Build it and they won't come

On 9/29/2017 8:28 AM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

We can't calculate the health benefit. How would you even do that? You assume that there is this magical group of couch potatoes just waiting for a bike path -- and when it appears, they materialize in droves -- clearing out their arteries and living for decades longer in perfect health. We could put ear tags on them and follow their every move to determine their outcomes -- maybe get a control group of couch potatoes.

It's the same group of couch potatoes that became that way when they
were required to wear helmets. They used to be active cyclists, now they
spend their days sitting on the couch eating junk food and watching TV.

On Friday, September 29, 2017 at 6:21:45 PM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 9/29/2017 8:28 AM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

We can't calculate the health benefit. How would you even do that? You assume that there is this magical group of couch potatoes just waiting for a bike path -- and when it appears, they materialize in droves -- clearing out their arteries and living for decades longer in perfect health. We could put ear tags on them and follow their every move to determine their outcomes -- maybe get a control group of couch potatoes.

It's the same group of couch potatoes that became that way when they
were required to wear helmets. They used to be active cyclists, now they
spend their days sitting on the couch eating junk food and watching TV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw20W9e3Co4

-- Jay Beattie.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:14:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 3:29:02 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-20 20:57, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 21:47:25 -0400, 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.

I remember seeing period BBC footage about this, describing the
innovations in place at the time. Now, maybe it's what you're used to;
I grew up in a very bikeable suburb of Chicago and all us kids just got
around on bikes. So I looked at infrastructure like this and was
puzzled as to why.

Apparently I wasn't alone.

In the Minneapolis-St Paul area we have been building out both
on-street and separated bike facilities. While I find much of the
design of the on-street facilities to be objectionable and even
downright stupid, there has been a noticeable increase in bike riding.
Most of them are young uns and are not wearing the pseudo-pro clown
suits (I'm still wearing mine, although I've reached an age and a body
composition where that's probably ill-advised). The separated
facilities- which are pretty extensive- get a whole lot of use; the
on-street facilities seem to get a lot of use too although not quite as
much.

But this doesn't seem to work everywhere. Denmark made it work by
taxing cars at an astonishing rate- owning a car is an economic
hardship for many if not most Danes due to the tax structure- and
pairing that with extensive on-street bike facilities. There would be
no way to accomplish something like that in the US, where owning a car
and having cheap fuel is effectively part of the Bill of Rights.


That is what many people who never lived there think but that isn't the
way it is. Nearly all adult Danes own cars, just like the Dutch, the
Germans, and so on. All countries where car ownership isn't cheap but
you've got to have one. They generaly have smaller more economical cars.
Not a monstrous SUV with a 5-liter engine but a compact car with a
1.5-liter engine.

Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
cycling.

My wife and I lived in Europe for decades so we know a thing or two
about it. Here in the US we have two cars. In Europe we had only one and
sometimes it sat in the garage for more than a month without having
rolled one lone kilometer.

Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again. Pointing
to some examples where they screwed up as Frank likes to do isn't going
to change that fact.

Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle infrastructure in
this area I notice a significant uptick in rider numbers but only in
areas where cycle paths are built, not in the others. Personally I was
down to 757 miles total on my car including business use for 2016,
dropping further. About 4000 miles between the road bike and the MTB. I
do not even remember the last time I bought gas and the tank is still at
more than 3/4. Of course, now I am gong through MTB tires like popcorn.

The US is an EXTREMELY healthy country. The problem is that immigrants both legal and illegal pull the average health down. The fact is that the life expectancy of the white anglo-saxon race is longer than most others. Only the Japanese exceed them. This is NOT because of health services because this has always been the case throughout history.


You might want to look at
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/u...ncy-white-male

and then compare the number with those shown in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ife_expectancy

Which seems to state that white males in the U.S. have a life
expectancy about the same as Slovakia and Mexico.

