"It's not about the bikes" has been a chorus I sing to fellow bike advocates, and it's frustrating how quickly they'll forget. I think you're right that a big reason is culturally, Americans are framing Car vs Bike. Many years ago I heard one of my long-distance mentors from Copenhagen say something along the lines of: "Americans seem to think we ride bikes to save the planet, that we're better environmentalists. We don't care about the planet any more than you. We want to get to work, or get to the store, or pick up our kids, and the bicycle is the most convenient tool."
As a 76 yo baby boomer, I would like to bring attention to one more problem. My generation will be becoming more decrepit over the next few years and, for that reason, the mean-distance-between-collision will probably decrease. Having recently visited Kraków and Berlin, I see those places as ideal for their public transportation mobility. The closest to that I know of in the US are New York and Philadelphia. I own a car, of course, but am not happy that it is not an option but a necessity, an artificial one in my view. Put me in the rabidly anti-car group. I think the car age will eventually die a natural death from lack of resources and being out-of-reach economically. It may get an extension if we allow the Chinese to make our cars.
Not a gibe but an observation: Americans enjoy the frisson of spontaneity. Who doesn't like the last minute decision to go for Thai instead of leftovers? The cab of a modern car offers snug warmth, plush comfort, and safety of bright headlights when you step out on a frosty night in obedience of an impulse.
Yes. I know and love that feeling. But the way to get that experience depends on the context. In some places it’s getting in the car. In others, the car is frictional and having to drive and park makes you stop and not do the thing, but being able to walk enhances it. What I’m saying here doesn’t contradict that - the right vehicles/transportation options should be paired with the appropriate built environments.
We do, but I have to say that a love of spontaneity doesn't necessarily REQUIRE a car. OK, maybe for that frosty night, but it's not cold that often, even in Wisconsin where I live. To be fair, I make this claim as a person who a few years ago spent New Year's Eve with his wife on a 4 mile pub crawl - walking - in temps that dropped to -10F, so perhaps "frosty" could be relative....
Nonetheless, much of the year the weather is more amenable to cycling. Ebikes can make the pedaling less onerous if that seems desirable. Cycling lights have improved tremendously, to the point where I have been "flashed" by car drivers to lower my light because of the intensity; they're bright enough. What can't be fixed at the personal level is the ride environment. If the community isn't bike-friendly then that last-minute dash is not going to feel possible on a bike. I've been to various places in Europe and in the UK where cyclists are much more common. People have cars, but it's much easier to get around, park, do what you're doing, get home on a bike than it is with a car. It's easier because the towns have made accommodation for bicycles as well as for cars. I think that was Addison's point.
Car dependency seems to be declining in Europe, but I think it's hard to make the case that Europe will become reliant on bicycles to move the population. At least that's not the impression I gathered on this year's extended time in northern Europe, the Baltic states, UK, and Ireland. In fact, I was rather aghast at European traffic. Thoroughfares were chockablock. Back in the USA, ancillary to this discussion is consideration of an aging demographic. Some will ride their bikes until they can't get out of bed. (I know because they are family members.) But an aging demographic is also keen about its mobility, freedom, independence, and (threat of) displacement.
Fair point. I would see scads of cyclists AND horrendous traffic. Also the miles-long traffic jams on various sections of Autobahn. I always wondered what the traffic would look like if all those cyclists were in cars as well. The situations don't seem sustainable, just on a space utilization level. I think the new pushes to limit parking and traffic are a belated attempt to get on top of this crowding issue. And maybe bicycles aren't the only answer. Perhaps a mix of bicycles, e-bikes, small 3-wheelers (pedaled or electric) will deliver mobility with a footprint smaller than that required by cars.
