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Cyclists Are Faster Than Cars And Motorbikes in Cities and Towns, Study Says (forbes.com)
Smartphone data from riders and drivers schlepping meals for restaurant-to-home courier service Deliveroo shows that bicycles are faster than cars and motorized two-wheelers. From a news writeup, which sources its data from Deliveroo, a UK-headquartered food delivery company with more than 30,000 riders and drivers in 13 countries: That bicyclists are faster in cities will come as no surprise to bicycle advocates who have staged so-called "commuter races" for many years. However, these races -- organized to highlight the swiftness of urban cycling -- are usually staged in locations and at hours skewed towards bicycle riders. The Deliveroo stats are significant because they have been extracted from millions of actual journeys. And it's all thanks to Frank.
Frank is the name Deliveroo gives its routing algorithm (the name was chosen for the Danny DeVito character in the TV series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.") Delivering millions of simultaneous orders from thousands of restaurants to hungry consumers within 30 minutes using roving self-employed couriers equipped with smartphones is a complex vehicle routing problem: consumers want piping hot food; restaurants want meals picked up when cooked; riders -- paid per drop -- want multiple deliveries per hour, and Deliveroo needs to make money. The algorithm team employs data scientists with PhDs in computer vision, computer science, operations research, cognitive neuroscience, econometrics, machine learning, and physics.
Frank is the name Deliveroo gives its routing algorithm (the name was chosen for the Danny DeVito character in the TV series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.") Delivering millions of simultaneous orders from thousands of restaurants to hungry consumers within 30 minutes using roving self-employed couriers equipped with smartphones is a complex vehicle routing problem: consumers want piping hot food; restaurants want meals picked up when cooked; riders -- paid per drop -- want multiple deliveries per hour, and Deliveroo needs to make money. The algorithm team employs data scientists with PhDs in computer vision, computer science, operations research, cognitive neuroscience, econometrics, machine learning, and physics.
They don't respect traffick lights and stop signs.
It's easy when you ignore the rules of the road. Or maybe in the UK bicycles are allowed to split lanes, ride on the sidewalks, ignore stop signs and traffic signals, etc.
They aren’t when you actually stop at stop lights and stop signs. Signed actual cyclist.
Speaking as someone who has done it biking through NYC traffic is not for the faint of heart. Make sure your legs are in good shape as well because not all that city has been well and truly flattened the way the Dutch started doing when it was New Amsterdam.
Then there is the whole utility thing. You aren't going to carrying a weeks groceries for a family of 3 or 4 back on bicycle. Yeah it can be done but who the hell wants to. Finally there is that whole matter of inclement weather.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you live in a city or town that is over crowded, streets bursting at the seams with heavy traffic and all that.. then yeah..
But if you live in an average city, with average traffic, population and all that, the car can't be beat. Sorry.
Move somewhere with less people. Building tall for human cities doesn't work too good in the long run. Better to sprawl out. But stop putting all the jobs in concentrated areas, spread those out too!
Given that their is still plenty of cars and trucks in the city means not many ride bikes everywhere. Not everything is just about time, its about convenience and other factors.
By car it takes me 15-20 if traffic is light and 30min to 1 hour and 15 minutes for the same commute depending on the number of retards that can't drive are on the road. This is in Tampa Florida so it is a highly season thing. It is opposite of what you think is true. The locals are by far the worse drivers I have ever come across in the US. Even worse than Los Angeles. They can flip a car in a single vehicle accident on a straight road on a dry sunny day. Don't ask me how but they do it all the freaking time. The snow birds and the tourists that flock down here for vacation just add to the stupid that is already inherent in the system, but are hardly the cause of it.
I've converted over to commuting by bicycle because of the outdated stand your ground laws don't consider a person with their head up their ass (phone) randomly changing lanes in a 3000lbs piece of mechanized steel at 60mph in a 35 to be a lethal threat and justification enough to be countered with the use of lethal force.
