Paige

Not once is cycling mentioned as a solution.

https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...-traffic_x.htm

Merriwether

It is strange. Cycling has the greatest advantages in congested areas. You aren't caught in long lines of stopped cars, you can park while others cannot, and in a pinch you can walk along an otherwise impassible stretch. You would think it would be in precisely such areas that cycling would catch on the most.

But congestion makes the exaggerated fear of traffic most intense, discouraging many people from trying. (Even in Manhattan, in which many people have caught on to cycling, far fewer people brave traffic than could practically do.)

The funniest bit in the article is the mention of busses, as if anyone who has a choice is going to use them. Can you imagine anything worse than sitting in traffic jams on a bus?

Paul L.

Actually, on my rest days I love to sit on the bus with a good book and just have some me time. No one can call me on the phone, my bike sits on the front rack and I get to still have a short bike ride to the bus stop. Of course it is also fun to people watch on the bus there are some rather interesting folks that ride the bus. Every once in awhile I will see one of the other bicycle commuters on the bus and can talk about routes. Anyway, I am surprised at how full the buses are here in Phoenix. I think they do have their place, even for a bike commuter who is only riding one way on a day to rest his/her legs. BTW my commute is 18 miles one way so rest days are important to me.

Chris L

We've known about this around here for a long time. Although we don't have massive traffic problems in this little corner of the world, there is a lot of concern about pollution and so on driving tourists away. They have even mentioned things like capping the population to prevent this problem from spiralling, but again cycling gets a limited mention.

Having said that, the local council have at least made a rudimentary effort to make things safer for us. I have on occasions seen flashing signs on roads displaying "cyclists are road users, too". However, I think this is more of a knee-jerk reaction to the cyclist deaths we had earlier in the year rather than looking at a viable transport alternative.

mike

This article focuses mainly on Atlanta which has some of the worst or non-existant transportation and road planning I have ever seen. It must have been modeled after Bankok, Thailand.

They have these long main roads that shaft out into the burbs and then these little nodules of housing developments that link to the main road, but have no other access to any other road or artery. Anybody that wants to get anywhere has to get onto the main road and drive endlessly to hook up to roads that will intersect and actually get you somewhere.

Atlanta has world-class traffic jams. Though not unique, Atlanta certainly provides a model for the sour ramifications of unplanned urban sprawl.

Spire

The problem is city density. Everybody wants to have their 1/4 acre of land out in the suburbs and they think life will be better for their little children if they shuttle them around the burbs.

Lets take a look an European city. I'll use London as an example. London has over 12 million people living in it. But it is only slighly bigger than Montreal (which including surrounding areas has about 3.5, that is Montreal + Laval + North Shore + South Shore). So it has about 4 times the population in the same space. That makes public transport that much more attractive. Sure there are traffic problems in the city center (about 8 months ago a 5 pound toll idea was passed to enter the city center). Roads just take up less of the city is another one of the reasons for London's higher density. That is our problem, people are willing to drive and pollute their way to their little land plot out of the city.

MichaelW

London also has a massive commuting catchment area, 200miles in diameter, with trains that are packed to capacity, the network always on the brink of failure due to decades of under-investment.
The roads in London seem to be in total gridlock in the inner area that and there is a lack of anywhere to park,which puts a few people off car use,
The daily toll of £5 is for the very central area, where car commuters account for well under 10% of the workforce. The mayor is a bit of a maverick with no party backing, so if it all goes FUBAR, the politicians can blame Ken.

The shape of London's suburbs really developed in response to the tube system, so most people are withing walking or bus distance of a station. I dont think you can take a city designed around the premise of total car use, and convert it to public transport or cycle based transportation, the whole architetcture of the place is wrong.

Brains

US Cities could be converted to operate with a public transportation system, bikes etc.

After all the European cities did not have a public transportation system that we would recognise until about 1850.

So the the Yanks start now, they could have something pretty good by say 2050

Brains

Just a thought - how many Americans would be prepared to pay 5 pounds/8 bucks just to drive to the center of town, as we will have to in London after Christmas ?

(That is after they they have paid US$8 a gallon for petrol)

The real way to get people out of their cars is to make a public transportation systemthat is faster, cheaper, and 'better' than the car. This is just about possible in Europe, but very difficult in the 'new' world

Big Johnson

I've never been to Europe, so I can't really compare transit systems over there to those in place here. What I have observed, especially in the western U.S., is that public transportation is not an efficent means of getting around. In my city, the busses run on what is known as a hub and spoke system. What that means is that busses run from downtown to outlying areas and back forcing riders to transfer from bus to bus at the central depot. Also, the bus will not necessarily drop you off anywhere near where you want to be. Riders are still faced with a long walk( not that having to walk is necessarily bad). The biggest problem is city design, especially areas built after WWII. There is very little east-west mobility in my hometown, forcing drivers onto relativley few arterial roads which were designed around 1950's traffic volume levels. One thing I will never understand though is why people choose to live as far as possible from their jobs. The vast majority of new housing development in Colorado Springs is on the extreme east side of town while most employers (high tech anyway) are on the west side. In my view, people who choose to do this deserve the problems they create for themselves, This is why I ride. An interesting idea being tried here is urban renewal and co housing communities. I don't believe this would be a solution for everyone, as out west we tend to enjoy our privacy and space, but is a sound concept nonetheless. The only problem is in it's implementation. These developments are priced way out of the reach of the average person and therefore are not selling very well. Make it more affordable, and it may catch on.