The aging populace issue is a toughie. I've wondered for a while just how I would realize that I shouldn't be cycling any more. Will it get too hard to pedal uphill on a mountain bike track? Will I misjudge a turn and hit a tree on a downhill section? Will I just fall over in my yard and decide the balance is no longer there? Can I just walk away from it one day? 'Cause you're right; there's the issue of maintaining independence, mobility, freedom of maneuver for all of us in that aging demographic. Thing is - cars are not the answer there. You still have to see to drive a car (macular degeneration took my mom out of her beloved Ford Focus), you still need reasonable reaction time, you still need judgment. A car can protect YOU in a crash, but not those you crash into. At some point each of us has to recognize that we're not up to the task anymore. Or have it recognized for us. This is my one argument for autonomous driving vehicles. I'm afraid I don't have a better answer...
As a thought problem, can you envision a society where the aging give up their election of mobility to the local "selection" committee? I can't see it. Perhaps you are one of those who would willingly, even enthusiastically, do so. But the seniors I know are "true grit" and won't do it until the stroke or the heart attack or blindness or memory loss. I concede, however, there inevitably comes that day when driving is no longer the great fun it was.
"All of this is to say, “Those weird Europeans sure love their bikes!” is sort of missing what we’re looking at. It’s more accurate to say that they love their cities, and they seem to understand better than we do what sorts of vehicles and modes of movement work with them."
100%. It's easy to fall into confusing means with ends. The vendors of car products love to stoke this!
I'd also add that the freedom bikes offer is equally applicable in rural areas.
I grew up in a (european) rural environment, and my lifelong riding habits stem from riding 20+ miles a day, aged 18 when I had a driving licence but could not afford a car, to work (unironically at a gas station). Freedom. Our transit was once a week local bus to town on cattle market day, plus once a day long distance coach that got me home from school but not to it. Of course, in countries like the US and NZ where i now live rural can mean very large distances, but there will still be decent amounts of the rural population for whom rural daily bike journeys are feasible and valuable.
My point is, the same value proposition of cheap / small / individual freedom is as powerful in extending the reach of living in rural settlements as it is in cities.
Ends & means, not just defaulting to lazy planning assumptions influenced by vested interests.
Your title says it all. It's about great space for people and that is what is missing in the US landscape outside a number of older select places. I agree with you that bikes are thought of as a recreational toy not to do real work and as such making them front and center - as much as a bike guy that I am - is often just waving a red flag in front of a bull.
"The best read on this is that they’re so used to thinking of the car as mobility itself that they can’t hear criticism of cars or driving as anything other than a criticism of the freedom to move."
This came up a lot in the commentary about low traffic neighborhoods in Oxford, which I think you wrote about last year. Whatever the merits and demerits of the policy, the Oxford City Council never restricted the ability to freely move between zones by foot, wheelchair, bike, and transit, only car. For all the talk about our phones turning us into cyborgs, our cars have been playing the long game.
My in-laws once had a successful health food store in Tampa FL. The first Outback restaurant (or one of them) opened in the same shopping center and became so successful that my in-laws patrons and clients had trouble getting parking. That was one of the factors that led to the family selling the business. One example of the car limiting business rather than aiding it.
Amsterdam could be cherry-picked for its (amazing) bicycle swarms, but Europe is really just as crazy about their machines as American drivers in their devotion to makes and horsepower. I watched a muscle-car road rally wind its way through Stockholm last July.
i don't inherently see anything wrong with that - cars really are COOL. Yes they pollute, yes they are dangerous. And I care about those things. But to me the issue isn't cars, it's the expectation that everyone has to have them. A group of enthusiasts who love their cars and put their time and money into them is fine - live and let live, and I get the vibe. But a norm and environment that forces everyone to put their money into a car in order to participate in society is what bugs me.
Yep. Europeans love their cars but they haven’t oriented all of daily life around them. I don’t see it as at all contradictory that the best supercars are European but some of the best walkable urbanism is also European.
There was a NJB video that made the point that the Netherlands also has some of the most satisfied drivers in the world, at least according to one study.
It's not entirely surprising. Does anyone actually like driving on a typical stroad? It kinda sucks, you feel like you're going to die if you make one wrong move half the time. Plus always having to try and beat the light. It just sucks.
