Question for the anti-bike / anti-bus people

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly how many people are driving on those streets at the same time?

Exactly. Those streets are getting more traffic volume of cars and buses in one day than the number of cyclists in one month. Hoarding valuable pulkic resources for a select few individuals is indefensible.

You neglected to include numbers. But a little back of the envelope math says that you're off by a significant margin. Traffic counts in surrounding street put numbers at about 15-20k per day, averaging out to maybe 5k vehicles per travel lane at most (I'm looking at 2018 numbers, so pre-pandemic, which is probably more generous to cars). A bike lane takes up a fraction of the space of a car travel lane though, so a more reasonable comparison is probably on the order of 5-10 to 1 right now. As our bike infrastructure evolves, that ratio will continue to go down. Plus, bike infrastructure slows down drivers, which makes it harder for them to kill pedestrians, and makes the streets more pleasant for everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of public transportation and biking for those who are able; but you have to acknowledge that the vast majority of people cannot and will not use a bike as their primary mode of transportation for day to day activities. It just doesn't work.

What exactly is stopping the “vast majority of people”? Could it perhaps be the perceived lack of safety due to the lack of protected bike lanes?

Why I don't bike besides safety:

(1) Don't want to get to work and be sweaty or ruin my clothes.
(2) Drive my kids to school (they are too big to put in one of those Amsterdam style bikes) - we live too far away to walk and bus service doesn't come often enough in the AM. (They do take the bus home.)
(3) My street is too steep on the way back. I'd have to walk the bike up hills which would take too long. (I work full time.)
(4) I only have time to grocery shop once a week, so it's too much to fit in a bike.
(5) For short trips on mostly flat surfaces, I'd consider it, but worried about the bike getting stolen.

You're allowed to make those choices, but there are ways people work around all those challenges.

For example, during colder months it's easy to not get sweaty. During the summer there are sometimes gyms that let you use shower only for a low cost. With more people biking there will be more demand for places to shower when needed.
With more kids biking they can bike themselves.

#3 is weird - most bikes have a low gear that you can use to go up a hill without being Arnold Schwarzenegger

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's be real. People driving cars are hogging the roads. Everyone else gets scraps. They like to try to pit us against each other but there's no question that the real problem is that we give too much space to individuals driving alone in oversized cars.

Roads were built for cars and busses.

Many of them were originally built for bicycles, but carry on.

This is one of the most incredibly stupid and ignorant things I have read in a long time. L’Enfant’s plan was created in 1790. The modern bicycles was not even invented until 1885.

Can you not be so friggin’ dumb all the time?

Roads, as in paved roads, silly billy. Here’s your reference: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/19/8253035/roads-cyclists-cars-history

Hopefully this will help you in your quest to be less “incredibly stupid and ignorant”, not to be mention “so friggin’ dumb”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you really interested in the status quo (or how it was 20 years ago)? Everyone drives everywhere? I'm having a hard time understanding how that works out from a space / traffic / environment standpoint. What's your vision?

The best way to fix the problem you are concerned with is to better position jobs in communities outside of the usual suspect metropolitan areas.

Not only would you tackle the congestion, you would also address the affordability issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of public transportation and biking for those who are able; but you have to acknowledge that the vast majority of people cannot and will not use a bike as their primary mode of transportation for day to day activities. It just doesn't work.

What exactly is stopping the “vast majority of people”? Could it perhaps be the perceived lack of safety due to the lack of protected bike lanes?

Why I don't bike besides safety:

(1) Don't want to get to work and be sweaty or ruin my clothes.
(2) Drive my kids to school (they are too big to put in one of those Amsterdam style bikes) - we live too far away to walk and bus service doesn't come often enough in the AM. (They do take the bus home.)
(3) My street is too steep on the way back. I'd have to walk the bike up hills which would take too long. (I work full time.)
(4) I only have time to grocery shop once a week, so it's too much to fit in a bike.
(5) For short trips on mostly flat surfaces, I'd consider it, but worried about the bike getting stolen.

For (1), lobby your employer to put in a locker room and showers. It’s much cheaper and more socially responsible than building a parking garage or subsidizing private parking. But in reality, there is only a couple of months a year where you are going to get sweaty after a ride. As long as you can access a bathroom, you can change clothes.

For (2), protected bike lanes will help your children bike safely to school.

(3) makes me wonder where you live. San Francisco, is it? There are few if any streets in DC that cannot be ascended by a reasonably fit person on a geared bike. See also e-bikes.

On (4), are bike trailers for that, but fine. Before I owned a car, I’d rent a car for a few hours to do a monthly grocery run.

(5) is strange. I’ve ridden a bike all over DC for 5 years. Never had it stolen or anything stolen off it. My bike isn’t worth a lot. If it did get stolen, I’m still ahead by thousands of dollars versus what it would have cost to do the equivalent distance by self-drive or rideshare.

