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Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

I always dislike these comparisons. The truth is simply that it depends. You can't justify an unknown city having a certain quality of bus routes compared to a diverse range of tens of countries by saying "it's smaller".

It'd be slower and more expensive in some parts of the UK, easier in others and in some countries I assume you'd be expected to just cycle the 6 miles.

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Which ones would that be?

6 miles is 10 km, that's a nice ride but I've never heard of traffic planners that expect 10km rides.

Maybe I'm totally wrong on this, I guess it just didn't seem like an odd choice in the UK and other countries have much stronger focus on cycling. "People I know" will be a hugely unrepresentative sample though.

For another unrepresentative sample, cycling commuters on strava average a bit over 10 miles: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-pai...

I can't find the stat I want for Copenhagen, they have 1/3rd to 1/2 of people commuting by bike but I can't find out how many journeys of ~10km are completed by bike. I know it's a small number of cycle journeys, as many are shorter, but that's not quite what I'm after.

It may be over half commuting by bike now.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revol...

I can't seem to find mode share as a function of commute distance.

Pure anecdata, but when I worked in El Segundo and lived in Santa Monica, I usually cycled the 12 miles to work. It took about 5 minutes longer than the drive.

Thanks, I saw references to it being 50% but then also found a source where 50% was simply an aim so assumed it had been taken out of context. I think from that article the figure might be over 40% though at least.

I think it doesn't seem a totally odd choice in the UK partly because the public transport is often pretty poor (London is a huge exception to the usual UK situation). Certainly here in Cambridge I'd choose a 6 mile cycle over the bus every time. But then I enjoy my (4 mile) cycle commute; I don't think I'm particularly representative. The right fix is for the buses to be better.

AFAIK, most traffic planners seem to believe that "if you build the streets/intersections for cycles, people will use cycles a great deal up to about x km, but only rarely for longer trips" for some x. I've heard different values of x, nothing close to 10. I'm sure it depends on the climate, terrain, etc.

I'd be very interested in hearing about any place that uses a value as high as 10km, and the rationale.

As the person commenting on that article points out, cyclists using strava are probably more likely to be athletic and cycle further and faster than cyclists not using strava

> cycle the 6 miles

The minority cycles. Crowded cyclists are hardly better than crowded cars.

They take up less space and result in less pollution and a healthier population. In what way do you think they're about the same?

I get the sense you are imagining this:

https://bicycledutch.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/amsterdam.j...

But the pragmatic reality is that in much of the world that has had such a bike culture, you will eventually end up with this:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QSXDqDni9VE/maxresdefault.jpg

Cars, although far less dense, are objectively better than the latter case. Safer, quieter, less polluting.

"Cars, although far less dense, are objectively better than the latter case. Safer, quieter, less polluting. "

Citation desperately needed. Also, keep in mind there are different ways of defining "safe". Cars are only "safe" inasmuch as they are safer for the occupants and incredibly dangerous for everyone else around. If we considered harm to people _outside_ the car we would view them as much more dangerous (and walking, motorcycling, cycling, etc as being much safer)

Safer? Debatable. There are no cars in that picture, which represent the largest danger to moped riders.

You'd also need a road 10x wider for the same volume of traffic.

I was mostly referring to congestion.

(They certainly have advantages like exercise, noise, and storage space.)

Bicycles are physically smaller, but they still need a substantial safety zone, just like cars. It's easier and faster to stop a 25mph car than a 25mph bike.

Bikes need a lot less space than a car. Look at some videos of Copenhagen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYGL80qx71g if cars were that close to each other they'd be intersecting.

> It's easier and faster to stop a 25mph car than a 25mph bike

Really? Is it that much different? Nothing I found was particularly conclusive but didn't suggest much of a difference.

....

Perhaps you can enlighten us as to how getting hit by a bicycle is comparable to getting hit by a Land Rover?

Land Rovers do not drive on sidewalks, for a start.

Bit of a strawman, since bicycles should drive in their own lanes.

"should" is the key word here.

Have you never seen a car mount the pavement in order to get around a blocking vehicle? Or even to park, straddling the pavement and the road?

To park, not to drive. And the speed in this case is 2km/h instead of bicyclist doing 20 among pedestrians.

Bicycles and Land Rovers are both operated on the street. Humans are on the street as well, with varying degrees of protection. I often use the street while mounted on a bicycle. If my skull is crushed by a Land Rover's tire that will be a markedly different experience from my skull being hit by a bicycle tire.

Please elaborate; I don't really understand what you mean.

GP's point was that bicycles are fairly often operated on sidewalks. Percentage-wise, way more frequently than cars/trucks are operated on sidewalks.

GP's point was asinine as well. They have failed to address the core issue - the difference between operating a two+ tonne metal box and a 15 kilo bicycle, and how getting hit by either of those varies.

Crowded cyclists are much denser than crowded cars.

http://www.bikehub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Munster1...

That's a really shitty comparison. Unless cyclists really do drive in such packs (which they don't). In reality, the effective space taken by cyclist on genera purpose road is bigger than a car — you need a huge safety margin to overtake a cyclist, and if you cannot do that you a forced to follow them untill you can and that's really ineffective. All this does not apply to dedicated cyclist roads/lanes, of course.

Yes, if cyclists have to use infrastructure not designed for them, then they likely take up a fair amount of space.

But that doesn't make the comparison "shitty", it just means you need to do more than convincing people to cycle to get the advantages.

Depends where you are but some cities easily have the density suggested there.

> In reality, the effective space taken by cyclist on genera purpose road is bigger than a car — you need a huge safety margin to overtake a cyclis

More than a car? I've certainly not been given more space when people overtake me. Remember a car is 6 feet wide, that's quite a bit of space already that's taken up by a car.

I can assure you most drivers don't concern themselves with providing huge safety margins.

Also, when you have a decent number of cyclists and congested roads they often do travel in packs. See here for an example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-4ynw8672A

or here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhuxmiNsHmA

The city in these videos has many cyclists (and one of the most successful bike-share schemes in the world), but rather scandalously provides very little bike infrastructure and even less enforcement (bike lanes are generally used for parking).

Finally, you might wish to note that one generally refers to "riding" a bike in English, rather than "driving". The same goes for motorcycles in most contexts. This is different from some other languages, such as German, where the same word is used for operating all of those conveyances.

You have never commuted by bike in London.

http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/upl...

Please come visit the Netherlands.

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