The "flat" argument made sense a while ago in my opinion. As someone who live in a very non-flat region, biking, especially "daily life" biking was not a good solution.
This argument is now dead with the rise of electric bikes.
I live in Montana in a city that is extremely bike friendly relative to nearby states. Still the little bits of friction make choosing to bike difficult. My work commute is 3 miles with a bike path most of the way, and then a bike lane for most of the rest. I biked to work every day this last year (even through the snow) and I loved it, but it made me bitter to how much cars are preferred.
Some of the crosswalks I use are parallel to a 45MPH stroad and I hate crossing them. Cars barely have to slow down to take the huge turns and they never are looking for pedestrians/bikes. I always stop and wait for a gap in cars because the chances I'm seen are just too low. Not Just Bikes has a good video on making crosswalks safer and I wish my city would take notes. One of my friends has been hit by a car 3 times because he's more reckless on crosswalks than me - I hate saying reckless because it should be a place that's safe for him to cross - no injuries ever.
In winter the bike paths were sometimes plowed, other times they'd just wait until the next storm. Snow drifts never were plowed. Studded tires are a must. The unreliability was a huge pain. I remember one snow storm came in while I was working and I had to walk my bike most of the way home.
Some of the lights make pedestrians wait an entire light cycle to cross so I'll leave the bike path to ride in the road just to save time. I know they do it in the name of safety so that bikes cross right when the light is green and are more visible, but it's hugely punishing to bike commute times, and I would argue that it's no safer. Cars aren't going to see bikes either way. I've complained to my city twice about one particularly dangerous intersection on the bike path and was told they have a 7 year plan to make it safer. No details how. I hope for once it involves slowing down cars.
Also, for the small section of my commute in the painted bike lane, I've been pushed off the road twice by cars. Both times on their cellphones. So I don't see painted bike lanes as offering any protection at all.
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags: