A very important topic, but this article is almost nothing!
Regardless, this is hugely important. My wife and I have two little kids (under 5) and we really, really want them to be independent young people when they're a little older. I want them to be able to hop on their bikes and ride to the shop, school, the train/metro/bus, etc. and most of all, I want them to survive. Drivers are the leading cause of dead kids, and deaths among vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) have risen dramatically in the US in the last couple years.
There are approximately 0 places in the US meeting this bar. https://culdesac.com/ near Phoenix is interesting but 1) very small and 2) in Phoenix, which will struggle with summer survivability by the time my kids are middle ages.
I grew up in suburban Sacramento and it was basically a prison. I _did_ ride my bike when I was 14 and older, dozens of miles in some cases, but in retrospect it's shocking I lived. I was nearly killed in multiple instances.
I chatted briefly with Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes fame (maybe the best urbanist channel on youtube) and he was very reassuring about moving to Amsterdam with kids older than my own. I just got naturalised as an EU citizen and Utrecht in particular is on the short list. But I hope US cities can improve.
As someone that moved to Utrecht five years ago (and also from California)....you could not have picked a better place. Infrastructure is amazing and quality of life is superb. Of course not everything is perfect and cost of living has sky rocketed but I assume you work in tech and everything will be fine. There's quite a lot of high quality cities but Utrecht is really nice (although the Netherlands is a bit boring but that's subjective of course).
My brother recently moved to Tilburg and I've visited a couple times and had a great time there. It's a quick train ride to Rotterdam, where there is lots to do. Then there are some nice trails and towns nearby to cycle to, including in Belgium. And given the proximity to Belgium there are lots of great breweries nearby and so the beer quality in many bars is really excellent. Sure it's maybe not as alive as NYC or London but you will find life if you look and the standard of living, when considering basics like housing, transit and food quality, is unmatched to any I've experienced.
What would you recommend someone do who also wants to make the same type of move?
Currently, I’m working for a data privacy startup and have hopes that they’ll have a physical presence in the EU in the next few years and would sponsor my move.
If you look at Bruges, there's literally a cycling junction underneath a busy turnaround or cycling bridges going over busy highway roads ( those are there when your enter/exit the city)
Throughout the city, most roads are one-way, while bycicles can go two-ways. So bicycling is literally the most efficient way to cross the city.
Eg. To my work, it's a 5 minute trip with the bicycle because there is a bicycle route to it. With the car, the road takes 10 minutes ( normally 20 because of traffic). So it's x 4 as efficient for me
Both of my kids grew up in Madison WI. Now they're both in college, car free, and doing fine. This isn't Amsterdam, but the bike infra and urban layout is good enough. You have to choose where to live. There are neighborhoods that are convenient for nearby shopping, and others that are more sprawled.
I don't think it has to be perfect for kids to learn good habits. More important is the parents modeling those habits themselves, and choosing activities that reinforce good habits.
Did you look at Portland, OR? I moved here from San Francisco, where I was terrified of cycling.
Here there are lots of bike trails, complete streets reserved for bicycles (“neighborhood greenways”), and even a bicycle/pedestrian only bridge for getting downtown. I can do a lot of my errands almost 100% on bike infrastructure without feeling at all unsafe.
I have even started going on bike rides for pleasure, which was never a thing I would have considered in San Francisco
I just found out about the trail that goes down the Eastside of the river and goes south, wrapping all the way to Gresham. It looks like it's all bike only. I haven't hopped on it yet but I'm gonna rent a bike maybe tomorrow or Monday and check it out.
Portland is definitely one of the more bike safe cities I've been in and it's awesome. It even inspired me to get into longboarding!
I enjoy NJB and other similar Youtube channels (Adam Something and Oh the Urbanity! are great, highly recommended), and his opinions on transit and urbanism are really interesting and reasonable. But this "move to Netherlands" trope is slightly tiring. Its clear that NJB is enamored and I'm happy he's in love with the place -- and the city seems great! -- but "move to Netherlands" is hardly practical for most people, right? I don't even mean literal "most people in the world", but even the select audience of such channels probably can't (and doesn't want to) just move like that.
Some of the angstier videos are a bit hard to watch and come out like "look how great this and how awful anything outside Europe is". I recently relocated from Brazil to Canada, and some of that angst is almost comical to me (first world problems!). With that said, again, he is spot on about car-centric vs human-centric cities and all that. I lived in Europe for a while and most of the cities felt "more human" than up here.
