My current pet peeve is people complaining about the ‘cost’ of protected bike lanes because “people on bikes don’t pay their way”.
Beyond even the data showing just how much private car ownership is already subsidized, can we just take a moment and acknowledge: We wouldn’t need protected lanes at all if cars were not killing and injuring so many people.
It’s like the owner of an animal bemoaning the cost of an enclosure for their animal, which keeps killing and maiming members of the public as they pass by.
It’s not the victim’s fault the enclosure is needed, and it’s not the fault of someone riding a bike they need protection in a public space.
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“people on bikes don’t pay their way”
I don’t even understand this argument - what is the reasoning? Why do car owners pay their way more than cyclists do?
Cars normally have a state level annual registration and various gas taxes that are slated to be used for road maintenance. So, that’s actually somewhat true. That said, the cost of maintaining roads for cars far exceeds the amount of money generated by the current gas taxes.
What it also leaves out is that the primary cost of road maintenance is potholes and resurfacing. Protected bike lanes have barely any of those costs since what causes the damage is the weight of the cars.
It also leaves out that people who use their bikes for errands and work commuting generate commercial activity (and the taxes from it). Those taxes don’t have to repave the bike lane over and over like a road, so it’s much closer to pure profit for the city.
People in many communities around the world use bicycles for most of their daily errands. This includes grocery shopping, taking kids to activities, moving goods for work, and so on. They use trailers and Bakfiet style (https://bakfiets.nl/en-en) bikes, many of which are now electric assist so you can haul lots of material (or kids - I’ve seen 6 seaters for K-3 aged kids) at city scale distances.
For reference, the number I have seen is that for city roads, 70% comes from local taxes (property tax generally) on average. Potential cyclists are already more than paying for a fully equipped cycling infrastructure, it is just being used to subsidize driving and lock them into that
Protected bike lanes also keep regular car traffic moving more smoothly. By reducing the lanes, which reduces the ability of the (left lane speeder), who tailgates everyone thinking that the red-light ahead of them would have been green if they were driving faster. Single lane roads with turn lanes, keep traffic moving at a regular speed pace, which in many cases is better than a two lane road with zig-zagging cars.
As a public transit user, and a small car driver, I appreciate the smooth 20 > 40mph single lane roads with protected bike lanes, makes sense to me.
Well couldn’t you just say the car taxes and such pay their way on the car road and the bikers “pay” for the bike lanes (which needs much less maintenance)? Just a rhetorical question, I’m guessing the people who make this argument never think this far.
People in many communities around the world use bicycles for most of their daily errands.
Haha, you don’t have to tell me, I live in Copenhagen and do that myself :)
There’s no specific taxes on cyclists to help pay for the lanes I think is the reasoning. But it’s silly regardless, by cycling you help improve streets in other ways - reducing need for maintenance, reducing traffic, freeing up parking etc. Cyclists and pedestrians are good for cars, too. It’s just driving a car makes most people irrationally angry for some reason so all the benefits are lost on them.
I would love to get to Copenhagen. I spent a month in Berlin last summer and the sheer volume of cyclists stunned me. Compared to the last time I was there the rate of cycling was through the roof.
So many people were moving things on bikes and it was great. The city has also strongly discouraged downtown driving along Unter den Linden so even during work days it has lots of empty street at times. It has made the city much nicer to walk around in.
I’ve been trying to move to Europe for a couple of years now. Once I work out family issues I’ll be there like a shot. It’s a much more humanist place to be and I am ready for that kind of life.
You’ll likely see even more bikes in Copenhagen haha! :D
Moving to Denmark is not easy though, especially if you’re not in the EU. But it is possible.
I have seen some footage and the numbers on bike use in Copenhagen. You’re kicking it out of the park.
I applied to Københavns Universitet, but didn’t get the interview. So far my best luck has been Germany and Finland for faculty appointments. I’ll get over there soon.
I wonder what tax could be limited to just bikers? Like all bike sales in the city? A tag system? Bike tolls? Personally property taxes of places connected by the lanes make the most sense to me. If its from a public transport stop maybe include that in that transport cost structure?
I don’t think any specific tax is needed. Road maintenance is just an expense that should be paid through regular taxes.
Regular as in income,salesS/VAT, property?
Yea basically
Great writeup!
Only butting in to say that fiets is the singular, fietsen is the plural, so it’s bakfiets not bakfiet.
The base absurdity of the statement aside, cars do much more damage to the roads than cyclists ever could
Gas taxes etc. Still dumb
Bike lanes are car infrastructure.
You don’t need bike lines, just have everyone drive at 30 kph max. Bike lanes just let cars go faster.
See also sidewalks and 15 kph.
As someone living in Copenhagen, a city built for biking around, I find this take kind of weird. Bike lanes just make sense to separate car and bike traffic. Nobody wants that traffic mixed, not drivers or cyclists.
There are smaller streets in Copenhagen where there are no bike lanes, but that’s because the traffic volume in those streets is so small that a car and a bike are unlikely to even use the road at the same time.
I think that’s the point. If everyone was in the same road, car drivers would get frustrated to be going so slow. Therefore, it’s in the drivers’ best interest to have a separate bike lane so cars can go faster.
That doesn’t really make much sense when you look at Copenhagen. It is frequently faster to get somewhere by bike than it is to go by car because bikes don’t block each other in traffic as much as cars do. If cars were on the same road as bikes, it would be bikes that would be going slower, not cars.
I am not going to agree or disagree, I was just trying to explain what the person you were replying to meant :)
Why not both? Protected bike lanes as much as possible, but have a city wide 30 kmph limit which will make driving itself less dangerous and people can cycle relatively safely on streets while the bike lane infrastructure is being built out.
Sure, both is nice. We already have the bike lane infrastructure in Denmark but I can definitely see why you’d want slower speeds if you have no bike lanes. I do think some road in cities in Denmark are being reduced to 40 km/h.
In Japan, most non arterial roads don’t even have footpaths, and are all shared with pedestrians, bikes, and motor traffic.
Granted, Japan’s arterial roads themselves are really hostile to pedestrians and need a lot of rework.
Lessons from the Streets of Tokyo - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/10/1/lessons-from-the-streets-of-tokyo
Urban kchoze: Are sidewalks even necessary? - http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/03/are-sidewalks-even-necessary.html?m=1
In some cases yes, however in others where there’s speedbumps in the road and not in the bike lane, with the bike lane protected to stop cars avoiding the bumps in them, the bikes (35kph) move faster than the cars (25kph)
It’s not every bike lane but a significant number
I feel like the person making that kind of argument is speaking from emotion, so any facts and statistics aren’t going to be persuasive.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Like, giving up on the assumption that people are rational and driven by facts. Nope. It’s all emotions and in-groups for a lot of people most of the time.
So you’d have to come at it a different way to change their mind. Figure out what they’re really mad about.
Unfortunately, it might be something like “seeing people on bikes makes me feel bad that I’m out of shape. I also know I’m needlessly contributing to climate change when I drive short distances. That makes me feel bad. Feeling bad is unacceptable, so I will find excuses, any excuses, to justify myself”
I don’t have a shoulder on the road, sidewalks, anything. Literally can’t ride a bike here, a really high chance you’ll die. I can’t imagine arguments about protected lanes when unprotected lanes are still a distant dream.
Cyclists subsidize motorists. They drive on our backs.
