Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
>It's out of the question in most places, it slows car traffic down

If you actually make a sufficiently high-quality bike network to convince people to bike that would otherwise drive, I would expect this to speed car traffic up by taking a lot of cars off the road.

Not everywhere is San Francisco. Where I live, it's below freezing almost half the year. No one wants to add bike lanes that will only get lightly used 3 months a year.
I bike 9 to 10 months out of the year in southern Wisconsin. It would do people well to get outside and spend less time on their screens in the Winter.
Scandinavia, The Netherlands, London, Paris. Great for cycling, shit weather.

Buy a coat and some gloves.

No one wants to. Great plan you have.
Have you ever heard of Oulu, Finland?
Have you ever heard of the sprawling Midwest?
So what? People bike there. They make products for winter cycling commuting. They don’t sell them to people in miami after all. There is a market evidently.

And then, so what about the lane? Drive all you want it doesn’t affect you, other than lessening the risk you kill a cyclist or someone you know dies riding a bike.

Denmark has excellent bike infrastructure and terrible weather.
NO

I like the comfort of my car too much to freeze my ass on a bike. Cities were built around the vision of economic prosperity and a car for everyone, and they should stay that way.

> I like the comfort of my car too much to freeze my ass on a bike.

you usually don't get cold when cycling. If anything you are warming up.

> Cities were built around the vision of economic prosperity and a car for everyone,

That is a false statement. Most cities predate the existence of cars for a start.

Also economic prosperity is unrelated to cars. If anything cars are a financial burden for most people and people buy them because they feel they are forced to need them, not because they want them. This is the antithesis of prosperity.

Then don’t? How come every bike lane thread has these annoying people assuming a bike lane means a gun goes to the head and forces you on a bike. Keep driving if you want. Doesn’t matter. But why fight a bike lane when it doesn’t affect your life at all, I will never understand.
Depends where you are but bikes are actually kind of fun. It doesn't mean you can't have cars. I have both but bikes are more practical around central London at any rate.
for me prosperity implies not spending a big chunk of my day trapped in a metal box with no way to get out. are you really saying that everyone except a couple freaks like me would rather fight traffic and sit on your ass than take nice walk? to the degree that we shouldn't even be allowed to have little pockets where driving isn't the only modality?

the US is huge, and its all car all the time. you have thousands of options of where to live like that - I have like 5. and you think I shouldn't even have that.

{"deleted":true,"id":50373771,"parent":50372876,"time":1793841318,"type":"comment"}
This is very geography/climate dependent though. There are conditions where most people would not bike regardless of how high quality the bike network is.
The effect is a lot less pronounced that you might expect. See, for example, this video talking about Oulu, Finland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
Are these conditions that typically can't be found in the Netherlands?

I guess heavy snow isn't too common there, maybe if we plowed the bike paths? Ok, now I'm getting distracted imagining a bike-path-plow, it would presumably be mounted on a powered bike of some sort, or maybe on those little parking enforcement trikes.

Bidirectional dedicated bike paths are usually at least car-sized. They will fit a regular plow just fine. Monodirectional bike lanes usually lack separation from the rest of the road, so they get plowed for free as a side-effect of plowing the car lane.
In the city where I live (which is _usually_ pretty bike friendly) the plow moves the snow from the car lanes onto the bike lanes a lot of the time :/
In Scandinavia they have an army of tiny tractors for this purpose:

https://cykelmagasinet.se/facit-finns-nu-sopsaltade-cykelvag...

{"deleted":true,"id":50375617,"parent":50369226,"time":1793857304,"type":"comment"}
So what? On nice days you get a safer way to bike. Why are people in favor of more risk of death to others?
Buy a coat and a pair of gloves. You're not made of sugar.
{"deleted":true,"id":50372005,"parent":50368932,"time":1793828774,"type":"comment"}