By the way, isn't the term "white anglo-saxon" a bit redundant? Or
were there some black anglo-saxons? Red anglo-saxons?
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 16:32:47 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-09-29 15:12, AMuzi wrote:
On 9/29/2017 11:37 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-29 08:14, wrote:
On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 3:29:02 PM UTC-7, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-20 20:57, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 21:47:25 -0400, 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.

I remember seeing period BBC footage about this,
describing the
innovations in place at the time. Now, maybe it's what
you're
used to; I grew up in a very bikeable suburb of Chicago
and all
us kids just got around on bikes. So I looked at
infrastructure
like this and was puzzled as to why.

Apparently I wasn't alone.

In the Minneapolis-St Paul area we have been building
out both
on-street and separated bike facilities. While I find
much of
the design of the on-street facilities to be
objectionable and
even downright stupid, there has been a noticeable
increase in
bike riding. Most of them are young uns and are not
wearing the
pseudo-pro clown suits (I'm still wearing mine, although
I've
reached an age and a body composition where that's probably
ill-advised). The separated facilities- which are pretty
extensive- get a whole lot of use; the on-street
facilities seem
to get a lot of use too although not quite as much.

But this doesn't seem to work everywhere. Denmark made
it work
by taxing cars at an astonishing rate- owning a car is an
economic hardship for many if not most Danes due to the tax
structure- and pairing that with extensive on-street bike
facilities. There would be no way to accomplish
something like
that in the US, where owning a car and having cheap fuel is
effectively part of the Bill of Rights.


That is what many people who never lived there think but
that isn't
the way it is. Nearly all adult Danes own cars, just like
the
Dutch, the Germans, and so on. All countries where car
ownership
isn't cheap but you've got to have one. They generaly
have smaller
more economical cars. Not a monstrous SUV with a 5-liter
engine but
a compact car with a 1.5-liter engine.

Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the
cycling
facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on
average
less obese that Americans and there are reasons for that,
one of
them being cycling.

My wife and I lived in Europe for decades so we know a
thing or
two about it. Here in the US we have two cars. In Europe
we had
only one and sometimes it sat in the garage for more than
a month
without having rolled one lone kilometer.

Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and
again.
Pointing to some examples where they screwed up as Frank
likes to
do isn't going to change that fact.

Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle
infrastructure in this area I notice a significant uptick
in rider
numbers but only in areas where cycle paths are built,
not in the
others. Personally I was down to 757 miles total on my car
including business use for 2016, dropping further. About
4000 miles
between the road bike and the MTB. I do not even remember
the last
time I bought gas and the tank is still at more than 3/4. Of
course, now I am gong through MTB tires like popcorn.

The US is an EXTREMELY healthy country. The problem is that
immigrants both legal and illegal pull the average health
down. The
fact is that the life expectancy of the white anglo-saxon
race is
longer than most others. Only the Japanese exceed them.
This is NOT
because of health services because this has always been
the case
throughout history.


Huh?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020302/

Quote "During 1991–2008, obesity prevalence for US-born
adults increased from 13.9 to 28.7%, while prevalence for
immigrants increased from 9.5 to 20.7%".


Nothing good about that but there are fatter populations.

http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/2...the-world.html


Mexico's socialist health scheme is suffering an inundation of obesity,
heart disease and diabetes with serious fiscal consequences:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3567772.html


AFAIK it was customary in the Pacific Islands to regard someone with a
major belly a rich person, they could always eat as much as they wante,
and did.


Generally speaking the impression that the rich and powerful are fat
seems well entrenched. Certainly from the Hawaiian Islands westward.
In China, S.E.A. and India the concept is still alive and well.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:52:12 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 11:03:30 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:24:54 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 09:46:04 +0700, John B wrote:

I've a good friend who is from Perth, Western Australia, who tells me
that nearly all the vegetables sold in Perth are actually Chinese
grown and shipped to Australia via refrigerated containers, as they
are cheaper then veggies grown in Australia.

