Comment by apexalpha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apexalpha | Hacker News Reader

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It's too bad he never mentions the Netherlands. We have few metros but take his 'walk to the station' idea and introduced 'cycle to the station'. You can always store your bike at a Dutch trainstation and coupled with good cycling infrastructure this increases the area served by a station.

We also have cross-country trains every 10 minutes and if you get to a station where you don't have a bike you can rent one from the train company. Or rent a car if you're a bit further away.

There's always room for improvement but right now they have a 90% on time record on an open rail system they share with competitors, foreign train services, and freight trains.

Adding bikes to the equation could solve America's "but our urban communities are too sparse to be served by a metro/train". A bike gets you quite far in 10 minutes. Let alone an e-bike or an electric scooter.

In Utrecht, the main station in our star-grid, they just opened a bicycle parking with 22.000 spots! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8

edit: this is what our national rail looks like: https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaar...

The model is indeed great, but the situation in Amsterdam is not that good. Metro lines are crowded daily, not that clean (especially 51), often delayed, sometimes out of reach for commuting even with cycling. The 52 line is a dream but at that pace it will take half a century to be half as good as Tokyo’s.

Intercity (or even longer distance trips within the city) are not available nearly often or connected enough. The Ring roads are chock-full of cars even with massive 5-6 lane express ways all around.

> A bike gets you quite far in 10 minutes.

Not when there's a foot of snow on the ground, it doesn't.

The Dutch and Danish approach to cycling is just from a different world. Even cities that I consider decent for cycling, like Berlin, pale in comparison to any larger Dutch or Danish city. And once you introduce cycling into commuting systems at that scale, yes, it enables you to design those systems in new ways.

It also requires a shift in focus away from prioritising cars to prioritising pedestrians and cyclists. In the Netherlands, you can be sure that every town planner owns a bicycle and commutes on it frequently. I live in Ireland. I've met regional town planners here. None of them own a bicycle.

Traffic planners here call the traffic state when pedestrians are crossing the road "dead time".

One of these days when I've got nothing better to I'm going to put together a little photo essay of the bike racks I know of in my city that don't even work. Using a conventional U-lock you can't even lock your bike to them.

Some are too fat for a U-lock to fit around. Some are placed so close to a wall that you can't fit your bike in. Others have these vertical slats that you can stick your front tire in between, but you can't lock your frame to anything secure.

The people who designed and implemented these things must have never used a bicycle for practical purposes. The stupidity is mind boggling. It's not a difficult thing to get right.

> Others have these vertical slats that you can stick your front tire in between, but you can't lock your frame to anything secure.

This is probably copied from Copenhagen, where it's by far the most common type of rack.

Bicycles simply aren't locked to anything secure, unless you bring your own cable lock. That's something you might do with a flashy, new racing bike, or any other very new bike left outside e.g. into the late evening or night, although insurance should cover theft anyway.

If you have a kickstand, you don't even need to use the rack.

Fancy example: https://pricetags.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/norreport-2....

(The blame is still with the designer; it's obvious this isn't appropriate in many places outside Denmark.)

> Others have these vertical slats that you can stick your front tire in between, but you can't lock your frame to anything secure.

If this is what I'm picturing, you can often just lift the bike over so the rear of the front tire is in the vertical slats, instead of the front of the front tire. Then the frame is close to the rack, and you can lock your frame to the rack.

Stick your rear tyre into those slats, usually this allows locking frame and rear wheel. Wirelock on the frontwheel if wanted. Also, the foldable locks are much more practical than the U-style locks.

I'm pretty loyal to the U-lock, it's the fastest. When I was a messenger, locking and unlocking 50 times a day, we all used them. It takes 5 seconds when you got your system down.

Its really sad, not too long ago (60's) most of us didn't have cars and cycled. Heres a great example of how badly we've fucked ourselves up in the last few decades. https://www.flickr.com/groups/dublincyclelanes/

That's a good point. When I look at some stuff that's done for cyclists here in California I also have my doubts if any of the planners ever have used a bicycle.

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