What if the problem with cars was not their method of propulsion? Epthinktank | European Parliament

Have some of these here. Absolutely wild, that the bike lane ends where it would become useful: Before a traffic light, so that you have to take part in the traffic jam of cars.

But what am I even talking about. Traffic lights per se are an anti-pattern of city design.

Oh yea, here they painted the gutter red and called it a day. One such red gutter directs you right into a busy 6 way intersection and just ends there, it's unofficially called the suicide lane.

Well obviously you can't put bike infrastructure in places with high traffic. There is too much traffic and all that traffic stuck in traffic it is better if it's stuck in 2 lanes or 3. Bike lanes work on quiet roads and out in the countryside. But in cities it would mean that the bikes go much faster than cars which doesn't make any sense because cars go faster than bikes.

It's just a waste of money. What is need is road widening. Or you know where that metro line is that doesn't connect to the other metro line. If we dig a tunnel between those lines we will have a super fast and efficient way to transfer cars from the traffic on one side of the city to the traffic on the other side.

Heyyy, we tried that! Yeah, went about as well as you can expect.

In my (over 1,000 year old) city, blocking several streets with bollards and massively reducing street parking worked just fine so far. As did curbing traffic coming in, with longer "red" phases at traffic lights for cars entering, when sensors detect too many cars in the city.

Just take lanes away from cars

Is it easier or is it just shifting the cost? We're talking thousands of cars needing electrification in any given city, at let's say they get it to an average of $35k each.

Picking a random city, let's say Cincinnati. They already have some infrastructure but it's largely car dependent. They have 148k households, of which 44.1% have one car, 25.2% have two, 6.8% have three, and 2.4% have four. So roughly 65k + 75k + 30k + 14k = 184k cars * 35k each or minimum 6.4 billion to electrify them all.

I don't know how much good public transit costs, but I have to imagine $6.4b can buy a fair amount of it.

Actually it really isn't easier to keep things car-oriented because building a city so there is enough room for cars is fundamentally impossible.

Biking is as common in the Netherlands as high winds and rain. I ride in the rain all the time. You wear a jacket. Same with cold, except you wear a bigger jacket. Biking in the snow is common in Finland. I've biked in freezing rain. It's not always super pleasant, but is a small amount of discomfort really worth destroying our cities and our planet to prevent?

I don't have a great answer for heat since it's not something we deal with here (as much). Cycling requires less energy than walking, so if you're not biking hard you can keep as cool or cooler than walking. Where mass transit exists, use that if you really need to get around... And, honestly, you should generally stay inside during dangerous heat anyway.

Kids, pets, and elderly folks regularly die in cars during normal summers. Things are only going to get hotter and we're going to need to adapt our culture around that.

Those trains are not comparable to cars, they're comparable to airplanes. The metros and light rails that are intended to replace cars are overwhelmingly more efficient per potential passenger. Comparing a vehicle that is usually run near capacity with a vehicle that almost never has more than one passenger is obtuseness almost to the point of deception.

Bikes don't replace cars. Bikes+trains replace cars. For comparable miles traveled, cars are insanely dangerous. It is utterly unhinged to argue that bikes and cars are equally safe but for the miles traveled, especially as higher bumper heights and decreased visibility are driving pedestrian deaths from cars through the roof.

And none of these touch the fact that cars simply don't fit in cities. You also completely ignored the literal tons of carcinogenic and heavy metal laden microplastics from tires that end up in our oceans. Every human being carrying around multiple tons of metal with them can't possibly be efficient. Large heavy machinery constantly interacting with soft swishy humans can't possibly ever be safe.

Arguing otherwise requires either an epic level of car brain worm or a pay check from the auto industry. I don't know which is worse: people desperately trying to ignore obviously reality, or people willing to sell out their fellow humans and even their future for a few more years of something that was never a good idea to begin with.

Trains reduce road traffic so much that normal lane road is enough, when without trains a city needs multiple laned roads that jam up regularly regardless how many lanes there are. Train systems get more efficient and waiting times smaller when more people use them. The opposite with car based transit systems

Yeah where did you get these energy numbers for the train? But you can use regenerative energy surces and since train wheels are mostly made of metal there is almost no microplastic produced.

I dont think you can kill as many people with bikes than you can with a car.

All in all some weak ass counter arguments.

I mean, I don't think conveyors are a good solution, but it's telling that someone so long ago already rejected cars as a viable transportation method.

Why did you write "kph" if you are aware of the correct "km/h"?

And what, only wake up 8,000 people instead? I’ve never heard an unmuffled one, but those little 50 cc fuckers are screaming loud in the high pitch frequencies - a perfect recipe for wakefulness. I often wake up when one of those assholes drives within a block of me at night. It doesn’t even have to traverse my street.

Even if it wakes 5,000 people, who then take 1 hr on avg to return to sleep, 5,000 man hours per scooter per day of lost sleep has to have a measurable loss of productivity and even quality of life.

Muffled scooters are still fucking loud.

The related fun fact to that would be that high-pitched sounds are more annoying and perceived to be louder than low frequency sounds with the same db.

I’m sure my sleep is more disrupted living in a city with an occasional 2-stroke engine screaming by than it would be if I lived next to a highway with that relatively constant and relatively distant ambient tire noise.

The scooters they mention in the article are the e-scooters you ride standing up in the bike lane.

No they are not. That makes no sense. Stand-up e-scooters are relatively quiet. Quotes from the article (emphasis added):

“worst of all, the high-pitched wail of motor scooters that speed by every few seconds.”

“Motorcycles and scooters — often with their exhaust systems illegally modified to boost noise and power”

“The noise can be ear-splitting,”

Obviously you would not describe a stand-up scooter as ear-splitting or capable of waking someone up. They’re talking about gas small gas combustion engines, most of which are the worst variety on scooters: 2-stroke.

Or if you meant the OP’s article is talking about e-scooters, that article actually covered both:

“Weight rates are usually over 10 times more favourable for the average motorbike or scooter and, of course, even better for lighter vehicles such as electric bicycles or kick-scooters.”

My reaction was to the idea that motor scooters are more favorable by a factor of 10 due to the weight -- which is true, but my criteria is more complex than just ecocide-avoidance… I want my sleep too!

No conclusions without adequate data, please. ;-)

I'm just suggesting that giving them pedal powered planes, like the Gossamer Albatross, might help, but may not solve all our problems.

Yes, I agree. Need much more cycling, walking infra. And public transport