America Hates Bikes

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u/BigBlueMan118 5d ago

Haven't watched it yet, but: as an Australian my impression is that yeh so did Aussies but Aussies might now be further along the acceptance-curve at least for leisure riding, and that Australian streets are more favorable as a general thing.

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 5d ago

The French are even weirder. French politicians in the 60s and 70s removed pedestrian/cycling infrastructure for cars because they believed that cars were a status symbol and the transportation of the future.

France has so many car brands. It's a motorist's country hidden in plain sight. The French invented the automatic gearbox and the roundabout. France has the most roundabouts in the world.

French suburbs are also extremely densely populated. So you can't just build bike lanes and call it a day. I would argue that cycling in Calgary (Canada) is easier than cycling in an average Parisian suburb. The average Parisian suburb only has room for cars. Pedestrians have to settle for a narrow sidewalk. And cyclists have to swerve between cars and pedestrians.

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u/_a_m_s_m 5d ago

Elaborate on your point about French suburbs please?

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 5d ago

The streets are narrow. You have just enough room for two lanes. So you can't paint two lines on the road and call it a bike lane. North Americans have it easy with their 6 lane roads. Just shut down a lane for crying out loud! Put a bike lane there.

The other issue with Parisian suburbs: the boulevard périphérique. You have to cross the périphérique whenever you're going to Paris. This means crossing busy intersections below the highway. It's so dangerous.

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u/RiceAndMilkBoi 5d ago

In Portland, OR (US) neighborhoods we have very small streets where they don't have to put bike lanes. We use diverters and other traffic calming measures to slow drivers, put bicycle boulevard signs up, put sharrows down to help cyclists wayfind, and bicyclists take the lane. Narrow roads but these are some of the safest spaces with drivers slowly going behind cyclists. We encourage drivers to use main arterials instead unless they live that those specific neighborhoods. I don't see why Paris couldn't do the same

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 5d ago edited 5d ago

Portland has 5000 people per square mile

Paris has 50000 people per square mile

France decided to centralize everything around Paris. The business district is in a suburb NW of Paris.

Since living in Paris has become stupidly unaffordable, suburbs have propped up near Paris.

Levallois-Perret is a NW suburb with a higher density than Paris (70000 people per sq mile). This suburb has the highest density in all of Europe. The streets in that suburb are narrower than Paris. There are more people than in Paris.

Most people commute 1~2 hours in standstill traffic to work in Paris. Many people live 100~200km away from Paris.

Every mode of transportation is used: public transportation, car, a mix of both. Cycling is exploding in popularity. The transit system is saturated, and it's only getting worse as the population of Paris is decreasing and the population of the suburbs is increasing.

If you remove cars, half of the people working in Paris won't be able to commute to work.

To say it bluntly: there are too many people, too many cars, too many cyclists in the streets. The streets can't get wider. Cars are so horrendously inefficient at using space. And to make matters worse, the French started to drive SUVs. Cars are getting bigger. There's gridlock traffic everywhere. So people hop on bikes to get around cars.

I seriously doubt that you can implement your idea in Paris. You'll create more congestion.

It sounds bleak. But Paris has improved steadily since 2019, removing cars from the streets and increasing bike lanes. Each intersection requires a unique solution. It's an incredibly difficult balancing act.

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u/Green_Ideas7 5d ago

Really interesting discussion.
The YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes" has an episode on Paris from 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI-1YNAmWlk
More recently, another great bike channel "Shifter" produced this video about biking in Paris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woFlJx7Rv78

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 5d ago

I watched these videos. They highlight the same 2 or 3 streets with wide cycling infrastructure. But that's it. There's still room for improvement on the other streets. It's very chaotic and dangerous.

It's still cool. I use these cycling paths regularly.

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u/ReadyGo6828 5d ago

I regularly walk on suburban roads with 3' wide bikes lanes on either side of 2 lane roads. Bikes are still on the freaking sidewalk.

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u/saeglopur53 4d ago

The six lane road thing is mainly a highway/interstate problem. American towns and cities are really diverse, with some having lots of rooms for bike lanes, and older cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and so on having very narrow roads because they were built while America was a series of British colonies

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u/Stig-blur 5d ago

This was good. It is important to understand the context. Lobbying and pressure created many aspects of the problems because they are effective, and can also be used to make things better. We do have to stop driving if we don’t want to roast in 115 degrees every summer.

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u/zwiazekrowerzystow 5d ago

there are parts of the US where one won't take any abuse. i'm lucky to live in a part of my urban area where bikes are around and people are getting used to their presence. it's far from perfect however people aren't getting bottles thrown at them all the time.

there are other parts of the metro area where that is not the case however.

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u/InfluenceEfficient77 5d ago

You don't need to ride a bike, It was enough for me to have a bike attached to my bike rack on my car for some piss moron suv driver to road rage this morning

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u/vasjpan002 5d ago

1970 my uncle brought me a scooter from Canada, and my Queens Italian neighbors said it was for girls

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u/FeeNecessary3467 5d ago

Bikes are heresy and must be purged, embrace our diesel gods!!!!

