Because the cities are being actively altered in a way that transfers space and other resources from cars, to bikes.
Zero sum game, resources being reallocated, obviously the people whose resources are being taken away are going to view that as a war.
Won’t anybody think of the poor cars? But seriously, resources are better utilised by bicycles to the benefit of all. There are no losers here other than the oil companies and car manufacturers.
Oops sorry I just noticed your last sentence. Yes there are losers. They include all the people whose lifestyles involve driving.
Pretending otherwise is childish and lame.
- There are more car-only roads than bike-only roads
- Virtually no roads are ever completely closed off from car traffic and allocated strictly towards bicycles
- More lanes = more traffic jams (induced demand)
- More bike lanes = more people on bikes = fewer people in cars = fewer jams for “your lifestyle”
- Narrower roads = Fewer cars = fewer pedestrian deaths = fewer car-crashes
- More people biking/walking, healthier lifestyle, less stress on the healthcare system.
I don’t see how this isn’t a win for car-people and bike-people.
And what exactly are those people going to lose if they get on a bike sometimes? Their diabetes?
I’m going to lose my lifetime, literally, by biking a total of 80+ km to work and back. And public transportation takes 2+ hrs one way.
No, lose it making money to maintain and feed the car ( how many working hours a year that is?) and sitting in a car for an hour in one direction. Correct time of commuting is time spent in traffic + time spent to earn the money for fuel. If you bikemute, you can actually consider a part of that time as free gym.
You have no idea how ableist you’re being right now.
Even ignoring the jab at diabetics, what about other disabled people? Not everyone can just get on a bike.
It’s always so funny when car brains suddenly discover their heart for disabled people when they desperately reach for arguments against non car centric traffic planning. If you’re genuinely concerned about disabled people and those who can’t drive for other reasons (poverty springs to mind) you should advocate for transport options besides cars.
I am a disabled person and I vote for transportation levies and taxes every time they come up, but nice trying to pretend that I’m a car brain just because I happen to need one.
Once again, ableism. Don’t assume everybody is not disabled just because you don’t see them in a wheelchair.
You’re a car brain because you jump from “we should build more bike lanes” to “they want to ban cars”. Nobody is saying that.
It’s always so funny when car brains suddenly discover their heart for disabled people
This is viciously insulting. What the hell are you talking about “suddenly discover their heart”. What do you know about my heart?
You really think the only people to disagree with you are ice cold monsters? That’s a crazy way to see this scenario: you versus the cold blooded shade demons who don’t like being forced to change their lives.
I suppose it’s generally easier for the disabled to drive, yeah?
I don’t get why people are just one or the other. I use a car, a bicycle and I walk. I experience shitty cyclists when in my car, shitty car drivers when I’m riding the bike, and as a pedestrian, usually both groups can be shitty lol
It’s only a zero sum game if they view driving as an essential and immutable part of themselves, and even then, not really.
Charging adequate prices for street parking, for example, guarantees that you’ll always be able to park easily if you need to, a luxury not provided by free parking.
And then, of course, they could always just get out of their cars and immediately start benefitting from the changes.
zero sum in that there is limited amount of space… so space from something but be subtracted in order to add it to the space of something else….
it’s not a metaphor, it’s about the total being the same. it’s mathematical and squarely fits the definition of zero sum.That accepts the framing that we’re designing for cars/bikes/peds. We’re not. We’re designing for people, whether they’re in a car, on a bike, etc.
In that sense it’s very much not zero-sum.
In my city the transportation infrastructure decisions are made by a car hate group. We have 400 miles of bike lanes and polling shows 3% of the population use. Bike infrastructure isn’t installed for bikers, rather bikers are the excuse to obstruct and restrict vehicle traffic. As long as they use the word “safety”, they get away with really dumb stuff.
I wouldn’t have nearly the problem I do if bikes USED the lanes, but I guarantee I can go out right now and not see a single bike. They are entirely vacant.
To add insult, the bike I’ve seen at a newly converted intersection with dedicated lanes, bike turn box, and no right on red sign didn’t give a rats ass about anyone or any rules, drove on the wrong side, ran a red and drive into active traffic; all the cars stopping for this moron. There is no shared responsibility and no enforcement of rules. That is my liability the biking idiot was messing with. Yes, he’d be at fault if he was hit, but the city stistics would mark that as dangerous intersection and crack down on cars harder.
So yes, I see this as a war. In my city, we coexisted before, but it wasn’t a problem until this turned this into a mine vs yours situation. The passion driving fuckcars communities to take over is matched with my passion to retain functionality. You are the invading force in this war, we are playing defence. I see paths of scorched earth like scars; barren and void of purpose for which it was designated.