True, but a lot of people _can_ move, but are afraid.
In Ireland half the people I know have lived in Canada, Aus, US, etc, at least for a while, and it's no big deal, but a lot of US-ians think moving abroad is basically moving to Mars.
Current Carmel resident and can confirm that it’s a pretty good option. There is a well maintained rail trail (the Monon) that bisects the city and lots of other paths that connect to it. You can get to most of the places in the city you’d want to go on the existing trails. And you can even get all the way to downtown Indianapolis on the trail.
I live in Davis. Biking is great here, but it’s not perfect.
The network of bike trails has been poorly maintained. The asphalt is badly cracked, which makes for a very bumpy and uncomfortable ride.
There are plenty of bike lanes on most streets, but almost no protected paths. Biking amongst cars is always stressful.
Most residents in town don’t actually bike that much. UC Davis students are forced to bike because most live off campus and obviously there’s little car parking available there. But I don’t see a remarkable amount of biking around town. I wouldn’t be surprised if more people in SF bike for day-to-day activities per-capita, such as shuffling kids around and picking up groceries.
All of this said, it’s still a nice place and biking here is nice. But it could be better.
sacramento is a incredibly bikable city. i don’t understand when people say america isn’t good for bikes. european bike cities usually have 2 characteristics. bike paths and high density. the paths we obviously have less of here. but not none. and it’s less important here because our cities usually have more than 1 main way to get somewhere and you just ride on the small street, not the 6 lane wide one
and the density thing is different. utrecht is a good example, if you bike more than 2-3 miles you’re in the country side. farmland. sacramento you can keep going. sacramento has good bus routes and ones that you can put your bike on. the bay area is a great mix of density and other transit supplanting it like awesome bus and train system to get you farther
i think you should do a little more research of this first hand and not just look at death numbers. they don’t tell the whole story. phoenix area is a massive pre planned grid with 45mph expw all over. people live far apart. you might have destinations 30 miles away. and it’s hot. i wouldn’t call it bike friendly at all even if it has paths
> Phoenix is interesting but 1) very small and 2) in Phoenix, which will struggle with summer survivability by the time my kids are middle ages.
I'm generally in favor of long term planning but in this case isn't #2 kind of going overboard? Their middle ages are ~35 years in the future. A better childhood will probably be worth them having to move 30+ years later. Heck, there is already only about a 50% chance [1] that an adult is living in the area where they grew up and that's just due to the normal ebb and flow of the economy.
[1] the surveys on this vary a lot. 50% looked like a reasonable average of several that showed up when I Googled.
I will say, not all bike lanes are created equal. In the Netherlands, a lot of bike lanes are built as proper infrastructure. They're separated with a curb, nicely paved, free of debris, heck they often have their own traffic lights. In many US cities, they just slap some paint on the ground and call it good.
Having ridden on both types, the Dutch style bike lane feels much safer.
Paint is not infrastructure. I regularly cycle to work clocking up about 200km a week. Entitlement, aggression and abuse by motorists has a major impact on the numbers of people cycling. Segregated cycle routes are essential.
I first became a US urban biker in 2003 before urban bike infrastructure really existed in the US, and I always felt and still feel safest riding on streets that have lots of traffic and no bike lane. Most US bike lanes are just paint between the parking spaces on the curb and the travel lanes. As such you can never predict if cars will enter the bike lane. I personally feel less safe in these unprotected bike lanes than I do riding in the normal travel lane because I find it less predictable. In the US if a car can physically get into a space, a driver will eventually go there.
This segregated kind of infrastructure is what it would take for me to consider riding a bike. The typical US painted bike lane is just way too dangerous.
The Dutch-style infrastructure is safer. It's important to mention that earlier bike lanes in the Netherlands weren't initially implemented in their current form; they, too, started out as painted lanes. It's when the roads they were on required resurfacing that they were then properly separated from automotive lanes.
Worse still is having to merge in/out of traffic to avoid parked vehicles. In the state of Oregon, you are legally entitled to the same rights as any other vehicle on the road, but that also means you are legally obligated to move over when possible so faster vehicles can pass. In practice, this means swerving into the lane of car traffic to get around cars parked on the curb, and then moving back into the "bike lane", repeatedly. It's frightening, even if drivers here tend to be very considerate to pedestrians.
