spare_wheel

please provide one example of this supposed intolerance.

holland has never really experienced low mode share and has unique geographic, historical, and social reasons behind its cycling obsession. i think we should look toward nations that have managed exponential growth in cycling from the same kind of motorist-centric depths seen in the USA. the dutch model is a historical quirk that has yet to be repeated anywhere else, including denmark.

spare_wheel

You strike me as someone who is quite young, jaywalk3r. I suggest you come visit portland and try riding that 50 lb city bike up larch mountain to understand that common sense argument that pedaleur was making.

spare_wheel

You felt.

Others have every right to disagree and even prefer alternate models for increasing cycling mode share. In particular, I feel that Germany resembles the US situation far more than Holland. I think the chances of a dramatic increase in USAnian cycling mode share are far more likely if we emulate a nation that has actually gone from low single digit to double digit mode share in the past century or so.



I have absolutely no problems with concrete comparisons. Condescension and immature aesthetic judgments, on the other hand, are just rude.

buzzman

When you rode in the Netherlands what didn't you like about their infrastructure compared to Germany? Did you feel the Dutch model was poorly designed for their environment? Or are you saying it is less transferable to parts of the US than the German model? I haven't had the pleasure of riding German bicycle infrastructure but it must be amazing if you prefer it so vehemently to the Dutch. I only rode in the Netherlands for 3-4 weeks and just never got to the point that I was finding much to criticize. It was just so superior to anything I'd encountered in the US I was too busy making comparisons favorable to the Dutch.

But I'd love to ride in Germany just to see how blown away I would be since, at least according to you, it is so much better.

buzzman

I'll ask again.

Have you actually ridden a bicycle there?

buzzman

Um, how 'bout your first post in this thread?

dynodonn 

Not relevant to my statement.......... my observation was that the Dutch motorists in the videos that I observed, reacted differently to cyclists than American motorists, more likely due to responsibility of a collision defaulting to the larger, heavier vehicle.

CB HI

Your right, it is not my daily commute. My daily commute is 22 miles one way with more climbing than you can probably find in all of Springfield, Missouri.

And since you swore off bike specific clothing before even trying them, out of your fear of looking odd in your mind, I see no value in your opinion on this subject.

Since you have no video of your >12% hill climb, how about giving us the map location of this famous climb in Springfield, Missouri.

CB HI

Of course I understand the statement "gravity being a conservative force". Do you understand that we know about as much about gravity right now as the science on the curvature of the earth did during flat earth times.

The fact that you think you know all there is about gravity, indicates that you have little to add to this conversation as well.

CB HI

And much greater interest in pushing cyclist off the roadway and onto side paths.

buzzman

To your statement?

I'm asking because I'm genuinely weighing your opinions expressed in this thread against the guy's video. He has ridden both places and expressed his opinion. Are you saying I should more readily accept your opinion even though you haven't ridden both in the US and the Netherlands? And, as has been repeatedly pointed out in the thread the US is extremely varied- in what parts of the US have you ridden in order to form such a strong opinion?


You said:

Please tell me why I shouldn't hold your opinions to the same standard?

Anyone can express an opinion. I'm more interested in your experiences in riding the various infrastructures and how those experiences have shaped your opinions.

CB HI

Useful suggestions or pointless criticisms?

buzzman

As Alhedges says in his post "useful observations". At least that's how I took them.

I-Like-To-Bike

I had the pleasure of riding in Germany for 10 years; from 1986-91 and 1997-2002. I did not observe in any way " ...that Germany resembles the US situation far more than Holland" as reported by our PDX expert on the German cycling environment. I suspect his knowledge of the German cycling environment comes from one (or a few) blog(s)/cherry picked source(s).

The German cycling environment in no way resembles in any fashion the chaotic cycling environment in many (most?) areas in the U.S., either in lack of consideration for cyclists by motorists, or aversion to implementing effective cycling infrastructure throughout a metropolitan area. It is far more like cycling in NL, especially with consideration for integration of the cyclist's needs throughout the transportation network and any cyclist from Germany would feel right at home in NL, and vise versa.

The OP's stated unease/aversion to American cycling environment is rather subdued from what I would expect from most German or Dutch cyclists on encountering U.S. cycling conditions. I think if they were being totally honest and not trying to be so polite to an English speaking audience they might really let forth with both barrels of scorn.

Pedaleur

This is correct. Poor wording on my part: using "difference in" instead of "deviation from" muddied the point.

But it only goes to show that hills will make your ride "harder". It's not about energy per se. Your bike gets back the energy, but your legs don't.

corvuscorvax

And to think I'd been ignoring this thread! It's pure gold ... only on BF would somebody honestly think the Higgs Boson and General Relativity are germane to a discussion about cycling in the Netherlands.

Dude, we know everything we need to know about gravity as it applies to cycling. The expansion of the universe (accelerating or not) will not change how you get up that hill. Neither will the Higgs boson.

spare_wheel

So the last time you lived in Germany was over a decade ago. Interesting how you claim to be such an authority on German cycling now.