[Anonymous]

Also, cars get stolen / broken into. It feels like a similar rate to me. It's just a lot less expensive to replace a bike.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you really interested in the status quo (or how it was 20 years ago)? Everyone drives everywhere? I'm having a hard time understanding how that works out from a space / traffic / environment standpoint. What's your vision?

The best way to fix the problem you are concerned with is to better position jobs in communities outside of the usual suspect metropolitan areas.

Not only would you tackle the congestion, you would also address the affordability issue.

It's not like the environmental problems will catch up to us in our lifetime, just our kids and grandkids. And since it'll disproportionately hit the poor, we don't need to really worry about that.

/s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Let's be real. People driving cars are hogging the roads. Everyone else gets scraps. They like to try to pit us against each other but there's no question that the real problem is that we give too much space to individuals driving alone in oversized cars.

Roads were built for cars and busses.

Many of them were originally built for bicycles, but carry on.

This is one of the most incredibly stupid and ignorant things I have read in a long time. L’Enfant’s plan was created in 1790. The modern bicycles was not even invented until 1885.

Can you not be so friggin’ dumb all the time?

Roads, as in paved roads, silly billy. Here’s your reference: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/19/8253035/roads-cyclists-cars-history

Hopefully this will help you in your quest to be less “incredibly stupid and ignorant”, not to be mention “so friggin’ dumb”.

This is the DC local politics forum moron. The streets in DC were designed before bikes were even invented. GD you people are dumb as bricks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about the pro-bike / anti-bus people? Seems to be the main category of cycling advocates in the area.

Is it okay if someone is anti-bike / pro-bus? That seems to be the main category of anti-bike people in the area.

I don't know that I've ever met a pro-bike anti-bus person. Maybe there are a few that exist, but I don't think that's much of a thing.

Every single red shared bus and bike lane is pro-bike and anti-bus. The idea that a bus load of people should be inconvenienced in a priority lane for one person on a bike going 5 miles per hour is very much a pro-bike and anti-bus.

Nice try. Most cyclists do 15-20 mph and are much faster than buses that stop every few hundred yards. I ride on shared lanes daily and have never once had a bus behind me. The lanes are regularly blocked by parked or waiting vehicles, however.

Wrong. Nice try.

[Anonymous]

Buses travel an average of 12 mph, so pretty reasonable to have buses and bikes together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Buses travel an average of 12 mph, so pretty reasonable to have buses and bikes together.

Assuming that this is even true, if you delay a bus behind a bicycle then the average travel time would be even lower. This would make bus travel unusuable as a form of transit because it would then be faster to walk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly how many people are driving on those streets at the same time?

Exactly. Those streets are getting more traffic volume of cars and buses in one day than the number of cyclists in one month. Hoarding valuable pulkic resources for a select few individuals is indefensible.

You neglected to include numbers. But a little back of the envelope math says that you're off by a significant margin. Traffic counts in surrounding street put numbers at about 15-20k per day, averaging out to maybe 5k vehicles per travel lane at most (I'm looking at 2018 numbers, so pre-pandemic, which is probably more generous to cars). A bike lane takes up a fraction of the space of a car travel lane though, so a more reasonable comparison is probably on the order of 5-10 to 1 right now. As our bike infrastructure evolves, that ratio will continue to go down. Plus, bike infrastructure slows down drivers, which makes it harder for them to kill pedestrians, and makes the streets more pleasant for everyone else.

DP here. Inventing numbers out of thin air looks really dumb. Also, I am not sure where you live but in DC the bike lanes remove whole travel lanes, not a “fraction of the space”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buses travel an average of 12 mph, so pretty reasonable to have buses and bikes together.

Assuming that this is even true, if you delay a bus behind a bicycle then the average travel time would be even lower. This would make bus travel unusuable as a form of transit because it would then be faster to walk.

You mean what car traffic does to buses? Bikes don't do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buses travel an average of 12 mph, so pretty reasonable to have buses and bikes together.

Assuming that this is even true, if you delay a bus behind a bicycle then the average travel time would be even lower. This would make bus travel unusuable as a form of transit because it would then be faster to walk.

You mean what car traffic does to buses? Bikes don't do that.

Keep up. The PP was discussing the shared bus/bike lanes, which are obviously anti-bus. In any case, cars also go faster than bicycles. Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buses travel an average of 12 mph, so pretty reasonable to have buses and bikes together.

Assuming that this is even true, if you delay a bus behind a bicycle then the average travel time would be even lower. This would make bus travel unusuable as a form of transit because it would then be faster to walk.

You mean what car traffic does to buses? Bikes don't do that.

Keep up. The PP was discussing the shared bus/bike lanes, which are obviously anti-bus. In any case, cars also go faster than bicycles. Hope this helps.

Oh I'm keeping up. It's just your "logical" seems like a lot of theoretical conjecture that doesn't actually take place in real life. The actual situation in DC is that buses are held up by car traffic, not bikes.