Comment by atoav
2 days ago
> The problem with "building infrastructure" is that plebs' money is not infinite, so public works to please the high lords of the pedal may not be possible.
That was my point, thanks for making it: There is money for building and maintaining 6 lanes of sophisticated road surface that needs to withstand trucks¹ we surely have the money to replace part of it with a cheaper to maintain bicycle path that sees next to no road wear aside from weather effects. I'd argue that we cannot afford to not have bicycle infrastructure.
You appear to be propping up public transportation against cycling, when in reality they are a match made in heaven. Why not both?
¹: weight factors into road wear by power of four. Double weight equals 16 times the road wear
Google maps is your friend to discover that most cities of the world don't have 6 lanes in every street!
And ready to invest in your shipping container-on-a-cargo-bike startup, which will be used to make deliveries to supermarkets in the city centers (for the last plebs who don't order their slop on Uber Eats ofc)! Or cement deliveries using drones!
What are you even talking about?
1. Even with a single lane the upkeep for a bicycle path is lower than for a road lane. There being more or less lanes doesn't change the math. The only difference is that for single lane road a bicycle path may be unnecessary to begin with since maybe it is a calm backwater anyways. Modal splits can be a good idea then.
2. Do you think trucks magically lose their ability to drive when there are bicycle paths nearby? Or which strawman variant of my argument are you arguing against? I said: a decent network of bicycle paths is needed, not that all roads should be torn up. If this is your style of arguing for your position, it doesn't really reflect well on you or the position.
The way it works is very simple: a better and safer network of bicycle infrastructure means everybody can more easily use the bicycle and public transport, of course people coming with the public transport and locals get the most out of it. That means less cars on the road, that means less road wear, noise, dirt and other bad side effects that mostly just affect the people living there. And who is going to decide how to use the space a city owns? Ideally the people who live there.
I live 2 hours from Kopenhagen and it works perfectly fine there. I visited the Netherlands quite often ot works fine there. Trucks also still work and you can still buy stuff at the grocery store, crazy huh? It is also a thousand times more enjoyable to get around than in some brutalist hellscape where you need to go everywhere with the car. In my own city my commute is 15 mins with bike, 20 mins with subway and 30 mins with car. Guess which one I pick most often.