Fuck your existing lanes and fuck your 1.5-tonne beasts. Make some space, it won’t fucking kill you.
Car drivers complaining about bike lanes ‘reducing capacity’ but still drive around with 4 empty seats are fucking morons.
Say it with me:
Cars do not belong in the city, sensible transit system and infrastructure does
I don’t know why this is so hard for people to understand.
I’m on the bicycle commission for my city, and I’m constantly hounding the engineers for any kind of hardening of their planned class II lanes. They had the gall to say that they didn’t like flexi-posts because they got hit and needed replacing too often and we were like “yeah, how do you think the cyclists feel?”
why not design it with sturdier posts that withstand cars?
We can’t really control what the city engineers or council do, it’s an advisory commission, and something more robust would well exceed the budget that the city has allocated for the project I’m talking about. We’re trying to get a win where we can right now, but we’ve added an agenda item to recommend a minimum standard for bike lanes so that they’ll all be built with some kind of hardening.
Suggest moats, then. Only requires a backhoe.
That might actually work in some cases, since a lot of CA cities are criss-crossed with little irrigation canals. Most of what I’m pushing for, though, is putting our streets on a road diet by converting over wide or extra lanes into hardened bike lanes.
Yeah, I bet concrete bollards don’t need frequent replacements
The irony of the idea that cyclists are “taking lanes” can only come from the mind of a motorist ignorant that roads in North America only started getting paved with smooth asphalt due to a campaign by what is today The League of American Bicyclists. It was only due to the hard work and advocacy of cyclists that roads ever became hospitable to colonization by machines in the first place. If motorists were ever honestly adamant in their demand that no lanes ever be “removed” then it would mean undoing every single car lane.
In an effort to improve riding conditions so they might better enjoy their newly discovered sport, more than 100,000 cyclists from across the United States joined the League to advocate for paved roads. The success of the League in its first advocacy efforts ultimately led to our national highway system.
https://bikeleague.org/about/equity-and-history/
TIL
your Noita profile picture fucking slaps
Wait, we have profile pictures?
Thanks! It’s from my emotes mod, which is also included in the Noita Together multiplayer mod.
Oh neat! I’ve used this actually
Thanks for making mods :3
What kind of sad sack is so anti-bike that they run a whole “no bike lanes” social media account?
Someone who needs to justify their big truck who both complains about taxes and gas prices. 🇺🇸
some fat lazy fuck who drives to their own mailbox at the end of the driveway
Fuck cars! And fuck groups that propagate the narrative that cars are good
Anyone who runs a group like that is intentionally being contrarian just for the trolling. Some people get off on intentionally being regressive.
That, or they are intentionally spreading oil lobby propaganda, or they’re a gullible tool that feel for the oil lobby propaganda.
there are “cities” of 5,000 people and others with more than 100,000 the same principles don’t apply to both the large exceptions and the normal small cities. Cars work great at moving a few dozen people many miles and terribly at moving hundreds a few miles.
The zero sum game conservative mentality rears its ugly head again to yap some heinous shit.
In Tokyo the bike lanes are all loading and unloading parking for the large trucks, taxis, and private vehicles. Means you gotta merge into traffic because none of the bike lanes lanes are enforced. I see a lot of cops stopping cyclists to check their registration, but I’ve never seen them ticket the trucks and taxis illegally parked. Tokyo needs better enforcement and separate bike lanes like Amsterdam (with a physical barrier or different grade from the street), otherwise its really dangerous to bike on streets even with bike lanes.
Bicycles are registered in Tokyo?
Sounds like a good set of laws to me - especially registration (mostly to help drive down bike theft rates).
Good point, but it might be used against cyclists by the car lobby, and perhaps even a future bicycle manufacturing lobby.
also e.g. “From now on, police can seize any bike with a tire pressure over 5% the recommended maximum.” or “But your honor, I didn’t realized I had to register my bike, and I think the confiscation and fine are racially motivated.”
My neighborhood is one of the poorer ones, and it’s got more people taking bikes than most other places I’ve seen in LA, yet the only places that get dedicated lanes or bike paths are wealthy areas where I don’t even see recreational bikers, let alone those getting to work.
