Comment by awjr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by awjr | Hacker News Reader

I'm chair of CycleBath (http://www.cyclebath.org.uk) and we're having one hell of a time pushing for better cycle infrastructure. I think one of the more interesting problems we have is that cyclists are treated as an outlier group within the UK.

There are certain cities that "get" cycling e.g. Cambridge ( https://vimeo.com/133736570) but persuading the general public that it is worth spending money on cycling is extremely hard. We have recently taken the approach to educate people that attend the Police Community Liaison meetings where they can spend 50%+ of the time discussing illegal pavement cycling, as to why it happens. http://cyclebath.org.uk/2015/08/24/how-to-solve-pavement-cyc...

I truly believe that the transport policy of your local authority defines the health and wellbeing of your residents. I think the fact the cost of healthcare in the UK is "hidden" as it is "free" has subtlety enabled a car centric culture to persist. My father who lives in Florida stated that people are demanding cycle tracks. They want to keep fit and keep their healthcare insurance low.

In the UK obesity in boys is around 16%, in the Netherlands it's around 1.6%.

The other problem with cycle infrastructure is that if it's not good for a 7 year old to ride on, it's not going to work for the general public. Segregation is key and definitely do not allow your local authority to create shared space where pedestrians and cyclists mix "happily".

Then you have the biggest issue. Cycle infrastructure is only as good as the weakest link. So local residents can massively impact the quality of the network and thus the ability for people 5 miles away to make a decision to choose to cycle. So you get a piece-meal approach to cycle network development in the hope that it will join up eventually :(

As an aside, I noted somebody felt 10miles was too far on a bike. I would suggest investigating e-bikes. They are rather good these days and can happily tank along at 15.5mph (Europe), even faster in some countries.

>In the UK obesity in boys is around 16%, in the Netherlands it's around 1.6%.

Not to detract much from your larger point, but this is much more likely due to diet than cycling. If the UK is picking up eating habits similar to the US, the ~200 calories a day you might burn from a leisurely bike commute (can't be vigorous enough to cause sweating) isn't going to be enough to offset the big caloric imbalances that lead to obesity.

How is ~10% of average daily caloric intake insignificant?

Exactly, especially when it's the last 10% that makes the most difference in deciding whether there's a caloric deficit, break-even or surplus, and that over time these small differences compound to radical changes in bodyweight.

When you're 500 over, you need to recognize that biking isn't going to fix your problem. People pretend exercise just magically fixes obesity when it's rarely that close of an imbalance for obese (not overweight) people.

You'll gain weight at half the rate.

I'm not saying kids are not fat in the Netherlands, just not obese. Something like 60% of kids cycle to school in the Netherlands. It's estimated that about 22% of rush hour in the UK is the school run.

I'm trying to look at Cambridge obesity rates vs other cities to see if there is some correlation.

EU obesity rates with the UK at 26% and Netherlands at 11%. Italy is even better, so diet is obviously a key factor. http://www.dw.com/en/rising-eu-obesity-rings-alarm-bells-in-...

I've looked at obesity studies in the UK and the child focused ones look at the location of fast food restaurants close to schools. I've never seen a study that looks at obesity rates and examines the Local Authorities transport policies. Cambridge, Bristol and some parts of London are possibly good control groups. I know Bath has better health than the UK average, but 27% of people walk to work.

On the other hand, the typical diet in the Netherlands consists largely of cheese and mayonnaise.

The parents who pedal their kids around in a bakfiets [1] (the Dutch equivalent of an SUV) have every incentive to raise their children to be slim, and the parents get a lot of exercise themselves.

[1] http://bicyclebelleboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Bak...

In terms of US eating diet in the UK, well the Netherlands is kind of split there. On the one hand it's the most americanised country in Europe, on the other hand it's got its own distinct eating culture, breakfast in the Netherlands isn't really like anywhere on the planet and food eaten during school is mostly homemade (although by highschool this starts to fade).