I haven't visited Amsterdam, but I've spent time in cities in Germany, Norway, Austria, Italy, and the UK. A lot of Europeans are serious gearheads. That doesn't automatically clash with their desire for livable cities. The guy who took me on a 200kph ride on the Autobahn to visit a client in eastern Germany walked to his office in a Frankfurt suburb. Appropriate tool for the job...
The tail does indeed wag the dog when it comes to needing more parking because we already have so much parking everywhere else. We've made the city untraversable on foot, therefore we need to double down on keeping it that way forever. Our collective unwillingness to give up free car parking everywhere, all the time is a sort of cancer that mangles and contorts cities (as humans around the world have known them for thousands of years).
I wonder how the emergence of E-bikes will change the dynamics (in particular e-bikes equipped with cargo capacity so that grocery shopping and a host of other shopping errands can efficiently be completed by bike by people with a much broader range of physical limitations)
"Liz" (an acquaintance) tried a lifestyle shift to E-bikes. She went through two of them before returning to car life. The cab of a modern car on a frosty morning is comforting, secure, and reassuring. You can drive your kids to school without leaving your pajamas (though I don't recommend it).
i can't speak for europe, but to me bikes, while great, aren't ideal - ideal is being able to walk to your needs and then to a hub where you can transit where you want to go. because that latter part is a bit tricky, bikes come in some handy for getting to and from those hubs (in places like japanese cities or even in the more rural parts of japan). In America, I mostly think of biking as a pretty good replacement for many car trips, but it's not my ideal. It is, itself, a response to an environment where things are somewhat spread out and traffic is high or parking is sparse, or i just want a bit more activity in my trip.
In this boutique poll, the bike votes take the lead, but there are 58 million seniors in America now, and they say the numbers will grow to 82 million by 2050. Many in this hoard require assistance that bike lanes can't provide. The magnitude of this demographic should be considered alongside the fun parts of this gabble. AARP is probably watching the conversation.
I'll be 73 in a month, so I guess I'm one of those 58 million. Some of use require assistance, some of us are pushing to maintain our personal mobility as a way to avoid needing that assistance. Sometimes the giving in to the perceived "easy way" is what causes you to degrade.
Also, I've watched a number of my own and my wife's relatives age and then die. I think if you've reached a point where you can't walk and can't ride at least a trike (trad or one of the fast 2-wheels-in-front ones; your choice) you probably shouldn't be driving either.
Glad you have made it this far and are still chiming in! The seniors I know are loath to accept limitations imposed by any corporate colossus or government agency or other consiglieri. They don't want to be "humored" or patronized. They want to retain efficacy. Just an observation . . .
I see that a lot as well. Surprisingly delusional, otherwise intelligent people. I assumed it was my spoiled "Boomer" generation, but my father-in-law was of the WWII generation, a skilled engineer and bright guy; he was fortunate that his moment of insight came in a grocery store parking lot rather than while driving. His kids had decided he was losing his ability to drive safely, but no one wanted to be the one to tell him...
Me, I'm a biologist who worked around health care for...ever. I have few illusions about aging. My parents lived into their 90s, and I watched the decay curves there. Good genetics and healthy habits can help, but aren't magic. Also I've been a cyclist, a climber, a backpacker all my adult life. Being active helps, but eventually you can't do the things you used to do. Or you CAN, but the risks of....call it a PROBLEM get larger and larger. Ah well... As one character in "The Eiger Sanction" said, "we shall continue with style."
"We shall continue with style" is apt. My friend Stephen, age 82, just brought down an antelope in the Medicine Bow basin, WY, with his Norma 308. One shot dropped it. Next he, with his dog, will pheasant hunt near Hawk Springs, on the Nebraska border. He admits he should be dead (given his "style") but on he goes.