That said, I’m 98% certain my local conservative city council is skimming the coffers, so I’m not expecting much.
I don’t want to disagree with your experience but I did want to inquire if are you in the wealthy areas during the morning commute times for their work? Most of the bikers I see in Denver are either retired MAMILs heading to the greenway trails for a 40-60 mile exercise ride or the health conscious tech/finance bros who are heading to gym then work at 6-7 AM. Then you get the next batch of wealthy dads on their $5-10k minivan-esque cargo bikes at 7:30-8 AM, then it goes dead until the evening commute. At the end of the day you then get the group rides like critical mass rolling through. The wealthy/poor divide on bikes is always interesting: If you’re poor it’s seen as “Broke ass can’t even afford a car” but the rich treat it like the people in the 2000s treated owning a Prius, and the people who show up to the city council meetings treat it as such.
No, I went to school (k-12 and later, uni) in the bike friendlier upper-middle neighborhoods but your observations do stand. Every neighborhood is different. I do teach in both downtown and in the mountains, too, although in the later one kind of has to drive because it’s both very vertical and very narrow roads so it’s basically suicide to bike there.
In Santa Monica, you do see much of what you’re referring to plus their city is heavy in anti-car for eco reasons. I heard from someone at city hall that they purposely reduce parking in venues to encourage biking, so even during rush hour you’ll see electric bikes pretty regularly-- even going to surrounding cities since they made driving unbearable.
In Orange County, you don’t see the same trends… but Irvine, where I attended grad school, is a planned corporate community with extra wide roads, lots of parks, and man made trails. Biking is strictly a recreation to them, and 90% of the bikers I saw on trail were grey hairs with extremely expensive bikes zooming way faster than my used mountain bike could ever go.
Somehow, though, my neighborhood with none of that still has so many more bicycles and walkers than either of the places actually trying to encourage biking. Necessity is simply going to beat desire, even for people who prefer biking — 100% is always higher.
Used to commute to work on the Santa Ana River trail. Majority of early morning commuters there were working class on inexpensive bicycles. Shifted to Mountains to Sea Trail, far fewer commuters, most in riding kit with more expensive bikes. No surprise, reflects the communities the trails exist in.
Just reminds me how I miss the Mountains to Sea Trail. I didn’t think about the Santa Ana one though, glad there’s at least an option.
Cars don’t belong in cities
What if it’s snowing, raining, or very hot; there are infirmed and/or disabled people; and those who have stuff to carry?
Weather is a cop-out, not an issue, plenty of hot, cold, snowy, rainy places with plenty of bikes. For the infirm and disabled there’s e-bikes and other light vehicles, and for people with stuff to carry there’s cargo bikes, delivery, or, hear me out, rental cars.
And for everyone there should be public transit. Kind of a shame so much urbanist focus is on bikes, though understandable as bike lanes are quite a bit cheaper than building public transit from scratch.
You’re absolutely right about the need for public transit. Recommending e-bikes for disabled people as some kind of resolution is problematic, however. There are plenty of disabilities that make e-bikes (and e-scooters and other such vehicles) a poor or impossible choice for people. I know two people with spine damage, which not only limits their mobility and how they can position their bodies, but involves nerve damage that makes holding onto a handlebar for more than a few minutes impossible (or prohibitively painful.)
I sympathize with your goal of decreasing reliance on cars, but suggesting an uninformed one-size-fits-all solution to a community that rarely “fits one size” is not the right approach. We must consult with disabled people to figure out what accommodations they tell us they need first, before we can figure out a solution that works for them.
Recommending e-bikes for disabled people as some kind of resolution is problematic, however.
Good that it’s not something that I did, then. I said:
For the infirm and disabled there’s e-bikes and other light vehicles,
Note “infirm and disabled”, not just “disabled”. Plenty of seniors around here who use e-bikes because they can’t pedal as hard as they once could, or not as long, but are otherwise fit. Then, “and other light vehicles”. Things like the Canta, which the Netherlands class as a disability vehicle and can be used, legally, on bike paths. Motorised wheelchairs etc. are also no issue on bike paths and are, *drumroll*, light vehicles.
For wheelchair-bound people it’s certainly more convenient to take a bike path on their wheelchair to the supermarket a couple minutes away than it is to maneuver themselves in and out of a car to drive miles on the highway to get to a walmart.
