Comment by jules | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jules | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder if that expert has been to the Netherlands or Copenhagen. In fact I wonder whether he has really experienced a bike for day to day use, because some of the ideas are very strange. It's telling that most bikes in the pictures are racing bikes. What's the advantage of bikes in apartment buildings? Why not park the bike at the ground floor? It would waste a lot of space in the corridors. Think about what you'd rather have: 2 meters extra apartment, or 2 meters extra wide corridor.

Bikes in shops will not work either. Walking through a shop with a bike seems extremely unwieldy; you would need much larger space between the shelves. A bike in your hand makes it hard to pick up things from the shelves. A bike does not stay upright by itself when you go to pick up something from the shelves, so you have to park it with that thing that I don't know the English name of. Even then, if you load the bike with a bag of groceries it usually falls over. When you are walking on one side of your bike it's hard to reach over your bike while not falling over. Bike parking space is a non-problem compared to car parking space. No cars whatsoever is unrealistic even in bike utopia. How do you move big and heavy things? No ambulance, no fire trucks?

I think there's a different culture in places where bikes remained (like Netherlands & Denmark) as a major vehicle type and where they can back in recent decades.

In the places where they came back, it was a trendy sporty thing. Very expensive bikes became normal and when these new age cyclists try to use their bikes for transport they hit the theft and vandalism issue. Part of the solution in (EG) Netherlands is riding fairly inexpensive & simple bikes so that theft is not such a show stopper.

To the sporty newcomers, this seems like a crappy trade-off.

In fairness, The Netherlands is flat & small. You can cycle from the outskirts to centres of major cities in 30-45 minutes and even between some cities (EG Hague & Rotterdam) in an hour. Even with the wonderful infrastructure, it's probably not applicable in places like Sydney. To get from the centre to the western suburbs where most people live would take 3+ hours cycling. On a rickety Amsterdam classic it'd be quite a chore, much hillier and hotter. Even inner city Sydneysiders travel farther that Amsterdam Suburbanites. So, sydney cyclists dreaming of a bike-first world are thinking about maximum speed, the fitness to power up hills, sweat clothes and showers at every destination.

The Netherlands wasn't always bike friendly. There was a big push in the 70's to redesign cities and popularize cycling. It wasn't something that just happened or something that was always there.

I agree that you need to adapt the approach to the country or area. The real goal should be making the space in cities outside of buildings human friendly rather than only car friendly. This is about pedestrians, bikes, public transport, architecture, atmosphere, etc. In Sydney you could perhaps use public transport for long distances, with bikes for the last mile. This is also common in the netherlands for people who travel between cities. Or you could have electric bikes for hilly terrain and warm weather. Note that the netherlands is rainy and windy, and that's not nice for cycling either yet people still do it.

Agreed. Strangely, this concept seems to replicate with bikes most mistakes done previously with cars (and 60's concepts around planes). The designer is actually sort of aware of this, not understanding the consequences:

> "Residential bike parking should have the same space-syntax relationship to the front door and kitchen as car parking does in a contemporary house in the suburbs," Fleming says.

Designing cities around people, not a way to transport them, is missing from this approach.

It's actually a much harder challenge than figuring out funny (and unsustainable) ways to bring "speed" to personal transportation within cities. Creatively, this concept is entirely underwhelming.

> Designing cities around people, not a way to transport them, is missing from this approach.

Exactly! What a lot of bike activists seem to be missing is that bikes are just one part of this. Bikes are a means to an end. The goal is human friendly cities not bike friendly cities. Facilities for pedestrians are as important as facilities for cyclists. The relationship of cars to bikes is similar to the relationship of bikes to pedestrians. If you look at well designed cities they have a pedestrian focused centre, then around that a bike and car focused area. In Amsterdam you aren't allowed to bike in shopping streets. (I'm using Amsterdam as an example because it's known internationally, but as far as dutch cities go it's not that good, neither for pedestrians nor for cyclists).

Beyond that the atmosphere is important. If you want people to spend time walking and biking around cities you need safety yes, but that's just the start. Would you enjoy walking or biking around a city with massively wide and straight streets that go on for kilometers? I don't think so. You need cosy streets with shops and squares with bars with terraces and trees and parks and nice architecture. The livable space of a city shouldn't just be the inside of its buildings, and what's outside is just a way of getting to those buildings. The outside should itself be a livable space.

I'm a huge bike transportation enthusiast, and I agree with you. You don't have to take a bike literally everywhere for it to be useful. Even in the US, people don't demand that they be allowed to drive through an indoor shopping mall.

That said, there's a ridiculous amount of room for improvement in terms of adding bike paths and protected bike lanes in the US. Getting more of those would result in a huge boom in biking.

Kickstand?

Yes, thanks :)

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