Even with the dodge-em I have to play with the cars, commuting by bike consistently takes less time, has a more predictable ETA and is by far more gentle on my sanity than commuting by car. Self driving cars can't get here quick enough in my opinion.
When there's lanes dedicated to them without competing with cars/pedestrian traffic - sure, they can go faster in many stop-and-go scenarios without any problem.
On a more negative note - bikes can also be faster if they are forced into regular traffic, in the sense that if you get enough bikes in front of enough cars, only the bikes can flow around, and the cars are forced to go at the slowest average bike speed. Bikes can also go around all the emergency vehicles caused by all the accidents involved in such exchanges that cars would be stuck behind.
They don't respect stop signs or lights, weave in and out of traffic, pop up unexpectedly when you least expect them. They're the Spanish Inquisition!
There's that, but not necessarily. Mostly, cyclists overtake long queues of stopped cars, may not even have to stop if the light gets green in the meanwhile and they're the first or among the couple first vehicles to get through the intersection. Then the cars complain it's "unfair".
That's ungrounded and fairly childish. You might as well complain than the pedestrians don't have to walk in strict lines and signal their turns, that rats are eating for free and pigeons are unfairly able to fly and so they get to peck anywhere knowing they always can get away by flapping.
Commuted one year with a bike in Dublin, and can confirm bike is much faster on peak hours even if you pedantically follow all traffic rules (unlike the cars which tend to speed through red lights). This is mostly because traffic crawls or stalls and you can drive past the cars up to next traffic light, whether there is dedicated bike lane or not, and can hop from the inside and walk as pedestrian on the sidewalk in the worst jams.
It's hard to rank something lower than Trump, but a cyclist makes the cut. Get off the road and onto your bike paths.
Bikes are faster than motorbikes that are faster than cars. In crowded situations.
This because they can (illegally) sneak through the car lines, jump on pedestrian lanes and the likes.
Cars cannot do that.
On city bypasses and fast lanes cars are way faster as usaully bikes are not allowed as well as light motorbikes (on my country).
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Cyclists tend to ride through red lights, against one-way streets and in pedestrain areas. I have on many occasions come quite close to running into a delivery cyclist, while having right of way, so I think the stats are biased
In my UK city Deliveroo riders actively avoid using roads, even seem averse to cycle paths if the pedestrian path isn't full. One way signs are just a hint to get off the road onto the pavement, stop lights are just pretty red lights to ignore if possible.
They're a fucking menace to pedestrians. It's no surprise at all they beat drivers following the rules.
I did not have a car for 15 years living in Berlin, Germany. Took the bike and walked as student. Still mostly take the metro and walk today. Our company get's battery damages from parking, as we only take it every other week or two to further away customers and meetings. Pro tip: walking each day to the office I feel super health, have ideal weight and do not even have to visit a gym for that ;-)
If you want to live somewhere where you make the big bucks, traveling will always suck. This is just one more thing that goes with it. Do what I did and get your company to let you work remotely (and be good enough that they can't replace you with 'just anyone') and move to a place where humans are living like humans.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Cyclists in cities also get to heaven a lot faster than car drivers.
correlation is not causation, you dumb fucks
It's like people who cite the low price of electricity overnight as a reason for buying an EV. Well yeah, that's the way it is now. But if everyone buys an EV and charges it overnight, then the new peak electricity use period will be overnight, and the overnight electricity prices will then be the highest, rather than the way it is now. You can't look at a situation, and just assume all other factors will remain the same if you make a single major change to it. You have to consider what changes will be caused by the change you make. The secondary changes are sometimes big enough to wipe out or even reverse the gains of the primary change you're thinking of making.
