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…
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Boston metro has done a fantastic job with interconnected, separated bike paths. You can now ride from downtown Boston to, I am not making this up, Nutting Lake about 20 miles away all on a separated bike path. It’s really good progress, especially compared to when I first started riding in the city 15 years ago.
Yeah, I’ve watched similar timelines. Used to be honked and punishment-passed even when drivers didn’t have to cross the center line to get past. They just hated that I existed on the roads, and I saw a couple of other bike commuters each day. Now I am actually facing bicycle congestion in Cambridge.
I had an irrationally angry driver a few weeks ago shouting at me and someone else just for existing, on their way to a visible traffic queue literally 100yds up ahead. But that interaction stood out because it’s now rare. I don’t remember the last time that happened. It used to be common.
Man, and I can barely find a bike rack in my city that’s actually bolted down… Jealous!
This is nice to hear. We have out enclaves of good cycling infra in Northern California, but much of the area near me is pretty much an afterthought. We have great recreational cycling, but for transport you are mostly mixing it up with the cars.
why do you hate people?
Do you not welcome our new bicycle overlords?
no, it’s the 21st century. It’s fine to move forward toward Jetsonmobiles and transporters, not backwars to bikes.
In the mean time have you we’ve actually driven in a road? You have two options: (1.) stupid bicyclists who don’t follow the rules, like not even showing down for stop signs, or (2.) stupid politicians who get rid of useful lanes to create protected bike lanes that are used near 0% of the time.
This is a community for people who love bicycles, if you wish to post about that, you’re more than welcome here.
However, I’ll warn you that if you’re only here to spout hate for cyclists, you will be banned. Please be nice.
Bicyclists like myself are just trying to do a thing we like in a world that is mostly designed for people that feel a 5000 pound SUV is a necessity to move a 175 pound person 4 miles to the store. Not sure why you are so mad. Might be a lack of exercise.
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.
Well said.
Sounds like you need to get out of the city
The future is in e-bikes. Keep retro-futurism out of reality.
E-bikes have a great role to play but they are a solution alongside leg-powered bikes. While I’m happy to see how many people seem to have been attracted to bike transportation through e-bikes, I also see it as kind of absurd when able-bodied people feel that their 4-mile commute in our largely flat city needs an electric assist, and they couldn’t imagine just getting a simple bicycle.
Given that I often pass e-bikes under leg power, I think masses of people hugely over-estimate the effort needed to cycle. Ironically, at least in my office, a lot of them are people who spend money and time then going to gyms to stay fit and healthy. One of the great things about a bike commute is it gives you exercise.
I like an assist for the hottest months (or if an area is hilly,) but in the Boston area, outside the hottest 2-3 months, I remove it in order to get a better amount of exercise in my life.
I am not interested in purity or commitment to some ideal, I’m interested in practicality. If we’re talking about city cycling, an e-bike is just flat out more practical and flexible as a vehicle for more scenarios, uses, landscapes, and body types. But to be clear: I am not trying to convert cyclists to e-bikes, I’m interested in converting drivers out of cars. And to them, an ebike is a much much much easier sell.
I’m also interested in practicality and I disagree that ebikes are flat out superior for many people and locations. That is my point, that many people vastly overestimate the difficultly of cycling.
I don’t disagree with you, but it’s worth pointing out ebikes’ potential as a gateway to cycling in general. My friend got into cycling by ditching his car and getting an ebike. He was originally planning on eventually getting another car, but he’s now talking about getting a gravel bike instead. But I don’t think he would have been willing to go from his car directly to traditional cycling.
