i feel like there’s a general tendency for people to mean different things when they say “bike”, some people think dutch-style cycling where high gears are something you use when you’re late for school, other people think more like road biking where low gears are something you begrudgingly resort to when you encounter a steep incline.
slow cycling is perfectly compatible with pedestrian places so long as it isn’t like a medieval alleyway, but fast biking is going to end up with people getting bruises.
I remember some comment somewhere on lemmy about e scooters being too slow (it was 10 or 15 km/h?) so they shouldn’t be in a bike lane and all I’m thinking is “I wonder if I exceed 5 km/h on my bike when there’s strong headwind” lol
Fast cycling isn’t really compatible with walkable culture. It needs some level of infrastructure for separation (lanes, lights, crossings, etc) to prevent collisions. I don’t understand the fascination with fast cycling for anything except for sports, exercise or long distance travel.
Slow cycling and walking don’t need any such infrastructure and that’s commonly considered as a walkable area. It brings roughly 1 km radius in a 5-10 minute zone and that’s enough area for at least 60-70% of required facilities (school, police station, fire station, hospital, groceries, bakery, shopping, transit stops).
and here i feel we’ve overcorrected.
Fast biking is absolutely fine (i have an e-bike, it’s very nice) and doesn’t require any insane infrastructure, just some wider straighter bike paths between more significant and far apart destinations.
like i’m sorry but i’m not gonna bike to the next town over at 15km/h, and those routes aren’t going to have lots of pedestrians.
A big road having bike lanes is perfectly fine. Moreover it’s encouraging to see people talking of putting bike lanes for commuters. But that’s a bikeable area, not a walkable one. And these 2 make sense in diff situations.
As long as kids and old people are able to walk or slow cycle most places, unsupervised (in a 20-40 minute radius around their homes), I’m happy with that. A place suitable for these 2 demographics is walkable for almost everyone else as well.
I’m not sure dutch biking is a good example for slow biking. A lot of bikes here in the Netherlands are e-bikes these days, and even without e-bikes people tend to be quite fast, especially on main streets that go straight for a while.
But then, most streets have bike lanes, and cars are very bike aware in streets that don’t. Pedestrians and bikes don’t share the same space.
i feel like there’s a general tendency for people to mean different things when they say “bike”, some people think dutch-style cycling where high gears are something you use when you’re late for school, other people think more like road biking where low gears are something you begrudgingly resort to when you encounter a steep incline.
slow cycling is perfectly compatible with pedestrian places so long as it isn’t like a medieval alleyway, but fast biking is going to end up with people getting bruises.
I remember some comment somewhere on lemmy about e scooters being too slow (it was 10 or 15 km/h?) so they shouldn’t be in a bike lane and all I’m thinking is “I wonder if I exceed 5 km/h on my bike when there’s strong headwind” lol
Fast cycling isn’t really compatible with walkable culture. It needs some level of infrastructure for separation (lanes, lights, crossings, etc) to prevent collisions. I don’t understand the fascination with fast cycling for anything except for sports, exercise or long distance travel.
Slow cycling and walking don’t need any such infrastructure and that’s commonly considered as a walkable area. It brings roughly 1 km radius in a 5-10 minute zone and that’s enough area for at least 60-70% of required facilities (school, police station, fire station, hospital, groceries, bakery, shopping, transit stops).
and here i feel we’ve overcorrected.
Fast biking is absolutely fine (i have an e-bike, it’s very nice) and doesn’t require any insane infrastructure, just some wider straighter bike paths between more significant and far apart destinations.
like i’m sorry but i’m not gonna bike to the next town over at 15km/h, and those routes aren’t going to have lots of pedestrians.
A big road having bike lanes is perfectly fine. Moreover it’s encouraging to see people talking of putting bike lanes for commuters. But that’s a bikeable area, not a walkable one. And these 2 make sense in diff situations.
As long as kids and old people are able to walk or slow cycle most places, unsupervised (in a 20-40 minute radius around their homes), I’m happy with that. A place suitable for these 2 demographics is walkable for almost everyone else as well.
I’m not sure dutch biking is a good example for slow biking. A lot of bikes here in the Netherlands are e-bikes these days, and even without e-bikes people tend to be quite fast, especially on main streets that go straight for a while.
But then, most streets have bike lanes, and cars are very bike aware in streets that don’t. Pedestrians and bikes don’t share the same space.
Where I lived in the Netherlands there often were electric bikes and scooters and sports bikes going 30+kph on the bike lanes.