In Cambridge, MA, USA, and nearby communities, bike advocates have made real progress with lanes and paths and general infrastructure. Also the city requires that new builds have a proper bike room. This building was recently gutted and fitted out and this is the bike room today - overloaded, and the building is barely half full… Looks like they will need to find more efficient bike racks!

Meanwhile in a recent commute I was in a queue of 30 bicycles at a light at which about 6-8 cars get through at a time. 10-15 years ago I was one of the few bikes on the roads at any time.

Hats off to the advocates and representatives of the local cities that have made this happen through continuous pressure and work over decades…

  • @spingOPEnglish
    6•1 year ago

    Oh, I assumed you were making an awkward sarcastic joke, but you were apparently serious (‽).

    it’s the 21st century. It’s fine to move forward toward Jetsonmobiles and transporters, not backwars to bikes

    You seem to have confused complexity and consumption for progress. Why is using bicycles moving backwards? They’re not much older an invention than cars.

    In the mean time have you we’ve actually driven in a road?

    Of course, like most cyclists I also own and use a car. I have driven on the road, that’s why I don’t commute by car. My car would be the slowest option and massively more expensive ($450 a month parking for a start), and would just be adding more to the ridiculous congestion problems of the city. Imagine if all these bikes were cars needing parking and road space. If I can’t use the bike my second choice is a train, but that’s slower, more expensive, and less pleasant, albeit better than a car.

    It’s true most road users around here don’t follow the rules closely, and cyclists are no exception. It would be better if we all did and the rules were more intelligently designed. Thankfully when cyclists do it doesn’t put other people in anywhere near as much danger as motor vehicles do.

    Very few car lanes have been got rid of around here, mostly just excessively wide lanes have been shrunk and some of the space clawed back for less corrosive and expensive use than driving. The bike lanes were lightly used initially but that use is exploding so on a lot of intersections at rush hour more people are passing on bikes than in cars. A couple of years ago a traffic survey found that 35% of people going through some Cambridge intersections were on bikes, but bicycle use has exploded since then.

    People aren’t doing it because they can’t afford cars or something, they’re doing it because it’s a superior option by almost every metric. The one exception is weather protection, but thankfully I’m not soluble and am generally able to function outdoors. If more of us move to bikes then it takes the stress from other modes for people who can’t use bikes. There should be significant congestion charges to discourage driving that are waived for the disabled.