Although it is a first step, most bike lanes in Brazil are put where they won't take space from cars and tend to be just some paint (not very good paint at that) on a few disconnected paths or in places of leisure because, you know, bikes aren't serious transportation.
Yeah, I'll take a proper (i.e. well-maintained surface, free of debris, etc.) separated bike road if there is one. If it's badly maintained, or just painted some part of the road that could be spared, I prefer riding in a proper "car" Lane.
Same in my area. Sometimes the lane is cut every 400m and changes sides. But even then, a bad bike lane is often safer than no marking at all, which signals car owns the road.
I bike in Chicago year round, and have done so for the past decade. What Chicago has done well:
* Curb and bollard protected bike lanes (Elston and Dearborn are examples)
* Large areas painted green at the front of intersections, giving bikes a dedicated place to stop at the head of traffic.
* Connecting trails and bike lanes to form a network of paths
* Dedicated bike ways like the 606 and the Chicago river flyover
* Adding more lane capacity on the Lake Shore Trail
* The parks district does a great job keeping essential commuting routes on trails clear of snow and maintained
* Continuing to invest in the rollout of Divvy and add more e-bikes to the fleet
That being said, there are still too many sharrows and painted lanes with no buffer zone (getting doored sucks). There are still too many heavy commuting routes like Clark St where the bike lanes disappear in many sections (near the zoo is still awful). Bikes are still very much de-prioritized for cars, especially when there's construction. We've had significant snow the past few weeks and many bike lanes will just be wastelands of ice and slush until the weather gets warm enough for it to melt.
But we have multiple cargo bike and e-bike dealers in the city, and the more families and non-competitive cyclists we get on the road the better things will get. It really helps normalize cycling as a form of essential transportation, instead of being viewed as recreation and sport.
I don’t bike, but I’d love to see some enforcement for the ubers and delivery vehicles that block bike lanes (and alleys and so on). But it’s Chicago so I’m not holding my breath.
Creepy municipal surveillance cameras are everywhere in my city, ostensibly for our security. If they were used for the enforcement you describe, my opinion of them would change completely.
Of course as soon as I move away they convert Milwaukee ave to a protected bike lane. I'm not crazy about the midwest overall, but I thought Chicago was one of (if not the most) bikeable city in the country. The combination of bike lanes, lakefront path, and grid layout make it very easy to get around on a bike. Damn now I miss that city :(
I spent my childhood and young adulthood living in rural/suburban zones in Appalachia where cars were a requirement for living. No car means no groceries, no socialization, and not even any recreation, because even to safely walk or bike I had to drive somewhere to do it. I actually find driving to be somewhat fun and meditative, but I hate being forced to drive. I want to walk to places, and I want to bike to places. I sold my car and moved to a bike-friendly city, and I'm determined to never again live anywhere that requires me to own a car to survive. Of course, rents are higher here--I pay $910 a month--but given that the average TCO of a car in the US is $950 a month, I'm actually saving money by living somewhere that I can get away with not owning a car (to be fair I should try to estimate the TCO of my bike, which might generously be $200 per year). I'm thrilled that my city keeps investing in more and more bike infrastructure, and it makes me proud to live here. I'm not even opposed to the possibility of owning a car again someday, but now I have a choice rather than an obligation.
> but given that the average TCO of a car in the US is $950 a month
FWIW, the average TCO of a car reflects what the average person can afford, not the minimum. I’m also pretty skeptical of that figure because my brand new Tesla payment + insurance + electricity costs about that much. So (1) I don’t think the average car is as expensive as a brand new Tesla and (2) even for my Tesla, the monthly TCO will be far, far lower because the payments for the car would need to be amortized over its lifetime.
I’m sure you’re probably saving money by cycling, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near $950/month unless I’m mathing wrong.
Note also that rideshare, car rental, delivery services, etc also cut into your savings. Further, if the car is shared between several people (e.g., a family) switching to cycling + supplementary services might not make sense.
> So (1) I don’t think the average car is as expensive as a brand new Tesla and (2) even for my Tesla, the monthly TCO will be far, far lower because the payments for the car would need to be amortized over its lifetime.
