Flat Bar Road Bikes with Low Step-Over, i.e Mixte

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 1:20:02 AM UTC-7, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 28.04.2015 um 23:53 schrieb jbeattie:
Is it Amsterdam? No, because Amsterdam and other successful cities
have dedicated bicycle roads -- the dreaded bicycle facilities of
Frank's worst nightmare.

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

I don't know, being that I don't live there, but the intuitive answer is traffic volume. If you have lots of vehicles on limited infrastructure, you will get traffic jams, conflicts and accidents. I can't compare Germany and NL, but the comparison has to take in to consideration traffic volume and not simply facilities or the lack of facilities. The bicycle injury rate in Eastern Oregon is probably zero -- except for little Jimmy falling off his BMX bike behind the corral or a run-in with a steer. http://tinyurl.com/lnc5d22 That says nothing about the infrastructure, which is also zero. Los Angeles has highways with 12 lanes of parked traffic at times.

And what Frank said about me not liking the Amsterdam-like bicycle scene is absolutely true. I would go crazy riding in an endless conga line of cyclists and would jump on the road and duke it out with the cars -- but I don't represent the demographic that wants or needs those facilities.

-- Jay Beattie.

On 4/29/2015 1:11 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

We know why there are more bicycle accidents per mile when you have far
greater volumes of cyclists, in a densely populated area, using cycling
infrastructure. We don't have to guess. Your error is in implying that
the reason for the accident rate is the infrastructure, it isn't.

Am 29.04.2015 um 17:24 schrieb sms:
On 4/29/2015 1:11 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

We know why there are more bicycle accidents per mile when you have far
greater volumes of cyclists, in a densely populated area, using cycling
infrastructure. We don't have to guess. Your error is in implying that
the reason for the accident rate is the infrastructure, it isn't.

Why do you have fewer car accidents per mile when you have a greater
volume of cars but more bicycle accidents per mile when you have a
greater volume of bicycles?

Given that everything else is equal, I fail to understand this; as a
mathematical modeller I'm just too stupid to follow this logic, so I
must assume that all else is not equal.

On 4/29/2015 7:21 AM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

And what Frank said about me not liking the Amsterdam-like bicycle scene is absolutely true. I would go crazy riding in an endless conga line of cyclists and would jump on the road and duke it out with the cars -- but I don't represent the demographic that wants or needs those facilities.

When I went to China for the first time it was maddening to go so slow
in such a mass of bicycles. But there was no choice. You went with the
flow and made no sudden moves or sudden stops. In fact you could not
make sudden stops because the brakes on those bikes did not allow sudden
stops. You got used to it. There were accidents because of the huge
number of cyclists.

In one sense it's much pleasanter to cycle in the Chinese cities now
because there are far fewer bicycles but the bicycle infrastructure is
still in place from the days of mass numbers of cyclists. However the
pollution is a lot worse than it was.

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 4:30:02 PM UTC+1, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 29.04.2015 um 17:24 schrieb sms:
On 4/29/2015 1:11 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

We know why there are more bicycle accidents per mile when you have far
greater volumes of cyclists, in a densely populated area, using cycling
infrastructure. We don't have to guess. Your error is in implying that
the reason for the accident rate is the infrastructure, it isn't.

Why do you have fewer car accidents per mile when you have a greater
volume of cars but more bicycle accidents per mile when you have a
greater volume of bicycles?

Given that everything else is equal, I fail to understand this; as a
mathematical modeller I'm just too stupid to follow this logic, so I
must assume that all else is not equal.

All else isn't equal, Rolf. Bicycles have two wheels and cars have four. Cars have all kinds of active and passive safety features and devices. Bikes don't. Cars are inherently stable, bikes aren't. Car drivers are surrounded by so much metal and padding that it is difficult to injure them; bicyclists are much more vulnerable.

