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Munich Planning Highway System For Cyclists
An anonymous reader writes: The German city of Munich has been looking for solutions to its traffic problem. Rush hour traffic is a parking lot, and public transit is near capacity. They think their best bet is to encourage (and enable) more people to hop on their bikes. Munich is now planning a Radschnellverbindungen — a highway system just for cyclists. Long bike routes will connect the city with universities, employment centers, and other cities. The paths themselves would be as free from disruption as possible — avoiding intersections and traffic lights are key to a swift commute. They'll doubtless take lessons from Copenhagen's bike skyway: "Cykelslangen (pronounced soo-cool-klag-en) adds just 721 feet of length to the city's 220 miles of bicycle paths, but it relieves congestion by taking riders over instead of through a waterfront shopping area."
speckgürtel!
Bike rage...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Now there will be no excuse not to require cyclists to get a license, registration, and payment of that registration yearly to pay for the roads they want. As a highly-taxed driver (gas and registration), I'm getting rather tired of cyclists requesting more and more road upgrades despite them not paying even a small share of the costs for those upgrades.
Obviously bicycles do far less damage to the roads, and the requirements are much lower. So we can forgo trying to replace the gas taxes, and just stick to registration costs.
Oh, you don't like that? Quit being a leech, TYVM.
Oh STFU you fat, lazy, donut-grubbing, ignorant jackass.
How many cyclists do you know? How many of the own a car or two also?
Good luck getting those 6-year-olds to pay for a bicycle license.
Fool.
Why would the need to be licensed? It costs far more than it brings in benefits. Or is this a way to expand the government overreach?
I bet you'd be fucking pissed if taxes went up to cover it, right?
Oh, and they pay (twice) for the roads anyway. 80% of cyclists have cars which are road taxed (but don't use when cycling), PLUS local roads are paid out of local taxes.
Now there will be no excuse not to require cyclists to get a license, registration, and payment of that registration yearly to pay for the roads they want. As a highly-taxed driver (gas and registration), I'm getting rather tired of cyclists requesting more and more road upgrades despite them not paying even a small share of the costs for those upgrades.
Obviously bicycles do far less damage to the roads, and the requirements are much lower. So we can forgo trying to replace the gas taxes, and just stick to registration costs.
Oh, you don't like that? Quit being a leech, TYVM.
Interesting points. I'd say allow electric bikes as well (within reasonable specs).
You just need to convince the austrians of such a tax, then its on the top TODO list of the CSU the next time seehofer does an 180Â turn.
Now there will be no excuse not to require cyclists to get a license, registration, and payment of that registration yearly to pay for the roads they want. As a highly-taxed driver (gas and registration), I'm getting rather tired of cyclists requesting more and more road upgrades despite them not paying even a small share of the costs for those upgrades.
Obviously bicycles do far less damage to the roads, and the requirements are much lower. So we can forgo trying to replace the gas taxes, and just stick to registration costs.
Oh, you don't like that? Quit being a leech, TYVM.
As a highly taxed driver, you should be happy at anything that means fewer cyclists on "your" roads (even though much of the road costs are paid out of general taxes), and to have more people switch to cycling, which means fewer cars on the road.
Since road wear scales with the 3rd or 4th power of axle weight, a 200 lb cyclist should pay about 1000'th of the road taxes as a driver with a 2000 lb car (or 1/5360'th as much as a 3500 pound car). So if you pay $1000/year in taxes for your 3500 lb Honda Accord, the cyclist would pay about 20 cents.
Give me your address and I'll pay you the 20 cents directly since no government could collect a 20 cent fee without losing money.
But hang on, how many cyclists out there, who are of age to drive, don't also own a car? Outside of dense inner-metro areas (NYC, London), virtually everyone owns a car.
The administrative costs of imposing and collecting bike registration (not to mention the relative difficulty of policing it, given that plenty of people own bikes but only ride on trails and other things that aren't city streets) would seem to outweigh the extra revenue it would bring in. Not to mention that you generally want to encourage bike riding as much as possible, for public health reasons, and the extra cost and inconvenience of having to register would probably drive away a lot of casual cyclists.