These are somewhat contradictory: someone spending less upfront on an internal combustion engine will be paying considerably more for maintenance and fuel. It's also a bit of a challenge to talk about this since it's a distribution — the _average_ new car bought in the United States was $47,000 which is more than the Tesla Model 3's base price of $40k:
The other big thing to remember is that taxes, insurance, parking, and tolls add up quickly. If you bought a Model 3 at $40k you're probably not getting the cheapest tier of insurance.
Now, if we look at used cars it's cheaper but that's still $28k and since a used car is going to need more maintenance you're definitely looking at a substantial amount of money:
In all cases, a lot of this is going to come down to where you live. In a city or area with high car theft rates, insurance is going to be steep even if you're a low-mileage driver and the cost of parking can easily hundreds of dollars a month. If you live and work in less dense suburb or rural area, you probably don't have to worry about paying much for parking but you're also almost certainly racking up the mileage.
Indeed, back when I was required to own a car I paid as little as I could get away with; I bought used, I got the cheapest insurance, I deferred maintenance as long as possible (though that may arguably be more expensive in the long run), I minimized start/stop driving to save gas, I ignored parking meters and hoped for the best (a single $400 tow ultimately made that a losing strategy)... and as a result I my annual TCO was on the lower end. But rent wasn't that much lower (roughly half), and I'm still paying less in combined rent and transport costs overall. And the psychological cost of driving a beater is nonzero, too. Stereo broken? Guess I'll just drive in silence now. Some jagoff sideswipes me while I'm parked? Guess that door panel is just ruined now. The seat breaks so that it's permanently reclined? Guess I'll wedge a pillow behind my back and deal with it.
> Note also that rideshare, car rental, delivery services, etc also cut into your savings.
I actually get away without almost any of these. I only get rideshare to go to the airport, but that's only if my flight's outside of public transit hours. And public transit is only necessary if I can't walk or don't feel like riding my bike somewhere, which is rare. I don't need anything delivered, I've got a low-cost grocer a five-minute walk away, and a full supermarket a ten-minute walk away, and any speciality shops I may need are well within biking distance. YMMV, of course.
I want to say that that $950/month figure is largely a function of the initial cost of the car and the lifetime of the car.
My current car is a 2009 Honda Insight that I got in September of 2009 (149 months ago). Its original price was about $19,000. Since then, my total expenses for it have been $13,022.22 for it - including gas.
This gives $215/month. In the before times, my average milage per day was 39/day and I currently have 144,998 miles on it.
Car insurance is a bit hard to pin down since its part of my general insurance. Let's call it $150/month though its probably lower... that only brings us to $365.
There are people who get much more expensive vehicles, and there are those who treat them poorly or feel the need to get a new one more frequently than I do or have other considerations that makes that car insurance much higher.
I would still claim that the $950/month is a bit high.
The numbers that differ most for me on that are the car insurance and finance payments. I purchased my car without financing - it was completely paid off on day 1 - that means that the interest costs of financing aren't factored in. My car insurance is less. The gas price that it uses of $145/month is closer to $80/month... and I haven't had any parking fees (which appears to be largely city dependent).
Indeed, feel free to scrutinize my numbers, I just did a quick search for the statistic (and looking at your link it's entirely possible that it was showing me a number in Canadian dollars, oops!). Even still, I've broken even from moving to the city and selling my car; a lot of the "cities are too expensive" arguments overlook the possibility that if you can get away with not owning a car (which, maybe you can't, I don't know your situation) then that can easily offset the sticker shock of urban rents. Plus, for me there psychological benefits; I used to drive for an hour every workday while commuting, and the drudgery was killing me with a daily infusion of dread; these days I would voluntarily take time out of my schedule just to bike for an hour.
Anecdotally, as an Austin, TX, resident and cyclist — this city is so far away from adequate cycling infrastructure that it’s inclusion in this piece taints the rest of it for me.
Clearly this piece is light on meaningful details. One example is how the increase includes areas that are completely unsafe to ride — for example adding lanes that are essentially storm drain run offs which are generally unfinished - so you have to bike in the road.
Our local news has a great example of a lane with an electricity pole right in the middle of it… :facepalm:
I live in Austin and largely stopped cycling after a motorist tried to run me off the road on trinity south of MLK. I was going straight and had taken the lane a little early to pass a bus that was stopped in the bike lane and to avoid that dangerous spot closer to the intersection where the bike lane crosses _through_ the right turn lane, with plenty of room behind me and open lanes to the left.
