06-15-2023, 03:31 PM
(06-13-2023, 12:48 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: *sigh* yeah, this is a tired old trope from ac3r. I can tell you every example he gives is directly contradicted by the Netherlands. 65 year olds riding their bikes, check, young office workers, obviously check, people with groceries, kids, check check.
Bikes are much more versatile for the same reason cars are versatile. Buses here are not…underinvested (see my article) but they have low frequency and low ridership compared with other European nations.
The only difference is our infrastructure. 65 year olds, people with kids, people getting groceries, they don’t mind biking, they do mind having their lives threatened. Sadly people with an attitude like ac3r are all too common.
We're not the Netherlands, though. Cycling happens to the extent it happens there because of the differences in cultural attitudes towards it...but most of all, the urban design of cities. And by that, I don't just mean bike lanes and stuff. The cities are dense because they are historically built that way. We have a continent that - outside of a tiny handful of old metropolitan areas - has been designed for car use for roughly a century, unfortunately. From where I am currently writing this post, there are only 2 small convenience stores within a 10-15 minute walk. There's a Zehrs about 20 minutes away, but the walk is annoying. Cycling to it would be actually suicidal. But from my home in Toronto, there is more around me in a 10 minute walk than there is in entire wards of Kitchener. Understand? The structure of these cities is different. Cycling works in some, but not in others. It barely works here.
More people would bike here if Waterloo Region felt like any other European city. That is to say, having things close enough that it's easy to cycle to, having the infrastructure, having fewer cars that will murder you around and so on. But we don't. Even if we put bike lanes all over the region from downtown to the townships, everything is still extremely spread apart. It's just a huge pain in the ass to take cycling seriously as a main form of transportation, which is why I mention Lycra. Most people just want to get around, they don't make cycling their entire personality like an annoying vegan nor do they have any desire to become cycling militants that advocate for turning everything into a bike lane.
This is why I think it makes more sense to spend money on more transit improvements - at the present moment, at least. Yes, build more bike lanes and MUTs of course because we still need those, but they need to be built strategically. We spent about 6+ million on this cycling grid alone. Was it necessary? Not really, I think. You have always been able to bike around downtown just fine. It's not like cars were flying down Ontario Street at 50 kilometers an hour. It has always been a place where cars, cyclists and pedestrians have been able to share just fine. I tend to see more actual vehicles mistakenly driving down these bike lanes than I do actual bikes (though yes I realize cyclists do use them).
At present and in the short term, all that money could have gone into improving bus services which benefit a hell of a lot more people than they do bike lanes. 6 million could have paid for a lot more drivers. Bus stop improvements (seats, shelters, displays, trash cans). More frequent service on routes. 6 million is a good chunk of money. In the meantime, slowly densify the city and yes absolutely invest in MUTs and such and put them in strategically useful areas so that people can in fact get between more distant places with ease. Then as the population density and building density increases, put more money into adapting roads with bike lanes, wider sidewalks etc. I mean when I lived in Kreuzberg, Berlin the population density was a shocking 15,000 per square kilometer. Transit and bike infrastructure makes total sense there. But here? The entirety of Waterloo Region doesn't even have 400 people per square kilometer.