...even then it was pretty bike friendly. It's interesting that in the article about the Copenhagen skyway, they cite pedestrians slowing bike traffic on the ground as an impetus for building the skyway. And the photo accompanying the article shows...a couple pedestrians walking down the center of the skyway *sigh*.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Munich is growing faster than any time in recent history. Yet, for the first time in 50 years, no subway is being built. Leaving aside the reasons for this (mainly the German obsession with public debt), this is simply wrong, the two parts don't fit. Bulding more subways would help traffic more than bike highways (as much as I like them) -- and it would do so even in bad weather.
What could be done? Well, one of the main problems is that the public transport infrastructure is organized in a way where basically every connection runs via the center. So even if your destination isn't on a straight line from where you're at towards the center, you will still have to go there, change trains and then move out on another radial line. Now, with the ever increasing numbers of passengers this leads to lots of congestion on the stations in the town center (anybody who has e.g. tried changing subway lines at Sendlinger Tor during the morning or evening rush hours can confirm this).
The logical conclusion is of course to build a loop subway. Reduce dependency on the center and increase priority. This should become a priority.
(It is perhaps noting that such a loop exists in the public transportation network, but it is a patchwork of tramways and busses. So the necessity was recognized already, only the implemented solution falls short.)
I know! And what about all those leeching pedestrians? Sidewalks don't just appear! Plus pedestrians slow me down when I'm in a hurry! We should require registration to walk in the city! :-)
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Screw that. When are those lazy anarchist pedestrians going to start paying sidewalk and crosswalk tax? And when are they going to have registration plates so we can report jaywalkers? I'm getting rather tired of people thinking they're just free to move about anyway they want to. Don't even get me started on adults offering piggy-back rides. Clearly unsafe. Also, peds should have to wear belts and helmets and hi-viz.
It gets more hippies and cyclist off our streets. And good ridden!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRxAZLV6vgU
Can't tell if that was a pun, a typo, or a misspelling.
101F for the next 7 days at my location.
Keep your bikes.
Irony: Cyclists who ride down the middle of a road built for cars complaining about pedestrians walking down the middle of a path built for bikes.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
As a cyclist, I am okay with that. But then the drivers ought to pay for their actual road and environment damage and for their parking as well. Would make driving completely prohibitive, though.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It's the same reason we don't require registration for people to walk on sidewalks
love is just extroverted narcissism
Should they also pay for
1. Increased air pollution due to causing cars to driver slower and waste gas while some gay boy in colorful pants ride 20 mph below the speed limit?
With few exceptions, driving slower saves gas, so that gay boy should get a credit for gas saved.
2. Loss of productivity due to delaying drivers?
Again, with few exceptions, cyclists cause less traffic on the roads, speeding up the commute -- my commute is faster by bike than by car because I'm not stuck in traffic behind all of the other cars while cyclists zip by in the bike lane. If you find that there are so many cyclists on your commute that they are slowing you down, then you shoulid be advocating for bike lanes to reduce the cyclists on the road.
3. Extra paint and labor setting up the bike lanes for "special" people?
Given that road taxes (at least in the USA) only cover a fraction of road costs, cyclists are already paying. Most cyclists are also car owners, when I bike to work, my car sits at home, unused, and while that reduces my fuel taxes, I don't get a refund on the expensive VLF that I paid that purportedly goes to road costs.
4. Finally, pay for emotional damage caused by seeing people in spandex who should never ever be in spandex?
Your mental issues are your responsibility, but it's lycra, not spandex, and few commute cyclists around here wear specialty cyclist clothes unless they have a long bike commute.
Actually from the OP and not just a stupid editor: "Cykelslangen (pronounced soo-cool-klag-en) " (fault of Wired.com)
Cykels Langen - there is precisely zero chance that's pronounced soo-cool-klag-en.
More likely, with a usually wierd euro-pronounciation of the "y" it's soocles-langen.
I'm American, and I'm honestly not sure why Americans are SO BAD at pronouncing foreign words. Do we just see an unfamiliar collection of letters and what, just give up?
-Styopa
How is that in any way ironic?
If there is no road sign that marks a road built especially for high speed motorized vehicles (like a freeway) then the road is built for general use, not just for cars.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Since road wear scales with the 3rd or 4th power of axle weight, a 200 lb cyclist should pay about 1000'th of the road taxes as a driver with a 2000 lb car (or 1/5360'th as much as a 3500 pound car). So if you pay $1000/year in taxes for your 3500 lb Honda Accord, the cyclist would pay about 20 cents.
