TC1

FYI... the League of American Bicyclists is far less-impressed with Irvine than you are, and scored their "Engineering ( bicycle network and connectivity )" a 4.19 out of 10. Their "Evaluation & Planning" scores even worse, 4.12/10. Its safety record is also not all that outstanding, although I haven't yet found detailed statistics for Irvine.

jon c. 

Again, you have provided no evidence that this is true.

TC1

That's a bald-faced lie. I provided evidence on an array of examples. And no one has been able to provide even one example of a municipality accomplishing this elusive goal.

But despite yinz' inability to even attempt to counter the point, I'll play along. If dedicated cycling infrastructure works, why is the fatality rate in the Netherlands so alarmingly high? There are only about 8 million Dutch cyclists, and 291 of them were killed last year alone -- the highest total in decades. For comparison, there are about 120 million American cyclists, and only about 800 are killed annually.

So how about it? Are you going to try, or will there be more crickets?

indyfabz

I think I remember this guy. You might want to use the Ignore feature.

Still waiting to see proof of all this decimation.

shelbyfv

Yep, I put him on ignore his first go around.

fishboat

It's been 4 days since the OP "launched" this mess, and he/she hasn't been back..and the thread is going (has gone) down the toilet, which was a certainty from the beginning.

..may the lock come soon..

tomato coupe

Toilet Circler 1.

TC1

That's an outstanding way to remain ignorant, and may explain your final sentence as well.

https://news.yahoo.com/european-citi...213150583.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/28/b...vironment.html
https://www.europeofcities.com/blog/...s-banning-cars
https://www.businessinsider.com/citi...ries-of-bans-9

And about a thousand other references, just in case you decide to stop being ignorant on this topic.

indyfabz

Not decimation. Fact!

indyfabz

More like No. 2.

TC1

You can always tell when someone is dredging up their very last pathetic attempt at a point, when they are forced to label their comment as "Fact" with an exclamation point.

That said, you are wrong. As previously mentioned, you may want to avail yourself of a dictionary:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/...glish/decimate
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/di...glish/decimate

Good luck with that.

50PlusCycling

Here in Japan a law was passed in 2008, requiring cyclists to ride on surface streets. In Tokyo, what few bike lanes existed were largely divided sidewalks, one half for pedestrians, the other half for cyclists. Frequent collisions caused this system to be rethought, and most of these sidewalks were changed to pedestrian use only. Through much of Tokyo, the shoulders of surface streets were marked for cycling use, but they aren’t bike paths or lanes, they are mainly indicators that bikes should ride there, and drivers understand that bikes should ride there.

E-bikes have caught on pretty strongly in Japan, but they are causing havoc on the roads, and Japanese police have been clamping down on them. If they can move without pedaling, they require a license plate, and any vehicle with a license plate requires a licensed driver. As a “motor vehicle,” they must be used on the street, the fine for riding one on the sidewalk is expensive. And, unlike regular bicycles, they are not legal to ride either way on a one-way street.

Japan’s roads are quite safe for cyclists relative to other places. Drivers are more alert as the consequences for hitting a cyclist or pedestrian in Japan are severe. Any driver who hits and injures a pedestrian or cyclists is charged with a crime, any driver who kills a pedestrian or cyclist is arrested and jailed on the spot, and you cannot bail out while you await trial. Japan does see a lot of bicycle accidents, but when you consider that in Tokyo alone, as many as 2 million people ride a bicycle on any given day, the number of people injured, or worse, is remarkably low.

john m flores 

SOURCE: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloa...cling-risk.pdf

tomato coupe

Junk science! Junk science! Junk science!

(Just a preview of coming attractions ...)

TC1

So, since we've established that you are prone to posting charts without doing any due diligence to confirm their accuracy, and your acolytes here in the peanut gallery are unequipped to do so either, let's take a look at this one.

First, and most important, you will note that I previously referred specifically to construction reducing fatalities -- not injuries. The latter are almost impossible to count accurately, as most studies note. And, even in this questionable chart, we see no improving trend in cyclist fatalities -- exactly as I told you we would find.

Second, the very important trip count column has a number of issues, including but not limited-to:

* The alleged progression from 55M to 186M trips is not supported by the source, and is in-fact contradicted by it. The source estimates that the value was around 180M as early as 2009, and it has been essentially flat since ( page 20, for the curious ). It is unclear from which orifice these authors pulled those ~100M trip values for years around 2010, but their own source disagrees by about 50%.

* Their method section does not describe any adjustment for seasonality, and they based their estimate on a single week study. If it was a summer week, when 590k adult New Yorkers claimed to have ridden 50% of the past seven days, that sloppy work would lead to a severe over-count.

