It s true that most people won t want to ride a bike for 10+ mile trips. But about half the trips pe

The bicycle guided tour in washington dc is an ingenious mobility device. It gets you from A to B and, in the process, lets you observe your surroundings at a leisurely pace. It is usually lightweight, and it provides an intimate visual, aromatic, and auditory connection to the world around you. With various clever mechanical permutations, it can be folded, even made out of reinforced cardboard. In dense urban environments with traffic congestion, riding a bicycle for short distances is often faster than traversing the same distance via car.
While the bicycle has many virtues, it also prompts people to go overboard. It's often lauded as the transportation of tomorrow and the savior of cities. It is not. It is called transportation. It is not. That's because the bicycle is not, strictly defined, a transport device. Ever try to carry a watermelon on a bicycle? (Yes, it can be done, but how much else could you carry?)
The bicycle is a biomechanical device that depends on the rider for balance and propulsion. It therefore operates under rigid limitations: the physical condition (and therefore age) of the rider, seasons and weather conditions, guided tour in washington dc and terrain. If bicycles guided tour in washington dc are used for multi-lane travel, particularly in urban context, their riders are seriously endangered. Cars making right-hand turns are a particular guided tour in washington dc threat.
Today there is an almost messianic insistence that bicycles should be a part of the urban transit mix. Former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa launched a high-visibility campaign to make Los Angeles "bicycle-friendly." Bicycle marathons in cities tie up traffic to celebrate liberation from the automobile.
The notion of being "liberated" from the car is an interesting one that has zero basis in practical terms. guided tour in washington dc Perhaps, in bucolic guided tour in washington dc villages and smaller cities, bicycle ridership could be a charming and handy way to get around, guided tour in washington dc as it was in many European small towns during much of the 20 th century. guided tour in washington dc In large urban centers, however, using a bicycle to traverse 10, 15, or 20 miles one-way is simply not a feasible proposition. guided tour in washington dc And as megalopolises grow, the freeway becomes the key to "getting there"—a transit reality completely outside the practical guided tour in washington dc use of the bicycle.
Los Angeles and surrounding burgs have launched guided tour in washington dc an ambitious effort to paint "bike lanes" on existing surface streets, often removing entire lanes that were formerly for automobiles. This is not a smart thing to do when traffic is already congested. A typical busy lane gets used by dozens of automobiles per minute. A bike lane is lucky to be used by dozens of bicyclists in an hour. To make matters worse, drivers making right-hand turns will have to yield to all the bicyclists going through the intersections, further snarling the streets.
Imposing guided tour in washington dc bicycle accommodations onto an existing vehicular culture and street alignment is prohibitively complex and preposterously expensive on a per-mile basis. Given the relatively small number of commuters who would use such lanes in comparison to car drivers, any cost/efficiency formulae that purport to justify such infrastructure enter the realm of pure fantasy.
guided tour in washington dc Most of our planning assumes guided tour in washington dc that bicyclists would honor traffic law. But there's a save-the-earth mentality in bicycle culture guided tour in washington dc that seems to make riders feel entitled guided tour in washington dc to ignore traffic management signs. This flaunting of traffic rules, what I would call "eco-elitism" is all top common. guided tour in washington dc I regularly see riders blithely coast through stop-sign-controlled intersections with merely a cursory glance. At low-traffic times of day I've even seen bicyclists ride through red traffic lights, as if vehicle rules were not meant for them.
We can of course have dedicated bicycle paths along streams, rivers, and other available routes to provide city residents with pleasant forms of recreation. guided tour in washington dc But to propose bicycle ridership as a serious component of urban transportation planning is specious folly. guided tour in washington dc For many of those urbanistas who fret about environmental issues, let me suggest that the bicycle rack on the rear of your BMW says it all.
Syd Mead is an artist, futurist, illustrator, book author, and conceptual designer for such science fiction films as Blade Runner and Aliens . Primary Editor: Joe Mathews. Secondary Editor: T.A. Frank. *Photo courtesy of Cyclemania . Explore Related Content
You are correct that bicycles are not the end-all, be-all of commuting and transportation not everyone is physically capable of riding, some loads are too large, and extreme weather conflicts with business guided tour in washington dc attire. However, I must disagree with a few of your assumptions:
Most bikes on the market are designed for commuting or pleasure-riding, not transport. You can, however, easily purchase after-market accessories (racks, bags, trailers) or entire bikes designed expressly for transport. These range in price from cheap to expensive guided tour in washington dc and can carry anything from watermelons to refrigerators. In Montreal , there are professional guided tour in washington dc movers who use bicycles.