But cycling can be significant. 200 calories per day is probably pretty accurate, I'd say it's more like 250 though. We're talking then about 1750 calories per week. Now if you were at caloric break even point, added an exercise that lost 1750 calories per week, ceteris paribus, that's about half a pound of weight loss per week. Over the course of a year that's 25 pounds. Or in other words, if you were at a caloric surplus (of 250 kcal per day) such that you'd gain 25 pounds every year during school, adding this exercise would totally negate that slow path to obesity. It's hugely significant.

Not just that but even if it prevents a small weight increases of say 10 in that year, and improves endurance and cardiovascular health due to daily exercise, kids will feel better and are more prone to trying out sports than if they'd already start to be overweight (or even obese) and have poor condition. (not because they don't need it, but because so many people start to identify them as a non-sports person, and many obese people start to self-identify with this, too). And that has compounding longer term effects.

Beyond that, I fully agree with the notion that you can't exercise away a bad diet, it's trivially easy to eat quantities of food that take massive exercise effort to counterbalance. But for kids in the Netherlands I do think cycling is pretty significant.

> It's the most americanised country in Europe

What makes you think that?

Strange, I distinctly remember reading a study about this a few years back, was in all the newspapers, too. Can't find even a trace of this right now, will have to take this back then.

I could make a claim for a high degree of americanisation based on a bunch of anecdotal evidence and references to e.g. France being distinctly French, like Spain or say Italy, but Dutch culture & media being very US dominated. (which isn't anything new, last century we were as impressionable by french, german and British culture), but at most I could say it's pretty americanised, not necessarily the most.

Either way, it doesn't really extend to kid's staple diets all that much anyway. Nobody eats hagelslag on bread haha.

The reason I ask, is because especially in a social and political culture, the USA and the Netherlands are vastly different.

We Dutch are social democrats, and (nearly) any politician from the USA would be considered extreme-right here. Our healthcare, education and justice systems are way different.

Our media is nothing like the american media in terms of shock and entertainment value. Most newspapers and news stations stick to reporting the news, and do not sensationalize.

Work and living culture is very different as well. Here, people do not hail 'the american dream' and overachievers. People strive to be happy, and work only as much as necessary to achieve that. 80% is the norm here, not full time.

The only thing that I can think of as being americanised is pop music.

Oh absolutely, I think there's also definitely a sense of disdain for the US in the Netherlands for many of the reasons you mention. (democrats being much further right than even the VVD, healthcare had been a joke for decades, substantial debt as a condition for getting a college education, public schools being sub-par, media like Fox News are a joke etc). My point wasn't in saying that the Netherlands is like it, but rather that compared to say France or Germany or Italy or many European countries, we've drawn a lot from the US. The vast majority of all popular movies, music, television shows and books are from the US. Not to mention consumer culture.

And while we're pretty good at standing our ground, we tend to flirt with a lot of American concepts. For example mandatory sentences, a staple of the American justice system, has been numerously put forward by some Dutch politicians, despite fierce resistance from judges and attorneys. Private schools, honours programmes, the removal of study finance during a slow rise of private funding by scholarships. In healthcare we've seen a very slow but noticeable trend to drop fundamental aspects of healthcare from mandatory collective basic insurance towards 'additional' insurance packages, from 'de pill' (not insured for 21 and older) to the majority of dental work. Some years ago we flirted with flexible pricing in dental work, fortunately when it turned out to be a disaster the government didn't double down but sensibly shut it down. And in the rest of society we saw a period of deregulation (since the crisis the trend partially reversed) and privatisation.

You can find these influences all over Europe of course, but the degree of pervasiveness of American influence in say France or Germany isn't quite as large. France has Hollywood, sure, but mixed with French cinema, and often dubbed.

