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Cities Turning to Bicycles
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[Group list & Followup-To trimmed]
* the black rose : DonQuijote1954 wrote: German version : No speedlimits. Only on the Autobahn. All other roads have speed limits. That's not true. In Germany there is no general speedlimit on the Autobahn and on dual carriageways. However, most Autobahns and dual carriageways have a speedlimit between 80 and 120 km/h. Following the tragic death of a young woman and her two children last year which was caused by a DaimlerChrysler test driver driving at 250 km/h public opinion has changed in Germany. Most people now consider a general speedlimit of 160 or 180 km/h sensible. -- Stefan |
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[Group list & Followup-To trimmed]
* the black rose : DonQuijote1954 wrote: German version : No speedlimits. Only on the Autobahn. All other roads have speed limits. That's not true. In Germany there is no general speedlimit on the Autobahn and on dual carriageways. However, most Autobahns and dual carriageways have a speedlimit between 80 and 120 km/h. Following the tragic death of a young woman and her two children last year which was caused by a DaimlerChrysler test driver driving at 250 km/h public opinion has changed in Germany. Most people now consider a general speedlimit of 160 or 180 km/h sensible. -- Stefan |
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Jack May wrote:
But these are figure that don't count the oil used to grow, transport, and cook the food that is used to power the person that is doing the riding. A totally stupid analysis. No, what you wrote qualifies as silly. Those figures are a constant for both the cyclist and the non-cyclist, since both eat and the food comes from these same sources. The non-cyclist typically consumes more calories than the cyclist because cycling improves the effiency of the human engine and reudces the number of heartbeats per minute, further reducing the number of calories. While amount of additional food required to feed a fit cyclist who trains for racing may well be significant, the commute cyclist does not need any additional food than his sedentary counterpart and may well consume less. Its like those idiot that call electric cars zero pollution because they don't know where the energry came from. Just for food processing we get "All together the food-processing industry in the United States uses about ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy it produces." In those cases, you are correct. There is no non-polluting form of transport, though some are clearly less polluting and more efficient than others. If you use, say, hydroelectric or geothermal plants, pollution is still a huge concern (as is the localized environmantal damage), but the overall air quality would clearly improve. ....stuff deleted |
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Frank Krygowski wrote in message ...
Matthew Russotto wrote: Personally, I don't value self-sufficiency as much as I value community. Too many Americans (males, especially) have a fantasy view of the world, based on a myth of the rugged man going out solo into the wilderness. So of course, they buy a 4x4 in case they have to haul in some provisions over a dirt track. [...] Indeed. I see stuff like that all the time. I don't remember all this suburban, edge-city madness when I was growing up in the 70's. I think that much of this happened over the last 30 years or so when the old cities experienced white-flight into the burbs. Ironically, a lot of these "self-sufficient" techno-libertarian types, live in developments that were bought by some large corporate development company at cheap prices from truly self-sufficient family farms who have had their land for generations. The development companies then proceed to strip out all the character from the land and put up god-awful plywood and tyvek movie-sets according to some bland pre-spec'd design. They then give these swaths of crap made-up names like "whatever ridge", "humdrum pointe", "blah-blah village". People then actually pay money to move into these places, and abandon _real_ cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, etc. The old cities suffer the economic consequences that are a direct consequence of white-flight while edge-city people then spew negative crap about how the city is crumbling and that it deserves what it gets. In reality, the families of many of these folks resided in the old cities for generations and it was their recent abandonment of the city that precipitated its problems. But hey, that's "self-sufficiency" for you. |
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[Trimmed off rec.bicycles.rides, and also rec.autos.driving on the list of
newsgroups.] "Frank Krygowski" wrote in message ... Brent P wrote: Also, these humps, speed bumps, etc are also an annoyance on bicycle. Not at all, in my experience. I think it depends on design. We had a spirited discussion :-) at one of the ped/bike advisory meetings with the design engineer about the design of speed humps on a particular street. The neighborhood is gung-ho on traffic calming because the street is both on the way to the local high school and elementary school, and a back way in to a major employer (Microsoft), so it sees more traffic than it was originally designed for. The street is two lanes, curbed with fog lines. The question was, where do you end the speed hump? You can end it at the fog line, but then you'll have cars going over the fog line all the time to avoid the hump on the right side. So, this was ruled out. The design engineer thought it might be a good idea to end the speed hump half-way across the paved area between the fog line and the curb. The cyclists present at the meeting objected, saying that if you are a commuter, and riding in the dark, you might not realize you're at the edge of the hump and lose your balance because you haven't hit the hump square on. We argued for the hump going all the way to the curb. This is how it eventually was built. During the day, during light traffic, say on a weekend ride, you can aim your bike down the slot they have for the emergency vehicles, which is about where the left wheel well is, and avoid the hump completely. Otherwise, you just ride over the hump, which even at 22 mph or so (what I'd average on the downhill-ish side of the street) is noticeable, but not jarring. Warm Regards, CP |
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Sun, 19 Sep 2004 20:02:33 GMT,
. net, enslaved scud jockey "Mark Jones" wrote: Filthy, deadly, stinky and noisey but still just a toy. Actually it is quite clean and uses 2 catalytic converters to reduce exhaust emissions. Lock yourself in the garage with it and burn off a tank of the filthy, deadly and stinky fuel then tell me how clean it is. thppppft! -- zk |
#8
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In article ,
Zoot Katz wrote: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 20:02:33 GMT, . net, enslaved scud jockey "Mark Jones" wrote: Filthy, deadly, stinky and noisey but still just a toy. Actually it is quite clean and uses 2 catalytic converters to reduce exhaust emissions. Lock yourself in the garage with it and burn off a tank of the filthy, deadly and stinky fuel then tell me how clean it is. thppppft! A myth left over from old Hollywood movies. |
#9
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Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:33:50 GMT,
. net, "Mark Jones" wrote: There are a lot more narrow speed bumps where I live than there are wide ones. So. Slow down. That's why they're there. Or don't slow down and trash your stinky toy. Either way you're going to whine. BWAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHA! -- zk |
#10
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"Zoot Katz" wrote in message
... Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:33:50 GMT, . net, "Mark Jones" wrote: There are a lot more narrow speed bumps where I live than there are wide ones. So. Slow down. That's why they're there. Or don't slow down and trash your stinky toy. Either way you're going to whine. I don't need to slow down because I do not speed in residential areas. Too many ways to have an accident because of kids playing and people entering and leaving driveways. You are the one whining because I have a performance car and you don't like them. Get over it. |
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