I think it follows logically that when you have the same density of cyclists as motorists (adjusted for the relative space a car and a bike occupy, not just counted as units through a control point), cyclists will have more injuries than automobilists. Of course, the speed differential between cars and bicycles is a bedevilling factor.

Andre Jute

On 4/29/2015 7:21 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 1:20:02 AM UTC-7, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 28.04.2015 um 23:53 schrieb jbeattie:
Is it Amsterdam? No, because Amsterdam and other successful cities
have dedicated bicycle roads -- the dreaded bicycle facilities of
Frank's worst nightmare.

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

I don't know, being that I don't live there, but the intuitive answer is traffic volume. If you have lots of vehicles on limited infrastructure, you will get traffic jams, conflicts and accidents. I can't compare Germany and NL, but the comparison has to take in to consideration traffic volume and not simply facilities or the lack of facilities. The bicycle injury rate in Eastern Oregon is probably zero -- except for little Jimmy falling off his BMX bike behind the corral or a run-in with a steer. http://tinyurl.com/lnc5d22 That says nothing about the infrastructure, which is also zero. Los Angeles has highways with 12 lanes of parked traffic at times.

And what Frank said about me not liking the Amsterdam-like bicycle scene is absolutely true. I would go crazy riding in an endless conga line of cyclists and would jump on the road and duke it out with the cars -- but I don't represent the demographic that wants or needs those facilities.

When I first went to China there were a lot more bicycle accidents
because of the masses of cyclists on the bike routes, often separated
paths. You get that when you have very high volumes.

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 8:47:15 AM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 4:30:02 PM UTC+1, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 29.04.2015 um 17:24 schrieb sms:
On 4/29/2015 1:11 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

We know why there are more bicycle accidents per mile when you have far
greater volumes of cyclists, in a densely populated area, using cycling
infrastructure. We don't have to guess. Your error is in implying that
the reason for the accident rate is the infrastructure, it isn't.

Why do you have fewer car accidents per mile when you have a greater
volume of cars but more bicycle accidents per mile when you have a
greater volume of bicycles?

Given that everything else is equal, I fail to understand this; as a
mathematical modeller I'm just too stupid to follow this logic, so I
must assume that all else is not equal.

All else isn't equal, Rolf. Bicycles have two wheels and cars have four. Cars have all kinds of active and passive safety features and devices. Bikes don't. Cars are inherently stable, bikes aren't. Car drivers are surrounded by so much metal and padding that it is difficult to injure them; bicyclists are much more vulnerable.

I think it follows logically that when you have the same density of cyclists as motorists (adjusted for the relative space a car and a bike occupy, not just counted as units through a control point), cyclists will have more injuries than automobilists. Of course, the speed differential between cars and bicycles is a bedevilling factor.

There is also a qualitative difference between bicycles and cars -- as one can see when starting from a light in a pack of cyclists, half of whom wobble all over the place before taking a straight line. There are many what-the-f*** moments riding with civilians -- you know, the "real" cyclists who carry umbrellas and fiddle with iPhones and earbuds and not the Lycra wearing pretenders. Give me a group of pretenders any day.

Another difference is the effect of weather and road conditions on bicycles, e.g. rain, ice, wind, potholes, grates, etc., etc. I just about went down on a slick manhole cover yesterday, which is not much of an issue for a car. If I had been riding next to another cyclists, my wobble would have taken him or her or both of us down.

-- Jay Beattie.

On 4/29/2015 4:04 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 28.04.2015 um 20:28 schrieb Frank Krygowski:

I don't doubt that Portland has many more cyclists than it used to
(although,
IIRC, the growth seems to have stalled for the past five years or so).
However, a more realistic picture of bike mode share would be one that
evaluates the percentage of bikes among all other vehicles, not just
(effectively) the vehicles of city residents.

I've read quite a few articles comparing bike mode shares in various
cities
around the world. But I suspect that the data is gathered using widely
variable techniques. In particular, Portland's trick of polling only
city
(not suburb) residents might not cause so much inaccuracy in some
European
cities. It seems to me that many cities over there have very little in
the way of suburbs.