Chris L

I have said this before. Public transport is not efficient in many places because never has there been a proper effort made to make it efficient. The train system between the Gold Coast and Brisbane is excellent and used by many commuters between the two cities. This is because the State Government actually put some $ into making the thing work. However, in many places, governments would rather sink $ into private transport (i.e. subsidising private cars) than making that effort.

MichaelW

Traditional cities are based on most people working in the centre and living in a ring of suburbs, so journy patterns are radial.
Modern sprawl cities have no defined centre, so the transport patterns are far more random. Fewer people share the same routes. People in the east travel to the west to work, and people who live in the west travel to the east of the city. To support this transport pattern you need large multi-lane freeways between locations, so you have to spread locations out to leave room for the roads. People are using cars, like any other resource, to the point of inefficiency.

In the US, some large companies with several branches have realized how inefficient this is, so are starting to let people work at the branch closest to their home !!

Spire

I know what you mean! I got on a train at Warwick Parkway headed for London making a few stops, it became obvious that people commut to London from near Birmingham. The number people commuting from Bambury was insane! I can't believe that people come it from so far away!

pforbes

Living in a concrete jungle like Houston, it's frustrating that cycling is only an afterthought. However, we do have a columinist in our local paper who's an avid cyclist. When our beloved Houston Texans (a brand new NFL team) had their debut back in August, it was absolute gridlock getting to the game. It took some people 3-hrs to go about 10 miles!!! Here's what the columnist did...

Aug. 28, 2002, 8:20PM
Car-tastrophe at Stadium Avoidable
By KEN HOFFMAN
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

You want to ride straight to Reliant Stadium with no traffic jams, no headaches, and park your vehicle -- for free -- in the best parking lot at the stadium?

Just ride your bike.

That's what I did last week. I left my sprawling estate in West U. at 3:30 p.m. and got to the stadium in exactly (I timed it) 12 minutes.

I zipped past all those cars stuck in neutral, going nowhere, polluting the air by burning gas to keep their air conditioners blasting. Drivers and their cars had something in common that day. They were both fuming.

I parked my bike at the first parking lot I saw, chained it to a fence and was eating a hot dog by 4 p.m.

A few days later, I grabbed Texans vice president Steve Patterson and said, "How about putting up some bike racks at the stadium? It won't solve the traffic problem totally, but it will take some cars off the road." Plus, imagine how thirsty bike-riding fans will be when they get to the game. Think beer sales! Patterson's reply: "Good idea. I rode my bike to a David Bowie concert once back in the '70s." Everybody's a comedian.

Patterson made some calls, pulled some strings and now he's the two-wheeler's best friend at Reliant Stadium. Starting this week, in time for Friday's game against Tampa Bay, there will be bicycle racks in the Teal parking lot.

Sorry for the long post, but maybe there's a glimmer of hope here in Houston!

Big Johnson

Sounds familiar. Sitting in Denver traffic one day is what got me thinking about riding a bike again. I remembered how in high school, I could allways arrive faster than the kids who rode the bus. In some wierd way gridlock actually turned out to be a good thing. It made a convert out of me

Andy Dreisch

Folks, don't you get it?

We don't want a whole bunch of cyclists. We want the road (or at least our portion of the road) to ourselves.

Screw the motorist; let 'em sit. But one thing's for sure: I don't want a whole bunch of rookie cyclists clogging up my lanes like some kind of wimpy bike trail on a weekend at the park. I like being the 1-in-100,000.

Dahon.Steve

>>> "Nationally, travel on interstates and other federal highways increased 38% from 1990 to 2000, from 606 billion annual vehicle miles to 839 billion. Over the same period, the total number of freeway lane miles grew just 8%, from 232,436 miles to 250,315, according to a TRIP analysis of Federal Highway Administration data. That means the rate of growth is five times higher for travel than it is for new freeway lanes."<<<<<<<

This is amazing. In ten short years, travel on highways increased almost 40%. We are increasing total annual vehicle miles of about 233 million every ten years. Can you imagine how much traffic there will be on american highways 40 years from now? The numbers are insane.

I just don't get it. The article's only solution is to build more highways and put more buses on those same roads. This is a lose, lose situation. You can't cure Atlanta's traffic problems any more than you can LA's by building more roads. This city was built on a car culture and to change that would cost hundrds of billions of dollars. Yet no one wants to raise taxes to do this so they are stuck.

bikerider

Despite the tackiness of 'me too' postings in general, I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with you on this!

