Don’t mistake me, I would much prefer to just hop on public transit and get to where I want without having to drive. Whenever I travel I take great pleasure in being able to use public transit that actually just “works” and not having to rent a car or drive my own car around
That being said, I think bicycles and “walkable” cities are the stupidest pursuit people who want to change the system pursue. It’s easy to make a bike lane to point to and go “see! progress!” when no one will end up using the bike lane with any real consistency because the city is still laid out like garbage and getting from one end of even a small city to the other by bicycle lane is frustrating at best and dangerous/suicidal at worst.
I don’t think bicycles and walkable cities are a stupid pursuit at all, but I do agree that often times bicycie infrastructure isn’t given the care or respect it deserves! That said, I think sometimes these changes are incremental progress that can get better over time… Sometimes you end up with bike lanes that aren’t great to get to for instance, but they’ll eventually make more sense when the network expands (and each additional bike lane makes this exponentially better). Plus, I get the sense that drivers often don’t have a good sense of how much other transit infrastructure is used and relied upon by other people. I’ve often heard complaints about having to wait for trains at lights, for instance, and it’s a bit silly because the trains have hundreds of people on them, so they really should take priority, even if the traffic waiting at the light looks bigger because it’s so much less space efficient. I suspect in a similar way the usage of bike lanes is often underestimated because they’re quite efficient at getting people through in a small amount of space with little congestion. Bike lanes support some pretty serious throughput, so even if they get some pretty heavy use they might seem empty and unused… You just never really have a traffic jam or anything on them because they’re so effective at moving people through.
Don’t mistake me, I would much prefer to just hop on public transit and get to where I want without having to drive. Whenever I travel I take great pleasure in being able to use public transit that actually just “works” and not having to rent a car or drive my own car around
That being said, I think bicycles and “walkable” cities are the stupidest pursuit people who want to change the system pursue. It’s easy to make a bike lane to point to and go “see! progress!” when no one will end up using the bike lane with any real consistency because the city is still laid out like garbage and getting from one end of even a small city to the other by bicycle lane is frustrating at best and dangerous/suicidal at worst.
I don’t think bicycles and walkable cities are a stupid pursuit at all, but I do agree that often times bicycie infrastructure isn’t given the care or respect it deserves! That said, I think sometimes these changes are incremental progress that can get better over time… Sometimes you end up with bike lanes that aren’t great to get to for instance, but they’ll eventually make more sense when the network expands (and each additional bike lane makes this exponentially better). Plus, I get the sense that drivers often don’t have a good sense of how much other transit infrastructure is used and relied upon by other people. I’ve often heard complaints about having to wait for trains at lights, for instance, and it’s a bit silly because the trains have hundreds of people on them, so they really should take priority, even if the traffic waiting at the light looks bigger because it’s so much less space efficient. I suspect in a similar way the usage of bike lanes is often underestimated because they’re quite efficient at getting people through in a small amount of space with little congestion. Bike lanes support some pretty serious throughput, so even if they get some pretty heavy use they might seem empty and unused… You just never really have a traffic jam or anything on them because they’re so effective at moving people through.