alt Hacker NewsI wonder if this will eventually lead to increased density and if that then leads to congested bike lanes. Will the cities of tomorrow regulate traffic between individual buildings?
Make no mistake, bikes are much, much, better for urban centers than cars. But the overall problem isn't cars, it's individual traffic in densely populated areas.
Certain policy here in Europe simply assumes that people stay in their surroundings ("15 minute city") and rarely, if ever, visit parts that are farther away individually.
Public transportation, however, is naturally biased. It can be much quicker to get 10km north-south than 5km east-west, or the other way around, depending on the city. And, of course, public transportation is often lacking quality compared to individual traffic. (Taking a bike across a bicycle road vs. getting into a crammed subway train in July, for instance.)
Replies
"15 minute city" is the most misinterpreted policy of our times. The idea is to try to make sure that there are enough services near enough to residential areas that short trips are possible, not to enforce this. It's just the oppposite of "simcity mode" where a huge area is zoned as only housing.
That combined with some anti-rat-run measures in Oxford (and any anti car measure ever) into outraged paranoia.
> But the overall problem isn't cars, it's individual traffic in densely populated areas.
I disagree; it’s cars.
There are a couple of places in the Netherlands with congested bike lanes, which is a great problem to have. It's crazy to imagine all those people in individual cars; we'd have reached congestion so much sooner. (Note that this is after decades of continuously improving bicycle infrastructure; basically everywhere else won't run into this problem any time soon.)
The problem isn't so much density (I think NYC is much denser), as much as it is the existence of really popular destinations; you'll see this close to some big train stations in rush hour, for example. Solutions are smarter road layout, and providing more and more attractive alternative routes, and alternative destinations (e.g. more train stations nearby).
Less cars + overflowing bike lanes = hey what if we mark more of the street as being for bikes. (Possibly with an interim step of "the cyclists have already claimed pretty much the entire street for bikes".)
https://danielbowen.com/2012/09/19/road-space-photo/
Bike and bus take the same amount of space. Cars take up far more.
The other problem with public transport is anyone wanting to go from, say, the northeast to the southeast outskirts of a city. Public transport will tend to take everyone via the centre whereas a direct route would be much shorter.
> And, of course, public transportation is often lacking quality compared to individual traffic. (Taking a bike across a bicycle road vs. getting into a crammed subway train in July, for instance.)
Well, it doesn't have to be like that. Riding a bike in July is atrocious where I live, even with an electrical one. I'll end up drenched after my 20-minute commute, even though it's mostly flat.
Cars didn't use to have AC, either, now they do. Newer metro lines where I live also started having AC a few years ago. This can be improved. They also automated some lines, and we now have trains every other minute during rush hour. They're still full to the brim.
What's missing, however, is some kind of reasonable policy. But not only of the government kind.
Why do we all have to commute at the same exact time? Yeah, some people have kids and need to get them to school on time. Others need to absolutely be physically at their work place at a given time.
But huge swathes of the population are not in this situation. Why do they insist on taking the metro at the same exact time as the others? When Covid was still a thing, the government tried asking the people who could, to move their work schedules a little before or a little after rush hour, so as to lower density. Nobody cared. I had already doing this before covid: the commute was much shorter; I had ample seating available. Yet I didn't see any change after this recommendation.
The skew you mention for mass transit exists for individual vehicles too. In New York it's baked in that the avenues, running north-south, are wider than the east-west streets and have longer greens at intersections.
The 15-minute city idea is now a real trigger issue. It's originally urban planning concept so I understand it's more about design the city in such a way that you /can/ live most of your life within a 15mins journey rather than assuming that's already the case (or worse as some conspiracy theories assume).
Bikes just don't take up nearly as much space as cars and don't really block each other as much: gridlock is a problem for cars but not really for bikes. In the Netherlands there are a number of famous intersections where there are no signs nor right of way rules and people on bikes and pedestrians just pass through each other by slowing down and taking turns. These intersection rules were chosen because of the high density: individuals in them can simply deal with the conditions better than formulated timeslots for right of way that waste time while changing priority. Some of these intersections also permit cars but the number of cars in such areas is generally small or limited to buses.
There is a natural limit to how far people want to bike (in a statistical sense, as the distance increases the number of people willing to bike that far drops). The highest density ends up occurring around train stations which is a focal point for foot and bicycle traffic and necessitates large bike parking lots. Those people then switch to trains although they might pick up a bike on the other side. Some people prefer bike rental for these reasons, since when you drop off your bike someone coming the other direction can take it and you can pick up another one at the end of the train ride.