How many people from the urban area actually move into the city how
often seems to be not so clear. Generally, people go shopping, go to
school or to the cinema near home and take longer trips to go to work or
go to concerts or to the opera into the center.

Actually, the big US cities seem to have approximatley 25% inhabitants
in the city, with the exception of New York.

Looking through Wikipedia, the distinction between City, Urban Area and
Metropolitain Area seems to be relevant.

Portland with City 583,776, Urban Area 1,849,898 and Metropolitain Area
2,314,554 seems to by typical for US.

In Europe, we have widely different extremes in settlement patterns. We
have Berlin and Vienna, central Cities since centuries, with typical
distributions like Berlin City 3.452.911, urban area 4.416.123,
metropolitain area 6.024.000 (the city center is more than half of the
metro area). Paris has a similar settlement structure as these cities
but the city administratie area is a lot smaller in relation to the
urban area (that's why Paris can brag with a lot higher cycling rate
than Vienna).

On the other extreme we have Frankfurt with city 701.350, urban area
2.221.910 and metropolitain area 5.550.619, stretching more than 50
miles into each direction and including two state capitals.

Then we have the multi-city metro areas like Randstad (taking half of
the Netherlands) or the Ruhr area in Germany, where the cities have
joinde together, and it does not make sense to talk about edges of the
urban areas.

It might be interesting to see if there's a correlation between bike
mode share and degree of suburbanization, if a suitable metric could be
devised for the latter.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 4/29/2015 1:57 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 8:47:15 AM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 4:30:02 PM UTC+1, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 29.04.2015 um 17:24 schrieb sms:
On 4/29/2015 1:11 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

We know why there are more bicycle accidents per mile when you have far
greater volumes of cyclists, in a densely populated area, using cycling
infrastructure. We don't have to guess. Your error is in implying that
the reason for the accident rate is the infrastructure, it isn't.

Why do you have fewer car accidents per mile when you have a greater
volume of cars but more bicycle accidents per mile when you have a
greater volume of bicycles?

Given that everything else is equal, I fail to understand this; as a
mathematical modeller I'm just too stupid to follow this logic, so I
must assume that all else is not equal.

All else isn't equal, Rolf. Bicycles have two wheels and cars have four. Cars have all kinds of active and passive safety features and devices. Bikes don't. Cars are inherently stable, bikes aren't. Car drivers are surrounded by so much metal and padding that it is difficult to injure them; bicyclists are much more vulnerable.

I think it follows logically that when you have the same density of cyclists as motorists (adjusted for the relative space a car and a bike occupy, not just counted as units through a control point), cyclists will have more injuries than automobilists. Of course, the speed differential between cars and bicycles is a bedevilling factor.

There is also a qualitative difference between bicycles and cars -- as one can see when starting from a light in a pack of cyclists, half of whom wobble all over the place before taking a straight line. There are many what-the-f*** moments riding with civilians -- you know, the "real" cyclists who carry umbrellas and fiddle with iPhones and earbuds and not the Lycra wearing pretenders. Give me a group of pretenders any day.

Another difference is the effect of weather and road conditions on bicycles, e.g. rain, ice, wind, potholes, grates, etc., etc. I just about went down on a slick manhole cover yesterday, which is not much of an issue for a car. If I had been riding next to another cyclists, my wobble would have taken him or her or both of us down.

I notice that Jute seems to have switched from discussing accidents to
discussing injuries, since a car's metal armor and padding may reduce
injuries, but probably don't reduce accidents. Perhaps that was
deliberate, perhaps that was just careless.

And perhaps the accidents Rolf were referring to actually were injuries
instead. We may need better definitions of terms. (Some bike "safety"
advocates have done lots of agenda-pushing by deliberately conflating
terms.)