Chris L

And I take it yuo were never a rookie cyclist at any stage.

nathank

So Andy, i don't know, maybe things are great for you, but i think the advantages to having more cyclists greatly outweigh the disadvantages of a few more bikes on the road. I'd rather thave 10 bikes more for every car removed from the road...
IF half the people out there were on bikes instead of cars, we'd have MORE places to ride, not less...

and an additional question: aren't there times when b/c of the lack of infrastructure/support for/attitude towards cycling you pretty much HAVE to drive? going to work for a meeting somewhere across or out of town? or taking your kid somewhere? and what about pollution? or are you an ex-smoker and you miss that burning in your lungs...

as far not wanting new cyclists or cyclists who are less physically strong... uh, well, you're kind of sounding like either a snob or a biggot... i'm a really strong "extreme" cyclist but i don't look down on others who ride a little more relaxed or more slowly...

i've lived and in places where cyclists are rare (Houston, Dallas, Massachusetts) and places where cycling is much more common (Portland OR and Munich Germany) and i enjoy cycling in the latter FAR more... drivers are more likely to watch for cyclists and know how to react/behave, planners think about cyclists since they're actually a sizeable number of the population. etc...

hayneda

This situation is a national issue in the US. Solutions to this issue will not occur (and there are many workable possiblities) until the mindset of the average American has been changed.

In the meantime, I think a good start would be a $2-3/gallon additional fuel tax to help support the huge military investment we maintain just to keep the oil flowing for the mideast. Once people have to start really paying for motoring 20 miles from their 'estate' in the suburbs, they might start to consider things a little differently.

Dave

Andy Dreisch

Never. I started as a pro and only got better.

nathank

yeah, the U.S. will be increasingly facing major transportation issues... but because of numerous reasons i don't think will get better for a while:
* as stated above, most US cities (exceptions for older cities mostly on the East Coast) and are designed amlost exculsively for the automobile with sprawled homes and jobs and often very small percentage of businesses downtown
* the cheap gas and lack of good public transit perpetuates the cycle as people have few good options other than driving - so we put all money into auto infrastrcuture and don't "waste" money on public transit so it only get worse
* most Americans think "density" is a bad evil thing b/c they want thier big open land in the suburbs (of course it's just an illusion for most as they spend so much time in traffic)

although there are many great things about the automobile, as a basic transportation device for every person that has virtually replaced all other modes of transportation such as walking or public transit the negatives increase: pollution, people being injured and killed, traffic, etc... but the American people will effictively ignore the pollution and continue to happily waste energy and pave and pave and pave... but, some time soon (say 15-25 years) TRAFFIC will be so bad that the automobile will no longer be a viable solution for most people as it takes 2 hours or more to get to work or to school... i believe once a city or region reaches this "critical mass" point, solutions such as some new form of public transit or mass telecommuting or whatever will be developed very quickly... (assuming we can handle the costs)

until we get to this point, raising the gas price (or at least not heavily subsidizing the auto system) would help to moderate the damage of "designing for cars" and make it easier for when this day eventually arrives... as well as helping to reduce the pollution and environmental damage or driving SO many miles and paving so much of the U.S. land

of course there is also a danger that we have some kind of energy crisis (say an oil supply disruption from war or terrorism) in which case the U.S. would be in a bad position b/c our entire economy depends so heavily on oil: how can companies transport thier goods and people get to work w/o oil?

with all the conservative types in the U.S. worried about the threats to the U.S. and the economy it baffles me that we continue to allow this weakness to increase -- and just holding more oil in the reserves is a VERY short-term solution -- what if the oil supply were limited for 6 months? and with even a slight shortage oil prices would skyrocket as demand would continue to be high as almost everyone is SO dependent on oil...

given the past of things like flying 2 planes into the World Trade Center, i don't think it's too unlikely that terrorists could SERIOUSLY distrupt the planet's oil supply - not for days, but for months - by destroying numerous pipelines, ships and oils fields...

but the average American doesn't want to do ANYTHING to reduce his God-given right to drive his huge multi-thousand pounds of steel to wherever he wants and get free parking... pay more for gas! "waste" money on public transit! ride a bike!

there are many solutions that could greatly help, but [vitually] no one wants to...

Andy Dreisch

Conservative "types" wanted to open a sliver of Anwar (the vast desert in Alaska) to drilling. Many promote nuclear energy. Two of the more obvious alternatives that liberal "types" oppose in favor of demonstrated non-solutions like light rail, commuter lanes, and solar cells.

As to "but [virtually] no one wants to..." This is because America is a democracy. People vote. Those that people vote for hold office. Those that don't get the people's vote are out on their keester.

Apparently, then, your case has yet to be made to the American public, or the case does not exist, or it's deemed only important enough to rank maybe 100th on the top issues list. It's got to be one of the above.

Big Johnson

Nathank I am one of the conservative types you mention. However, I believe one of the best ways to make our nation more secure is to reduce our dependence on oil PERIOD. I believe, to quote the old cliche, that necessity is the mother of invention. As such, alternative energy will only be developed in earnest when oil becomes scarce and expensive. Rest assured as it is painfully obvious that we cannot continue to consume petrolium products at our present rate, we will eventually have no other choice but to use other energy sources. Unfortunately, it may be a long while before we do. When that day comes, our economy will no longer be at the mercy of the middle east. We will have fewer and fewer reasons to interfere in the affairs of foriegn powers, and we can focus on conditions here at home.