Can't agree with this. First let's dispense with Amsterdam - it has unique qualities making it suitable for bicycling in that it is below sea level, thus essentially flat, and a cool climate. So you could perhaps commute by bicycle without arriving sweaty and needing a shower as you would elsewhere. The bicycle is absolutely terrible as a commuting vehicle. Nobody wants to get to work needing a change of clothes, much less a shower. It is also terrible as general urban transportation. Nobody wants to go to a restaurant needing a change of clothes either, or having to lug around a helmet wherever they go, or being unable to carry anything home that cannot fit in a backpack. Bicycles also menace pedestrians in every city where they are prevalent. It's a double whammy - bikes threatening the pedestrians, cars threatening the bikes, nobody feeling safe. (Plus the thieves targeting the bikes. If you're not living in a high trust society, you are lugging around 10 pounds of locks and cables. A lot of urbanist aspirations require high trust societies.)
Bicycles are lovely for recreation though - in the country, on quiet open roads. They're not suited for city density and especially not suited as a car alternative.
As someone who bikes to work regularly, and know a lot of folks who also do so, I can't disagree more. I think the "need a shower after biking" narrative is a massive overstatement. The only time I'm even remotely sweaty after biking to work is in the winter, ironically, and that's just due to overlayering. Plus, with the rise in E-bikes, sweaty riding is even less of a likely outcome.
As for pedestrians, as usual, that's just a result of bad infrastructure. Actually providing sensible infrastructure built in the context of a city goes a long way towards mitigating those conflicts. And even more as usual, it's a strange thing to point out bike and pedestrian conflicts without sounding the much louder alarm that cars represent. Bikes kill as many people every year as falling vending machines. Cars kill more people than guns in this country, and that's quite the accomplishment. Maybe we should focus on the real killers!
As for high trust societies, maybe those societies have high trust because they actually foster community and make it easy to see folks out and about, rather than the anonymizing separation found in car-dominated American cities. They're not a different species, after all.
Good points all. It's fascinating to me that winter, when I ought to be best able to dump the heat, is the time I'm most at risk of overheating. But it's a difficult choice. Do I shiver and freeze to get going, knowing I'll be using 10X the energy in a few minutes, or do I dress to be sort of comfortable to get going, and then be wildly overdressed after the first couple miles. Any winter athlete knows this conundrum.
Also, while the cyclist - pedestrian entanglements are ironic, the fact in the US is that drivers of cars kill and injure more pedestrians and cyclists than these groups are doing to each other.
OK.... Point 1: make time for an easy ride TO work so you don't sweat. A helmet can be managed, since I almost always have some sort of bag with me anyway - for the bike lock if nothing else. And you've never seen a rear rack? If I can ride into the backcountry for 4 days, living off my bike, you can find a way to carry home some groceries. If you're trying. Yes, you will need to make more grocery trips than if you took your car.
Point 2: yes, cyclists can be jerks too. Even cyclist friends (a mate in Cambridge UK for example) complain about the smug and aggressive among their fellows. In his opinion ebikes have made that even worse. But he lived in the US for 15 years, and when I ask him if the cyclist danger is equivalent to the danger to a walker from cars his reply is "not even close". If nothing else, a quick side step and a half turn push with send an overly aggressive cyclist sprawling. Try that with an oncoming Toyota...
Point 3: again, yes. Bike theft can be an issue in some places. And yes, securing a bike can require carrying extra stuff. Cars get stolen too, but a car can sort of protect itself. On the other hand, you could just use one of the rental bikes that have proliferated all over. Or one of the ubiquitous e-scooters...
The reason why European cities have made efforts to reclaim the landscape from cars is because cars suck up SO much space - for roads, for parking, even the air. Amsterdam began it push to limit cars because of air pollution issues. A lot of places just decided to push back and reclaim the space from cars. Let cars do what they do best: travel in uncongested conditions.