There are other costs to building and maintaining a road besides simple road wear. The biggest cost of a road is usually the land acquisition in order to build one. A bike lane takes up far more than 1/5360th of the land that a car lane uses. Probably closer to 1/3rd.
And there are other causes of road wear than the weight of vehicles traveling on it, such as water damage from rain puddles, freeze/thaw cycle, etc
Actually...
Here in Portland a lot of roads downtown lost square footage thanks to wide swaths of green-painted areas which are bike-only, forcing cars to concentrate themselves into fewer lanes, wearing those portions of the road out faster, etc.
Also, in many locales, bicycles do require a license anyway (mostly to assist in recovering stolen ones). Wouldn't take much to slap a tax on those bad boys, and without much overhead beyond what's already in place.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Since road wear scales with the 3rd or 4th power of axle weight, a 200 lb cyclist should pay about 1000'th of the road taxes as a driver with a 2000 lb car (or 1/5360'th as much as a 3500 pound car). So if you pay $1000/year in taxes for your 3500 lb Honda Accord, the cyclist would pay about 20 cents.
There are other costs to building and maintaining a road besides simple road wear. The biggest cost of a road is usually the land acquisition in order to build one. A bike lane takes up far more than 1/5360th of the land that a car lane uses. Probably closer to 1/3rd.
And there are other causes of road wear than the weight of vehicles traveling on it, such as water damage from rain puddles, freeze/thaw cycle, etc
You forgot to factor in the road shoulders and parking strips that are a part of most roads -- in many cases a bike lane takes 0% of the space a car needs to drive on the roadway. But since drivers rarely pay the acquisition costs of roads (especially roads that were in existence before cars came along), it seems a little unfair to suddenly charge cyclists for roads that were originally easily shared between bikes and horses.
And there are other causes of road wear than the weight of vehicles traveling on it, such as water damage from rain puddles, freeze/thaw cycle, etc
One of the dedicated bike paths I ride to work has been in existence for nearly 30 years without repaving or major maintenance (only tar sealing cracks). The busy road in front of my house has been resurfaced 2 times in the past 15 years and it's still pothole strewn, the city tries to fix them as they occur, but their 5 year plan includes grinding off the top surface and repaving. A cycling path is much cheaper to build, not only is it a lot narrower than even a single lane road, it typically uses only a few inches of fill under the surface compared to a road that requires 12 - 16" of subsurface prep and drainage before paving.
I just can't find any picture of the Cykelslangen with more than a few cyclist on it. For a route that relieves congestion in a busy area, you would expect it is full all the time, and that it looks busy on most pictures. But it doesn't. Strange.
It's Cykelslangen and not Cykels Langen. Cykel is bike and Slange is snake so it's the Bicycle Snake (due to how the road wriggles around). Other than that you are dead on, the pronunciation from Wired.com is completely wrong.
90% of road wear and tear is from trucks, even though they make up less than 1% of the traffic. Do trucks pay 9x the road tax?
Actually...
Here in Portland a lot of roads downtown lost square footage thanks to wide swaths of green-painted areas which are bike-only, forcing cars to concentrate themselves into fewer lanes, wearing those portions of the road out faster, etc.
Sounds like all the more reason to get more of those wear-inducing cars off the roads and replace them with cyclists. The other side effect of narrowing roads is that it increases safety for everyone (cars, cyclists and pedestrians) since drivers naturally go slower on narrow roads. Make a city street as wide and straight as a freeway and drivers will drive as if it's a freeway.
Also, in many locales, bicycles do require a license anyway (mostly to assist in recovering stolen ones). Wouldn't take much to slap a tax on those bad boys, and without much overhead beyond what's already in place.
I'm fine with a bike tax that goes to dedicated cycling infrastructure, but don't tax a cyclist to pay for shared roads that they are already paying through their general taxes. My locality passed a general bond measure to pay for road repairs, so I'm paying for roads through my property taxes whether I drive or not.
I live in Denver, and just moved. My previous commute was about 3.9 miles via bicycle, with about 2.5 miles of it on bike lanes. My new commute is 4.5 miles, with about 3.5 miles of it on a dedicate recreational path (Denver's Cherry Creek Trail), and the other 1 mile almost all on bike lanes.
My new commute, while having a longer distance, takes me less time. In addition, it is a lot less stressful. The recreational path makes all the difference. It is limited access - there are ramps to the trail about every .2 miles - no motorized vehicles, and goes from my neighborhood (an urban residential-heavy area) to downtown.