This guy was not having it. Got maybe 2 inches from my rear wheel, then jerked around to the left, sped up, and then swerved right into my lane when he was even with me.
This is all maybe 100 ft from the intersection, where there was a red light. I passed him less than ten seconds after all this, since he was sitting in the more congested right turn lane and I was going straight.
I live in Austin. The bike infrastructure varies a lot depending on what part of town you’re in. No doubt that’s true for most places — including around the University of Texas. I’ve ridden many trips up and down Dean Keeton Street without any trouble from motorists.
The electrical pole story is ridiculous — someone didn’t know what they were doing. But readers should not assume the entirety of Austin’s bike lanes are like that.
That’s fair feedback! I found my OP started to meander with my calling out the bits of Austin that aren’t bad; but clearly in culling those my piece made it sound like a terrible-to-cycle-in-city. It’s not… Except in the summer obvi, when anything outside sucks ^_^
I guess my main schtick with the Axios piece is that it lacks any form of nuance; starting percentage increases as uniformly good.
Taking cars out of some urban areas is such an upgrade. Once in a while I revisit a street in a city I didn't visit for long, where the road has been appropriated for pedestrians and sitting area. Just like that, the street transforms – from a passage through which to go – to become the go-to attraction.
My little town did this, and it’s wonderful. Downtown is now constantly packed with people. All I can say is, I hope this is the beginning of a long term turn towards human-scale cities in the US.
When I tell people in my city they could instantly double their property values by greatly restricting car traffic and parking on their street, they look at me like I'm crazy.
What is very prevalent in America and I believe less so in more bike-friendly countries is that places are designed to keep others out.
This has longstanding racial undertones (google why bridges are too low for buses to pass under in Queen, NY) but the same desire to keep the 'other' out has a grounding in class as well.
Where I live, you can't visit unless you have a car _and_ a place to park it, so visitor traffic is minimized, by circumstance that has become design.
There was an almost comedic example of that around here a couple of years back: people were publicly claiming that expanding a bike path to their suburb would cause increased crime, by which they meant the possibility of black people riding the trail out from Baltimore. Meanwhile, the actual robbers drive because you can't fit enough on a bike to be worth the risk but oddly there's no call to stop building roads.
My city wants to support bikes but it is poorly executed. Ideally you have a street for cars and trucks, then outside the lanes you have parking for vehicles separating the traffic from the cyclists, and beyond that a sidewalk for pedestrians and wheelchairs.
What we have is a shoulder that is now painted and has plastic guards that separate the cars from bikes. What that results in is you now have a painted bike path inaccessible to the street sweep that accumulates glass and debris and is very slick during rain which is often. There is no signage except for the main path either. Everything remains a grassroots effort with citizens making signage and apps for maps.
It's as if the designers just went with the very first idea they had, without any reflection on its pros and cons. How does this kind of thing happen? How did they not do even the smallest bit of research into all the possible options and successful examples that are out there? It's so frustrating how short-sighted and incompetent these efforts tend to be.
I share your frustration but it's unfair to look at it this way. If you attend some city planning meetings you'll see how entrenched and irrational the opposition is to any cycling infrastructure that could be perceived as affecting car traffic or parking. It's like pulling teeth, and I agree it's a tricky compromise, but we should consider any ground gained a success.
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Regardless, this is hugely important. My wife and I have two little kids (under 5) and we really, really want them to be independent young people when they're a little older. I want them to be able to hop on their bikes and ride to the shop, school, the train/metro/bus, etc. and most of all, I want them to survive. Drivers are the leading cause of dead kids, and deaths among vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) have risen dramatically in the US in the last couple years.
There are approximately 0 places in the US meeting this bar. https://culdesac.com/ near Phoenix is interesting but 1) very small and 2) in Phoenix, which will struggle with summer survivability by the time my kids are middle ages.
American Fietser - https://twitter.com/AmericanFietser - has been beating the drum for Carmel, Indiana, which apparently has made great strides in their downtown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94-kxjgOtdU&feature=youtu.be
I grew up in suburban Sacramento and it was basically a prison. I _did_ ride my bike when I was 14 and older, dozens of miles in some cases, but in retrospect it's shocking I lived. I was nearly killed in multiple instances.
I chatted briefly with Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes fame (maybe the best urbanist channel on youtube) and he was very reassuring about moving to Amsterdam with kids older than my own. I just got naturalised as an EU citizen and Utrecht in particular is on the short list. But I hope US cities can improve.