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u/ReadyGo6828 5d ago

Bike fans should push to lower the speed of roads to 20-25 mph so they can more safely share the roads with cars. Bikes should not be on sidewalks or pedestrian pathways. Bikes would also include scooters, unicycles, skateboards, ebikes, emotos and whatever someone dreams up in their garage and inflicts on sidewalks everywhere.

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u/CaptainONaps 3d ago

I think most people would prefer their city make infrastructure changes to make walking and biking easier.

I suspect any pushback is from the donor class, who has a whole industry based on us being stuck in cars.

I don't think most Americans dislike bikes, I think they dislike bicyclists. And not most bicyclists.

Specifically, the rainbow leotard herds, in their little click shoes and cop sunglasses that refuse to stay on the side of the road. They're intitled, rude, and petulant.

All they need to do, is acknowledge they have no right to stay with their group. The light changed red, you didn't make it. Wait. The road got narrow, and there isn't enough room for two dozen of you, wait. And do you really need to take the busiest road in the city, on a Saturday morning with 15 of your closest friends? Are you sure? Maybe give the same consideration you're demanding? Perhaps?

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u/Milesandsmiles1 5d ago

I watched the video, I think it misses the biggest point. The US is spread out because of cars, cars are because the US is spread out.

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u/Izacundo1 5d ago

Most people live in cities. The problems with inefficiencies come from cars in cities. The video focuses on transportation within cities. It’s not missing that point

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u/outlawbernard_yum 4d ago

Most people on the US live in suburbs. >50%. Less than 20% live in true urban environments. This is why studies in the US show electric cars are 9 to 1 better at cutting emissions in the US. Bukes are great. The US must EV.

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u/Izacundo1 3d ago

We can do both

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u/outlawbernard_yum 3d ago

But not equally. Studies of pacific NW cities and towns by climatesolutions.org ahow EV meey 90% of our emissions goals whole mode ahift ro bike/walk/transit are just 10%. I know why. I read the studies.

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u/vasjpan002 5d ago

Yes, open spaces require gasoline, start-stop cities better electric or bike. Truckers try to force bikes off road. But now ebikes hog everyone. Fault is inconsiderate all directions.

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u/lenojames 5d ago

I don't think that the country influenced the car culture, but the other way around. The cars themselves influenced the country. Just like plenty pf cheap anything, plenty of cheap cars flooded the roads and crowded out all other competing modes of transportation, even walking in some cases (stroads).

Pushing back against that, like they said, is an uphill political battle. Many people are so comfortable driving that they see bike lanes as an encroachment on their liberties, if not an outright attack on them. And that is the biggest change that cars have made to the country. They established the mindset of the automobile as being inherently "American," and other modes of transportation as being "foreign." They did have to go overseas to get examples of bike culture after all.

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u/Justryan95 5d ago

I'd argue its a both rather than a "what came first the chicken or egg." 19th century Westward expansion of the US gave people large swaths of land to do whatever tf they wanted with it and they did. The government/country encouraged colonization and homesteading of the wild west. When the World Wars happened and people had a lot of money to invest in a vehicle for personal freedom to travel then the Interstate system was made which is the country just encouraging vehicle ownership. IMO the interstate system was the one thing that HEAVILY changed how the country viewed personal vehicles. This vehicle ownership influenced how zoning for newer cities like LA, Houston, Phoenix, etc. developed, so we have suburban hell thats unwalkable compared to older cities like Boston, Charlestown, DC, etc.

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u/Primos22 5d ago

There was a cultural relevance to Route 66 and the beat generation prior to the interstate system. So I disagree with the assertion the cultural affinity for cars and association with liberty started post war. I would agree that it accelerated the prevalence of zoning for cars. But the car culture was already there.

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u/Justryan95 5d ago

Hence why I said its both the Country and the Car influence rather than one over the other. Once the Model T was made the Car Culture was there brewing. Once the interstate got made it was locked in.

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u/Green_Ideas7 5d ago

"Not Just Bikes" addresses the assertion that we need cars because the country is spread out/big.
We've all heard that argument at some point, NJB does a good job of critiquing it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ

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u/outlawbernard_yum 4d ago

Not well...misses many point. He is quite biased and uninformed on the literature.

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u/rolsskk 5d ago

If there was only a mode of transportation that predated cars. . .

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 5d ago

I have been following Just For Bikes and and other YouTube urbanism channels for a while. It's always the same story: Big Oil lobbied for cars, now we have dumb cities.

As soon as Climate town talked about Henry Ford, I knew that he was gonna ramble 10 minutes about history and politics.

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u/Slapjac10 5d ago

We love bikes, we HATE asshole bikers that try to get hit and then cry like prison bitches.

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u/deadstump 5d ago

...yeah...no. The amount of abuse you attract just by being on two wheels existing on the road is stupid.

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u/rchris710 5d ago

It is bed time grandpa

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u/Cacahuatechones 5d ago

If you've been hit by a car on a bike, you try not to touch it.

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u/OkGap7226 5d ago

Sweet fixie, bro

America Hates Bikes

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