"It's not about the bikes" has been a chorus I sing to fellow bike advocates, and it's frustrating how quickly they'll forget. I think you're right that a big reason is culturally, Americans are framing Car vs Bike. Many years ago I heard one of my long-distance mentors from Copenhagen say something along the lines of: "Americans seem to think we ride bikes to save the planet, that we're better environmentalists. We don't care about the planet any more than you. We want to get to work, or get to the store, or pick up our kids, and the bicycle is the most convenient tool."
This is a useful framework, especially when you consider thay many of these cities also exclude bicycles from designated pedestrian zones.
As a 76 yo baby boomer, I would like to bring attention to one more problem. My generation will be becoming more decrepit over the next few years and, for that reason, the mean-distance-between-collision will probably decrease. Having recently visited Kraków and Berlin, I see those places as ideal for their public transportation mobility. The closest to that I know of in the US are New York and Philadelphia. I own a car, of course, but am not happy that it is not an option but a necessity, an artificial one in my view. Put me in the rabidly anti-car group. I think the car age will eventually die a natural death from lack of resources and being out-of-reach economically. It may get an extension if we allow the Chinese to make our cars.
Not a gibe but an observation: Americans enjoy the frisson of spontaneity. Who doesn't like the last minute decision to go for Thai instead of leftovers? The cab of a modern car offers snug warmth, plush comfort, and safety of bright headlights when you step out on a frosty night in obedience of an impulse.
Yes. I know and love that feeling. But the way to get that experience depends on the context. In some places it’s getting in the car. In others, the car is frictional and having to drive and park makes you stop and not do the thing, but being able to walk enhances it. What I’m saying here doesn’t contradict that - the right vehicles/transportation options should be paired with the appropriate built environments.
We do, but I have to say that a love of spontaneity doesn't necessarily REQUIRE a car. OK, maybe for that frosty night, but it's not cold that often, even in Wisconsin where I live. To be fair, I make this claim as a person who a few years ago spent New Year's Eve with his wife on a 4 mile pub crawl - walking - in temps that dropped to -10F, so perhaps "frosty" could be relative....
Nonetheless, much of the year the weather is more amenable to cycling. Ebikes can make the pedaling less onerous if that seems desirable. Cycling lights have improved tremendously, to the point where I have been "flashed" by car drivers to lower my light because of the intensity; they're bright enough. What can't be fixed at the personal level is the ride environment. If the community isn't bike-friendly then that last-minute dash is not going to feel possible on a bike. I've been to various places in Europe and in the UK where cyclists are much more common. People have cars, but it's much easier to get around, park, do what you're doing, get home on a bike than it is with a car. It's easier because the towns have made accommodation for bicycles as well as for cars. I think that was Addison's point.
Car dependency seems to be declining in Europe, but I think it's hard to make the case that Europe will become reliant on bicycles to move the population. At least that's not the impression I gathered on this year's extended time in northern Europe, the Baltic states, UK, and Ireland. In fact, I was rather aghast at European traffic. Thoroughfares were chockablock. Back in the USA, ancillary to this discussion is consideration of an aging demographic. Some will ride their bikes until they can't get out of bed. (I know because they are family members.) But an aging demographic is also keen about its mobility, freedom, independence, and (threat of) displacement.
Fair point. I would see scads of cyclists AND horrendous traffic. Also the miles-long traffic jams on various sections of Autobahn. I always wondered what the traffic would look like if all those cyclists were in cars as well. The situations don't seem sustainable, just on a space utilization level. I think the new pushes to limit parking and traffic are a belated attempt to get on top of this crowding issue. And maybe bicycles aren't the only answer. Perhaps a mix of bicycles, e-bikes, small 3-wheelers (pedaled or electric) will deliver mobility with a footprint smaller than that required by cars.