Shall I get started on how car dependency affects blind people or can you make the necessary inferences yourself.
But randomly lashing out at an ally in defence of people who did not need defending, certainly not from sane urban design, surely made you feel good, so I guess you have that going for you.
Who’s lashing out? The user above mentioned “infirmed and/or disabled people” in general, you said they could use e-bikes or “light vehicles.” I saw your answer, and immediately thought of my friends who can’t use bikes because of their disabilities. (And I was hoping it wouldn’t need to be mentioned, but the costs involved in obtaining a specialized “light vehicle” like the Canta are prohibitive. Both friends are dependent on disability insurance for income, in the United States.)
I’m not sure what part of that is considered “lashing out.” Not everyone who participates in a conversation is doing so from a hostile standpoint. One of these friends obtained her injuries through a car accident and is 100% on board with ditching cars, but the system as-is makes it impossible for her to have a choice in the matter. Assuming her needs is something that lots of well-intentioned people do, and both friends frequently hear the same suggestions you’ve offered. Does it suck to mean well and still be told your solution won’t work? Yes. Does that mean whoever is telling you it won’t work is “lashing out” or trying to hurt you? Absolutely not.
I’m not sure what part of that is considered “lashing out.”
You misrepresented what I said while simultaneously calling it “problematic”. I’m not new to leftist circles, I know exactly what “problematic” means.
And, yes, granted, health insurance in the US sucks. That doesn’t make a Canta more expensive than modifying a car to be used with a wheelchair or such. If you can’t afford a bike lane solution you sure as fuck can’t afford a highway solution.
Your issue is not with e-bikes, it’s not with bike lanes, it’s not with light vehicles or powered wheelchairs, it’s not with what I actually said, it’s with the US. Then go ahead and call the US problematic.
Weather is a cop-out, not an issue, plenty of hot, cold, snowy, rainy places with plenty of bikes.
I live in Toronto, and yes, I see a few people cycling in winter, but many more do so in the summer.
Goodness knows what it’s like in, say, parts of the American during mid-summer.
For the infirm and disabled there’s e-bikes and other light vehicles, and for people with stuff to carry there’s cargo bikes, delivery, or, hear me out, rental cars.
You posted:
Cars don’t belong in cities
but now you are allowing for cars, provided they’re rentals—perhaps from Mega Car Rental Inc. Yes, I’m sure Bezos, Musk, Cook, and other corporate riffraff have thought of this.
though understandable as bike lanes are quite a bit cheaper than building public transit from scratch.
This is true in Toronto.
Your choosing to cycle was your decision, not some committee’s.
You posted:
Cars don’t belong in cities
I didn’t. You need streets for at least the fire brigade, ambulances, tradespeople, (parcel) delivery, and the occasional taxi. Moving vans. Even lorries supplying shops, can’t have a cargo tram everywhere.
What we definitely don’t need is parents driving 12yolds to school.
perhaps from Mega Car Rental Inc. Yes, I’m sure Bezos, Musk, Cook, and other corporate riffraff have thought of this.
How about we make it a municipal utility.
Your choosing to cycle was your decision, not some committee’s.
It’s actually habit, formed at an early age. Bike is how I got to primary school, which was possible because some committee designed the city in a way that it was possible (distance) as well as safe. I do have a driving license, lessons etc. cost a good 2k Euro back them, never owned a car. Haven’t driven in ages.
You posted:
Cars don’t belong in cities
I didn’t. You need streets for at least the fire brigade, ambulances, tradespeople, (parcel) delivery, and the occasional taxi. Moving vans. Even lorries supplying shops, can’t have a cargo tram everywhere.
You’re back-tracking: now you are allowing, however intelligently, for cars in some instances
You also sound British, which no offense, but it’s a country that doesn’t have cities that get as hot (or hot and humid) as say, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Antonio, New Orleans, Atlanta, or Orlando.
or as cold as, say, St. Paul, maybe Anchorage, Chicago, or Buffalo;
and that’s just the US. No cars within Toronto city limits wouldn’t work well. Ditto Moscow, probably Kyiv, Warsaw, Mumbai, Brisbane, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Dubai, et al, either.
