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0 pointsSteltek4y ago0 comments

From personal experience in town meetings:

* City roads are narrow and don't have empty space just waiting to be painted green. Bike lanes will cost you parking spots or a car travel lane. This gets huge pushback.

* Dangerous drivers must be removed from roads. You can be hit, killed even, with video evidence and the driver may escape punishment entirely.

* Cities (or specifically NIMBY residents) must stop resisting increased density, mixed use, and useless parking minimums. Not everyone wants to live in a suburban development, miles from useful amenities.

* Bikes and alternative transportation are compliments and need to be developed together. Biking to transit hubs is huge. It's not just green paint wherever it fits.

0 comments

occz4y ago

>City roads are narrow and don't have empty space just waiting to be painted green. Bike lanes will cost you parking spots or a car travel lane. This gets huge pushback.

Both should be sacrificed in order to break the car-infested cities. I imagine the pushback must be annoying to deal with, yes, but there's just no way you're going to be able to reconstruct your cities to be safe with this absurd amount of space dedicated to cars in cities of all places.

I suppose we might be on the same page here, though it's not entirely clear to me at the moment.

100% agree with the rest of your comment.

Packofbezens4y ago

Dangerous <everything> must be removed from roads. There is a non-negligible amount of bikers skipping red lights, or using the sidewalk (forbidden in many cities), or even going the opposite way on one-way streets. The rationale in most cases is that a bike is not a motor vehicle and thus should not observe the same rules. This is a problem even in a scenario without cars, as it leads to collision vs. other bicyclists or pedestrians.

This behaviour from a few individuals pushes anti-bikers to protest even more, making it harder for these initiatives to thrive.

As ridiculous as it sounds, a deterrent similar to a license plate may become a necessity.

SteltekOP4y ago

Not to say that behavior is okay but you're comparing apples and oranges. Drivers kill tens of thousands of people a year. Bikes are responsible for <1 person a year on average. People citing misbehavior by some cyclists need to get some perspective.

Meanwhile, the driver who hit me (in a bike lane) defended himself to the cop by saying "it's hard to not hit bikers". He was not even given a warning. I had video evidence from a helmetcam.

rtlfe4y ago

> you're comparing apples and oranges

More like comparing apples and shotguns.

msla4y ago

> People citing misbehavior by some cyclists need to get some perspective.

And some first aid for being run down by a cyclist, sure.

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