Slave labor saves money, keeps costs down *and* boosts profits:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...josh-gelernter

http://content.time.com/time/world/a...635144,00.html

If we get rid of enough government regulation, maybe we can do that in
the US too! Hey, wait, we've got a start on that already:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...invisible-army

http://tinyurl.com/ya4w4ojz
Well, given that the U.S. has a prison population of 693/100,000
population while China has 116/100,000 it appears that just maybe the
Chinese are doing something right.

Torturing prisoners so that they don't want to go to jail again is what you're looking for? Underfed to the level of starvation? No health care whatsoever? Work the same as a healthy, well fed person expected of them?

I do believe that the punishment should fit the crime and that if it did we'd have a great deal less crime.

The point remains that the U.S. - the land of the free and the home of
the brave - has the highest percentage of their population
incarcerated (except for the Seychelles) in the entire world, some 693
(not including juvenile) per 100,000, and the highest number of
prisoners - 2,145,100.

China with a population 4 times larger then the U.S. has a per capita
incarcerated rate of 118/100,000, and total prisoners of 1,649,804.

Given that legal systems are simply tools to protect society which
system is preferable? One that produces a 0.1% criminal rate or one
that produces a rate six times higher?

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 16:56:17 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 9/29/2017 1:03 AM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:24:54 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 09:46:04 +0700, John B wrote:

I've a good friend who is from Perth, Western Australia, who tells me
that nearly all the vegetables sold in Perth are actually Chinese
grown and shipped to Australia via refrigerated containers, as they
are cheaper then veggies grown in Australia.

Slave labor saves money, keeps costs down *and* boosts profits:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...josh-gelernter

http://content.time.com/time/world/a...635144,00.html

If we get rid of enough government regulation, maybe we can do that in
the US too! Hey, wait, we've got a start on that already:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...invisible-army

http://tinyurl.com/ya4w4ojz
Well, given that the U.S. has a prison population of 693/100,000
population while China has 116/100,000 it appears that just maybe the
Chinese are doing something right.
--
Cheers,

John B.


Summary executions may have some downsides here that the
Chinese don't fear there.

I'm sure that they would.

But I've always wondered what the effect would be if the federal
government spent their money only on federal responsibilities as
originally specified in the Constitution and left local matters up to
locals.

For example, I read that the costs in California to maintain a
prisoner for one year in the state prison system is $47,102, per
individual.

Lets see? 47,102 x 129,875 prisoners.... $6,117,230,944.

Hey Guys! We gotta raise the taxes...
--
Cheers,

John B.

On 9/29/2017 10:30 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-28 18:17, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/28/2017 6:29 PM, Joerg wrote:

Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
cycling.

Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again.

In the U.S., it's been proven time and time again that "build it, and
maybe 1.5% will come, if you're lucky and cycling is fashionable in your
area."


In some areas a lot more came...

If you count 3% as being "a lot more" than 1.5%. Seems to me it's a
difference between negligible and negligible.

but 1.5% is a respectable number for the US.

IOW, you've lowered your standards to the point that you consider any
non-zero number to be respectable.

To repeat your own words: Calculate the longterm health benefits
from that 1.5% increase in Dollar numbers.

First, a smart person would not assume that putting in some bike
facilities and getting 1.5% bike mode share are causally connected. Why?
Because as mentioned many times, San Francisco got more bike mode share
growth when it was illegal to build bike facilities. And Stevenage,
Milton Keynes etc. got negligible bike mode share from world class
facilities designed into the town from scratch as the towns were built.

Second, you have no way of knowing how long that 1.5% mode share will
last. Cycling, like most things, is subject to the whims of fashion. It
may be "cool" for a while; then who knows? Muscle cars may come back in
style, and the teens whose moms and dads ride bikes may decide that
anything Mom or Dad do is stupid and geeky and must be avoided.

Pointing to some examples where they screwed up as Frank likes to do
isn't going to change that fact.

But the examples I've given _did_ build it, and they _didn't_ come.
Don't pretend that's false.


You can always find an example where they screwed up.

Sorry, Joerg, you're claiming Stevenage bike facility designers screwed
up based _only_ on the fact that almost nobody in Stevenage rides.
You're using 20-20 hindsight.

