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#11
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Build it and they won't come
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 14:27:18 +1000, James
wrote: The helmet law supporting researchers (Jake Olivier, Raphael Grzebieta, Soufiane Boufous, Rebecca Ivers, Royal Australian College of Surgeons, etc.), are all trying to "move on" from discussing helmet laws, spouting the need for protected biking infrastructure. They know the health benefits of cycling, but reject the evidence that the helmet law stops many people from cycling. They think that by building infrastructure that somehow cycling will blossom regardless. Well, that actually has worked here where I live. The numbers of people using bikes as transportation rather than recreation has doubled or trebled (although is still only 1-2% of trips at best). A few years back when gas nearly hit $5 per gallon bumped up the numbers of folks on bikes and it seems like many of them kept riding. For the public cost in terms of building out cycling infrastructure, I think the return on investment has been paltry. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to gain a few thousand cyclists. Perhaps the number of riders replacing drives with rides will grow more over time; the millenials in particular seem more likely to ride, but my guess is that as they get older, have kids, buy houses, etc., the bikes will end up gathering dust. By comparison, the ridership performnce of the light rail facilities we've built out have been surpassing expectations handily, despite the conservative ire about "social engineering" via transit (I find it interesting that *increasing* the citizen's options for getting around is "social engineering" to some). Around here I think one of the real purposes of bike infrastrcture is really just to get them out of the way of cars- driving is still the real focus of transportation policy. |
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#12
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Build it and they won't come
On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 8:50:31 AM UTC-7, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 14:27:18 +1000, James wrote: The helmet law supporting researchers (Jake Olivier, Raphael Grzebieta, Soufiane Boufous, Rebecca Ivers, Royal Australian College of Surgeons, etc.), are all trying to "move on" from discussing helmet laws, spouting the need for protected biking infrastructure. They know the health benefits of cycling, but reject the evidence that the helmet law stops many people from cycling. They think that by building infrastructure that somehow cycling will blossom regardless. Well, that actually has worked here where I live. The numbers of people using bikes as transportation rather than recreation has doubled or trebled (although is still only 1-2% of trips at best). A few years back when gas nearly hit $5 per gallon bumped up the numbers of folks on bikes and it seems like many of them kept riding. For the public cost in terms of building out cycling infrastructure, I think the return on investment has been paltry. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to gain a few thousand cyclists. Perhaps the number of riders replacing drives with rides will grow more over time; the millenials in particular seem more likely to ride, but my guess is that as they get older, have kids, buy houses, etc., the bikes will end up gathering dust. By comparison, the ridership performnce of the light rail facilities we've built out have been surpassing expectations handily, despite the conservative ire about "social engineering" via transit (I find it interesting that *increasing* the citizen's options for getting around is "social engineering" to some). Around here I think one of the real purposes of bike infrastrcture is really just to get them out of the way of cars- driving is still the real focus of transportation policy. Looking it up I discovered an interesting statistic: England has something like 10,000 cold related deaths every year. So do you really think that bicycle facilities would increase cycling? |
#13
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Build it and they won't come
On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 7:22:36 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2017 at 6:47:30 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote: Build it and they will come? Sorry, no. Here's a new article dispelling the myth that segregated facilities generate tremendous bike mode share. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...ped-stevenage? Unless motoring is actively dissuaded, almost all people who have cars will drive cars. That's hardly an example now is it? It's ALWAYS raining in England and people will always opt for comfort over convenience. I will only on very seldom occasions go to San Francisco by car because it's such a pain in the ass.. But if it's raining there's no way I'm riding a bike. It was raining this morning (and yesterday, and the day before and the day before that), and it looked like ridership dipped a bit. Nonetheless, I had to dodge a bunch of bicyclists this morning. I got a late start to work and beat traffic by probably ten minutes on my five mile commute. It was also cold, but it's going to warm up again and dry out for a while until fall hits for real. Then its piles of sludge-leaves and then ice and then probably snow this year. We've already got snow on Mt. Hood, which is pretty weird. Time to wax the skis. -- Jay Beattie. |
#14
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Build it and they won't come
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:59:29 +0700, John B.
