices you are faced with.
Certainly! And that's the problem. We've been spending billions to expand highways and add new highways through cities, while chronically under-funding public transit and designing roads that are unsafe to cyclists and pedestrians. As cities continue to grow, adding highway lanes counterintuitively increases traffic due to induced and latent demand, when the most people will be moved by public transit, walking and bicycling. The only cure to traffic is viable alternatives to driving.