The aging populace issue is a toughie. I've wondered for a while just how I would realize that I shouldn't be cycling any more. Will it get too hard to pedal uphill on a mountain bike track? Will I misjudge a turn and hit a tree on a downhill section? Will I just fall over in my yard and decide the balance is no longer there? Can I just walk away from it one day? 'Cause you're right; there's the issue of maintaining independence, mobility, freedom of maneuver for all of us in that aging demographic. Thing is - cars are not the answer there. You still have to see to drive a car (macular degeneration took my mom out of her beloved Ford Focus), you still need reasonable reaction time, you still need judgment. A car can protect YOU in a crash, but not those you crash into. At some point each of us has to recognize that we're not up to the task anymore. Or have it recognized for us. This is my one argument for autonomous driving vehicles. I'm afraid I don't have a better answer...
As a thought problem, can you envision a society where the aging give up their election of mobility to the local "selection" committee? I can't see it. Perhaps you are one of those who would willingly, even enthusiastically, do so. But the seniors I know are "true grit" and won't do it until the stroke or the heart attack or blindness or memory loss. I concede, however, there inevitably comes that day when driving is no longer the great fun it was.
"All of this is to say, “Those weird Europeans sure love their bikes!” is sort of missing what we’re looking at. It’s more accurate to say that they love their cities, and they seem to understand better than we do what sorts of vehicles and modes of movement work with them."
100%. It's easy to fall into confusing means with ends. The vendors of car products love to stoke this!
I'd also add that the freedom bikes offer is equally applicable in rural areas.
I grew up in a (european) rural environment, and my lifelong riding habits stem from riding 20+ miles a day, aged 18 when I had a driving licence but could not afford a car, to work (unironically at a gas station). Freedom. Our transit was once a week local bus to town on cattle market day, plus once a day long distance coach that got me home from school but not to it. Of course, in countries like the US and NZ where i now live rural can mean very large distances, but there will still be decent amounts of the rural population for whom rural daily bike journeys are feasible and valuable.
My point is, the same value proposition of cheap / small / individual freedom is as powerful in extending the reach of living in rural settlements as it is in cities.
Ends & means, not just defaulting to lazy planning assumptions influenced by vested interests.
Your title says it all. It's about great space for people and that is what is missing in the US landscape outside a number of older select places. I agree with you that bikes are thought of as a recreational toy not to do real work and as such making them front and center - as much as a bike guy that I am - is often just waving a red flag in front of a bull.
"The best read on this is that they’re so used to thinking of the car as mobility itself that they can’t hear criticism of cars or driving as anything other than a criticism of the freedom to move."
This came up a lot in the commentary about low traffic neighborhoods in Oxford, which I think you wrote about last year. Whatever the merits and demerits of the policy, the Oxford City Council never restricted the ability to freely move between zones by foot, wheelchair, bike, and transit, only car. For all the talk about our phones turning us into cyborgs, our cars have been playing the long game.
My in-laws once had a successful health food store in Tampa FL. The first Outback restaurant (or one of them) opened in the same shopping center and became so successful that my in-laws patrons and clients had trouble getting parking. That was one of the factors that led to the family selling the business. One example of the car limiting business rather than aiding it.
A small price to pay for only the finest of dining, surely.
Amsterdam could be cherry-picked for its (amazing) bicycle swarms, but Europe is really just as crazy about their machines as American drivers in their devotion to makes and horsepower. I watched a muscle-car road rally wind its way through Stockholm last July.
i don't inherently see anything wrong with that - cars really are COOL. Yes they pollute, yes they are dangerous. And I care about those things. But to me the issue isn't cars, it's the expectation that everyone has to have them. A group of enthusiasts who love their cars and put their time and money into them is fine - live and let live, and I get the vibe. But a norm and environment that forces everyone to put their money into a car in order to participate in society is what bugs me.
Yep. Europeans love their cars but they haven’t oriented all of daily life around them. I don’t see it as at all contradictory that the best supercars are European but some of the best walkable urbanism is also European.
There was a NJB video that made the point that the Netherlands also has some of the most satisfied drivers in the world, at least according to one study.
It's not entirely surprising. Does anyone actually like driving on a typical stroad? It kinda sucks, you feel like you're going to die if you make one wrong move half the time. Plus always having to try and beat the light. It just sucks.