I have commuted via bicycle in a wide variety of cities on the East Coast and can say that this new commute is about as ideal as it could be. I dread the days I have to drive into work. Even without traffic (which doubles the time needed), it takes me longer to drive.
A lot of US cities I have lived in see separated paths for recreational use only. They never seem to see that a trail going from residential areas to business areas can be a great encouragement for bicycle commuting.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Sidewalks on a street benefit the property owners, so a property tax proportional to street frontage would be an equitable and practical way to pay for sidewalks. In fact, for the same reason it also ought to pay for the property owner's half of the street.
Of course, this assumes a distinction is made between streets, which are low-speed roads at destinations; and non-street roads, which are meant to move traffic efficiently between destinations. This is a distinction that not every country makes, and that's why those countries have so many street/road hybrids that have a high frequency of at-grade intersections like streets but also have high speed limits like non-street roads, making them neither good destinations nor efficient at moving traffic. They are the jack of all trades and master of none.
Are you aware that motorists violate the right-of-way of pedestrians more often than the reverse?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
A cyclist highway in the states would start with an on-ramp where no one yields, 6 people fall over due to shoddily constructed wal-mart bikes, some guy on a strider bowls through a lane of recumbent elderly, and 2 kids on mountain bikes wobble aimlessly and perpendicularly across the darn thing. But every morning a quarter million dollars of race-grade peloton disciplined commuters would roar toward their respective office cubicles, leaving a wake of empty gel-protein wrappers in their path.
Good people go to bed earlier.
No it's not. Try it on Google Translate https://translate.google.co/ by selecting Danish and clicking on the speaker symbol. Danish pronunciation is sometimes a bit odd but not as crazy as your example.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Guess we know where all of the Greek money went.
He was being sarcastic you know.
Slange is also a hose or tube, and "cykelslange" is the word for "innertube", so it's a pun as well.
I'm Norwegian, not Danish, but I'll take a stab at the pronunciation:
Cyglslangen (with cy as in cylinder, gl as in glue, and slang as in the word) shold be close enough.The g is softer though, and there's almost but not quite an e in the transition to the next letter.
Here in England, the only roads that were built for cars (motorways) don't allow cycles (or horses or pedestrians) on them. The other roads were built for general pedestrian (we don't have a jay-walking law) and vehicle use. The first "modern" roads were paid for by cyclists groups, so it's ignoring history to claim that the roads are built for cars.
Have a look at http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/ for a really good examination of the early history of roads and cars. Most of the car pioneers were also cycle enthusiasts (the earliest cars were pretty much tricycles with a motor fitted).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Not sure what your point is. I don't think the amount or percent of cost bearing was discussed by me or the OP, just a method to help pay. BTW, a very large portion of road costs are for new construction, expansion, safety improvements, traffic lights to help flow, etc. So, just factor that in when you make your valid, but maybe not completely thought out point. Trucks pay other fees besides gas tax, and are a very important element in our economy.
Ugh. So wrong and such a lousy transliteration it made me shiver.
with all the electric bikes/scooters/... coming out right now. i've seen a lot of those things lately: http://monowheel.info/?gclid=C...
In Frankfurt you can ride bike with minimal interference from cars already for some time... Even long distance routes (100km+)
This 20 cents will go far to pay the several million dollars the road system is projected to cost as per the article you didn't read.
It's called house taxes. If you don't want a sidewalk, there's many houses without them. As such, what was your point?
That's a paradox.
I am not Danish, but I visit often and I think it is pronounced "sooglslangeh".
Danish pronunciation is very soft on the consonants.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Then there's the complete disregard for traffic lights (oh, the light's red? Well I'm a pedestrian now, so screw you and give way as I suddenly pull out of my lane and ride across the crosswalk without warning!)
If a signal has remained red for five minutes despite my bike's front and rear wheels being directly over the crack in the street that indicates an induction loop sensor, what else am I supposed to do?
This 20 cents will go far to pay the several million dollars the road system is projected to cost as per the article you didn't read.
The same could be said of the billions of dollars of road improvements that aren't paid out of fuel taxes. My city recently passed a $300M general obligation bond that will go largely toward road repairs and maintenance.
Something tells me that even if there were snow removal on the bikeways, they're going to be deserted in the winter. And when it rains. Not exactly my idea of a commuter traffic reliever.
