What would it ACTUALLY take for you to consider biking or taking the bus, in lieu of motoring?

[Anonymous]

In this area??? Nothing. You gotta be insane to want to use the bike lanes here or have a death wish.

Don't get even started on the bus and this from someone who used to take the bus for many years.

[Anonymous]

"Motoring"?

[Anonymous]

For me to bike tbh I would have to live in a place with a different climate, different topography, protected bike lanes and clear rules. I hate how as a driver and pedestrian, I never know what a bicycle is going to do. I get that’s largely because the rules for bicycles don’t make sense for them but I hate the chaos element.

I used to take the bus regularly and it was because it ran near my house to near my work, more or less continuously during rush hour. But since it was a useful bus (the 42/43) it was always crowded. I didn’t like that part. I feel the same way about the train in the Before Times, I haven’t done any of this post Covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With buses and public transportation generally, you are going to get a lot of people explaining that they don't want to be in close proximity to poor people. I mean, they'll say "safety" or something, but this is what they mean.

Also, some people just don't want to be in proximity to people generally, I've found. I am a longtime bus rider and have had many coworkers and neighbors tell me they couldn't do it because it means being near too many people. They don't want to make eye contact with other people, be close enough to smell them (even if they smell objectively good I guess, though as a longtime bus rider I can assure you most people do not smell objectively good, especially in the summer), and -- god forbid -- speak with them.

This is a major cultural obstacle to widespread adoption of public transportation in the US, I think. People have become very accustomed to personal space, being on their own personal timeline, not having to perform the basic niceties of being in public. Covid has made it worse. I don't know how to change it. I have always kind of liked being around other people, but I've learned I"m an outlier here.

What a ridiculous comment. I have no problem being near poor people (how would I even know they're poor)? It's the mentally ill and criminals that I'd prefer to not be around because I'd like to return home to my family at the end of the workday.

Agreed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I drive an electric car. You should take a break because this is an unhealthy obsession.

Electric cars solve one of the problems with cars, namely: tailpipe emissions. But that's the only one.

E-bikes and Electric cars have the same environmental impacts.

No, this isn’t true at all. Yes, both of them have environmental costs from battery mining, but e-bike batteries are so much smaller than car batteries that comparing them is silly. E-bikes are clearly the far superior environmental choice to electric cars (and I say that as someone who has an electric car, and also a non-electric bike).

Are you capable of not trying to claim your opinion as fact? The PP that said you are perseverating was correct.

Here are some facts. Once you have opened a mine, the marginal impact of the additional materials is less significant. You still need one mine for one E-bike and one mine for one electric car. It is the same for the whole supply chain. The rest of the materials are also the same: steel, rubber tires, etc. The only major material that cars have that e-bikes don’t is glass, but that is the most easily and best recycled material in the world.

So do you have any facts or just more opinions?

I don't know who you think you're replying to, but this post that you replied to was my first post in this thread, so I know for a fact that the PP who said someone was perseverating was not talking about me.

Aside from the efficiency argument another poster made -- you can make far, far more bike batteries from one lithium mine than you can car batteries -- there have been a lot of studies that find e-bikes are much better for the environment than EVs are. That's partly because bikes of any kind are better for the environment than cars of any kind; here's a study in the UK that found that electric cars lead to added congestion because (while they do have zero direct emissions, which is why I personally have an electric car), they're ultimately still just... another car on the road: https://electrek.co/2019/07/08/study-electric-bicycles-better-than-electric-cars/

Another study notes that the carbon footprint of manufacturing one e-bike is about 165 kg, compared to 5.5 tons to manufacture a small hatchback and 13 tons to manufacture an SUV (not sure if the carbon footprint of manufacturing an EV is more or less than an ICE car, but either way, it's not comparable to a bike): https://eponline.com/articles/2023/01/13/environmental-impact-of-bikes-and-e-bikes.aspx

I don't know what side of the bike/bus vs. car argument you're taking in this thread. And, again, I have an electric car and don't have an electric bike, so I'm arguing against my own interests here. But it's absurd to claim that e-bikes and electric cars have the same impact on the environment, and it's also absurd to claim that's just my opinion.

[Anonymous]

I have in the past regularly taken the bus, the metro, or my bike to work downtown depending on where I was living at the time. The things I personally noticed that would help:

The bike trail gets super dark on the VA side after you pass the airport. I had a good headlight but still felt like I could hit a branch and go flying. Wish there were more light posts.

On nice evenings the trail would get super crowded and a*hole cyclists would still be going 30mph zooming past families…need a separate trail or lane I guess.

More reliable bus times, switching around on the different apps is annoying. It’s stressful to sit on the train or bus trying to figure out how fast you need to run to catch the connection.

Less time between metro trains would hopefully increase ridership. No one wants to wait 20 mins.

Later bus service from Pentagon. It starts super early because they expect mostly military to be riding, but it means I have to leave my office at 5:30 on the dot to catch the metro over to pentagon and make the last bus home. Sometimes they leave a few minutes early and you’re screwed, I’ve ended up taking group Ubers from there in order to ride the express lanes and get home without sitting in traffic.