Currently, I’m working for a data privacy startup and have hopes that they’ll have a physical presence in the EU in the next few years and would sponsor my move.
If you look at Bruges, there's literally a cycling junction underneath a busy turnaround or cycling bridges going over busy highway roads ( those are there when your enter/exit the city)
Throughout the city, most roads are one-way, while bycicles can go two-ways. So bicycling is literally the most efficient way to cross the city.
Eg. To my work, it's a 5 minute trip with the bicycle because there is a bicycle route to it. With the car, the road takes 10 minutes ( normally 20 because of traffic). So it's x 4 as efficient for me
Reproducible: https://www.google.be/maps/dir/Marie+Popelinplantsoen,+8000+...
I don't think it has to be perfect for kids to learn good habits. More important is the parents modeling those habits themselves, and choosing activities that reinforce good habits.
Here there are lots of bike trails, complete streets reserved for bicycles (“neighborhood greenways”), and even a bicycle/pedestrian only bridge for getting downtown. I can do a lot of my errands almost 100% on bike infrastructure without feeling at all unsafe.
I have even started going on bike rides for pleasure, which was never a thing I would have considered in San Francisco
Portland is definitely one of the more bike safe cities I've been in and it's awesome. It even inspired me to get into longboarding!
Some of the angstier videos are a bit hard to watch and come out like "look how great this and how awful anything outside Europe is". I recently relocated from Brazil to Canada, and some of that angst is almost comical to me (first world problems!). With that said, again, he is spot on about car-centric vs human-centric cities and all that. I lived in Europe for a while and most of the cities felt "more human" than up here.
In Ireland half the people I know have lived in Canada, Aus, US, etc, at least for a while, and it's no big deal, but a lot of US-ians think moving abroad is basically moving to Mars.
The network of bike trails has been poorly maintained. The asphalt is badly cracked, which makes for a very bumpy and uncomfortable ride.
There are plenty of bike lanes on most streets, but almost no protected paths. Biking amongst cars is always stressful.
Most residents in town don’t actually bike that much. UC Davis students are forced to bike because most live off campus and obviously there’s little car parking available there. But I don’t see a remarkable amount of biking around town. I wouldn’t be surprised if more people in SF bike for day-to-day activities per-capita, such as shuffling kids around and picking up groceries.
All of this said, it’s still a nice place and biking here is nice. But it could be better.
and the density thing is different. utrecht is a good example, if you bike more than 2-3 miles you’re in the country side. farmland. sacramento you can keep going. sacramento has good bus routes and ones that you can put your bike on. the bay area is a great mix of density and other transit supplanting it like awesome bus and train system to get you farther
i think you should do a little more research of this first hand and not just look at death numbers. they don’t tell the whole story. phoenix area is a massive pre planned grid with 45mph expw all over. people live far apart. you might have destinations 30 miles away. and it’s hot. i wouldn’t call it bike friendly at all even if it has paths
Downtown Sac is pretty good but I lived in the Pocket and Citrus Heights, both mediocre at best.
I'm generally in favor of long term planning but in this case isn't #2 kind of going overboard? Their middle ages are ~35 years in the future. A better childhood will probably be worth them having to move 30+ years later. Heck, there is already only about a 50% chance [1] that an adult is living in the area where they grew up and that's just due to the normal ebb and flow of the economy.
[1] the surveys on this vary a lot. 50% looked like a reasonable average of several that showed up when I Googled.
Portland's temps last summer have me spooked and I'd be even more worried about Phoenix.
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Having ridden on both types, the Dutch style bike lane feels much safer.
it almost feels more dangerous to merge into and out of motor traffic at every other intersection
Hoping to see more safe variants.
But we have multiple cargo bike and e-bike dealers in the city, and the more families and non-competitive cyclists we get on the road the better things will get. It really helps normalize cycling as a form of essential transportation, instead of being viewed as recreation and sport.
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FWIW, the average TCO of a car reflects what the average person can afford, not the minimum. I’m also pretty skeptical of that figure because my brand new Tesla payment + insurance + electricity costs about that much. So (1) I don’t think the average car is as expensive as a brand new Tesla and (2) even for my Tesla, the monthly TCO will be far, far lower because the payments for the car would need to be amortized over its lifetime.
I’m sure you’re probably saving money by cycling, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near $950/month unless I’m mathing wrong.
