SMH Article: Sydney: the city that hates bikes

On Mar 16, 11:01*pm, "Tomasso" wrote:

My pedestrian adventures include observing faces of drivers. And
occasionally, very occasionally, I see a smile.

That's funny, I once saw a woman in a car on William Henry Street
holding a dildo, waiting for the light to change. She was smiling,
too.

I'm ambivalent about Sydney drivers. The majority are pretty good, but
there's a significant minority that aren't. Quite possibly that's just
the number you'd expect that are having a bad day, so this may be
idiosyncratically situational, rather than pathological. If you couple
that with people's tendency to recall unusual events over common
events, you can see how you'd end up with a perception that Sydney
drivers are worse than they really are.


-- Phil

Phil H wrote:
On Mar 16, 11:01 pm, "Tomasso" wrote:

My pedestrian adventures include observing faces of drivers. And
occasionally, very occasionally, I see a smile.

That's funny, I once saw a woman in a car on William Henry Street
holding a dildo, waiting for the light to change. She was smiling,
too.

Hmmm, multi-tasking. A feminine rite if you believe the stories.

Strange that it happened in Ultimo. Sounds more like lower North Shore...

:-).

I'm ambivalent about Sydney drivers. The majority are pretty good, but
there's a significant minority that aren't. Quite possibly that's just
the number you'd expect that are having a bad day, so this may be
idiosyncratically situational, rather than pathological. If you couple
that with people's tendency to recall unusual events over common
events, you can see how you'd end up with a perception that Sydney
drivers are worse than they really are.

Recent trips to the Hunter Valley found happy, cautious and polite
drivers and a few big utes. They never have to travel as far (or as
gridlocked) as Sydney drivers, so hardly ever go over the brink.

45+ minute commutes are pretty common in Sydney, and weekend
travelling is a boring mess. The opportunity and the pressure to
lose it are much higher. At least without some kind of vibrator
as a distraction...

Tomasso.

-- Phil

In article ,
Zebee Johnstone wrote:

In aus.bicycle on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:27:34 +1100
Jack Russell wrote:
Zebee Johnstone wrote:
In aus.bicycle on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:25:41 +1100
Jack Russell wrote:
Further on in the same edition is an article quoting Geoff Brabham on
how appalling Sydney drivers are Nothing to do with cyclists). I think
that is the crux of the matter, the are crap, rude ,selfish drivers.

Weird in a way... the very first time I drove in Sydney I was stunned
at how polite the drivers were!

If I put my indicator on to change lanes, people gave way to let me
in, never seen that in the other cities I drove in.

Zebee
Funny that because my experience is the exact opposite and it is the
example I always use of how bad Sydney drivers are!!!

I see it all the time on my commute. I suspect it is because a Sydney
driver will indicate and go, so if you don't give way you get hit...
but they do give way.

I do see people hesitating, you don't get a huge time window to make
your changes so if you dither they will give up and think you don't
want to change lanes.

Zebee

Most commuter drivers are OK because they share a common misery.
I find tradies in their utes most aggressive and eastern suburbs madams
in their black 4WD the most unpredictable as they search for a park no
further than 20 metres from their destination.
Victorian drivers are like rabbits in the spotlight, freezing at the
first hint of danger.
Luckily not many South Aust drivers come here. When you drive in South
Aust (I think Zebee and I share a colonial past?) you get to experience
a world where merging is a bigger sin than heresy.
regards,
20cents

In aus.bicycle on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:47:23 GMT
20cents wrote:
Luckily not many South Aust drivers come here. When you drive in South
Aust (I think Zebee and I share a colonial past?) you get to experience
a world where merging is a bigger sin than heresy.

They are like that in Perth too. The willingness of drivers to let me
merge when I was driving a small sedan was quite different to their
willingness when I was driving a rather hard used F100.

Zebee

Does anyone have the text of the article? Its not online at the moment



"K.A. Moylan" wrote in message
...
A U.S.A. academic was stunned by his experience, observes that "Sydney
is one of the developed world's most hostile cities for cycling".
Article is in the URL
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-the...-20100312-q45h.
html

I was surprised that it was *worse* that Texas and the south-east states
of U.S.A.

--
K.A. Moylan
Canberra, Australia
Ski Club: http://www.cccsc.asn.au
kamoylan at ozemail dot com dot au

In article ,
"Premier" wrote:

Does anyone have the text of the article? Its not online at the moment



"K.A. Moylan" wrote in message
...
A U.S.A. academic was stunned by his experience, observes that "Sydney
is one of the developed world's most hostile cities for cycling".
Article is in the URL
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-the...-20100312-q45h.
html

I was surprised that it was *worse* that Texas and the south-east states
of U.S.A.

--
K.A. Moylan
Canberra, Australia
Ski Club: http://www.cccsc.asn.au
kamoylan at ozemail dot com dot au

??
I visited the URL today, and this is what I found:

Sydney: the city that hates bikes

Matthew Moore
March 13, 2010 - 3:00AM

Sydney is one of the developed world's most hostile cities for cycling,
according to a US academic who spent a sabbatical year researching ways to
boost bike-riding levels in the city.

''I did not cycle that often because I almost got killed several times -
people cutting me off, squeezing me off the road and not stopping,'' John
Pucher said of his efforts to ride to Sydney University from his Stanmore
home.

''Whether I was a pedestrian or cyclist I found the level of the hostility of
enough Sydney motorists worse than I had seen anywhere in the world.''

For decades Dr Pucher, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, has been riding
bikes - from the cycling wonderlands of Amsterdam and Copenhagen to the
car-choked streets of many US cities. But he was still stunned by his
experience here.

''In Texas or in the south-east of the US it's aggressive but there was an
incredible level of aggression from Sydney motorists & It's not every
motorist but there were enough of them, whether it was resentment,
irritability or just aggression, I don't know.''

In a paper to be published in the Journal of Transport Geography, Dr Pucher
and two Australian colleagues explain why Sydney cycling levels lag much of
the developed world.

Their paper compares cycling in Sydney and Melbourne and finds twice as many
trips are made by bicycle in Melbourne as Sydney with the rate of trips in
Melbourne growing at three times that of Sydney.

Dr Pucher says Melbourne's flatter terrain and lower rainfall alone do not
explain why in hilly San Francisco the percentage of trips by bike has grown
to 2.5 per cent, 3‡ times Sydney's rate of 0.7 per cent.

More significant than topography is reducing aggression among motorists.
Making cyclists, especially female cyclists, feel safer, is a job Melbourne
has done much better than Sydney. Dr Pucher says women are a litmus test for
cycling safety as many will ride only if they feel safe. Twenty-five per cent
of commuting cyclists in Melbourne are women, but only 17 per cent in Sydney.
In Denmark the figure is 45 per cent and in the Netherlands 55 per cent.

Still, he was impressed with the City of Sydney's spending $76 million on a
200-kilometre network of bike lanes. The Premier, Kristina Keneally, says
that since she took up riding to work more than a year ago she has never had
an incident. ''I see some drivers perhaps not being as aware of cyclists as
they could be. That said, there are cyclists who take risks that I
wouldn't.''

This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-the...0312-q45h.html

--
K.A. Moylan
Canberra, Australia
Ski Club: http://www.cccsc.asn.au
kamoylan at ozemail dot com dot au