They compared delivery times by car vs bike under current traffic conditions. It does not necessarily support the conclusion bike advocates are pushing. Peak efficiency is usually at a specific combination of solutions - x% bikes, y% cars. Depending on which side of that peak you lie, bikes may be faster than cars, or cars may be faster than bikes. What TFA really found is that at current levels of car and bike use, most cities and towns sit on the side where bikes are on average faster during the times when people order those delivery services most. Unlike a business with demand spikes around meal times, cities have to build streets with 24 hours/day of car use in mind. Which means to them the optimal solution is too much capacity at night, about right amount during the day, not enough during spikes like meal times.
Delivery workers most likely have a decent bike enough to go about their work, but car owners might not.
This may depend on region, era and such but I'll describe something that fully applied to my country in the 90s and early 00s at least. Most people have a bike they bought a decade ago, a few years ago or got as a teenager, etc. Doesn't matter how old, it's stored away at least 99.9% of the time.
So when you get it out, it's not inflated and you do a poor job at inflating it (e.g. you fail to care about it or you don't realize it needs to take much more air in). The chain is dry, everything is dry and this is where the cracking noises mostly come from. Alternately the chain is very dirty, though cleaning it is easy and cheap much like washing your hands or a dish is. Then, it's a mountain bike and you're driving it on roads, probably on its somewhat spiky tires (we call them all-terrain bicycles, but think cheap ones bought for kids).
All the problems accumulate quickly (multiply a few numbers less than 1 together) so you're riding a slug, not enjoying much but still a bit useful.
Maybe, maybe you can then think that cyclists only get by by cheating.
This might not apply to all casual users e.g. the US culture of the "hobby" may lead to doing things properly and spending the money.
About the money there's a bit of a fallacy in that people balk at paying a new tire or anything though it's not very much at all.
And no driver under the age of 80 has never broken the speed limit, unlike cyclists. So you gonna take that into your little ranting calculation?
If I also completely ignored all traffic laws, stop signs, and red lights, I bet I could get around even quicker in my car.
I live in a medium sized Swedish city. During commute time there is a slight advantage for bikes in traveling time. If you also count finding parkingspace it is even more favouring for bikes. Many of the biking lanes have few lights and also ther are shorter routes to take when travling by bike. Congestion even in this small city gets pretty bad during commute time. Glad more people are realising biking is good for saving time, better health and the environment.
VASTLY ore people, like 30-1, are killed or seriously hurt by cars while walking on the pavement. Yet you assert blankly that YOU were knocked unconscious by a cyclist. Bullshit.
Right now it is 3 miles the grocery store where I do most of my food shopping, another 2 to Wal-Mart and 1 more mile to Home Depot. Most other stores / shopping are within 8 miles. Double those distances for the return trip. Right now it is 25 degrees, snowing, most of the roads are covered with a light layer of snow or ice. If they don't have that, the salt applied is making the roads wet. And this type of weather is available from October until May.
Passionately Indifferent
I live out in the country, but whenever I'm downtown, cyclists get in the middle of the street, at traffic lights, blocking all over vehicles (when they respect traffic lights at all, that is). When the light turns green, all vehicles behind a bicycle have no choice but to accelerate at the same pace or slower. So *OF COURSE* the end result is that, unless you run a fucking bicycle off the road, a car won't be any faster. Weakest link in the chain and all.
Personally? Like I already wrote, I live out in the country--always have. I was about 7 years old when I understood any road with cars on it is no place for a goddamned bicycle and haven't been on since. What are adults' excuses, beyond their holier-than-thou attitude? Every year you keep hearing about how a few cyclists got mowed down by motor vehicles on public streets--you'd think they'd be much more aware of reality than *I* was, as a kid.
Fuck your idealism, if you want to live, between a bicycle and a car's bumper, my money's on the car.
On the same vein as "I'm not a racist, I have black friends!". Wrong. Cyclists obey the rules FAR more frequently than drivers do, most of the time even proportionally to the relative population.
But YOU drive (and, no, I don't believe your bullshit claim you cycle) and so you feel entitled to act that way because when YOU do it, "I have a good reason!".