Note also that rideshare, car rental, delivery services, etc also cut into your savings. Further, if the car is shared between several people (e.g., a family) switching to cycling + supplementary services might not make sense.
These are somewhat contradictory: someone spending less upfront on an internal combustion engine will be paying considerably more for maintenance and fuel. It's also a bit of a challenge to talk about this since it's a distribution — the _average_ new car bought in the United States was $47,000 which is more than the Tesla Model 3's base price of $40k:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38748092/new-car-average-...
The other big thing to remember is that taxes, insurance, parking, and tolls add up quickly. If you bought a Model 3 at $40k you're probably not getting the cheapest tier of insurance.
Now, if we look at used cars it's cheaper but that's still $28k and since a used car is going to need more maintenance you're definitely looking at a substantial amount of money:
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-used-car-price-now-over...
In all cases, a lot of this is going to come down to where you live. In a city or area with high car theft rates, insurance is going to be steep even if you're a low-mileage driver and the cost of parking can easily hundreds of dollars a month. If you live and work in less dense suburb or rural area, you probably don't have to worry about paying much for parking but you're also almost certainly racking up the mileage.
I don’t know how you’re mathing but the AAA yearly TCO study mostly agrees with @kibwen.
https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-YDC...
> Note also that rideshare, car rental, delivery services, etc also cut into your savings.
I actually get away without almost any of these. I only get rideshare to go to the airport, but that's only if my flight's outside of public transit hours. And public transit is only necessary if I can't walk or don't feel like riding my bike somewhere, which is rare. I don't need anything delivered, I've got a low-cost grocer a five-minute walk away, and a full supermarket a ten-minute walk away, and any speciality shops I may need are well within biking distance. YMMV, of course.
Dead Comment
My current car is a 2009 Honda Insight that I got in September of 2009 (149 months ago). Its original price was about $19,000. Since then, my total expenses for it have been $13,022.22 for it - including gas.
This gives $215/month. In the before times, my average milage per day was 39/day and I currently have 144,998 miles on it.
Car insurance is a bit hard to pin down since its part of my general insurance. Let's call it $150/month though its probably lower... that only brings us to $365.
There are people who get much more expensive vehicles, and there are those who treat them poorly or feel the need to get a new one more frequently than I do or have other considerations that makes that car insurance much higher.
I would still claim that the $950/month is a bit high.
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Your number appears to be based on a similar calculation of https://www.ratehub.ca/blog/what-is-the-total-cost-of-owning...
The numbers that differ most for me on that are the car insurance and finance payments. I purchased my car without financing - it was completely paid off on day 1 - that means that the interest costs of financing aren't factored in. My car insurance is less. The gas price that it uses of $145/month is closer to $80/month... and I haven't had any parking fees (which appears to be largely city dependent).
Clearly this piece is light on meaningful details. One example is how the increase includes areas that are completely unsafe to ride — for example adding lanes that are essentially storm drain run offs which are generally unfinished - so you have to bike in the road.
Our local news has a great example of a lane with an electricity pole right in the middle of it… :facepalm:
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/austin-cyclists-flag-...
This guy was not having it. Got maybe 2 inches from my rear wheel, then jerked around to the left, sped up, and then swerved right into my lane when he was even with me.
This is all maybe 100 ft from the intersection, where there was a red light. I passed him less than ten seconds after all this, since he was sitting in the more congested right turn lane and I was going straight.
The electrical pole story is ridiculous — someone didn’t know what they were doing. But readers should not assume the entirety of Austin’s bike lanes are like that.
I guess my main schtick with the Axios piece is that it lacks any form of nuance; starting percentage increases as uniformly good.
This has longstanding racial undertones (google why bridges are too low for buses to pass under in Queen, NY) but the same desire to keep the 'other' out has a grounding in class as well.
Where I live, you can't visit unless you have a car _and_ a place to park it, so visitor traffic is minimized, by circumstance that has become design.
Like looking around my house, there's not much other stuff that you could fence for $1,000 laying around.
Which is not to say I think that the concern there was valid.
What we have is a shoulder that is now painted and has plastic guards that separate the cars from bikes. What that results in is you now have a painted bike path inaccessible to the street sweep that accumulates glass and debris and is very slick during rain which is often. There is no signage except for the main path either. Everything remains a grassroots effort with citizens making signage and apps for maps.