Entirely unashamed anti car propaganda, and the more the better.
- Thread starter teuchter
- Start date
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
I've done over 50mph on my bike on a long, steep descent. It feels a bit like when the Millennium Falcon jumps to light speed. You are very aware that if something goes wrong there's nothing between you and the tarmac but some very thin lycra 
120kph/75mph is generally accepted as the fastest you're likely to ever get on a standard road bike, given their aerodynamics and the roads available.
120kph/75mph is generally accepted as the fastest you're likely to ever get on a standard road bike, given their aerodynamics and the roads available.
I think Proper Tidy has been confused all these years and is actually a motorcyclist rather than a cyclist. 
An easy mistake to make.
Tidy; if your machine has a button on the right handlebar and the whole thing makes vroom vroom noises when you press it, that's called a motorbike. If it has none of that and you feel your IQ drop significantly when you sit on it, it's a pushbike.
An easy mistake to make.
Tidy; if your machine has a button on the right handlebar and the whole thing makes vroom vroom noises when you press it, that's called a motorbike. If it has none of that and you feel your IQ drop significantly when you sit on it, it's a pushbike.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Please don't. It's hard enough putting up with your incessant whining when there's the width of two countries and a body of water between us.
not-bono-ever
meh
I am being serious here- my spacing and awareness is much better- still like to thump it along Autobahns tho'
Interesting that in this current pandemic climate the official advice is to avoid public transport as much as possible and travel ideally by solo means ie car, van, motorbike, bicycle.
Obviously if you require to travel reasonable distances eg to work etc, then a car/ motorbike is the most advisable methods for practical reasons, especially cars/vans as you are within your own environment compared to bicycles where you are in an open air environment potentially infecting or being infected.
Obviously if you require to travel reasonable distances eg to work etc, then a car/ motorbike is the most advisable methods for practical reasons, especially cars/vans as you are within your own environment compared to bicycles where you are in an open air environment potentially infecting or being infected.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Part of every driving test should involve cycling along a road while several cars pass you too close and at speed, so everyone knows what it feels like.
maomao
普費斯
I'm sure Proper Tidy meant Kilometres per hour and just got a bit confused. And that everyone else's boasts about having done 200mph on a motorbike or whatever are 100% true as well.
maomao
普費斯
At least 200% true.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
In his defence, it probably is true as far as he's aware. He's got no way of knowing that the car fakes 90% of its orgasms.
Yeah. That's what I reckon too. Happens all the time.
And part of every cycling test should .... oh, hang on ...
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Yeah, I often use it as an excuse. Oh, I'm sorry officer. The speedo on my bike reads in mph. I thought they were the same as kilometres, just spelt differently.Yeah. That's what I reckon too. Happens all the time.
Easy mistake to make.
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
Not so bothered about “luxury” cars, but I love fast/lightweight sports cars and generally anything performance related, be it 4 wheels or 2.Is there anyone on here who likes fast/powerful luxury cars and cycling?
Or are the two mutually exclusive?
I just happen to know where the place for each lies
Cid
Proper break this time
Is there anyone on here who likes fast/powerful luxury cars and cycling?
Or are the two mutually exclusive?
No, not mutually exclusive at all. Tbh a vast number of hardcore roadies with full on lycra and £8k+ bikes are also the kind of people who own Audis. I'd be very surprised if there's not a full Ineos team kit and a Pinarello Dogma F12 hiding in Spymaster 's cupboard.
sleaterkinney
Well-Known Member
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
A lot of the golf crowd now ride bikes. You can spot them easily, they’re the ones on a 10 grand Bianchi that you pass going up hills
Cid
Proper break this time
Personally, being a maker of high end furniture, I do like a good car interior. Though most on the RR spectrum are a bit too gaudy tbh. Also miss driving a decent hatchback, but the expense and the knowledge that it's just a bit shitty clogging up the roads on the peaks means I won't be getting one in a hurry.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I was not giving this thread my full attention yesterday, so coming back to this.
Rural areas are more difficult than urban of course. So I think effort should be focused on urban areas first, as they are also where most people live. Change will gradually filter outwards to increasingly lower density areas.
I think it would be possible to eliminate private car ownership via a version of the car club concept where you would not own the car but maybe it would be parked in your driveway for much of the time. I have previously suggested a version of this system and you can look at this thread if you are interested. That proposal seems too radical even for 99% of urban75 readers so I don't expect it to come to pass unless I become transport minister under some form of dictatorship. However, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that in 10 or 20 years a version of what I suggest would no longer be seen as completely nuts.
So, on a more pragmatic basis, things I would propose for rural areas.
I think that the feasibility of providing bus services in relatively sparsely populated areas is often underestimated. The assumption is that there are too few people wanting to travel on the same, linear routes to make it work. It's true that there will be many journeys made by rural dwellers that can't realistically be provided for by a bus network. However, it's often the case that there are certain linear routes, generally leading to the nearest large town, which pass by a fair chunk of population, and that a large proportion of those people's journeys are along that route. Often bus services are provided on these routes, but they run largely empty and this is used as an argument that they are not useful to people. One reason that people don't use them is that they are too infrequent and too expensive. More people would use them if they were affordable and more frequent, ideally to the extent where you get into a virtuous circle where they become more financially sustainable because of increased patronage and this allows further increases in frequency.
