Electric vehicles

Tim Faber
Tim Faber
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anniet wrote: lovely to see

anniet wrote:

lovely to see you again

It's not.

*contemplate the horizons where the sighted people went* ...ask them...  they'll tell you.

But thank you for being polite

Why not try being polite back?

 

Chris S_2 wrote:

It seems there isn't a law to wear cycle safety helmets, and there damn well should be.

 

Where it's law here, cyclist numbers crashed over 50% in some places. If that's what you want, go for it.

anniet
anniet
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I'm sorry if it came across

I'm sorry if it came across as rude, Tim :( It wasn't my intention. My apologies too to Chris and Sir Rodney.

 

I've not been able to comb my hair for five weeks - just wash it in its big snarl form - and I've had an insight into what it must be like to be viewed with the same repugnance that lepers once suffered from, that's all. I am so sorry.

 

 

Please wait here. Further instructions could pile up at any time. Thank you.

Jonathan
Jonathan
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Creating additional

Creating additional road-space always is the better solution, but if there simply is no budget or room, one must come to alternatives.

For such occasions in Holland we adjusted roads like this:

cycling lanes shared

The road still is for all vehicles but the red parts primarily for cyclists, just there to remind other traffic that the cyclist deserves some space, but also to encourage cyclists to drive behind one another instead of next to one another.

mikey
mikey
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Jonathan_76 wrote:Creating

Jonathan_76 wrote:

Creating additional road-space always is the better solution, but if there simply is no budget or room, one must come to alternatives.

For such occasions in Holland we adjusted roads like this:

cycling lanes shared

The road still is for all vehicles but the red parts primarily for cyclists, just there to remind other traffic that the cyclist deserves some space, but also to encourage cyclists to drive behind one another instead of next to one another.

So they took a 2 lane road for cars and made into a single lane road with 2 bike lanes? That must not be like most US roads, around cities and towns, that can see nearly constant 2 way traffic over 16 hours per day. Holidays and events etc can move that up to nearly 24 hours per day.

Tim Faber
Tim Faber
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Cycling is a sport or how

Cycling is a sport or how kids get about. That's how it was where I grew up. Yeah there were Africans trying to sell ice cream from cooler boxes, but that doesn't count. Bust a gut laughing when I emigrated. If you can't afford travel by car, stay at home, or get on public transport.

While waiting for the fad to pass, the Dutch Reach Project makes sense. (Link - http://www.dutchreach.org/) Last time I "doored" a cyclist, my car was in the shop for three days.

 

Jonathan
Jonathan
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High traffic roads have

High traffic roads have separate cycling lanes with a barrier between the cyclists and the other part of the road. There must be some roads in any country that do not have constant heavy traffic!

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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There was an extremely

There is an extremely genuine attempt to allow people to bypass much inner city gridlock using publicly funded bicycles in Melbourne. Note that the Royal Automobile Club Of Victoria operates the scheme on behalf of the primary funding bodies. This montage I made up from various media shows one unintended/unexpected side effect of the scheme :

bikes.jpg

What's interesting isn't so much that you will find people that do this sort of thing ( it used to be shopping trolleys until RFID triggered clamps were installed on them ) but the silly discussions that made stupid generalisations about it. Bloody cyclists etc ..... even if there is probably only a small number of idiots involved. That's the problem with dealing in classifications : they fail because groups of people are definitely not monolithic to some arbitrary label* & never have been. So one challenge is to lift discussions above banner chasing and victim-cloth weaving. We can exercise our sapiens qualities** and examine actual realities if we choose to.

The original idea itself was pretty clever : you come in to the CBD on a train/tram, perhaps via car to some parking stack, select a bike from one of many available stands ( fee + deposit involved, tap/swipe a credit/debit card etc ) then scoot around using dedicated bike lanes, when you're done you return it to one of many like stands ( deposit returned to card account plus adjustment/accounting for time usage ). At night a crew redistributes/services/replaces the bikes as needed. You will note the front basket for a bit of shopping etc.

A practical problem solving approach of greater merit is to consider the different ways that a given person might move about the city and design a system to reasonably cater for that. This has already been done, at least in Melbourne by town planners etc. Hardly anyone listens to them though, and instead many prefer to mount the nearest Twitter podium*** to get more up-votes for some personal 'cause' disguised as representation of community interest ..... egocentric fads rule alas.

Cheers, Mike.

* For example I can drive from home to the nearest town with a railway station. I park my car and get a train ride to the Melbourne CBD. I then take a tram to say, Melbourne University, and within that large area use a bicycle. I might use a cab at some time if it suits me and I walk in b/w these modes. I might even take a lift inside a building and not use the stairs. I could have used a wheelchair for all of the above bar the bicycle. So what am I ? Which variety of thrown mud ought I be the proper target of ? :-)))

Everybody repeat after me : We are all individuals ....

** In logical terms the cognitive error is simple to describe. You have some set of objects ( people ) each with various possible characteristics ( bike rider, moron ). You make a subset by selecting a value of one specific characteristic ( bike rider = yes ). You may label that subset by your criteria or selective mechanism ( Bike Riders, with the universal set of discourse being all people as implied by context ). One may do that mutatis mutandis for some other value of a different characteristic ( moron = yes ). Unless otherwise informed you cannot normally correlate that first specific value with the second specific value ( {bike rider = yes} IMPLIES {moron = yes} ) across said subsets. You can have sensible bike riders and some morons don't ride bicycles. Beware those who exhibit this logical error because it probably isn't innocent. They may be wanting to bypass your intellect to latch onto some emotion ie. co-opt you to their cause and thus subvert your normal behavioral filtering. Historically this is a well worn path to mob-driven tragedy.

*** IMHO Twitter is the garbage dump of human civilisation's intellect. Oooops. A generalisation ! :-))) 


( edit ) Sorry. I should have said that those particular errant bikes pictured above were stolen from their legitimate users ie. vandals don't routinely self-identify via recorded transactions. Also the scheme isn't intended to generate income much above the costs of doing it.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Sir Rodney Ffing
Sir Rodney Ffing
Joined: 8 Nov 15
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The Rock's equivalent is the

The Rock's equivalent is the Redibike. What Brexit will do to a key element - usage cross-border - is not clear though. Not a diamond frame to be seen amongst them anywhere either ;-)

 

My apologies too to Chris and Sir Rodney

I do not accept unwarranted apologies, AnnieT, so please do not trouble yourself. :-) I cannot speak for Mr S, nor Mr Faber, but I see no grounds on which you need have any concerns.

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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Err ... don't ride bicycles

Err ... don't ride bicycles or drive electric cars if your hair is like this :

hair_bear.jpg

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Jonathan
Jonathan
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Unless that is the back of

Unless that is the back of your head and you have a clear view (and the glasses firmly secured by some wire or something as I doubt glasses on the back of your head will stay where they are)

But since there is hair in the shape of a nose under the glasses I guess this is the front of her head, just posing like that for a picture.

 

Anyways, to give you all an idea of just how much we dutch cycle:

part of the bicycle parking near a train station.

part of the bicycle parking near a train station

 Just imagine how large the parking lot would have to be if every bicycle was a car.

A very common sight:

Cycling path in use

So that is why we have so many separated cycling roads.

 

We Dutch do however not have the busiest cycling roads, that would be Denmark (Copenhagen) with a cycling path that gets 42K cyclists per day. That is more traffic then quite a few highways have, and those highways take quite a lot more space then these cycling roads. Not to start on the pollution.

 

This month the largest bicycle parking in the world will open in Utrecht (Holland), giving place to 12.5K bicycles.

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