wrote: Singapore tried the "tax it out of existence" scheme years ago and it did work for a while but as the economy grew so did auto sales. Today a new Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Standard will cost you, including the first 6 months road tax, US$78,509, and traffic is a major problem. Comparing cost-o-living prices between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore &tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 294% more in Singapore than in L.A. Gasoline is 92% more expensive. Comparing Copenhagen and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Denmark&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Copenhagen& tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 96% more in Denmark than in L.A. Gasoline is on 110% more expensive. Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore Bicycle as the main means of transportation: L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35% From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities. To be uncharacteristically fair, this web site partly uses crowd source input for data, which makes me suspect that the numbers have been tweaked. Even if wrong, they're still interesting. I don't know what went wrong in Stevenage. In any other town, such dedicated bicycle paths would be infested with joggers, baby carriages, radio controlled racers, skateboarders, push carts, electric powered assault transports etc, which suggests that nobody is using the paths using any means of transport. That's too strange to not have an obvious cause. The paths might be going from nowhere to nowhere, the weather is chronically uncooperative, there are undesirables lurking along the paths, or something else that might discourage its use. Also, don't judge the quality of an idea by its first attempt. I did that once when I passed judgment on personal music players. At the time, the only example was the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP 300 digital media player. I bought one and it stunk in every possible way. So, I declared the idea to be worthless, only to have the iPod appear 2-3 years later, which demonstrated conclusively that it was a good idea and that my evaluation stunk as badly as the Diamond Rio. https://maas.museum/event/interface/object/rio-pmp-300-digital-media-player/index.html The moral is that innovators have to get everything right or the idea won't work. Like the media player, the bike paths are part of a system. Something is fundamentally wrong with some part of the system at Stevenage. However, from here, I can't tell what it might be. -- Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
#15
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Build it and they won't come
On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 12:35:36 PM UTC-7, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:59:29 +0700, John B. wrote: Singapore tried the "tax it out of existence" scheme years ago and it did work for a while but as the economy grew so did auto sales. Today a new Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Standard will cost you, including the first 6 months road tax, US$78,509, and traffic is a major problem. Comparing cost-o-living prices between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore &tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 294% more in Singapore than in L.A. Gasoline is 92% more expensive. Comparing Copenhagen and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Denmark&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Copenhagen& tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 96% more in Denmark than in L.A. Gasoline is on 110% more expensive. Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore Bicycle as the main means of transportation: L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35% From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities. To be uncharacteristically fair, this web site partly uses crowd source input for data, which makes me suspect that the numbers have been tweaked. Even if wrong, they're still interesting. I don't know what went wrong in Stevenage. In any other town, such dedicated bicycle paths would be infested with joggers, baby carriages, radio controlled racers, skateboarders, push carts, electric powered assault transports etc, which suggests that nobody is using the paths using any means of transport. That's too strange to not have an obvious cause. The paths might be going from nowhere to nowhere, the weather is chronically uncooperative, there are undesirables lurking along the paths, or something else that might discourage its use. Also, don't judge the quality of an idea by its first attempt. I did that once when I passed judgment on personal music players. At the time, the only example was the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP 300 digital media player. I bought one and it stunk in every possible way. So, I declared the idea to be worthless, only to have the iPod appear 2-3 years later, which demonstrated conclusively that it was a good idea and that my evaluation stunk as badly as the Diamond Rio. https://maas.museum/event/interface/object/rio-pmp-300-digital-media-player/index.html The moral is that innovators have to get everything right or the idea won't work. Like the media player, the bike paths are part of a system. Something is fundamentally wrong with some part of the system at Stevenage. However, from here, I can't tell what it might be. The idea has worked in cities in The Netherlands and Denmark -- and probably other flat European cities. It is hard to tell if it has worked in PDX since the influx of cyclists pre-existed the creation of infrastructure, although the later-created close-in infrastructure has gotten a lot of use. We get tracked like park animals in Portland, so with a little effort, one could determine the effect of additional infrastructure. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/trans...article/545858 -- Jay Beattie. |
#16
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Build it and they won't come
