twodot posted:

Iceland clearly wanted bikes because they built a bunch of poo poo to support bikes! I know the US government isn't going to spend money building bikeways for Lowell, Massachusetts, because the US government is not currently doing that. The point is they definitely could. The money exists. The resources exist. The people to physically build it exist. The only thing lacking is political will.

We can have a discussion on whether the lack of will is smart or good, but pretending like physical reality is impeding us from building infrastructure can't be part of the conversation.

Cicero posted:

Yo've kept arguing that there's some "special factors" at work here letting them build stuff for bikes, but it's very obviously false.

This is wrong.

This is also wrong; US cities have plenty of money for "proper bike infrastructure" when they care.

fishmech posted:

There is no US city which has a third of the country in itself and another third of the country as its suburb. That you don't comprehend this is quite odd.

fishmech posted:

The United States government isn't going to drop a bunch of funds for say Lowell, Massachusetts to get comprehensive bikeways built, for a comparison of an urban area of similar size. And if they were in the mood to do such a thing they're far more likely to spend some extra money to build better public transit in it, probably teeing it off from the current connections down to Boston.

fishmech posted:

Again, it would be stupid to do the bike thing for Lowell because there's already public transit options for it to tie into that would make more sense, there's an entire rail industry in the US for acquiring rolling stock and operating staff from, etc. In fact it would likely be able to pull off some of the unneeded stock from neighboring transit operators like the MBTA proper into the existing LRTA. For instance, MBTA rail service within the LRTA's service area is currently just the one line from Lowell to Boston with two stations in that direction within LRTA service to the southeast - the city could use a route from the west and another to the east easily for travel within its own urban area, which could use some existing freight rights of way for that purpose.

twodot posted:

Ok so definitely not "Again", because you've never asserted it would be dumb to build bicycle infrastructure in Lowell. What you asserted was that the US government wouldn't build bicycle infrastructure in Lowell. It turns out, not only are you wrong about that, even if you were right "What the US government will or won't do" is totally irrelevant to whether it is a good idea.

If you want to have a conversation about whether it's smart to build bicycle infrastructure in Lowell, then I'm happy to have that conversation (because it is smart). If you're going to pretend that Lowell can't walk and chew gum and that our only options "only expand bicycle infrastructure" and "only expand public transit" then gently caress off.

twodot posted:

If you want to have a conversation about whether it's smart to build bicycle infrastructure in Lowell, then I'm happy to have that conversation (because it is smart). If you're going to pretend that Lowell can't walk and chew gum and that our only options "only expand bicycle infrastructure" and "only expand public transit" then gently caress off.

Cicero posted:

He wrote that anytime biking is faster than public transportation for a trip, then that means that the public transportation is by definition underdeveloped/underfunded; that for a transit system to be considered "good", it has to beat biking in speed for every possible trip.

Cicero posted:

This context is probably missing for many people: fishmech is super irrational about bikes for some reason. In addition to the thing where he just made up random bullshit history to try and explain biking in the Netherlands, and insisted that he knew better than actual Dutch people how it worked, he also once insisted that biking is never inherently better than transit for transportation trips of any type. He wrote that anytime biking is faster than public transportation for a trip, then that means that the public transportation is by definition underdeveloped/underfunded; that for a transit system to be considered "good", it has to beat biking in speed for every possible trip. Yes, even if a trip is only a mile or two long, going to random rear end, non-busy parts of town.

I have no idea why he's so weird about bikes, but it's one of his things that he gets stuck on like a broken record.

exploded mummy posted:

twodot posted:

I mean I'm pretty sympathetic to the view point of "insanely over build public transit", it's just even if you think public transit should beat biking in speed for every possible trip, that's still no argument against providing bicycle infrastructure for people who want to bike anyways.

twodot posted:

I have no idea what you're expecting me to see here.

exploded mummy posted:

I meant to quote fishmech

Cicero posted:

This context is probably missing for many people: fishmech is super irrational about bikes for some reason. In addition to the thing where he just made up random bullshit history to try and explain biking in the Netherlands, and insisted that he knew better than actual Dutch people how it worked, he also once insisted that biking is never inherently better than transit for transportation trips of any type. He wrote that anytime biking is faster than public transportation for a trip, then that means that the public transportation is by definition underdeveloped/underfunded; that for a transit system to be considered "good", it has to beat biking in speed for every possible trip. Yes, even if a trip is only a mile or two long, going to random rear end, non-busy parts of town.