In addition, the injury line before 2006 is dashed, not solid, with no explanation. Why? Did they just invent those numbers? They seem to be prone to doing exactly that.

We also find that most of the alleged decline in cyclist injuries were just relocated to scooters and mopeds, due to the boom in those vehicles:



And, aside from all those issues, anyone familiar with New York City ought to know that the construction of a few bike lanes is far from the only change over the past couple decades. As I have repeatedly explained, construction does not work, but slowing and reducing motor vehicle traffic does. And, lo and behold, that is precisely what New York City has done -- dropping the speed limit from 30 to 25 mph, and more importantly, enforcing traffic laws with speed and red-light cameras. They are even seizing vehicles from the worst drivers -- only a dozen so far, but a couple thousand have been threatened with such.

https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/mo...-driving.shtml


So, John, I will give you some credit for being stubborn, and not giving up. But again, you are failing to perform the due diligence on the sources that you are citing, and you are finding yourself repeatedly burned as a result. This is not actually surprising, since you are trying to argue a lost cause. As I've mentioned, we've seen the ineffectiveness of dedicated construction for a long time now, and this is not cutting-edge research we are discussing. Municipalities -- including New York City -- have seen their cyclist fatalities remain at the same level, or higher, regardless of how much money they throw at concrete and paint, and subsequently turned to the other options I have described.

This should not be news to anyone who pays attention to cycling or transport in general. The only mystery is why presumably well-meaning people such as yourself continue to lobby for "separate but equal" infrastructures that will never be either, and have been proven to be disastrous wastes of time, money, and lives.

TC1

And this is exactly how it could work in America, and other places. The United States has 4 million miles of roads, and the vast majority of them are perfectly suitable for cycling -- as long as vehicle operators behave, and the fear of prison is one of the few things that actually effects behavior.

And, coincidentally, the US could implement this strategy almost for free right now. We already have about three-quarters of a million cops who are already being paid, but who are doing naught, because they are effectively on-strike, and prosecutors doing the same, because they can get away with it. We already have millions of prison cells, and many of them are or will soon be vacant after we stop locking-up non-violent drug offenders due to the proliferation of legalization. Federal and state prison populations are already down 25% from a dozen years ago. A similar percentage applies to local jails, as well.

We have plenty of room to "store" vehicle operators who cannot behave, we just need to do so. Then we can help save the planet by not pouring a trillion gallons of paint and a trillion yards of concrete -- if that's your thing. And as a side benefit, this strategy helps pedestrians and rural folks, too, who are completely ignored by the demands for cycling infrastructure in cities.

indyfabz

Anyone else thinking AI?

LarrySellerz

None here, yet.

shelbyfv

The "I" might be a hurdle.

john m flores 

Wrong. This is the source data. There were 87.6 million cycling trips in 2009, not the 200 million that you allege.



Wrong again. This is their methodology. It is not based on a single week study. Their data collection methods have changed over the years and since 2013, data collection for the four East River bridges have been automated and are 24/7/365.



The dashed line indicates an increase in data collection. See above.

You have failed to show causation.

LOL. When was the last time you've either ridden a bicycle or driven in New York City? I've been bicycling and driving (and riding motorcycles) there for the past 30+ years. The speed reduction from 30mph to 25mph is immaterial in many parts of the city due to congestion and road conditions. And still, you've failed to show what impact the reduction of the speed limit has had. Let's see the data. Connect your theory to results.

I'll ignore your condescension. The bottom line is that bicycle use in New York City has increased significantly in the last 20 years. I've seen it with my own eyes and the data supports it. And as the data shows, the growth in bicycle usage is far outpacing severe accidents. In other words, the efforts that New York City has made to make the city more bike-friendly with bike infrastructure has worked.

SoSmellyAir

Irvine, California?

50PlusCycling

I worked in American law enforcement for many years, and things are not the same. Nowadays police usually can’t arrest people for driving on a suspended license, and many states have done away with habitual offender laws, so there is no point in even bothering to pull them over. If you are hit by an unlicensed driver, you can be pretty sure they are also uninsured, and that their car is likely unregistered. My brother was hit and killed while riding a bicycle, the driver was an illegal immigrant with no license, no insurance, driving a car with a fake temporary license plate. The driver wasn’t arrested. I had to file a claim with my own insurance company to pay for the funeral expenses.