I haven't visited Amsterdam, but I've spent time in cities in Germany, Norway, Austria, Italy, and the UK. A lot of Europeans are serious gearheads. That doesn't automatically clash with their desire for livable cities. The guy who took me on a 200kph ride on the Autobahn to visit a client in eastern Germany walked to his office in a Frankfurt suburb. Appropriate tool for the job...
The tail does indeed wag the dog when it comes to needing more parking because we already have so much parking everywhere else. We've made the city untraversable on foot, therefore we need to double down on keeping it that way forever. Our collective unwillingness to give up free car parking everywhere, all the time is a sort of cancer that mangles and contorts cities (as humans around the world have known them for thousands of years).
"You cut your leg off to save a buck or two
Because you never consider the cost
You find the lowest prices every day
But would you look at everything that we've lost"
- David Bazan
I wonder how the emergence of E-bikes will change the dynamics (in particular e-bikes equipped with cargo capacity so that grocery shopping and a host of other shopping errands can efficiently be completed by bike by people with a much broader range of physical limitations)
"Liz" (an acquaintance) tried a lifestyle shift to E-bikes. She went through two of them before returning to car life. The cab of a modern car on a frosty morning is comforting, secure, and reassuring. You can drive your kids to school without leaving your pajamas (though I don't recommend it).
i can't speak for europe, but to me bikes, while great, aren't ideal - ideal is being able to walk to your needs and then to a hub where you can transit where you want to go. because that latter part is a bit tricky, bikes come in some handy for getting to and from those hubs (in places like japanese cities or even in the more rural parts of japan). In America, I mostly think of biking as a pretty good replacement for many car trips, but it's not my ideal. It is, itself, a response to an environment where things are somewhat spread out and traffic is high or parking is sparse, or i just want a bit more activity in my trip.
In this boutique poll, the bike votes take the lead, but there are 58 million seniors in America now, and they say the numbers will grow to 82 million by 2050. Many in this hoard require assistance that bike lanes can't provide. The magnitude of this demographic should be considered alongside the fun parts of this gabble. AARP is probably watching the conversation.
I'll be 73 in a month, so I guess I'm one of those 58 million. Some of use require assistance, some of us are pushing to maintain our personal mobility as a way to avoid needing that assistance. Sometimes the giving in to the perceived "easy way" is what causes you to degrade.
Also, I've watched a number of my own and my wife's relatives age and then die. I think if you've reached a point where you can't walk and can't ride at least a trike (trad or one of the fast 2-wheels-in-front ones; your choice) you probably shouldn't be driving either.
Glad you have made it this far and are still chiming in! The seniors I know are loath to accept limitations imposed by any corporate colossus or government agency or other consiglieri. They don't want to be "humored" or patronized. They want to retain efficacy. Just an observation . . .
I see that a lot as well. Surprisingly delusional, otherwise intelligent people. I assumed it was my spoiled "Boomer" generation, but my father-in-law was of the WWII generation, a skilled engineer and bright guy; he was fortunate that his moment of insight came in a grocery store parking lot rather than while driving. His kids had decided he was losing his ability to drive safely, but no one wanted to be the one to tell him...
Me, I'm a biologist who worked around health care for...ever. I have few illusions about aging. My parents lived into their 90s, and I watched the decay curves there. Good genetics and healthy habits can help, but aren't magic. Also I've been a cyclist, a climber, a backpacker all my adult life. Being active helps, but eventually you can't do the things you used to do. Or you CAN, but the risks of....call it a PROBLEM get larger and larger. Ah well... As one character in "The Eiger Sanction" said, "we shall continue with style."
"We shall continue with style" is apt. My friend Stephen, age 82, just brought down an antelope in the Medicine Bow basin, WY, with his Norma 308. One shot dropped it. Next he, with his dog, will pheasant hunt near Hawk Springs, on the Nebraska border. He admits he should be dead (given his "style") but on he goes.
