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Comment by necubi | Hacker News Reader

I have trouble believing that simply making cycling more attractive will be enough to deal with the massive transportation problems that suburbs (and more so exurbs) create. No matter how nice the trails are, most people will not communicate by bike or walking.

The solution is to pack people more densely in mixed-use communities. Ideally most people would have their necessities within walking distance (grocery store, drug store, restaurants, movie theatre, bank, etc.) and public transportation to everything else, including work. Both of these goals can only be implemented affordably if population densities are high.

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Experience tells me you're wrong. I know people who walked one block to work every day of their lives, only to be critically injured by passing cars or trucks. I know plenty of of cyclists injured by buses pulling over to pick up passengers, or even by parked cars suddenly opening doors. Population density does not protect you from motor vehicle traffic density. Even bike lanes are dangerous when the only barrier is a line of paint. There is no reason pedestrians or cyclists need to be anywhere near motor vehicle traffic. Once this becomes a principle of residential planning, communities become far more liveable.

Those are anecdotes that don't address my main point, which is that there will be no mass turn towards biking merely because it is made more pleasant.

I offer as counterpoint Santa Cruz, CA, where I grew up. It's hard to imagine a more bike friendly city: there are bike lanes on nearly every road, there are special bike trails along many busy routes, and there are bike racks everywhere. And a lot more people bike than in other places I've lived.

But it's still a tiny minority, and the vast, vast majority of people drive everywhere because the city is too small and spread out to have decent public transportation.

True, anecdotes aren't proof. But how can you counter that making something more pleasant won't affect its popularity? Your original concern was that this wouldn't "be enough to deal with the massive transportation problems that suburbs (and more so exurbs) create." I agree that the sprawl of population over vast distances creates a dependency on individual motor vehicles that simply isn't going to disappear as the commute lengthens. But certainly, some relief is offered wherever consideration is given to pedestrians and cyclists. Consider how much worse your example of Santa Cruz would be if cycling were impossible.

Also note, I'm not only talking about commuting to work or shopping. I live in an area where every single structured activity my children are involved in (school, sports, entertainment, etc.) requires them to be chauffeured. That's one more car on the road that could have been avoided with better residential planning, urban or suburban.

No offense, but Santa Cruz is hardly a bicycling mecca. It's actually kind of bad for cycling - downtown is too congested, Pacifc Avenue is a one way, the east side is too spread out, once you go up the hills on the west side it's also too spread out, there are a lot of small and winding busy roads with no shoulder that you need to use to get from one part of the city to another, and the cops are hostile to cyclists. Even in California, you don't need to imagine a more bike friendly city, you can just visit Sacramento.

The parent is right - studies have shown that if you improve bicycling infrastructure, you increase the number of bicycle commuters. However, you are also correct... even in the American city with the most bicycle commuters (Minneapolis) the total percentage of commuters using bicycles is less than 3%. Unfortunately, the density of American cities does not lend itself to bike commuting. Even though it's not even ranked in the "best places to bike" articles, I thought Manhattan was the easiest place in the USA to get around on a bike.

even in the American city with the most bicycle commuters (Minneapolis) the total percentage of commuters using bicycles is less than 3%

Agreed with your agreement with comments above. We live in (the suburbs of) Minneapolis, and we bike-commute. Most of the time I actually walk to shopping or to the nearest branch of the county library system, but I bike to do various errands. My wife is a regular bike commuter, who has put on 2,000 miles of bike commuting in all seasons since a year ago. But this area is terribly spread out, and for purposes such as bringing children to soccer games we have to drive. (Yeah, I know, driving to go get exercise sounds more than a little odd, but that is why it is called "travel" soccer. Just getting to different "home" fields for practices in different age groups in the sprawling territory of our local soccer club involves a lot of driving, even though our U14 player does his utmost to bike himself to practices and some home games.) Quite apart from the weather here, it's hard to imagine the percentage of bike commuters in greater Minneapolis going much over 5 percent, simply because of how sprawling the metropolitan area is.

For a description of bicycling culture in Minnesota in January (winter), see

http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/1-bike-city-m...

I played travel soccer as a kid, but that's because we played all over the Southeast, mostly tristate area... Not because our parents drove us to practice.

Sac is a good place to bike? Better than SC? You've got to be kidding me. Davis - now that's a great place for biking.

Exactly, but that proves the point: Davis is a not a suburb -- it's exactly the kind of small town that started to disappear fifty years ago.

I've lived in the UK and Finland. When I lived in Finland, I cycled everywhere in town, for work and shopping and for pleasure (needless to say, I was more than a few pounds fitter).

I never, ever cycle in the UK.

Reason ? In Finland towns have cycle paths everywhere. It's safe. People take their little kids cycling. Lots of people cycle.