If you hadn't heard about the low ridership, and instead had seen the
designs for a town with short travel distances; and a completely
segregated set of quiet bike paths that avoided even road crossings (by
using underpasses or overpasses); and that reached every reasonable
destination in town, you'd have said "THAT'S how it should be done!"

But it _was_ done that way. And only about 2% of travel occurs by bike.
In the U.S., the same system would produce even less bike mode share.

Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle infrastructure
in this area I notice a significant uptick in rider numbers but only
in areas where cycle paths are built, not in the others.

Significant? What are the numbers?


Over 1% which is a lot for the US...

1% is negligible in this field, just as it's negligible in almost every
other field.

So you want to promote spending bundles on segregated infrastructure to
get negligible results.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 9/29/2017 11:28 AM, jbeattie wrote:


I still think the very best facilities are wide clean shoulders or bike lanes. You can sweep them, and they aren't full of dogs and walkers, etc., etc. They allow for passing other bicyclists without hitting some on-coming cyclist like the dopey two way cycle tracks -- which are fine if you like conga lines or bike herds. Not my cup of tea.

I greatly prefer quiet streets or roads, whether or not you call them
bicycle boulevards.

Second best are streets with traffic, but with lanes wide enough to
safely share.

Those don't need to be swept because it happens naturally, by cars'
tires. Riders don't get funneled into reach of parked car doors by badly
placed stripes. Nobody gets their ire up if a cyclist has to move left
to avoid a pothole or to merge into left turn position. Faster cyclists
can pass slower cyclists more easily.

If you have enough pavement width for the level of traffic (including
bikes) a stripe of paint generally gets you nothing, other than debris
in the segregated lane, and hassling if you leave that segregated lane.


--
- Frank Krygowski

John B. wrote:
On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:14:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 3:29:02 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-20 20:57, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 21:47:25 -0400, 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.

I remember seeing period BBC footage about this, describing the
innovations in place at the time. Now, maybe it's what you're used to;
I grew up in a very bikeable suburb of Chicago and all us kids just got
around on bikes. So I looked at infrastructure like this and was
puzzled as to why.

Apparently I wasn't alone.

In the Minneapolis-St Paul area we have been building out both
on-street and separated bike facilities. While I find much of the
design of the on-street facilities to be objectionable and even
downright stupid, there has been a noticeable increase in bike riding.
Most of them are young uns and are not wearing the pseudo-pro clown
suits (I'm still wearing mine, although I've reached an age and a body
composition where that's probably ill-advised). The separated
facilities- which are pretty extensive- get a whole lot of use; the
on-street facilities seem to get a lot of use too although not quite as
much.

But this doesn't seem to work everywhere. Denmark made it work by
taxing cars at an astonishing rate- owning a car is an economic
hardship for many if not most Danes due to the tax structure- and
pairing that with extensive on-street bike facilities. There would be
no way to accomplish something like that in the US, where owning a car
and having cheap fuel is effectively part of the Bill of Rights.


That is what many people who never lived there think but that isn't the
way it is. Nearly all adult Danes own cars, just like the Dutch, the
Germans, and so on. All countries where car ownership isn't cheap but
you've got to have one. They generaly have smaller more economical cars.
Not a monstrous SUV with a 5-liter engine but a compact car with a
1.5-liter engine.

Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
cycling.

My wife and I lived in Europe for decades so we know a thing or two
about it. Here in the US we have two cars. In Europe we had only one and
sometimes it sat in the garage for more than a month without having
rolled one lone kilometer.

Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again. Pointing
to some examples where they screwed up as Frank likes to do isn't going
to change that fact.

Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle infrastructure in
this area I notice a significant uptick in rider numbers but only in
areas where cycle paths are built, not in the others. Personally I was
down to 757 miles total on my car including business use for 2016,
dropping further. About 4000 miles between the road bike and the MTB. I
do not even remember the last time I bought gas and the tank is still at
more than 3/4. Of course, now I am gong through MTB tires like popcorn.