Let's not forget for example that France actually has specific anti-foreign policies. It's not often discussed but France has had screen quotas for decades, i.e. cinemas aren't allowed to show foreign movies for substantial parts of the year. 40% of TV must be exclusively French and another 20% European, leaving American influence a minority. Stuff like that is intentional, to have France remain French, in the Netherlands it's contrary to our international diplomatic and business model which is to be an open economy, which is susceptible to influences from abroad, and naturally in particular from the world's hegemony. In France it's called cultural exceptionalism, mostly practiced in cinema and literature. As a proxy of its success in sustaining a vibrant French cinema industry you could point to a study (pretty old now) in the late 90s about the number of cinema festivals France held compared to other European countries here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/fr/timeline/13255a67e...

But I do agree with you we've been able to do things a 'Dutch way' quite well, and sensible Dutch policy is pretty much the only source of nationalism or pride for the country I have. (I'm normally not much of a chauvinist)

> The other problem with cycle infrastructure is that if it's not good > for a 7 year old to ride on, it's not going to work for the general public.

Bikes are children's toys, that's so... Saudi Arabia?

I really consider this a terrible design principle, because nobody likes to be treated like a seven year old and doing so could be a serious disincentive against cycling for anyone but the most irrationally fearsome. Design for competent cyclists, everyone can eventually become one. If the result happens to good for the seven year old, fine, it'd not that unlikely if money and space permits it at all. If not, treat children like pedestrians and grant the appropriate exceptions in law for supervising adults. They are surely not the kind of cyclist who causes havoc on the sidewalk today (this won't work in exceptionally walked places like most of Manhattan, but there, nothing less than a complete network of elevated bikeways could be made even remotely child-proof while providing real transport and not just some recreational riding in a park).

The issue is that people cycle despite the conditions and pavement cycling is illegal in some countries (UK). Also pavement cycling is slow and tedious compared to on-road cycling or within a dedicated cycle track.

The idea of making a cycle route "child proof" is not to appeal to current cyclists, but to persuade people that want to cycle but feel the roads are just to dangerous to share them with buses, to get on a bike.

Taking Bath, UK as an example, the river to the west of Bath has a shared use traffic free child friendly path that connects that area to the heart of the city with 12% of people cycling to work. A similar area without that connection on the east side is about 5% http://datashine.org.uk/#table=QS701EW&col=QS701EW0010&ramp=...

This is all about persuading parents that it is safe to let their kids cycle to school as the roads are designed to accommodate that should a child fall off his bike they won't be killed by a car running them over. With that type of infrastructure in place you get a massive uptake.

Cycling with children is slow and tedious, so it's a perfect fit. And yes, I was talking about changing the law. Here in Germany we are half way there, it's mandatory for children, but forbidden for their supervisors who are also not allowed to let younger children ride three unsupervised. Perfect catch 22.

Who's talking about cycling with children? I'm talking about kicking them out on their bike and having them cycle to school on their own.

In Germany it's mandatory for children to ride on the sidewalk. But for an adult accompanying the child, it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk.

Is "pavement cycling" (cycling on the sidewalk) a really big problem in the UK? It's come up a few times in this thread. It's illegal in Boston, as well, but basically a non-issue. I occasionally see people doing it, but it's usually children or someone making a quick detour.

The reason why adults in the netherlands are biking is because they started at age 7 or younger. So at least from this perspective it's a sound design principle. Making safe bikeways is easy and benefits 7 year olds and adults alike: instead of making streets have [bike lane][car lane][car lane][bike lane] make streets like [car lane][car lane] || [bike lane][bike lane].

I started cycling at a similar age ("or younger"), but my radius of operation was not very large at the time. No amount of cycling infrastructure could have changed that. Designing for children can't be free from tradeoffs and it's counterproductive to follow that goal in places where children would not go anyway.

Flipping lanes around is all fun and games until you need to have some kind of intersection (or, even worse: tiny access roads to private properties. This is where wrong-sided bike lanes kill)

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