I have no idea why he's so weird about bikes, but it's one of his things that he gets stuck on like a broken record.

Cicero posted:

You're trying to say that the unusual population density means it's easier to get funding for bikes,

twodot posted:

Ok so definitely not "Again", because you've never asserted it would be dumb to build bicycle infrastructure in Lowell. What you asserted was that the US government wouldn't build bicycle infrastructure in Lowell. It turns out, not only are you wrong about that, even if you were right "What the US government will or won't do" is totally irrelevant to whether it is a good idea.

If you want to have a conversation about whether it's smart to build bicycle infrastructure in Lowell, then I'm happy to have that conversation (because it is smart). If you're going to pretend that Lowell can't walk and chew gum and that our only options "only expand bicycle infrastructure" and "only expand public transit" then gently caress off.

Cicero posted:

The context of that particular argument was that he was saying that you shouldn't make serious investments in bike infrastructure because transit is better (more accessible/resistant to weather) anyway, and then when people pointed out that for some types of trips biking is better than transit, he brought out the brilliant argument of "well actually if biking is ever faster than transit that just means it's because that particular transit system sucks, therefore transit is still always superior to biking, checkmate "

It was truly a sight to behold, but I can see the appeal: why make sane arguments, when you can just change what things mean until you're right by definition?

twodot posted:

You think they have more funds than the United States of America government?

fishmech posted:

But I did assert that, it's why massive funding if available wouldn't be used to build bikeways in preference to building new rail and other transit options in the city, especially with its history of rail connections.

fishmech posted:

The United States government isn't going to drop a bunch of funds for say Lowell, Massachusetts to get comprehensive bikeways built, for a comparison of an urban area of similar size. And if they were in the mood to do such a thing they're far more likely to spend some extra money to build better public transit in it, probably teeing it off from the current connections down to Boston.

quote:

Transit IS better though. This is uncontroversial. That you think it's controversial at all is just sad.

It's much better if everything can be simply accessed via short walks and transit versus such long distances that one needs to bike.

boner confessor posted:

in a relative sense they do, the us federal government is horribly restricted in what they can spend on local infrastructure projects (10th amendment etc.) where many european nations have a strong national presence in planning, especially when it comes to the capital/primary city

if the us government wasn't barred from writing a check, you are correct in that they could put a shitload more zeros on that check. but there are very deliberate barriers meant to prevent the federal government from interfering in state government, which leads to goofy loopholes and a lot of inefficiency because as it turns out allowing state governments to starve local governments of infrastructure funding leads to lovely infrastructure

paperwind posted:

it also means something as simple as businesses making a minor investment in bicycle parking racks that one can actually securely lock a bike up to, and then locating said racks near their front entrance so as to deter theft and signal clearly that cycle commuters are welcome customers.

twodot posted:

No, friend, I have your words, you asserted what the US government would do, not that it would be smart for it do it. If you think the government always makes smart decisions, I invite to inspect the military budget.

You see these words? "isn't going to" "they're far more likely" You are describing what you think would happen, not that it is good that those things would happen. If you were trying to express they shouldn't drop a bunch of funds you need to use words like "shouldn't drop a bunch of funds" or "it would be a bad idea to".

I see you are unfamiliar with the existence of "traffic" and "recreation". Interesting.

This is dumb and wrong. The federal government writes many checks to state governments, there's nothing stopping a state from saying "We'd like $5 million extra to build bikeways" and then the federal government agreeing. Like did you forget Medicaid exists?

exploded mummy posted:

the lowell mbta line actually does have an eastern spur to connect it out east, and there isn't exactly a ton out west to connect it to unless you run it up into New Hampshire, which really isn't the City of Lowell's business

fishmech posted:

You're pretty bad at understanding things. The military budget makes a whole lot of sense for its real purpose of lining pockets and spreading patronage.

quote:

If you think "traffic" and "recreation" means walk+transit should be worse than biking, I don't even know what to say to you. The whole purpose would be to provide such a level of public transit provision that frankly a ton of traffic would not exist, and beside the transit wouldn't be placed to be interfered with by traffic.

twodot posted:

If we're agreeing that a third of the federal budget is devoted to lining pockets and spreading patronage, I have no idea why you think what the federal government would do is at all relevant to what is good.