But when it's a cyclist, you will delve deep to find a "reason" why the cyclist is bad, so that you can feel your utter hatred is not your problem but the cyclist.
They factor in the reckless driving in their research. I live near my city centre and here there is a restaurant every 15 mt and deliveroo couriers are more than mosquitoes in a summer night, they are a real danger to everyone else on the street. They run through red lights, they jump on and off sidewalks, they owertake cars on the wrong side and so on. As a matter of facts biking may or may be not the fastest way to move around in cities but is surely the most dangerous.
It isn't just cyclists. Now that Bird, Lime, and the dockless scooters have moved in, you now have another set of people who have zero licensing or insurance running on the roads with motorized vehicles. Cyclists tend to value their steed, so even though they are bad, they sort of try to figure out if cars are coming. The dockless riders are worse, since they really don't give a shit, as their scooter gets chucked on the side of the road once they get to where they are going. They also ride anywhere they please, be it in the street, on a sidewalk, or wherever.
To boot, if you have -ever- used a dockless scooter and their app, and later on, some drunk on a scooter pulverizes your car, the EULA prevents you from suing them, even if they were 100% at fault.
Cars do it all the time. Someone is turning to the left (or right for left side drivers) and move over the central marker, and others filter through the gap big enough to go through.
Funny how you fuckers never call THAT illegal passing, innit....
To hell with my karma.
Yep, cyclists frequently break traffic laws, which helps them go faster through congested traffic. But, after having bicycle commuted for several years, rude cycling is not the major factor in reduced commute times. Taking up less space and moving continuously while cars idle is what saves the time. I've crossed intersections, waiting for green lights, with scores of pedestrians and other cyclists, all crossing at the same time. Parallel asynchronous flows work with pedestrians and cyclists, not so much with cars, especially in dense cities. And car drivers typically break just as many traffic laws as cyclists, just different laws: speeding, changing lanes in an intersection, driving distracted/talking on cell phones, using bike lanes as turn lanes, etc. Pot, meet kettle.
Every election cycle healthcare becomes an issue, and increasingly CO2 & global warming, energy independence, and global conflicts over energy. Here's an idea: Chip humans and log their blood pressure and heart rate. In order to get any health insurance, your log must show some reasonable level of aerobic exercise - 4 to 6 hours per week, for starters. You are too busy, too important, and don't have the time for this? Fine, pay for your own healthcare. All of it, including vision and dental. No exercise for 1 week - probation. No exercise for 1 month, no coverage, for anything. Probationary coverage resumes the first day you can show a week's worth of exercise, which can be done in half a day. Full coverage after a consistent month of reasonable exercise. A brisk walk per day is plenty good enough. For many, using stairs instead of the elevator would do it. If you exercise, healthcare should be very prompt and comprehensive. The real goal is to get fat, lazy people off their ass and moving around in something other than an SUV.
Is this socialist, bordering on fascist? Yep. But trying to get universal healthcare for a population that doesn't care about their own health is pulling money out of my pocket to keep some twinkie eating lard-ass alive for a few extra years, and that's just as wrong. Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped, then that's on you, not me.
I'll take the rude cyclists anywhere, any day, over the lazy, whiny, entitled little bitches. You know who you are.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Sorry, cupcake, the same sad story happens far more times than if even every single such event that ACTUALLY happened were recounted: almost all such claims are utter lies.
Have yet to make a account here but.. Bikes for open commute should have to be plated and at minimum have vehicle insurance. If they travel on roadways as cars do and have the power to injure people or put dents in cars when they are fault then like cars they should be able to pay for damages.
...why do they get run over by cars ?
Asks someone with the name LordHighExecutioner. Oh, the irony :-p
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
I don't think it happens that much, cycling is rather safe. It's safer when cars are used to them. Not just the antics, just the basics and all.