My point was that it's a compound word, and that can help parse out saying foreign words sometimes.
-Styopa
"[...]Lots of research ties increased cycling rates to social, economic, environmental, and health benefits. “We need a new form of infrastructure,” Kastrop says. "
no source? and the "tie" could as well be the other way around: societies/communities wealthy enough to buy bikes but not cars have passed the hunger stage and are not getting fat yet, so they live longer: alternatively, this "green fixation" positively correlates with income, so rich communities, with higher education and living standard, are more healthy, and buy and use bikes. But please, try to be rigorous about causation: this article was not. And the person involved is an "urban planner", a work description which would be rapidly out of a job without some mess. like making speed lanes for bikes, which are one of the riskier ways of moving around known to man.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
In the Bay Area we have lots of paved biked trails that go through our cities and connect to county parks. Many commuters are using these every day, while the system definitely needs some improvement, it has already become a network of small bike expressways. The main problem with the current system is a lack of planning, and this is reflected in that many of the official county trails have to merge into busy streets for short sections to reconnect to a nearby trail, rather than having a contiguous and protected path. There are a few bridges and tunnels now, which is helping.
(I speak mostly from the experiences in the South Bay / Santa Clara County, but the other parts of the Bay Area, especially on the Peninsula, are in a similar situation)
Well, from my personal experience (and I rarely get home without meeting at least a couple of bicycles) nope, it's quite an environmental hit, actually for two reasons:
1) I have to break and accelerate, which is apparent waste of resources (let alone my time)
2) My car (heh, old VW Golf) consumes about 6.5l per 100km on average, when I'm trailing bikes it's about 10l.
Most of the time I am not alone, it quickly grows to about 5-10 cars trying to outmaneuver the bike rider.
Anecdotal evidence aside, your statement about "driving slower is more effective" is plain wrong. Most motors have a sweet spot which normally is at 2000 rpm.
One of the exceptions is low speeds, i.e. ones similar to a typical urban hiptard cyclist.
The 55 mph speed limit on US interstates was introduced during an oil shortage. It's not a coincidence.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Slange is also a hose or tube, and "cykelslange" is the word for "innertube", so it's a pun as well.
I'm Norwegian, not Danish, but I'll take a stab at the pronunciation:
Cyglslangen (with cy as in cylinder, gl as in glue, and slang as in the word) shold be close enough.The g is softer though, and there's almost but not quite an e in the transition to the next letter.
The a sound in slang is different. The Danish 'a' is more like the 'a' as in Khan or aaahh.
Built for cars, don't you mean built for people on foot and then horses and then tarmac for.... Bicycles:
Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring: Amazon.co.uk: Carlton Reid: 9781610916899: Books
So, enough of this built for cars crap already, roads are built for people, all people.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Idiot.
All taxes pay for roads - cyclists pay for the roads.
Most cyclists own cars.
It's pointless for a cyclist to have a license, it's been tried and scrapped as a complete waste of time and money.
Cars get roads, why should cyclists have a cycling infrastructure.
You are damaging the environment 50x what a cyclist is.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
The (few, but expanding) bike paths in downtown Chicago are surprisingly well used in cold, snowy weather, as soon as they are cleared of snow, even when the temperatures drop into the teens (deg F).
Where I live there is a 32-mile long paved path that follows a river. While it's designated as multi-use, it's primarily for bicycles.. yet, as you observed, people on foot are continuously either walking right down the middle of it, or walking 2 or 3 abreast down the middle of it, or wandering out from the shoulder onto it without even so much as a thought to look both ways first. At least half the time when you make your presence known so they'll get out of the way, they get all bent out of shape like you're the one being rude and thoughtless, instead of them acting like it's their private hiking trail and they're the only ones on it. I think it's a universal problem.
Generally speaking you should not be feeding the trolls like you just did, because that's what that was: trolling, and very garden-variety trolling at that, but your math-fu and physics-fu is strong, and you brought yet another angle to refuting all the same old and busted arguments about bikes and road wear. Something else that can be added to the anti-argument, especially for those of us who live here in the U.S., is an eventual reduction in health insurance costs, as more people would be encouraged to ride bikes, making them healthier overall, reducing the occurrance of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, which would make healthcare less expensive for everyone in the long run.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
They might also want to encourage shower and clothes-storage facilities at workplaces.... Just sayin'
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
this guy's got an answer for everything. and it's always more bikes.