What we definitely don’t need is parents driving 12yolds to school.
I mostly agree. As a person older than 70% of North Americans, I think the nerfing of society can cause problems.
How about we make it a municipal utility.
Okay. Now let’s say it’s a city with over 1 million people, and the experts say minimally one car per 400, or 2500 cars needed for rent. Which company will get the contract to sell the city those ≥2500 cars—Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, BMW, Tesla, or a Chinese variant? The one that lobbies best?
How about allow licensing of rent-a-cars? Existing ones are grandfathered in for 20 years without plates, but others pay, say, £10 000 + £2000 every year for a license to rent. Obviously they’d also have to have good insurance.
It’s actually habit, formed at an early age. Bike is how I got to primary school, which was possible because some committee designed the city in a way that it was possible (distance) as well as safe. I do have a driving license, lessons etc. cost a good 2k Euro back them, never owned a car. Haven’t driven in ages.
Perhaps, and good for you. My point was more of individual effort. Chances are, where you’re from, there were people who’d cycle in pretty well any condition, and insisted on the right to cycle. They were the reason some authorities made accommodations, which in turn made cycling seem more viable to more people, thus increasing the number of cyclists. Such were incremental—a bike lane here, a bike lane there—nothing that required >£1 billion (or >€1 billion)—and eventually cyclists got a bit of an infrastructure and proposals for more expensive projects got more considered—but one way or another, people will be cycling—the only question is how to increase it.
You’re back-tracking: now you are allowing, however intelligently, for cars in some instances
No I’m not: I’m not the one you think I am. “No rubber on asphalt, like, ever” is a stupid stance from the get-go. “Reduce individual car ownership as far as reasonably possible” is a statement I’d support.
You also sound British, which no offense,
Why, confusing me for a chap from our colony, how quaint. More on topic: Europe gets hot. Europe gets cold. Still there’s bikes in Finland and bikes in Spain. Oh, Not Just Bikes has a video on Finns vs. Canadians.
Which company will get the contract to sell the city those ≥2500 cars—Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, BMW, Tesla, or a Chinese variant? The one that lobbies best?
Probably the one that hands in the 2nd cheapest option ticking all the boxes. How do cities decide on which busses to buy? Who will build a bridge? This is not a topic specific to car rentals.
They were the reason some authorities made accommodations, which in turn made cycling seem more viable to more people, thus increasing the number of cyclists.
People never stopped cycling. People never started to believe that it’s reasonable to close the primary schools of 20 villages and put kids into a single giant one.
I understand that it’s harder to fix what’s fucked up than to improve what was still functional but “oh it’s hard” is not an argument with which you can counter “it’s better”. I never said it would be easy.
though understandable as bike lanes are quite a bit cheaper than building public transit from scratch.
Why, confusing me for a chap from our colony, how quaint.
- (British, Ireland, South Asia, Africa) A large and heavy motor vehicle designed to carry goods or soldiers; a truck
also this:
https://youtu.be/3CPu9c1Qp6c?t=560 (cued, for several seconds)
😁🙂
Thanks for the link. 🙂
How do cities decide on which busses to buy?
The selection probably isn’t as good as cars.
Who will build a bridge?
idk. Maybe some mafia front that under-bids, but raises the price when they’re halfway done?
I understand that it’s harder to fix what’s fucked up than to improve what was still functional but “oh it’s hard” is not an argument with which you can counter “it’s better”. I never said it would be easy.
I was agreeing with your statement “though understandable as bike lanes are quite a bit cheaper than building public transit from scratch.”
IIUC, in Ontario cyclists are legally allowed to take up a whole lane on most roads.
Legally allowed doesn’t mean a whole lot when it’s 100kg vs 2000kg.
I don’t mean that it’s not a fair point, but is it worth a life?
We take the lane for safety, actually. There are many situations where it is much safer to take the lane.
I suppose carrying a few cameras would help to insure safety.
When using a crosswalk on foot, I always make sure a car is stopped in it’s lane before proceeding to the next lane. Full eye contact. It doesn’t matter that I’m in a crosswalk. I might have been in the right, but that won’t matter if I die.