It still happens. I think if you're commuting to a solemn place of work hence doing it hundreds of times, drowsy in the morning, forced, then wear a helmet and pay more attention to having lights and shit because it's probably when it's the most dangerous. It's when it is closest to the driving experience where you feel like it's automated driving and you fall asleep at the wheel and still make it to your destination.
I actually had an accident on a deserted street/road, graveyard shift, rode on a bump or something and hit the head on the ground. This to be filed under "fell off the bike".
Because there's no way to show you a cyclist signalling in a text only virtual world you fucking retard.
Here, to prove the point, YOU show ME a driver who indicates when turning.
And remember hw many drivers have signalled then not done it, Signal left or overtake or whatever then not overtaken or even turned right. HArd to signal incorrectly as a cyclist.
'nuff said.
Doesn't matter, what the claim is that "cyclists are at fault", when yuo SHOULD be terrified of drivers, since no pedestrians were killed by cyclists. Doesn't matter if the "reason" is that there are thousands times as many drivers: zero deaths by cyclists still means you are an idiot by pretending to be afraid of cyclists on the pavements.
remember too that drivers are NEVER admitted to be driving o the pavement, yet apparently every cyclist rides on it.
So if you wanted to be HONESTLY nit picking, you'd have to ask compared to the number of drivers who drive mostly on the pavement.
Learn some fucking sense.
So, yeah, cars can do it and so can cyclists, the situations in which they can are not identical, but neither are doing something illegal.
Yet somehow you call it illegal when bikes do it, even though it is still legal for them.
My fucking point.
On the same vein as "I'm not a racist, I have black friends!". Wrong. Cyclists obey the rules FAR more frequently than drivers do, most of the time even proportionally to the relative population.
Bullshit. Maybe they follow the rules where you live, but not here.
But YOU drive (and, no, I don't believe your bullshit claim you cycle) and so you feel entitled to act that way because when YOU do it, "I have a good reason!".
I ride for enjoyment and exercise. I do not ride for transportation. That's what I have a car for. I spend a lot of time of the plentiful bike trails around my home. There is a hub less than one mile from my home and I can go 100 miles on trails literally in any direction. I stay off the kind of streets I would have to commute on because it's dangerous. And I certainly would not blow traffic lights on a bike if I did. That's insane.
But when it's a cyclist, you will delve deep to find a "reason" why the cyclist is bad, so that you can feel your utter hatred is not your problem but the cyclist.
I can see how the idiot I described is bad. If you can't, I think it says more about your bicycle behavior entitlement than it does my "hatred."
Not irony Dan. It's just a kindof Alanis Morrisette-ish dingbat obversation. Like when two things are jussst barely overlapping in some venn diagram, and your brain thinks there is some quirky significance.
Irony is when you take up cycling because you think it's safer and healthier, and die under the wheels of a car. Hth.
Where cyclists don't stop for traffic lights or obey 4-way stops. Also taking pedestrian paths on bikes is often prohibited in cities but cyclists do that anyways as well.
If you follow the traffic laws in California, then lane splitting with a motorcycle is faster in my experience.
Cyclists don't always run red lights - but they do so often enough that I bought a
dashcam for self-evidential protection.
I speak from experience on both sides of the windshield.
More's the pity.
tip: cars don't stop at stop signs either.
"Rolling stop" you say?
You never slowed down more than a bicycle anyway.
If vehicle drivers blew through stoplights, ran on sidewalks, ran stopsigns, drove down the wrong way on streets, and did the same things as cyclists, they would be arrested for reckless driving, or felony reckless endangerment.
The reason cyclists have that ability is simple. Cops can't catch them, pure and simple.
I see a lot of confirmation bias on this thread. If you expect to see cyclists ignore traffic laws, that's what you'll see everywhere. If you instead watch for drivers ignoring traffic laws, you'll see that everywhere. Fascinating.