However, and this I think is very important, and a fact that is wilfully ignored, the other reason people don't use rural buses is that they already have a car. They've already paid for the car and their insurance and everything else, and the marginal extra cost of using it for a journey into town is small. And for this reason, you could provide the most excellent bus services possible and people would still stay in their cars. So, just like in urban areas you have to look at disincentivising the car use as well as providing alternatives (the other option is to change that marginal-cost calculation, which is what my nationalised car system is all about, but anyway). It's quite difficult to work out methods of disincentivising car use in rural areas if you are not going for zero private car use strategy, because you are accepting that there are still some journeys that will be done by car, and you only want to target the ones where there are genuine alternatives.
I think there are a number of things you can do though, and a lot of that can take advantage of the fact that most rural dwellers now don't really "live in the country" - they live in an extended suburbia. They likely still work in a town and/or make frequent journeys to a town for services and shopping. So, you can focus on what happens at the "town" end of their journeys - which are likely to be (a) one of their most frequently made journeys and (b) journeys which can potentially be served by public transport. In addition to that, much of the urban congestion in towns is caused not by people living in the town, but people driving there from the surrounding rural areas. Park & ride is one approach to this and maybe there are places where it's the best solution but it's not one I'm entirely enthusiastic about. You are still generating a large number of car trips to the P&R and (importantly) it's of no use to any rural dwellers who don't have a car, or can't drive. I would prefer to see people taking the bus from as close to their home as possible.
So you provide the bus services and then in parallel you make it increasingly difficult for people to eg. find parking spaces in town. Maybe you think about a kind of distributed park and ride where you don't have a giant car park 5 miles out of town but you have strategically located parking in villages along bus routes.
There's lots of planning policy stuff to do as well. For example STOP BUILDING OUT OF TOWN SUPERMARKETS. These are entirely designed around convenience for car owners. They actively encourage car use in rural areas. There's no good using a token bus service to claim that they serve others. Have planning policy which encourages more local shops, just like good planning in urban areas encourages. Have shops co-located with public transport hubs and networks.
Also on planning policy - I would like to see a bit more emphasis on transport availability when deciding on planning permission for new housing. So discouraging scattered development, and encouraging new houses to be built close to transport routes or ideally within walking distance to a local centre.
A quite small village can sustain several shops/services if their customers aren't habitually driving miles away instead. Having active villages like this isn't just good from a transport point of view - it's good for community cohesion and all that stuff too.
As I mentioned the other post about country lanes, I think there should be a review of rural speed limits too. One reason is to increase safety for pedestrians (just like in urban areas) and encourage people to walk to local centres. It shouldn't be the case that it's often actually harder to walk somewhere in the countryside than it is in a city. If as a side effect this increases certain journey times, then that isn't necessarily a bad thing, and might also help tip the balance in favour of public transport alternatives. In most rural areas there's a cake-and-eat-it attitude to travel times where people want to live somewhere quiet and remote and at the same time want to be able to get to places as quickly as possible. If you want to get to town quickly, live closer to town. There's a constant pressure to make roads faster and faster and I find it nonsensical. A lot of old arguments about increasing the economic fortunes of rural areas don't apply any more - we mostly no longer have a "working" countryside in the way we used to. Increasing road connectivity is not letting poverty stricken rural basket makers and apple growers get their products to town - it's now about letting remote-working accountants get their amazon order delivered more quickly, or shortening the commute of people who work in town but want to live somewhere with a big garden and less air pollution. I exaggerate of course but some of these arguments need to be called out and we need to be realistic about what the countryside actually is now.
I think technological changes will very likely have impact on what's possible for rural transport. If self-driving vehicles ever appear (and like others have said, it may still be many years away) then quite potentially they can become part of a public transport network - replacing parts of bus networks but also acting as feeders for a bus network - I can see that a well-designed combination of autonomous taxis and buses could be highly effective and achieve the holy grail of giving everyone access to public transport from their doorstep.
And I think that the car club concept should be expanded, with some level of subsidy perhaps, into rural areas. For example, providing car share cars at all rural rail stations could tip the balance on a lot of people's travel decision making - so, if you need to get somewhere that's 5 miles from a train station, you only drive that 5 miles instead of doing the whole journey by car.
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teuchter
je suis teuchter
You'll often see people parked half-on pavements where they could have parked fully in the roadway. And the reasoning from their point of view is that they don't want to obstruct traffic any more than necessary. They could have parked on the road but then maybe cars in one direction would have to stop to let those in the other direction get by. So their solution is to generate the same situation for pedestrians on the narrowed pavement. Quite often it's narrowed enough that a wheelchair or pushchair can't get through. They are in the car driver mindset - pedestrians aren't part of their picture. Even where the space is clearly delineated by a kerb, they make the decision to take away some of the space specifically allocated to pedestrians, in order to keep things clear for the all important motor traffic.
There are moves to make it illegal throughout the UK like it already is in London. Why's it so difficult to change this - why should it even be in question?
Hopefully it'll eventually be properly banned and then we can get our keys to work on the paintwork of those who continue to do it.
Agreed. The twats that do this are likely the cyclists we always hear bleating "well I'm a driver too". Dickheads. You'll find the same pricks cycling on pavements too.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Good.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I've done over 50mph on my bike on a long, steep descent. It feels a bit like when the Millennium Falcon jumps to light speed. You are very aware that if something goes wrong there's nothing between you and the tarmac but some very thin lycra
120kph/75mph is generally accepted as the fastest you're likely to ever get on a standard road bike, given their aerodynamics and the roads available.
It's 'highest speed' not 'fastest speed'. A given speed does not itself have any speed at all, for it is a mathematical abstraction.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
You forgot to photoshop the reflection.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
There appears to be a recurring theme here. Bike wankers also buy wankers' cars, when they grow up.