The US is an EXTREMELY healthy country. The problem is that immigrants
both legal and illegal pull the average health down. The fact is that
the life expectancy of the white anglo-saxon race is longer than most
others. Only the Japanese exceed them. This is NOT because of health
services because this has always been the case throughout history.


You might want to look at
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/u...ncy-white-male

and then compare the number with those shown in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ife_expectancy

Which seems to state that white males in the U.S. have a life
expectancy about the same as Slovakia and Mexico.

By the way, isn't the term "white anglo-saxon" a bit redundant? Or
were there some black anglo-saxons? Red anglo-saxons?
--
Cheers,

John B.

Hmmm... move north of 49° to Canada and you gain 3 years of life
expectancy. Damn socialists and their universal healthcare systems.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 23:15:56 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 9/29/2017 10:30 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-28 18:17, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/28/2017 6:29 PM, Joerg wrote:

Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them being
cycling.

Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again.

In the U.S., it's been proven time and time again that "build it, and
maybe 1.5% will come, if you're lucky and cycling is fashionable in your
area."


In some areas a lot more came...

If you count 3% as being "a lot more" than 1.5%. Seems to me it's a
difference between negligible and negligible.

but 1.5% is a respectable number for the US.

IOW, you've lowered your standards to the point that you consider any
non-zero number to be respectable.

To repeat your own words: Calculate the longterm health benefits
from that 1.5% increase in Dollar numbers.

First, a smart person would not assume that putting in some bike
facilities and getting 1.5% bike mode share are causally connected. Why?
Because as mentioned many times, San Francisco got more bike mode share
growth when it was illegal to build bike facilities. And Stevenage,
Milton Keynes etc. got negligible bike mode share from world class
facilities designed into the town from scratch as the towns were built.

Second, you have no way of knowing how long that 1.5% mode share will
last. Cycling, like most things, is subject to the whims of fashion. It
may be "cool" for a while; then who knows? Muscle cars may come back in
style, and the teens whose moms and dads ride bikes may decide that
anything Mom or Dad do is stupid and geeky and must be avoided.

Pointing to some examples where they screwed up as Frank likes to do
isn't going to change that fact.

But the examples I've given _did_ build it, and they _didn't_ come.
Don't pretend that's false.


You can always find an example where they screwed up.

Sorry, Joerg, you're claiming Stevenage bike facility designers screwed
up based _only_ on the fact that almost nobody in Stevenage rides.
You're using 20-20 hindsight.

If you hadn't heard about the low ridership, and instead had seen the
designs for a town with short travel distances; and a completely
segregated set of quiet bike paths that avoided even road crossings (by
using underpasses or overpasses); and that reached every reasonable
destination in town, you'd have said "THAT'S how it should be done!"

But it _was_ done that way. And only about 2% of travel occurs by bike.
In the U.S., the same system would produce even less bike mode share.

Now that they are (finally!) building out the bicycle infrastructure
in this area I notice a significant uptick in rider numbers but only
in areas where cycle paths are built, not in the others.

Significant? What are the numbers?


Over 1% which is a lot for the US...

1% is negligible in this field, just as it's negligible in almost every
other field.

So you want to promote spending bundles on segregated infrastructure to
get negligible results.

In my experience a motorized vehicle is the first thing that anyone
buys just as soon as he/she can find the money to do it. Even to the
extent of going into debt at larcenous interest rates. And it is
common in every country where I've lived. First they walk, then a
bicycle, next a motorbike and so on. In fact those who talk the
loudest about bike paths also keep an automobile. Joerg has two.

It might also be noted that automobile ownership is increasing in
countries like Denmark and Holland that are often mentioned as biking
paradises.

Given the choice of getting in the car and turning on the air
conditioning or sweating up the hill on a bicycle the bulk of the
human population will take the car.

In fact, didn't someone, just recently, mention saying to a car full
of relatives, "Here, we'll just walk over to that store", and someone
replied, "drive over".
--
Cheers,

John B.