So they did a study where the default package size can be carried by someone on a bike and "prove" bikes r better than cars. Put another passenger on there. How about food for 10?... the point is bandwidth matters add much as speed.
Chip humans and log their blood pressure and heart rate.
I can think of 666 reasons why likely voters in this country would reject large-scale chipping of humans. "It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name."--Revelation 13:16-17 (NIV).
Besides, wouldn't the majority end up losing health insurance during winter in northern latitudes? There, daily high temperatures are often below the freezing point of water, causing roads to be dangerous for cyclists.
They found that a cyclist is faster than a motorbike.
A motorbike can do all the same 'squeeze through spaces' things a bike can (at least within 90%).
It is also significantly faster (in the situations where that would count).
So no, the difference is not the ability to split lanes.
That pretty much leaves breaking the law.. Which motorcyclists get pinged for, and bicyclists generally dont..
While you don't pass drivers, since they're in front of you and moving the same speed. So of fucking COURSE you "see more cyclists" do it. You see a dozen drivers that only change when they turn off from your path. If you and they were going the same place you'd only see that one driver.
As a pedestrian I see scores of drivers ignoring the stop lights. And you do it too. You see that amber light? IT DOESN'T MEAN "Speed up to try to get through before it goes red". But you do try to get through, and blow through that light just as illegally as a cyclist. Amber means "stop unless you cannot do so in time". No ignorant drivers know or care about that.
10-30 times as many people killed on sidewalks by drivers than are by cyclists. If drivers dont drive on pavements, how the fuck do they manage to do that, hmmm?
In Amsterdam cyclists have their own roads and are kept separate from cars and trucks. This is the best solution. However London, being such an old city doesn't have the room to do this.
All you did was say "You're not allowed to accuse us of doing it! We accused you first!!!". Nothing you drooled out said that drivers don't break the law. So?
What you're REALLY pissed off about is when you break the law and you DO get punished (though this is far FAR rarer than the times you break the law) you are pissed off you got caught. And you want to make it someone else's fault. So you make it the fault of cyclists for not getting caught (which not being a cylcist you don't know fuck all about how frequently they get ticketed).
They are not the ones getting cold, rained-on and run over by drivers. They are the ones sitting in their warm coccoons with their entertainment systems.
The number of people claiming being knocked over by a cyclist exceeds by an order of magnitude the number of actual such incidents.
People do not bike usually when they can get their faster than car because majority of cyclists are by choice: they can afford the car.
Ergo, all the data comes from the cyclists in the area where by definition the traffic is very bad.
Another note: every cyclist can physicall drive, not every drive can cycle.
People do not get that by promoting and defending cyclists they are taking an elitist approach, not the opposite.
Cyclists are yuppies. Period.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I drive a 7500lb vehicle and if I hit a bike I win. A yugo wins. A mini wins. The problem with bicycles is 1. Space, they take up lanes that should be used for cars. 2. They are speed limited and cause an impediment to the flow of traffic. 3. They are harder to see 4. They are mass inferior to everything else on the road 5. Most people don't know the rules when a bicycle is around, as I recall they were never taught or on the driving test. 6. They jump out in front of cars thinking they own the road. If that happens and I have a choice of running into oncoming traffic or running over the bicycle I will hit the bicycle because less damage and less risk to my life. 7. When Godzilla attacks; and he will, the bicyclist is less protected against his radioactive breath. and finally 8. Godzirraaaaaaaaaaaa!
Because if it's more than 3%, then the figures are still accounting for it, and, if less than 3% of drivers drive on the pavement, the drivers are that much over-represented in the stats.
Remember: the whinge you idiots have is cyclists knocking down pedestrians on the pavement.
So if 10 deaths of pedestrians by cars on the pavement compared to less than 1 from cyclists, it's not the number of drivers, but the number of them that drive on the pavement that you need to equate with the cyclists.
Cycling is the best form of transportation in the city hands down. The USA is just full of redneck assholes.