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Old February 10th 20, 10:11 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Tom Kunich[_2_]
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Posts: 1,318
Default How to suck all the joy from cycling

On Monday, February 10, 2020 at 9:43:16 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/10/2020 12:21 AM, sms wrote:

Depends on where you live, but it my city there is tremendous support
for bicycle infrastructure, much more so that other ways we could spend
tax money. Not everyone is on board of course, just like not everyone
wants to fund schools, libraries, parks, storm drain maintenance, tree
trimming, street lights, etc.


Below, you chide me about "no data." Can you give us _your_ data on the
"tremendous support" for bike infrastructure? Is it more than for
libraries, parks, and trimming those horrendously dangerous tree limbs
you claim are just six feet above the road? Where is your data?

Frank is wrong of course about the reasons many cities want separated
bicycle lanes, and as usual he has no data. It's not just about hit from behind crashes, it's more about keeping vehicles from parking, stopping,
and loading and unloading in bicycle lanes. There's no point in a
painted bicycle lane if it's constantly being blocked by vehicles, and
cyclists have to veer into traffic to pass the illegally parked
vehicles; it's impossible to have enough police to patrol all the
bicycle lanes.


But what's the reason for a bike lane at all? On most streets, it does
no particular good except in the imagination of people fearing hits from
behind. If you have a 12 foot lane and a five foot striped bike lane,
you could remove the stripe and have tons of room for cars to pass
bikes. People want the stripe almost entirely because they think it will
prevent hits from behind - a microscopic portion of urban car-bike
crashes. They don't realize it increases the odds of intersection
crashes, which are already far more common and dangerous.

The problem with separated bicycle lanes is how you treat intersections
to prevent right-hooks. Right hooks happen even without these lanes of
course, but it's more of a problem with the separated bicycle lanes.

The Netherlands seems to have figured out bicycle infrastructure, and as
a result has very high bicycling use.


Scharf is putting the cart before the horse. His "... as a result..." is
simplistic, even backwards. The Netherlands had very high bicycle use
for about 100 years, long before their current separate facilities. The
pre-existing bike culture allowed them to impose the restrictions on car
travel that were necessary to maintain and increase bike use.

In The U.S., every time we add
cycling infrastructure ridership goes up.


Bull****. Look at Portland for the last few years. Ever more weird bike
infrastructure, but their bike mode share is level or dropping. And the
city is still absolutely dominated by motoring.


--
- Frank Krygowski


Frank, take your absolute creeping age bull**** elsewhere. Just because you're suffering from age related disabilities doesn't mean others are. When I watched you showing pictures of a place where I was nearly knocked off my bike and a large dent was put in my helmet by the tree branch and you running on about how I was making it all up that pretty much showed that you are sick and getting sicker.
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