In the UK it's appallingly bad in comparison. Some places may have a few cycle lanes here and there for appearance's sake but in the main it's nothing. When you go cycling in the UK you're taking your life in your hands. You're a completely unprotected second-class citizen. A guy I knew died that way, hit and run by a taxi. I certainly wouldn't allow my kids to cycle here.

Certainly on road cycling in a British city can be "challenging" - I used to have a 10 mile cycle commute through the center of Edinburgh for a few years and I had a number of incidents that were pretty scary.

However, things are getting better - Edinburgh has a pretty decent cycle path network (mostly on old railway lines, so they sometimes appear to be ridiculously over-engineered - with huge bridges and tunnels). We had a family cycle on Sunday morning where we cycled for about 3 hours with perhaps 15 minutes of that being on roads.

I wouldn't let kids cycle on roads by themselves though - something I did as a child from an early age without thinking about the dangers (I did grow up in a small village in the north of Scotland!).

There's more to it than recreational cycle paths though.

In order to change people's lifestyle - i.e. to be a practical alternative to the car in cities - the paths have to go somewhere useful. In other words, you need cycle paths connecting offices, schools and shops. Even in Edinburgh I see that as a long way off - and the city council seem fit to sink money instead into the neverending tram fiasco.

Absolutely - one of things we were discussing as cycling along yesterday is what could have been done with a tiny percentage of the money wasted on the trams.

<sigh>

Really? I remember Oxford having a great many dedicated bike lanes (not just a part of the road), although maybe it's an outlier.

The big university cities tend to have good cycling. Oxford, Cambridge, and York I know are all good, although the car drivers may disagree. London careers from the brilliant to the disastrous, often within blocks of each other.

That's completely irrelevant to the point of the article. Simply put, building sewer systems and roads far distances for few people is expensive.

The point of the article is that the return value of suburbs is being propped up by new investment and they are destined for collapse (Ponzi scheme). There isn't a single fact in the whole muddled essay that supports this premise.

Once this becomes a principle of residential planning, communities become far more liveable.

It was reasonable for Le Corbusier to claim so in 1920. To believe it in 2011, one has to ignore the result of a century of doing it: the suburbs.

Experience tells me he's right tho. Here in Denver we actually have that green ribbon. You can easily bike from our very southern suburbs all the way to Downtown (or float if you choose too:>). It's an extensive, safe, and rather awesome system all around.

While it's a heavily used system, outside of the center ring it's mostly for fitness and leisurely bike rides more than anything else. No amount of niceness makes up for the fact that those suburbs are 30 minutes away by car. Most people just don't have two hours to dedicate to their commute.

The fundamental problem isn't that biking isn't pleasant enough, it's that in a far flung suburb and exurb it's just not a practical choice.

I think you and the grandparent are addressing different concerns. You're concerned with the act of walking or biking itself - such as its safety. He's concerned with having things to walk to.

That solution is New York City, especially the outer boroughs.

One word for you. Copenhagen.

And one word for you: Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is arguably the most bicycle-friendly city in the world. It has more bikes in it than people. The city is completely flat and designed for biking. Virtually everyone rides bikes. Bike lanes and bike racks are everywhere.

Bicycling around Amsterdam is one of the most pleasant activities I've ever engaged in. However, I wouldn't say that it makes for a nicer community on its own.

People are no more apt to socialize or feel part of the community if they're riding past each other on bikes at 10 mph than they are if they drive past each other at 60 mph or walk past each other at 3 mph. Though I suppose it is more likely that they'll stop and chat if they're walking or biking than if they're driving.

Public transportation unfortunately can't deal with mixed-use areas. It can deal with a nice big downtown commute center, but that's the opposite of mixed-use, and by definition someone works in all those non-residential locations.

This is a head scratcher.

Downtowns, by their nature, are the very epitome of mixed use. They are almost always populated (to some extent), sport shops and restaurants, as well as providing employment. It doesn't get more "mixed use" than that.

Public transit systems are at their most efficient in these environments. In my experience the cities that offer the best mixed use neighborhoods have the best transit systems, if for no other reason than high density, mixed use areas provide the highest economic impetus for transit in the first place.

How many downtowns are livable and enjoyable after 6pm? Some have pockets of activity, usually built with lots of subsidies and great effort (and they often have an eery feel of the-city-as-imagined-by-suburbanites). Skyscrapers are density without any of the advantages of density (http://newurbannetwork.com/news-opinion/blogs/michael-mehaff...). Even Manhattan, a kind of endless downtown, is at its best in the somewhat lower density areas that have fewer skyscrapers.

Victoria, B.C., which has crappier weather than most places I've lived, has a fantastic arterial bike path which penetrates to the core of downtown. I have never in my life seen so many commuting cyclists at rush hour.

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