Citation needed. The majority of road wear and tear is from weather even in "stable" climates. I don't want to appeal to authority but, yeah, I am going to... I *am* an authority on the subject by extension. Unless you have something factual to say, then...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
In the United States any road with a route number (and many are but do not have signs - states try to push the costs to the towns over time) is either a federal or state road and, as such, is not paid for out of the general fund but is paid for by taxes on gasoline and on-road diesel. The answer is not more bikes. The answer is fewer stupid people.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
In the United States any road with a route number (and many are but do not have signs - states try to push the costs to the towns over time) is either a federal or state road and, as such, is not paid for out of the general fund but is paid for by taxes on gasoline and on-road diesel. The answer is not more bikes. The answer is fewer stupid people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From 2008 to 2010, Congress authorized the transfer of $35 billion from the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury to keep the trust fund solvent.[7]
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in January 2012 that the fund's Highway Account will become insolvent during 2013, and the Mass Transit Account insolvent in 2014. CBO said that although vehicles will travel more miles in the future (therefore consuming more taxable fuel), rising fuel efficiency standards and congressional refusal to increase the fuel tax or tie it to the rate of inflation means that the fund receives less money. CBO's insolvency projection assumed that Congress will not increase transportation spending beyond inflation-adjusted 2012 levels.[7]
The Highway Trust Fund will run out of money in late July or early August 2015 as of late June 2015 without an increase in gas taxes.[8] The gas tax has not been raised for such a long time, an increase is dubious.
this guy's got an answer for everything. and it's always more bikes.
Not just bikes, but also better transit, and better planning that doesn't encourage sprawling suburbs that require huge highways to handle the huge numbers of mostly single passenger cars driving to population centers.
And sometimes you get law enforcement officers who appear to have forgotten the rules of the road. Today I was in the right half of the through lane of a city street without a bike lane, with a right-turn-only lane (we drive on the right in the United States) to my right. A cop in a cop car pulled up beside me at a red light and told me I shouldn't be on the road because I'm blocking traffic. When I asked for clarification, he told me I ought to be farther to the right or on the sidewalk, and then he drove off. As far as I can tell, the first is illegal because the lane to the right is a turn-only lane, and the second is dangerous because it might cause me to plow into a pedestrian. Was this an attempted entrapment or just what the French call les incompetents?
That would be an anomoly where they were providing "shovel ready jobs" to improve the economy. Did you forget that? Anyhow, I should have mentioned that anyhow - a lot of the money comes back in the form of federal tax dollars from the general fund though that is usually used for inter-state roads. You can tell those roads by the sign, they are black and white inside of a seal type of display (for lack of a better word). State roads are, most generally, paid for with gas taxes. Toll roads are *supposed* to be paid for exclusively with taxes in most states though some will have started with a trust and will pay out of that and the toll money.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That would be an anomoly where they were providing "shovel ready jobs" to improve the economy. Did you forget that? Anyhow, I should have mentioned that anyhow - a lot of the money comes back in the form of federal tax dollars from the general fund though that is usually used for inter-state roads. You can tell those roads by the sign, they are black and white inside of a seal type of display (for lack of a better word). State roads are, most generally, paid for with gas taxes. Toll roads are *supposed* to be paid for exclusively with taxes in most states though some will have started with a trust and will pay out of that and the toll money.
Is this an anomaly too:
About 70 percent of the construction and maintenance costs of Interstate Highways in the United States have been paid through user fees, primarily the fuel taxes collected by the federal, state, and local governments.
The rest of the costs of these highways are borne by general fund receipts, bond issues, designated property taxes, and other taxes. The federal contribution comes overwhelmingly from motor vehicle and fuel taxes (93.5 percent in 2007), and it makes up about 60 percent of the contributions by the states. However, any local government contributions are overwhelmingly from sources besides user fees
And this:
http://taxfoundation.org/artic...
Nationwide in 2011, highway user fees and user taxes made up just 50.4 percent of state and local expenses on roads. State and local governments spent $153.0 billion on highway, road, and street expenses but raised only $77.1 billion in user fees and user taxes ($12.7 billion in tolls and user fees, $41.2 billion in fuel taxes, and $23.2 billion in vehicle license taxes).[3] The rest was funded by $30 billion in general state and local revenues and $46 billion in federal aid (approximately $28 billion derived from the federal gasoline tax and $18 billion from general federal revenues or deficit financed).