It seems a large part of the American voting public don’t want law and order or public safety. They are fine with crumbling infrastructure and failing schools, they don’t mind that entire districts in major American cities look like something from a zombie apocalypse movie. When I visited Japan on a vacation some years ago, I was so impressed by how well things were run that I made up my mind to move here. I don’t regret my decision. What is ironic is that Japan’s constitution and criminal justice system are American inventions, written by the Occupation Forces in the post-war years. Japan’s civil system is based on America’s military system. It’s harsh, and the West often accuses it of being unfair, but the Japanese people prefer it because it works.

I can’t begin to say how nice it is to live in a country where drug addiction, homelessness, and crime are not even minor social issues. And how wonderful it is to be able to send your kids to public schools in which nearly all kids are proficient in fundamental subjects. How nice it is to ride on smooth and well-maintained roads without the worry of being hit and hurt or killed by an unlicensed, uninsured driver.

TC1

John, I implore you to develop the habit of reading the source material you cite. Your inability or unwillingness to do so has become repetitive, and is wasting everyone's time. That chart is not the source data. The source data is on page 20, as I already told you, and I will quote it for you:

"The New York State 2009 NHTS Comparison Report (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 2012) indicates that 18.2% of trips that New Yorkers take using personal vehicles are commuting trips to work. This would indicate that potentially 536,000 (97,600/18.2%) total bicycle trips are taken each day."

365 days times 536,000 daily trips is just shy of 200M annual trips -- starting almost a decade a ago.

That said, their methodology doesn't make much sense anyway, as it relies the percentage of trips by bicycle being identical to the percentage of commuters who use a bicycle. That might be true, but it certainly isn't written in stone.


Whether it is a single week, three days per summer, or all summer long, seasonal adjustment is still required and not being done. And, for the record, some are even less than I mentioned:

"Uptown counts are 12 hour bicycle counts that take place in October at 86th S" and "Count is on a single mid-summer weekday from 1980, and 1985-2006, on three separate weekdays in
May, July, and September 2007, and from April to October after 2007."

That said, let's examine those East River bridge counts that you are so fond of: total in 2013 was 20,935. Total in 2018 was 21,033. Almost exactly the same. Yet this chart claims cycling exploded by 40% over that same span ( of time, not span of river ).

Furthermore, many of those count locations are on protected routes, yet no control is apparently implemented to account for those attracting cyclists from other routes, as opposed to representing actually increased cycling.

So, again, the claimed explosion in cycling trips is simply not present in this data.


John, buddy, try to keep up. You are the one trying to prove that construction saves lives. I am explaining to you that it does not -- and all of the data agrees with me. If one of us needs to prove causation, it is you.

John, the data is directly in front of you. There has been no improvement in fatality rates in New York City among cyclists, scooterists, and other micromobility types, as a result of infrastructure construction. This does not surprise anyone who has paid attention to this topic, because that is true in every single location where such construction has been undertaken.


The data does not support that, and more to the point, it does not support the alleged trend shown in your chart. The data does show an increase in cycling from 2000 to 2010 (roughly), but just about all of the counting techniques also changed during that time frame, so the resulting confidence is low. Since 2010, cycling appears to be pretty flat.


This is merely wishful thinking and that does not save lives -- a trait that it happens to share with the construction of dedicated cycling infrastructure, as even your chosen data illustrates.

Simplifying to wrap up, NYC hit about 200M annual bicycle trips in 2015 and had 14 fatalities, and 4896 injuries ( officially ). It reached about 220M trips last year, and had 18 fatalities, and 4949 injuries ( again, official count, not worth much ). ( All per NYC.gov bicycle crash data reports, and the aforementioned trip estimates. )

TC1

Irvine doesn't have a particularly impressive safely record, per the League of American Bicyclists, and scores only 4.19/10 for its Engineering, and even worse for "Evaluation & Planning".

TC1

I frankly don't care if cops arrest people for having a suspended license -- as long as they didn't hit anyone. The problem is, as you seemingly discovered, even running people over goes unpunished regularly, and that is the problem. And that problem is entirely owned by our cops and prosecutors -- who, like I said, largely refuse to work.

Nothing could be further from the truth -- which is largely why the Republican party continues to do as well as it does, despite being culturally out of sync with most Americans. They are able to run on "Law & Order" -- even if that's unadulterated nonsense. The problem is that those voters usually don't have anyone to vote for, who actually shares their concern.

Repeated waves of flight from American cities illustrates beyond question that your premise here is completely without support.

The people that live in those districts don't vote -- and sometimes, through no fault of their own, their votes barely count.


The United States is number one according to the United Nation's Education Index, just for the record ( https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/e...ngs-by-country ) and its good public schools are world-class -- which is why so many of the world's top universities are also in the US.

Japan is not in the top 5 on that index -- despite having a demographic situation that should make it easy to educate their rare children.