I mean if step 1 of your proposal is "eliminate basically all traffic everywhere" then bold plan, I applaud. In the mean time, we're going to be building bikeways because some people want to bike and making it safe and easy for them to bike is good and cheap. Once you achieve your plan of "eliminate basically all traffic everywhere" and then "expand public transit so much that literally no one ever could possibly want to bike from any point to any other point" we'll talk about reclaiming the bikeways and planting some nice trees or something.

twodot posted:

This is dumb and wrong. The federal government writes many checks to state governments, there's nothing stopping a state from saying "We'd like $5 million extra to build bikeways" and then the federal government agreeing. Like did you forget Medicaid exists?

fishmech posted:

It's actually a pretty good idea to ensure the ongoing industrial production in a lot of widespread communities that would otherwise have no industry at all anymore. There's a lot of ways to approach that, but frankly military subsidy is a pretty hard angle to attack, politically.

Yeah so like, what did you miss about the statement that public transit should be very good? There would inherently be much safer biking opportunities from the mass reduction of private vehicles, but most importantly you wouldn't need to since you could just walk, or take public transit.

Do you think it's bad for public transit to be very good?

boner confessor posted:

i guess it seems dumb and wrong if you completely ignore what i posted because you're worked up into a lather over fishmech

i specifically said infrastructure and you started talking about medicaid. there is definitely a thing preventing state government from asking for money, which is that DOT TIGER grants are typically constricted to a smallish pool of money (on the scale of single billions) and of the multiple state/local projects that compete for them, not everyone can get funded

if you're going to be needlessly hostile because you're determined to win the bareknuckle internet argument i dont see the point in responding to you. try listening instead of yelling

fishmech posted:

By having 0 apps, indeed no one else could control the apps. In the same sense, I have total control over all the transparent durluminum missiles in the Andromeda galaxy.

Squalid posted:

Much of America really is pushing hard to add new bike infrastructure, even in lots of mid sized cities that are extremely car centric today. Turns out its a lot cheaper painting a bike line on an existing road than it is to build a new highway. It's progressing slower than it should but I think bikes are going to be an increasingly important part of American transit for the foreseeable future.

It's coming up from a pretty low point but even a lot of small towns and subburban areas are really pushing the bike infrastructure.




Thanks OOCC, for refuting a point nobody made or even implied

twodot posted:

No, I'm super supportive of your transit ideas. Eliminating traffic and making transit so awesome no one could ever want to bike is perhaps insane, but still better than our current strategy of "have public transit so insanely bad that it's normal for a family of four to have three+ cars".

What I'm letting you know, is your strategy is going to take some time. So while you're working on that, we're going to build bikeways because there is an existing need and desire for people to use bikes. It's fine if you want to focus or prioritize transit, but that's no argument against building bikeways today. If 30 or 40 years from now (optimistically) you've solved the transit problem and the bikeways are empty we can do something else with them.
edit:

VideoGameVet posted:

Apple had their own apps on the iPhone (mail, safari, calendar etc.) from day one. The critical app being Music.

If you were in the mobile app world pre-iPhone, you'll remember the 'deck' with J2ME and BREW being the leading app platforms. The carriers controlled everything back then.

Steve Jobs ended that.

twodot posted:

Well, you see, my entire point has been that the lack of funding for bikeways is entirely political, and if there was political will to change that we could. Then you replied to me saying there are obstacles to funding bikeways and also brought up the 10th amendment for no reason, when you are apparently aware that federal government does directly fund bikeways (via TIGER) and how much that is funded is entirely a political issue, so I don't really see any reason to be nice to you since you've either fundamentally ignoring what I'm saying or are actively trying to throw up red herrings.

twodot posted:

You think they have more funds than the United States of America government?

twodot posted:

Like TIGER grants do not prevent state governments from asking for money and then getting it, it is literally a mechanism through which that happens. The extent to which TIGER was funded is entirely political.