And the local roads, where cyclists are more likely to be sharing roads with cars tend to be the same roads that are largely funded through local tax revenue -- so as a cyclist I'm paying for the roads through my property and other local taxes, while the driver coming in from another county wants me off "his" road, even though he contributes very little to the costs of the road.
The other side effect of narrowing roads is that it increases safety for everyone (cars, cyclists and pedestrians) since drivers naturally go slower on narrow roads
If slowing traffic is the only way in which narrowing roads increases safety, then I propose that we take it to the limit get rid of them entirely. Once traffic is not moving at all, no one will ever be injured again!
It's not axle weight. It's pressure and friction. The latter isn't a problem for bikes or cars, mostly for large heavy things like buses who can displace the road surface itself while braking. But a 200lb bike with street tires has two tiny contact patches. So you're looking at 50-100lbs per square inch vs a car with four wide contact patches, let's say 3000lbs with 4 x 40sq-in patches which spreads the force to 20lbs/sq in.
So I'm not sure it's that clear cut.
With few exceptions, driving slower saves gas, so that gay boy should get a credit for gas saved.
I don't know why you think it's true, or maybe are just pontificating for the case. But it sure sounds like you have never driven a car.
Let me fill you in: at speeds where air drag is not significant, the faster you go, the higher mileage you get. For example, my car has a sweet spot around 55-65mph. At some point air drag starts to ruin that curve but there isn't a big drop until about 75 or so though. Driving at 20-25 is a huge drop. Driving at 15 even more. I'm not talking about bumper to bumper but constant speed.
The other side effect of narrowing roads is that it increases safety for everyone (cars, cyclists and pedestrians) since drivers naturally go slower on narrow roads
If slowing traffic is the only way in which narrowing roads increases safety, then I propose that we take it to the limit get rid of them entirely. Once traffic is not moving at all, no one will ever be injured again!
Do you always take everything to the most extreme, absurd conclusion? If someone recommends reducing calorie intake to lose weight, do you advocate eliminating calorie intake completely, which will result in death and even greater weight loss through decomposition of the body?
In any case, slowing traffic is just one way that narrowed lanes increase safety. Another is in reducing road crossing times by pedestrians, which reduces their exposure to cars. Another is in making drivers "feel" less comfortable and making them concentrate on their driving rather than just speeding along without needing to pay much attention at all to staying in their lane (or looking out for other road users). Transportation planners have spent the past few decades making streets exceptionally safe for cars, at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists. But as cities get more crowded and it becomes more difficult to accommodate cars when city streets have no room to expand, planners are realizing that streets need to accommodate *all* users, not just cars.
But hang on, how many cyclists out there, who are of age to drive, don't also own a car?
Quite a few.
Every regular cyclist I know here in Perth doesn't have a car, in fact the only regular cyclist I know who does have a Class C drivers license makes it a point not to ride on roads as much as possible. I imagine it's worse in somewhere like London where you can live quite well without a car.
Do you have evidence that the majority of cyclists have licenses. If not your anecdotal evidence is only as good as my anecdotal evidence.
Now the only reason I want cyclists to be registered is so they can be identified and have their road using privileges revoked when they do something wrong, just like motorists and motorcyclists are. I've seen too many near accidents from cyclists pulling out into traffic without looking (and somehow motorists are the bad guy here). Of course cyclists are going to oppose being registered and having to wear an identifying number because they know they will have to start obeying the same traffic laws as the rest of us. Cyclists want equal rights on the road, fine, I agree but you must also have equal responsibility.
I'm a member of a race club, we take our driving very seriously and several times before when we've caught a member acting stupidly (especially off the track) we throw him to the wolves. We will report them ourselves then toss them out of the club. Cyclists on the other hand still refuse to admit that a cyclists is even capable of doing anything wrong and worse still, protect those who are endangering themselves and other road users out of some belief that motorists are always the bad guys. I've never seen or even heard of a cyclists dobbing in another.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I know! And what about all those leeching pedestrians? Sidewalks don't just appear! Plus pedestrians slow me down when I'm in a hurry! We should require registration to walk in the city! :-)
So basically you hate pedestrians doing to you just what you do to motorists.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Really? Even with the smiley you can't tell I was being sarcastic?
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Yup, them cyclists and motorists just WHOOSH on by me all the time, and I'm NOT TAKING IT ANYMORE !!!!