I have no complaints with the actual buses I’ve been on, there were only a few times I felt unsafe when there was a mentally ill person on board and it was late at night. I’ve taken them all over the city and tend to prefer them over the train. I love biking as well but it can be stressful with aggressive drivers and cyclists around you. I’ve been hit a few times and had to be late to work to get a CT scan as a result.

[Anonymous]

Folks writing masters theses about bicycles and buses are embarrassing themselves. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?

[Anonymous]

DC not being full of lunatics with hand to hand combat weapons led by the lunatics on the DC Council who think hugs are a fit punishment for crime. Yeah, that.

So basically, it would take the National Guard back on the streets like Jan 7th or being Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Geneva instead of Cali, Minsk or Lagos

[Anonymous]

More frequent buses inside beltway. I ride to metro from close in VA and it can be tricky making the train I need. It would be nice to have rail work done too. I like the newer card with more standing room. Signs outside stations on train times would be fantastic.

[Anonymous]

Protected bike lanes away from roads. Patrols and no assaults or robberies. Very secure bike storage at my destination and harsh punishments for bike thieves.

[Anonymous]

I live in DC and drive to work alone in the deep suburbs in a transit inaccessible location. It’s not feasible to bicycle, I’m not moving to the suburbs and I’m not going to change jobs over this. So there is nothing that will get me to consider transit or the bus, but thanks for asking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, the obesity rate in this country is almost 42%:https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2022/#:~:text=Nationally%2C%2041.9%20percent%20of%20adults,obesity%20rate%20of%2041.4%20percent.

Walking and biking require a degree of fitness that most folks simply don't possess. Good luck.

It's sad and true. Less than 5% of people in the US get the recommended $150 minutes of exercise a week! Pretty terrible.

[Anonymous]

Bullshit. People of all sizes and fitness bike in the cities that are safe and not dirty. I figure it’s a bit harder to club me over the head, shoot me and rob me in a car.

Two buses have been sprayed with gunshots in the last few weeks in DC.

I mean the city is a hellscape. Clean it up. People will bike.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, the obesity rate in this country is almost 42%:https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2022/#:~:text=Nationally%2C%2041.9%20percent%20of%20adults,obesity%20rate%20of%2041.4%20percent.

Walking and biking require a degree of fitness that most folks simply don't possess. Good luck.

It's sad and true. Less than 5% of people in the US get the recommended $150 minutes of exercise a week! Pretty terrible.

Most of the people that I see cycling around DC are overweight. Sure there are the young and fit ones, but everyone else looks just massively overweight way out of proportion with the general population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would need affordable housing and better schools in DC to live near enough to my job to bike.

For metro: I suppose I could drive and park at the metro and then metro to work - but that would take longer than driving and cost more than gas (I get free parking at work).

This is a major factor in people's choices. When there is free parking, people are more likely to choose to drive by themselves than when they have to pay for parking.

That people take cost into consideration of their choices is not revolutionary insight. Time is also a cost that people take into consideration, which is something that you don’t seem to understand.

OP's question is: What would it ACTUALLY take for you to consider biking or taking the bus, in lieu of motoring?

So one answer is: if people who currently don't have to pay for parking would have to pay for parking.

However, life is offing hard enough as it is, and we shouldn't use sticks when we can use carrots to shape behavior, especially when what we'd consider as carrots is the bare GD minimum public service in Capitals around the world.
Let's continue to make it easier to use transportation modes that aren't cars. Take the burden of transporting thousands of independent kids to school away from parents in their personally-owned vehicles. Continue to grow public transit and protected bike lanes so that as they become safer and more convenient, they become the obvious choices.

The only "stick" we really need to step us is enforcement of traffic rules in the city, including ensuring MD and VA scofflaw drivers with tens of thousand of dollars in unpaid tickets for their dangerous driving and parking habits pay those tickets and fix their behavior.

We can use sticks as well as carrots. In setting policy, we usually do use sticks as well as carrots. If you even think it's a stick to stop subsidizing "free" parking, vs. simply removal of a carrot to reward driving.

Okay but wouldn't you agree that it doesn't make sense to expend tons of policy energy forcing employees to use transit systems that still suck before doing enough to make them suck less? Having to wait 14 minutes for a busy bus at rush hour Downtown sucks especially when you have to take another one before you get home. It just doesn't make humane sense to use the stick before you're done doling out a very low bar basic level of the carrots, which means we must offer viable alternatives.

We can't improve the buses until more people ride them, and more people won't ride the buses until we improve them, and we can't improve the buses until more people ride them, and...

I don't think it would require the expenditure of tons of policy energy to stop some of the very, very many ways we subsidize driving.

Yes it's a self-reinforcing cycle, but you won't break by forcing people to choose between terrible options and making the city residents miserable. You beeak the self-reinforcing cycle of shitty underused public transit by taking responsibility and making non-car options competitive with those of other developed nations' capitals, or at least decent. What you're suggesting is ill.