imakecircles

Saw this today and it's interesting. Results seem to be about what I'd expect given my very limited dataset.

https://coya.com/bike/index-2019

Stadjer

They are quite unexpected for me, and wrong too. Not just because Antwerp comes in 3rd while it's cycling is problematic and other Flemish cities do better, but because the ranking is all wrong.

It's trying to rank two very different things: The state of cycling in a city and the effort of a city to improve cycling. But if it's already a good cycling city there's little extra effort left that can be made and some efforts become pointless because they belong to early days activism and not to cities with good cycling.

For example I live in a good cycling city as it has been for years. That means that everybody's got a bike and there's little demand for bike shares. In good cycling cities bike share is a matter of how much visitors come and how well it's connected to public transport. No one here cares about a No Car Day, most would probably not even notice if there is one. A critical mass event? Might as well be just a group of cyclists going somewhere. Investmen in infrastructure? Regular maintenance and some small improvements will do. Specialized cycling infrastructure? No, if the number of cars is low enough it makes no sense to specialize the infrastructure.

It makes sense to rank cities by effort and recent progress. It also makes sense to rank cities by what is already accomplished or just on how things are for cycling. But mixing them up makes no sense.

alcjphil

Well, I live in a city that scores pretty well on a global basis. One area we score unusually high on is the number of bike share bicycles available to the general public. During our summer festivals, primarily the Montreal Jazzfest, riding your bike there is a pain, you cannot take your bike into the site, so you have to lock it up and trust that it will be there when the outdoor free concert is over. A Bixi which you can ditch at the entrance to the concert area is way better than your own bike. When the concert is over, you pick up another Bixi to ride home.

mr_bill

So Utrecht comes in first but you complain because your tiny city isn’t on the list?

The triple cities is missing too. Binghamton/Endicott/Johnson City. (They would place toward last.)

?

-mr. bill

mr_bill

Oh no. That can’t be. The only people who use bike share are people who can’t afford bikes, and tourists.

-mr. bill

Stadjer

I think bike shares are great, wouldn't want to do without it, and are probably very important in the transition towards a more cycling friendly city. But it's not a measure to determine the best cycling cities, it can be a measure of the effort made, but that's a different matter and even then it isn't necessarily.

No, I complain about Antwerp beeing 3rd, like it would be the way to go, because the index isn't right in it's set up. You can rank cities by progress/effort and you can rank cities by the level of cycling it has. But you can't mix it up, because the latter influences and limits the first.

I don't mind leaving the smaller cities out, but Innsbruck and Bern which are on the list are twice as tiny as the city I live in. I don't care much for a ranking of cities by the quality of cycling, it's not like my cycling experience would improve if my city ranks top, and you'll probalby end up with 9 out of 10 Dutch cities that nobody knows and don't make the best example for cities that want to increase cycling. So it makes more sense to rank only cities of a certain size and rank them by effort and progress made in recent years. But this it doesn't paint a proper picture nor does it give much useful information.

People who can't afford bikes? I'm from a cycling environment, I really can't relate to that. Bike shares are much more expensive, even for the first month. I use them quite regularly in different cities where I got by train, rent one at the station with my public transport card for less than 5 euro/24h but in your own city you use your own bike so it's limited to a certain percentage. Bike share/rental is much bigger in Amsterdam than in Utrecht, but do all those tourists on bikes disrupting traffic really contribute to making a Amsterdam a better cycling city? In cities like Groningen, Utrecht and Nijmegen Swapfiets is very popular. This is a kind of a bike lease, for 15 euro's a month you get a bike that get swapped at your front door if it's broken, stolen or lost. But people treat the bikes like it's a bike share, often because they can't finder their 'own' among lots of simular looking bikes from the same company. This is creating a bike parking problem, which was already cramped so also not contributing to a better cycling city.

I'd just like it if an organization would make a proper, informative and useful ranking.

mr_bill

Bike share in Amsterdam is exclusively OV Fiets, but you must have an address from Netherlands, Belgium, Germany or Luxembourg. Not many tourists qualify.

Lots of people ride OV Fiets to/from Centraal and other transit stations and to/from home/work.

And yes, I know you have a problem with tourists on bikes "disrupting" things, apparently traffic in Amsterdam would run like Clockwork Orange except for ONE tourist.


Bottom line about bike share. You'd be surprised how many people own bikes *AND* use bike share.

-mr. bill

Stadjer

The rental bikes for tourists count for the ranking too, without making Amsterdam a better cycling city.

Maybe, but in the more cycling friendly cities the inhabitants seem to prefer their own bike there. The point is that bike shares do a lot for cities moving towards a more cycling friendly environment, but do hardly anything for cities that are further and already have a lot of cyclists with their own not so fancy bikes for short trips. That's not translated to the ranking because the ranking is fundamentally flawed, because it tries to rank by two different things in the same rank.