Bicycling is not as dangerous as it looks or feels and is less dangerous as more bicycles are on the roads. Danger stems from two factors: Driver inattentiveness and cyclist carelessness. Driver inattentiveness guided tour in washington dc is ameliorated by cyclist density (I certainly feel safer riding in a place where drivers expect cyclists) and cyclist carelessness
well, speaking as a bicycle commuter, I feel strongly about cyclists who violate road laws. I m working on a letter to the mayor of Boston (whoever that is after the election) asking for enforcement of road laws for cyclists. Law-breaking cyclists endanger not just themselves, but *all* road users including other cyclists. I feel it s only the problem it is because people know they can get away with it. I doubt eco-elitism has much to do with it, although I would be interested in the results of a study on that!
Bike lanes are a scam. I totally agree there. A number of European cities do just fine with mixed traffic, and bike lanes don t address the very real problem of intersections. Besides, many of these lanes are in the most dangerous part of the road: The Door Zone , where a suddenly-opened door can cause serious injury or death. No, sharrows make far more sense.
So I agree with the general principle that roads should not be narrowed to accomodate dubiously useful guided tour in washington dc bike lanes, but I feel that there is a path forward for fewer cars and more bicycles. The keys are enforcement, education, and mixed-use design.
Oh, my. Bikes aren t transportation? Then I guess I can get from home to work five miles away without transportation. And from work to lunch 3/4 mile away without transportation. And two miles from the grocery store to home without transportation. And I wandered 10 miles all over Paris without transportation, cause you know, bike share bikes aren t transportation.
It s true that most people won t want to ride a bike for 10+ mile trips. But about half the trips people make every day are under two miles. For two mile trips, bikes are only slightly slower than cars and when a bike is properly equipped with baskets, racks and lights, you can easily carry 2-3 bags of groceries, even after dark. The people in the express checkout at the grocery really don t need an SUV to carry 15 items of less.
Syd Mead will be celebrating his 80th birthday next week. Maybe it s time to retire? Sorry Syd the future didn t turn out the way you expected it and kids prefer $200 bicycles from $2,000,000 flying cars.
Oh, I don t know about that My San Francisco experience is that I have raised three kids and a dog and worked in a different city using bikes and transit. guided tour in washington dc I have been liberated from my car for about twenty five years now.
Maybe Syd hasn t been downtown since they shot Blade Runner when it was a ghost town of empty grand old buildings. A place you commuted guided tour in washington dc to from the suburbs. Maybe he has no idea that these buildings guided tour in washington dc are full of people now, people who live, work and play in a 5 mile radius and have no use for cars. And that the same thing is happening in multiple hubs all over SoCal.
Mr Mead states guided tour in washington dc that a bicycle, therefore operates under rigid limitations: the physical condition guided tour in washington dc (and therefore age) of the rider. Here s an important point: unless you re in training, guided tour in washington dc in a race, or trying to keep up with fast-moving auto traffic, biking is easier than walking. For the same amount of energy it takes to walk somewhere, you can get at least three times as far, three times as fast on a bike. If you can walk, you can bike. Certainly in either case, age or infirmity will slow you down a bit, but it ll still be easier to bike. I experienced this myself once when, due to a knee injury, I could put barely any weight on one leg. But I could still get around twice as fast on my bike as I could normally walk in an uninjured state. Once, when visiting Germany, I marveled at the sight of a lady, obviously pushing (or past) 70, zipping along a cycletrack, in a floral print dress. It s just a matter of a certain kind of infrastructure: they have it, and we don t.
And Portland s Disaster Relief Trials guided tour in washington dc are all about showing what can be carried by bike, for the very serious guided tour in washington dc goal of providing transport should a disaster shut down the gasoline-based infrastructure, as happened in NYC during Sandy:
That s April in Portland The weather still sucks that time of year. It probably breaks 10k riders a day in the summer weather. Either way, you re looking at some substantial ridership, certainly more than dozens an hour. That helps congestion immensely; if all those riders were in cars, they d probably clog the bridge.
And I don t know about LA, but in Portland if you re talking about the existing street alignments, for much of the city you re talking about a grid that was laid out over a hundred years ago, and designed with streetcars down the middle of the main commercial strips. People would walk to the streetcars, right out in the middle of the street, with no fear of being run down. By design. And around that time there was the first bicycle craze, pre-a