Regarding Jay's "real cyclists" (i.e. utility riders) vs. "pretenders"
(i.e. enthusiasts): I just returned from a ride with about 15 in his
"pretender" class. I knew enough not to ride near certain people, based
on observing their riding style. But I still nearly got hit from
behind, when those ahead of me suddenly decided on a no-warning stop to
let the slow guys catch up. And it's not just that crowd of riders.
I've taken evasive action to escape many a well-equipped sport rider.

Lycra alone doesn't generate competent riding, any more than wearing a
helmet generates "safety."

I've seen people crash on wet steel. It's good to watch for that stuff.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 9:57:58 PM UTC+1, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/29/2015 1:57 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 8:47:15 AM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 4:30:02 PM UTC+1, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 29.04.2015 um 17:24 schrieb sms:
On 4/29/2015 1:11 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:

I don't think anybody has bike roads as a nightmare. Frank's and my
nightmare concerning Amsterdam are the bicylce sidewalks - why do you
think the accidents per bike miles are higher in the Netherlands than in
Germany? Why should the traffic jams on the Grachten be bigger for
bicycles than for cars?

We know why there are more bicycle accidents per mile when you have far
greater volumes of cyclists, in a densely populated area, using cycling
infrastructure. We don't have to guess. Your error is in implying that
the reason for the accident rate is the infrastructure, it isn't.

Why do you have fewer car accidents per mile when you have a greater
volume of cars but more bicycle accidents per mile when you have a
greater volume of bicycles?

Given that everything else is equal, I fail to understand this; as a
mathematical modeller I'm just too stupid to follow this logic, so I
must assume that all else is not equal.

All else isn't equal, Rolf. Bicycles have two wheels and cars have four. Cars have all kinds of active and passive safety features and devices. Bikes don't. Cars are inherently stable, bikes aren't. Car drivers are surrounded by so much metal and padding that it is difficult to injure them; bicyclists are much more vulnerable.

I think it follows logically that when you have the same density of cyclists as motorists (adjusted for the relative space a car and a bike occupy, not just counted as units through a control point), cyclists will have more injuries than automobilists. Of course, the speed differential between cars and bicycles is a bedevilling factor.

There is also a qualitative difference between bicycles and cars -- as one can see when starting from a light in a pack of cyclists, half of whom wobble all over the place before taking a straight line. There are many what-the-f*** moments riding with civilians -- you know, the "real" cyclists who carry umbrellas and fiddle with iPhones and earbuds and not the Lycra wearing pretenders. Give me a group of pretenders any day.

Another difference is the effect of weather and road conditions on bicycles, e.g. rain, ice, wind, potholes, grates, etc., etc. I just about went down on a slick manhole cover yesterday, which is not much of an issue for a car. If I had been riding next to another cyclists, my wobble would have taken him or her or both of us down.

I notice that Jute seems to have switched from discussing accidents to
discussing injuries, since a car's metal armor and padding may reduce
injuries, but probably don't reduce accidents. Perhaps that was
deliberate, perhaps that was just careless.

It seems to me that, given that cyclists are more vulnerable to being injured than the driver encased in his motorcar, it is fairer to count injuries rather than accidents. That also makes the results more comparable with such proper studies as the one conducted in New York over the turn of the century, which counted injuries presented at AE, and the few competent studies from among those the anti-helmet zealots quote all the time.

And perhaps the accidents Rolf were referring to actually were injuries
instead.

Here we go again with Krygowski trying to put words in someone's mouth that the someone never spoke.

We may need better definitions of terms. (Some bike "safety"
advocates have done lots of agenda-pushing by deliberately conflating
terms.)

Holy ****, Krygowski, this constant hypocrisy from you is not only an insult to our intelligence but goddamn insensitive and offensive too. How the **** do you think a constant agenda-pusher like you can get away with accusing the rest of us, who don't play the same dull tune over and over as you do, of "agenda-pushing"? Man, your agenda-pushing seems to most of us like outright, deliberate lies.

Andre Jute
Relentless rigor -- Gaius Germanicus