fishmech posted:

Actually it's far better and more important to build public transit right now when there's scarce funds, hope this helps.

boner confessor posted:

i brought up the 10th amendment because you said this:


you dont seem to be aware that the 10th amendment curtails the federal governments ability to pay for state and local projects since this is the amendment which specifically reserves powers to the states - critically in this case, infrastructure funding. there are loopholes for national infrastructure, which is why the federal government can intervene for trade infrastructure like ports, or infrastructure that crosses state lines like the interstate highway system

quote:

i dont know why you're saying it is a "political issue" unless you're talking about politics not increasing the available pot of money.

quote:

the point i'm trying to make here is that it's complicated, by design, and talking to you appears to be a waste of time until you do some basic reading about how transportation funding is actually allocated in the united states

fishmech posted:

Sorry that you're mad that public transit should be run at a high standard I guess? I get that you fetishize bikes but you don't need to freak out about it. There are quite a lot of people out there who can simply never rely on a bike, so public transit should always be available and suitable for them.

quote:

No, that's your strawman. I said that Reykjavik has unique unsuitability for most sorts of public transit and an unusually high percentage of its whole country's population, and that its density level is part of why it's unsuited for a lot of things. And that it also has further oddities like a complete national lack of rail infrastructure and industry. That is why it has an unusual amount of bicycling infrastructure and use considering what you'd expect about Iceland or a city of that size as a whole, and why it's not a particularly good model for how another city elsewhere in the world would or should build out bike infrastructure. As such we can disregard all the rest of your rant.

quote:

Transit IS better though. This is uncontroversial. That you think it's controversial at all is just sad.

quote:

It's much better if everything can be simply accessed via short walks and transit versus such long distances that one needs to bike.

twodot posted:

Pretending that a $5 million bikeway is competing with a 25 year $53.8 billion dollar transit expansion for funds is ludicrous, especially considering that the bikeways were included in the funding for the transit expansion to attract more voters to vote for the tax increases.

twodot posted:

I am saying the manner in which we allocate transportation funding is an entirely political issue, and we could allocate effectively arbitrary amounts of funding if we had the political will to do so.

boner confessor posted:

buying everyone a pony is inherently a political issue *farts*

twodot posted:

Who is saying funds are scarce? We have the money, the only thing missing is political will.

Cicero posted:

Lol, nice strawman, I think transit is great. Unlike your weird biking hateboner, I can recognize that each mode has advantages and disadvantages.

It's really not though. Again, it doesn't even have that much biking. How many times do I have to repeat that for it to sink into your thick skull? It has a lot more than the US as a whole, but less than plenty of European and Japanese cities.

It has about as much biking as you'd expect given the level of public investment. Nothing unusual about it at all.

Ahhh, there it is, the obsession rears its head in full. Could it be that each mode has its strengths and weaknesses? No, transit is flatly superior, always!

It will never happen, it's simply not feasible for transit + walking to beat biking for all trips a person might want to do. You might be able to get close to that kind of platonic ideal in a place as dense as, say, Hong Kong, but even then it's hardly a fair comparison when transit has probably received on the order of 1000x as much money there.

You look at someplace like Portland, the bike mode share is less than transit, sure, but it's more than half of transit, even though transit gets, like, 100x as much money. Again, transit gets insanely more resources, and it's only beating biking by a moderate margin. And I'm not saying that because I want to disinvest in transit, I think transit should receive even more funding there than it currently is. But it's a great example of how incredibly cost efficient biking is for infrastructure. Great bike infrastructure can get comparable numbers to great transit, while being similarly useful overall, while also being much, much cheaper.

There is nowhere in the world where you can point to where biking and transit get comparable resources, and yet transit is still better than biking for most intra-urban trips.

poopinmymouth posted:

Even leaving existing car ownership rates, just moving to using a bike on gorgeous days or short trips, if multiplied times all the people currently using their cars, would have a measurable difference in congestion, pollution, road wear, and a nation's health.

It doesn't have to be a car-less, bike mandated, gay space colony to encourage people to use a bike just a little more often.