There is compromise, yes and I agree some can be made, in return, I want to see utilization, coexistence, and shared respect for the rules.
I see $150 million a year wasted for a incredibly small but disproportionately vocal group of radicalized individuals to actively make things suck and in their wake, after the construction, abandoned by those for whom it was built.
I honestly think conservative media just tries to start as much shit as possible so they have something to talk about.
At this point they probably start out by picking some slightly complex idea that’s objectively correct and then work backwards to find a way to disagree with it.
Because everything is a culture war.
What’s your favourite colour? Whatever your answer to that question is, it will determine the side you’re on for a culture war next week.
To add to that, it’s all to distract everyone too. If I’m busy hating on your shitty choice of color, then I’m not thinking about how my true least favorite color is wealth hording.
There should be zero delivery trucks clogging city streets. Zero.
Good luck with that. And the bike-riding population will do all their shopping far outside the city, where shops still survive? A cargo bike is nice for personal shopping, for deliviering letters or small packets, but you won’t be able to fill the shelves of a supermarket this way. And whoever thinks about using freight trams for this, sit down and actually think this idea through for a change.
Delivery trucks are fine. They don’t contribute to sprawl, are driven by professional drivers, and don’t need parking lots.
It’s personal automobiles that are the problem.
If I had a dime for every time somebody made this reply, I’d have a lot of dimes.
Nobody has ever said that. What people are saying is that the private automobile is the worst way to move masses of people in cities. They command ungodly amounts of space, make everything more expensive thereby, and aren’t even good at moving masses of people.
You want to increase the capacity of your road? You can:
- spend millions adding lanes and possibly destroying houses
- turn a lane into a dedicated bus lane
- turn a lane into a bike lane
- hell, pedestrian areas have higher people capacities than car lanes
Yes, you are right. You are talking of moving people inside cities. I am talking about a) getting in and out of the city and b) moving goods into and out of cities. None of the usual demands in this group ever even starts to address this.
What usually works better for moving people in and out of cities is park-n-ride setups where you setup a giant parking lot in the suburbs next to a metro station. People can just ditch their car outside the city and proceed using public transit. I often do this in Montreal, for example.
For goods, it’s a similar setup but with big trucks transferring cargo to smaller trucks; this is already pretty common.
Just use busses and trams
And once people use bikes all over and you can get rid of the 10.000 parking spots, you can build much more local small shops. Nobody loves going to Walmart and nobody will if there are small local shops around the corner where you can simply walk to
Bikes ain’t gonna work for people coming from far outside the city. I’m not talking about commuting distance, I’m talking about people who live in rural areas 2+ hours away from a city that need to come in occasionally. Having them make the whole trip by car necessitates maintaining car infrastructure in the city center, which will soon be co-opted by suburbanites. This use-case needs a bi-modal strategy.
You think that doesn’t happen in the Netherlands? It’s called public transportation. Trains, busses, trams, metro. People take their bikes onboard if they have to, get into the city, cycle the last little bit, and it’s done
Also, if you gotta commute 2 hours you need a different job
I’m not talking about commutes, I’m talking about going to the city for an appointment/shopping/conference/concert/sightseeing/etc.
But yeah, cycling the last mile works in the Netherlands between cities or suburbs because they are relatively well served by inter-city transit, but what about places like this random dairy farm . Can this guy just take his bike to downtown Amsterdam?
Because cyclists are narcissistic people who think the vast minority of people who live in cycling distance of their work and everything else and never get enough from the store or anywhere else that is problematic to carry back home (seriously, do these people ever actually get anything of substance?) think they need entire city blocks completely dedicated to them while giving a big middle finger to people who just want to get to where they’re going directly because they CAN ferry any decent amount of goods back and forth.
Not to mention their massive ableism that ignores people who cannot easily walk or ride for any decent distance and denies them direct access to places. Cities already do this to a point where there’s no actual free parking anywhere for people, even parking dedicated for them which, in the suburbs, every single parking lot has spots right next to the building for them so it’s as easy as possible to access. Most cities rely on garbage paid parking decks and lots far away from most things people need to get to, and even if they have spots for those people, they’re still not as accessible as the vast majority of places in suburbs.
Cyclists are basically like vegans and religious people: ignorant, hateful, and annoying. It’s not “turning” into a culture war: it is a culture war, with rich, fortunate elitists on one side and the rest of us on the other.
Yes the “rich, fortunate elitist” trying to commute on a $200 bike instead of a $60,000+ SUV that spews noxious gases.
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