It’s the same with cycling. Cameras will only help after the fact, and maybe a bit if it’s very visible. But the best thing you can do is not trust any car, and avoid travelling where you have to trust cars.
That just means the footage would go on cyclists/protestors getting owned compilations.
The real answer is to have your own vehicles blocking other traffic while the cyclists do their protest… and to be armed.
I don’t think many judges watch owned compilations.
“But your honour, I can’t pay the awards, I can’t even begin to pay it!”
“You can start with the revenue you make from those ‘owned’ videos you posted on YouTube.”
“But YouTube pays me shit!”
“That’s not the court’s problem. You injured the cyclist and destroyed his bike: you pay for it.”
Gotta survive to get your day in court.
You better survive if the defendant knows what’s good for wt:thon.
Thon might be facing a number of charges.
Someone being charged doesn’t help the dead, and sentences for car drivers that kill people are shockingly light.
In most coastal US cities, if bike-specific facilities are unavailable or blocked then it’s legal to take a full motor lane. At your own peril of course, most drivers and many cops are indifferent to this information. Vehicular cycling is sadly not the answer to getting everyone out on a bike.
Organized protests should not be too difficult (probably ditto many unorganized ones. 😁🙂).
I think you left out an “n’t”.
corrected and thank you for the correction. 😁🙂
I loved this one:
I kinda like it too. 😁
Thanks for posting it!
Let the motorists know your disapproval. There might be many ways to express such. 😁
And these statistics (I would appreciate OOP’s sources if they’re available) would be good ammunition in the lawsuit filed against the Ontario government for their bill that is spuriously trying to remove bike lanes in Toronto.
Fuck bike lanes. We need to dedicate a percent of the roads to be cycling-only roads
You can still have a road next to the bike lane, it just needs to have a barrier in between.
In the Netherlands you’ll see roads with three lanes of equal size in each direction with dividers in between. One for bikes, one for buses, one for cars.
In North America you will make drivers absolutely furious if you take some of their driving lanes away and make them exclusively for bikes or public transport. But they will eventually realise that such a system makes driving far more pleasant because there are so much fewer cars on the road when most journies are done via bike or public transport that you don’t need the extra lanes.
Nah. I prefer to free half the roads entirely from cars. I’m sure most city dwellers would agree.
i had to stop biking in my area because it’s too dangerous :(
I’m relegated to only riding on designated bike trails because of the hazard. This really means only riding for leisure/exercise, rather than actual transportation.
I love cycling and would be more than happy to help the environment and improve my physical health by cycling to various places within range (including my job), but it’s simply too dangerous. One driver looking down at their phone or fucking with their car’s touchscreen infotainment could end me in the blink of an eye.
They only way to remove conflict between bikes and cars, where the bike usually loses, is to remove cars or bikes. Giving the road to cars is tried and always runs into standstill traffic and stupendous infrastructure costs. Bike infrastructure turns out to scale more and is cheaper.
In South Africa roads are not even designed with pedestrian walkways. I would hear all the time in the news about drunk drivers hitting a group of cyclists or pedestrians. Its genuinely unsafe to go anywhere without a car. I now live in the Netherlands and I only bought a car 3 years after I moved here, because there is actual working public transport and even the rural areas have bike lanes.
Why did you buy a car?
Pretty handy to have a car. I have one too, for the first time in 10 years. But I don’t use it to commute and I actively try to avoid using it.
But sometimes you need to take the wife and kids to visit some family out of town or go down to the local hardware store to pick to materials. There’s a lot use usecases
Basically for carrying goods, doing long drives, or comfort in bad weather. Public transport works well here but you can still end up having to do a lot of waiting and walking if you are doing a trip somewhere. Also the more connections a trip needs then the higher chance something can go wrong. For example, missing a train because the connection was late. There are car sharing services here too, and there is one of these cars right next to my house. I would rent that when I wanted to go to an appointment somewhere. But there were enough times that the service was unreliable or booked out when I needed a car urgently, that I got annoyed and decided to get my own car. I think a mix of cycling, public transport and having your own car is best.
I am not that familiar with the public transport in the Netherlands. But I envy your bike paths. I do most of my daily stuff using my bicycle.
I wondered how our needs might differ, since I don’t own a car in Germany. I guess you have more need for long distance travel than I do.