Considering that, similar to the USA, German mode share was very low during your time in Germany I have to laugh at your claim that:

Dutch mode share, on the other hand has fluctuated in the 20-30% range for over 50 years.

The German love affair with highways and motoring is also very reminiscent of the USA. In fact, I don't think there is a another nation in europe that resembles the USA more in this respect (even the British are nowhere near as car obsessed as USAnians and Germans). Likewise, apart from dense inner city areas, German urban planning and geography resembles the USA far more than it does Holland. Does it resemble some podunk town in the middle of rural Iowa? Absolutely not. But then again most Americans, like most Germans, live in large cities and their suburbs. Indeed, there are many areas in the USA with a distinctly tuetonic feel both in ethnicity and urban lay out. For example, my better half's family speaks German at family gatherings (despite repression during WWII).

Moreover, from a political perspective Germany, like the USA, is far more fiscally conservative than Holland or Denmark. There is simply no political will to spend billions on separated side paths. Despite this Germany has managed enormous growth in cycling while expressly rebelling against and discarding the Dutch model. Moreover, I think the German approach of creating traffic calmed bike boulevards (nothing like the ones in the USA), allowing cyclists full access to the road, and claiming large swathes of space on the road for cyclists is far more politically, socially, and culturally in tune with the USA than the Dutch approach.

This is an amusing statement. German cyclists specifically rebelled against Dutch-style mandatory sidepath laws and now have the right to cycle freely in the lane (even when there is adjacent infrastructure).

You mean the videographer...right? I don't think the litany of criticism of cycling attire, type of bike, wearing of helmets, or cycling speed was at all subdued.

The condescension came through, despite his...erm...attempts to hold back.

buzzman

Can you tell us about your experiences riding on Dutch infrastructure? What didn't you like? You seem to have such a negative reaction to the Dutch infrastructure I am so curious as to what your personal experiences were while riding there that shaped your opinion.

mr_pedro

The mistake I am reading in what you write is the underlying assumption that difficulty is a mere function of total energy required.

In reality it is mostly a function of the average power level, length of the period and how much time you spent in your higher power levels, (threshold power and above), that you can only maintain for a minute or two.

I can ride for a couple of hours at 180W and burn 2000, 3000 or more Calories during that ride. This is not hard, I feel no pain and could do the same thing the next day.
I have also done races and interval training rides of only 30 to 60 minutes and having burned between 500-1000 Calories, where I had to recover for a couple of days as my legs were still so sore that I was in pain going up the stairs. This is because the amount of time spent doing 500W-1000W.


All this is very well known and is the reason why metrics exist like Normalized Power, where the variance in Power during the ride is taken into account to give a better indication of how hard a ride was.

spare_wheel

My experiences are not the issue. I believe a German-style approach is a far likelier path to ~10% cycling mode share in the USA than a Dutch-style approach. Moreover, I also agree with Jan Heine that poorly-designed segregation is worse than no infrastructure at all.

Ideologically, I also have an issue with the accommodationist aspects of segregated infrastructure. The goal in North America is often to get cyclists out of the way rather than put them on an equal footing with motorists. Given that motoring in North America is in decline I expect that separation will become less effective in the next few decades, especially in urban areas

corvuscorvax

Indeed. Anybody who claims that because "gravity is a conservative force" that a 150km loop with 2000 m of climbing is just as easy as a 150km loop on the flat has a laughable understanding of both physics and cycling, and zero common sense to boot.

None of which, of course, has anything to do with cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands.

I-Like-To-Bike

Baloney!! Where the heck do you get your information from?

Totally irrelevant to the topic at hand. Who gives a hoot what language your relatives speak? Love affairs with automobiles? So what?

Where do you get your "impressions" of bicycling in Germany from, besides one blogger about biking in Munich?



Where do you get the idea of German Bicycling Rebellion? Whoud this "rebellion" be similar to a bicycling club somewhere taking a political stand on an a bicycling issue that may be of little concern to most other bicyclists. You are are posting extravagant extrapolations from a tiny bit of information you have gathered from cherry picked blogs.


The videographer's criticism was far more subdued than your posted reaction to it.

mr_pedro

Right, if both are done at the same constant speed the total amount of work will be the same, but the variations in power required for the hilly loop will make that the harder more painful ride that will leave more soreness.

spare_wheel

We did this same song and dance a few threads back.

6% in the 90s to 17.4% and rising:
https://www.radlhauptstadt.muenchen.de/radlnetz/

Munich and Germany showed similar increases (albeit of slightly less magnitude) but I will let you do the googling.

So maybe you should not have said, and I quote:



Calling the ADFC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club) a mere "bicycling club" is beyond silly. And if you cannot accept that their stance on segregated infrastructure and mandatory sidepath use is not representative of many cyclists in Germany then you are simply living in denial (which makes any kind of conversation very boring).

buzzman

So, what you're saying is that the answer to my question as to whether you've ridden in the Netherlands is, "No."

Maybe it doesn't matter to you but before I attach much significance to your opinions, or anyone else's, I prefer to listen to those with first hand experience on the infrastructures in question. Pardon my skepticism but I'll weigh your opinions based on your lack of experience.