Can't agree with this. First let's dispense with Amsterdam - it has unique qualities making it suitable for bicycling in that it is below sea level, thus essentially flat, and a cool climate. So you could perhaps commute by bicycle without arriving sweaty and needing a shower as you would elsewhere. The bicycle is absolutely terrible as a commuting vehicle. Nobody wants to get to work needing a change of clothes, much less a shower. It is also terrible as general urban transportation. Nobody wants to go to a restaurant needing a change of clothes either, or having to lug around a helmet wherever they go, or being unable to carry anything home that cannot fit in a backpack. Bicycles also menace pedestrians in every city where they are prevalent. It's a double whammy - bikes threatening the pedestrians, cars threatening the bikes, nobody feeling safe. (Plus the thieves targeting the bikes. If you're not living in a high trust society, you are lugging around 10 pounds of locks and cables. A lot of urbanist aspirations require high trust societies.)
Bicycles are lovely for recreation though - in the country, on quiet open roads. They're not suited for city density and especially not suited as a car alternative.
As someone who bikes to work regularly, and know a lot of folks who also do so, I can't disagree more. I think the "need a shower after biking" narrative is a massive overstatement. The only time I'm even remotely sweaty after biking to work is in the winter, ironically, and that's just due to overlayering. Plus, with the rise in E-bikes, sweaty riding is even less of a likely outcome.
As for pedestrians, as usual, that's just a result of bad infrastructure. Actually providing sensible infrastructure built in the context of a city goes a long way towards mitigating those conflicts. And even more as usual, it's a strange thing to point out bike and pedestrian conflicts without sounding the much louder alarm that cars represent. Bikes kill as many people every year as falling vending machines. Cars kill more people than guns in this country, and that's quite the accomplishment. Maybe we should focus on the real killers!
As for high trust societies, maybe those societies have high trust because they actually foster community and make it easy to see folks out and about, rather than the anonymizing separation found in car-dominated American cities. They're not a different species, after all.
Good points all. It's fascinating to me that winter, when I ought to be best able to dump the heat, is the time I'm most at risk of overheating. But it's a difficult choice. Do I shiver and freeze to get going, knowing I'll be using 10X the energy in a few minutes, or do I dress to be sort of comfortable to get going, and then be wildly overdressed after the first couple miles. Any winter athlete knows this conundrum.
Also, while the cyclist - pedestrian entanglements are ironic, the fact in the US is that drivers of cars kill and injure more pedestrians and cyclists than these groups are doing to each other.
OK.... Point 1: make time for an easy ride TO work so you don't sweat. A helmet can be managed, since I almost always have some sort of bag with me anyway - for the bike lock if nothing else. And you've never seen a rear rack? If I can ride into the backcountry for 4 days, living off my bike, you can find a way to carry home some groceries. If you're trying. Yes, you will need to make more grocery trips than if you took your car.
Point 2: yes, cyclists can be jerks too. Even cyclist friends (a mate in Cambridge UK for example) complain about the smug and aggressive among their fellows. In his opinion ebikes have made that even worse. But he lived in the US for 15 years, and when I ask him if the cyclist danger is equivalent to the danger to a walker from cars his reply is "not even close". If nothing else, a quick side step and a half turn push with send an overly aggressive cyclist sprawling. Try that with an oncoming Toyota...
Point 3: again, yes. Bike theft can be an issue in some places. And yes, securing a bike can require carrying extra stuff. Cars get stolen too, but a car can sort of protect itself. On the other hand, you could just use one of the rental bikes that have proliferated all over. Or one of the ubiquitous e-scooters...
The reason why European cities have made efforts to reclaim the landscape from cars is because cars suck up SO much space - for roads, for parking, even the air. Amsterdam began it push to limit cars because of air pollution issues. A lot of places just decided to push back and reclaim the space from cars. Let cars do what they do best: travel in uncongested conditions.