On 22/09/17 01:50, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 14:27:18 +1000, James wrote: The helmet law supporting researchers (Jake Olivier, Raphael Grzebieta, Soufiane Boufous, Rebecca Ivers, Royal Australian College of Surgeons, etc.), are all trying to "move on" from discussing helmet laws, spouting the need for protected biking infrastructure. They know the health benefits of cycling, but reject the evidence that the helmet law stops many people from cycling. They think that by building infrastructure that somehow cycling will blossom regardless. Well, that actually has worked here where I live. The numbers of people using bikes as transportation rather than recreation has doubled or trebled (although is still only 1-2% of trips at best). A few years back when gas nearly hit $5 per gallon bumped up the numbers of folks on bikes and it seems like many of them kept riding. For the public cost in terms of building out cycling infrastructure, I think the return on investment has been paltry. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to gain a few thousand cyclists. Perhaps the number of riders replacing drives with rides will grow more over time; the millenials in particular seem more likely to ride, but my guess is that as they get older, have kids, buy houses, etc., the bikes will end up gathering dust. By comparison, the ridership performnce of the light rail facilities we've built out have been surpassing expectations handily, despite the conservative ire about "social engineering" via transit (I find it interesting that *increasing* the citizen's options for getting around is "social engineering" to some). Around here I think one of the real purposes of bike infrastrcture is really just to get them out of the way of cars- driving is still the real focus of transportation policy. Yes, some people will begin to ride if subjective safety concerns are addressed, but if they continue to build more and bigger roads in a bid to reduce congestion, that only breeds more car use and the congestion returns - if it was ever diminished. The problem is that many advocates are focused on fixing one cause for lack lustre bicycling mode share. Usually the argument is that infrastructure is the key. Where in reality there is a whole raft of changes that need to be made, and one without the rest really doesn't help significantly. It's like having advanced stopping lines for cyclists (bike box at a road junction) without a separate green light phase for cyclists. The intent of the bike box is to get cyclists ahead of traffic so they can clear the intersection safely. Without the separate green phase they just **** the drivers off more as they all race from the lights at the same time. -- JS |
#17
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Build it and they won't come
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:52:55 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote: On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 12:35:36 PM UTC-7, Jeff Liebermann wrote: (Rant, rave, mumble, speculate, etc...) The idea has worked in cities in The Netherlands and Denmark -- and probably other flat European cities. It is hard to tell if it has worked in PDX since the influx of cyclists pre-existed the creation of infrastructure, although the later-created close-in infrastructure has gotten a lot of use. We get tracked like park animals in Portland, so with a little effort, one could determine the effect of additional infrastructure. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/trans...article/545858 -- Jay Beattie. Nice tangled mess of statistics. In order to preserve my sanity, I'll refrain from tying to correlate that report with whatever might he happening in Stevenage UK. Maybe a back of the envelope sanity check might help. Stevenage seems to have 13 bicycle shops: http://www.stevenage.org.uk/bike-shops/ of which only 4 offer repairs: http://www.stevenage.org.uk/bicycle-repairs/ For a town of 84,000 population, that's one shop for every 6,500 residents. For a population of 84,000, how many bicycles per year could these bicycle shops expect to sell? For all of England: http://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-statistics http://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-statistics#How%20many%20cycles%20are%20sold%20in%2 0Great%20Britain? Not counting e-bikes, that is 3.5 million bicycles sold per year for a population of 53 million. So, everyone gets a new bicycle every 15 years. Either UK bicycles have a very short half life, a few people buy hundreds of bicycles, or everyone owns more than one bicycle. Assuming the same rate of replacement for Stevenage, 1/15th of the population will be buying a new bicycle every year or: 84,000 / 15 = 5,600 bicycles sold each year in Stevenage. However, there are 13 bicycle shops, each of which will sell: 5,600 / 13 = 430 bicycles/year or 430 / 12 = 36 bicycles/month Not very good but possibly survivable for a small shop, especially if they are expensive machines. So, with 430 new bicycles being added to the Stevenage ridership every year, where do these bicycles go? I find it difficult to believe that the trails are empty when there 1.2 new bicycles added to the ridership every day. Do they only ride at night when nobody will notice? Or are the bicycles stolen immediately after they're sold? Or, perhaps something is wrong with the original story? -- Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
#18
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Build it and they won't come
jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 12:35:36 PM UTC-7, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:59:29 +0700, John B. wrote: Singapore tried the "tax it out of existence" scheme years ago and it did work for a while but as the economy grew so did auto sales. Today a new Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Standard will cost you, including the first 6 months road tax, US$78,509, and traffic is a major problem. Comparing cost-o-living prices between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore &tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 294% more in Singapore than in L.A. Gasoline is 92% more expensive. Comparing Copenhagen and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Denmark&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Copenhagen& tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 96% more in Denmark than in L.A. Gasoline is on 110% more expensive. Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore Bicycle as the main means of transportation: L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35% From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities. To be uncharacteristically fair, this web site partly uses crowd source input for data, which makes me suspect that the numbers have been tweaked. Even if wrong, they're still interesting. I don't know what went wrong in Stevenage. In any other town, such dedicated bicycle paths would be infested with joggers, baby carriages, radio controlled racers, skateboarders, push carts, electric powered assault transports etc, which suggests that nobody is using the paths using any means of transport. That's too strange to not have an obvious cause. The paths might be going from nowhere to nowhere, the weather is chronically uncooperative, there are undesirables lurking along the paths, or something else that might discourage its use. Also, don't judge the quality of an idea by its first attempt. I did that once when I passed judgment on personal music players. At the time, the only example was the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP 300 digital media player. I bought one and it stunk in every possible way. So, I declared the idea to be worthless, only to have the iPod appear 2-3 years later, which demonstrated conclusively that it was a good idea and that my evaluation stunk as badly as the Diamond Rio. https://maas.museum/event/interface/object/rio-pmp-300-digital-media-player/index.html The moral is that innovators have to get everything right or the idea won't work. Like the media player, the bike paths are part of a system. Something is fundamentally wrong with some part of the system at Stevenage. However, from here, I can't tell what it might be. The idea has worked in cities in The Netherlands and Denmark -- and probably other flat European cities. It is hard to tell if it has worked in PDX since the influx of cyclists pre-existed the creation of infrastructure, although the later-created close-in infrastructure has gotten a lot of use. We get tracked like park animals in Portland, so with a little effort, one could determine the effect of additional infrastructure. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/trans...article/545858 -- Jay Beattie. Bike paths in Montreal are pretty busy. Hard to say if those people would not be riding on the roads if the paths didn't exist but cycling numbers are increasing here so the implication is there. For club rides we head out of town toward eastern Ontario where the roads are better and there's not much auto traffic. -- duane |
#19
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Build it and they won't come
On 9/21/2017 6:09 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:52:55 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie wrote: On Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 12:35:36 PM UTC-7, Jeff Liebermann wrote: (Rant, rave, mumble, speculate, etc...) The idea has worked in cities in The Netherlands and Denmark -- and probably other flat European cities. It is hard to tell if it has worked in PDX since the influx of cyclists pre-existed the creation of infrastructure, although the later-created close-in infrastructure has gotten a lot of use. We get tracked like park animals in Portland, so with a little effort, one could determine the effect of additional infrastructure. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/trans...article/545858 -- Jay Beattie. Nice tangled mess of statistics. In order to preserve my sanity, I'll refrain from tying to correlate that report with whatever might he happening in Stevenage UK. Maybe a back of the envelope sanity check might help. Stevenage seems to have 13 bicycle shops: http://www.stevenage.org.uk/bike-shops/ of which only 4 offer repairs: http://www.stevenage.org.uk/bicycle-repairs/ For a town of 84,000 population, that's one shop for every 6,500 residents. For a population of 84,000, how many bicycles per year could these bicycle shops expect to sell? For all of England: http://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-statistics http://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-statistics#How%20many%20cycles%20are%20sold%20in%2 0Great%20Britain? Not counting e-bikes, that is 3.5 million bicycles sold per year for a population of 53 million. So, everyone gets a new bicycle every 15 years. Either UK bicycles have a very short half life, a few people buy hundreds of bicycles, or everyone owns more than one bicycle. Assuming the same rate of replacement for Stevenage, 1/15th of the population will be buying a new bicycle every year or: 84,000 / 15 = 5,600 bicycles sold each year in Stevenage. However, there are 13 bicycle shops, each of which will sell: 5,600 / 13 = 430 bicycles/year or 430 / 12 = 36 bicycles/month Not very good but possibly survivable for a small shop, especially if they are expensive machines. So, with 430 new bicycles being added to the Stevenage ridership every year, where do these bicycles go? I find it difficult to believe that the trails are empty when there 1.2 new bicycles added to the ridership every day. Do they only ride at night when nobody will notice? Or are the bicycles stolen immediately after they're sold? Or, perhaps something is wrong with the original story? First off, I don't know. But another factor is that even within a city there are neighborhoods with virtually zero new bike sales and others with very heavy purchases year after year. -- Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org/ Open every day since 1 April, 1971 |
#20
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Build it and they won't come
On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 12:35:36 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote: On Thu, 21 Sep 2017 13:59:29 +0700, John B. wrote: Singapore tried the "tax it out of existence" scheme years ago and it did work for a while but as the economy grew so did auto sales. Today a new Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Standard will cost you, including the first 6 months road tax, US$78,509, and traffic is a major problem. Comparing cost-o-living prices between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore &tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 294% more in Singapore than in L.A. Gasoline is 92% more expensive. Comparing Copenhagen and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Denmark&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Copenhagen& tracking=getDispatchComparison A Toyota Corolla costs 96% more in Denmark than in L.A. Gasoline is on 110% more expensive. Comparing traffic between Singapore and Smog Angeles: https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2 =Singapore&city1=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&city2=Singapore Bicycle as the main means of transportation: L.A. = 2.90%, Singapore = 2.35% From the section "Average when primary using Bike" it would seem that L.A. bicycle riders use cars, trains, and buses on part of their rides, while Singapore riders use none of these facilities. You apparently missed the part where it said that: Bus/Trolleybus (LA) 2.90% (SNG)29.41% and: Train/Metro (LA)1.45% (SNG)28.24% Or to put it another way, 57.65% of Singapore commuters use public transportation. -- Cheers, John B. |
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