One program Reykjavik does is to have a car free commute month in our nicest weather (I think it's in July, the program) where there is a city wide competition of which company can move the most percentage of their workforce by human power (walking, jogging, biking, skating, etc). Totally voluntary but people participate every year and I'm sure the paltry sum used to maintain the program is recouped from the benefits of less car use. Little things like this, useable safe bike Lanes, showers at workplaces, bike racks to lock your bike, etc, can add up.

twodot posted:

Well no, there isn't 300 million ponies, so we can't buy everyone a pony. Even if we started a breeding program it's not clear we have the land area or food production to maintain 300 million ponies, or that even if there was it's not clear that we could distribute those resources in a way that gave people constructive access to their pony, there are actual real world, physical reality problems with buying everyone a pony. Building bikeways is just a matter of convincing the government/society it is a good idea.

boner confessor posted:

if you're going to be needlessly hostile because you're determined to win the bareknuckle internet argument i dont see the point in responding to you. try listening instead of yelling

Squalid posted:

You know if you think there are issues with the tone of discussion you should probably try to be a little less condescending. You really don’t come off as more mature or w/e when you act like this.

I know you studied this stuff and have professional experience but if it’s such a pain for you to speak down to us poor ignorant masses you might as well not bother and spare us this kind of post

boner confessor posted:

breeding 300 million ponies is easier than restructuring the federal government to permit easier funding of transportation infrastructure. you committing to your ignorance of the topic does not handwave away the very real roadblocks in place here. teleportation is also a political issue, we merely need to devote 100% of our society to the creation of a teleportation device *hits weed vape*

seriously dude pull your head out and do some reading

twodot posted:

No this is very wrong. TIGER is literally just a subsection of an act of Congress. The fact that of the 800 billion we spent in that act we only spent a billion on transportation is just an artifact of what ~500 assholes could agree to.

fishmech posted:

Funding is money available after being factored through political will and the law. So the funding is in fact scarce.

quote:

Yeah this is what you don't get: I don't hate bikes.

quote:

Reykjavik has quite a bit more biking now than it did before they started to seriously improve their cycling infrastructure though. It's completely irrelevant that other places elsewhere have more biking.

quote:

But transit is flatly superior. Transit can work for everyone, bicycling by definition can only work for people physically able to operate a bicycle. Additionally it can handle far more people far more comfortably in far more weather and geographical conditions.

quote:

It is entirely feasible for transit plus walking to beat biking for all trips. It's called having good urban design and retrofitting and spending the proper amounts on it.

quote:

Portland is a garbage city with garbage transit and garbage everything else, so I don't know why you think it's relevant.

quote:

Correct, transit is better than biking.

Cicero posted:

I accept your defeat. Agreed, it's because of political will and interest that biking in Iceland is more successful than the US, not because of the population distribution or anything like that.

You hate bikes way more than I hate transit, and you're constantly spreading misinformation and outright lies about them.

Yup, all it'll take is the US improving bike infrastructure, which they could easily do if they cared. Which is why there are a few cities in the US that have even more biking than Reykjavik: those are the ones that care.

I'd add that transit is much better than biking for funneling to a central location, like a downtown, and for that reason is better for big city commutes overall. NYC's bike improvements are great, but it's never gonna match the subway at rush hour.

But that's okay, because biking has its own advantages: it's generally cheaper than transit for the user, it's MUCH cheaper than (good) transit for the government, it's healthier, it can let people carry more cargo, and it's far more flexible when it comes to start/end-points as well as time of day. That transit can theoretically work for anybody doesn't overcome that many trips from not-super-busy-area to not-super-busy-area don't have the numbers to justify fast, frequent transit. And that problem only gets worse in the early morning or late evening.

Pick any city in the US you want, I'll find plenty of trips where biking handily beats transit for days. But we both know you'll just come up with excuses instead.

Nope, it's impossible. Go ahead and try to find an existing example where the bike investment comes even within an order of magnitude of transit spending and this is even close to true (heck, I'd be surprised if you could find any examples, period). You can't, and so you won't, because it's impossible, and that's why it doesn't exist.

That "garbage transit" cost them billions of dollars, many times more than what they've put into bikes, because bikes are much, much more cost-efficient.

Haha, nice reading comprehension.