We want healthy, liveable cities and to cut emissions to net zero. Getting more people to use bicycles instead of cars will go a long way towards achieving these goals.
Hey as long as you’re advocating for better infrastructure so people whose commutes are within a distance that’s cyclable can do so, it doesn’t bother me (and I doubt many other advocates would be bothered) if you drive. The thing that bothers me is that we frequently see people with long commutes explain that as though it’s a reason nobody can ride, and therefore we shouldn’t bother putting in the infrastructure.
The obvious counter is the fact that if everyone with a 10 km or less commute got out of their car and onto a bike, there would be so much less traffic. You’d probably halve the peak hour commute time for those 40 km commutes as a result.
As a small side note though, the distance is a problem, the “dropping kids off to school” is not. With good infrastructure, kids can be ridden in a bike trailer, in the front of a bakfiets, or on a kiddy seat. Older children can ride their own bikes alongside a parent. And teenagers can ride by themselves the whole journey. Bikes are amazing for independence of growing kids, rather than needing to be ferried everywhere by parents. But only if we build the infrastructure for them.
Of course there’s also a big overlap between cycling advocates and urbanism. And that overlap obligates me to ask: is your commute 42 km because you love living way out rurally even though you work in the city, or is it because housing prices are so obscene that that’s the only place you could afford to live with your family? Because a key point for urbanists is that it should be possible for anyone to be able to live close to where they work, in large part thanks to reducing the cost of housing by drastically increasing supply of medium and higher density housing. And that medium and higher density housing should come in a variety of configurations, instead of being almost exclusively 1 and 2 bedroom places with a small number of 3 bedroom, and 4 bedroom is basically non-existent, as is currently the case.
And as an urbanist, I’d say that even if you do just want to live 42 km out, it should be possible to take a train in. It’s probably too low-density for public transport alone to be viable, but a 5 k–or–less cycle to a train station served every 15 minutes or more is absolutely possible, if there were political will.
To your question, I couldn’t afford to live where I work (near the brighton end of the SE industrial zone), and the hub-and-spoke melbourne train network means my PT commute would be somewhere between 2 to 2.5 hours one way, with me getting to work two hours after my start time.
We operate 24 hours a day, for back shifts there is literally no public transport option available at the 10-11pm shift change due to the end of service (and making the start time earlier would just mean shift change at 4am, same problem.)
Changing workplaces in the industrial/ag sector is another important factor. For example, my last job, I was driving 40 minutes in the opposite direction to my current commute, it wouldn’t be tenable to sell and buy housing every time there is a job change, the stamp duty alone would be a waste of money. For my colleagues, I recruited a couple last year from a company that wound up, they went from a 20 minute drive in one direction to a 40 minute drive in the other direction, Many travel radially across the city to get here, and large industrial/manufacturing plants are typically NIMBYed in development or if the sprawl grows around it, suddenly there’s noise and activity restrictions.
I could get work locally outside my area of expertise, but I’d be stunting my career and dropping about $50 grand a year in earning potential.
I 100% support public transport and personal mobility, but also recognise the limitations.
Hey as long as you’re advocating for better infrastructure so people whose commutes are within a distance that’s cyclable can do so, it doesn’t bother me (and I doubt many other advocates would be bothered) if you drive. The thing that bothers me is that we frequently see people with long commutes explain that as though it’s a reason nobody can ride, and therefore we shouldn’t bother putting in the infrastructure.
The obvious counter is the fact that if everyone with a 10 km or less commute got out of their car and onto a bike, there would be so much less traffic. You’d probably halve the peak hour commute time for those 40 km commutes as a result.
As a small side note though, the distance is a problem, the “dropping kids off to school” is not. With good infrastructure, kids can be ridden in a bike trailer, in the front of a bakfiets, or on a kiddy seat. Older children can ride their own bikes alongside a parent. And teenagers can ride by themselves the whole journey. Bikes are amazing for independence of growing kids, rather than needing to be ferried everywhere by parents. But only if we build the infrastructure for them.
Of course there’s also a big overlap between cycling advocates and urbanism. And that overlap obligates me to ask: is your commute 42 km because you love living way out rurally even though you work in the city, or is it because housing prices are so obscene that that’s the only place you could afford to live with your family? Because a key point for urbanists is that it should be possible for anyone to be able to live close to where they work, in large part thanks to reducing the cost of housing by drastically increasing supply of medium and higher density housing. And that medium and higher density housing should come in a variety of configurations, instead of being almost exclusively 1 and 2 bedroom places with a small number of 3 bedroom, and 4 bedroom is basically non-existent, as is currently the case.
And as an urbanist, I’d say that even if you do just want to live 42 km out, it should be possible to take a train in. It’s probably too low-density for public transport alone to be viable, but a 5 k–or–less cycle to a train station served every 15 minutes or more is absolutely possible, if there were political will.
To your question, I couldn’t afford to live where I work (near the brighton end of the SE industrial zone), and the hub-and-spoke melbourne train network means my PT commute would be somewhere between 2 to 2.5 hours one way, with me getting to work two hours after my start time.
We operate 24 hours a day, for back shifts there is literally no public transport option available at the 10-11pm shift change due to the end of service (and making the start time earlier would just mean shift change at 4am, same problem.)
Changing workplaces in the industrial/ag sector is another important factor. For example, my last job, I was driving 40 minutes in the opposite direction to my current commute, it wouldn’t be tenable to sell and buy housing every time there is a job change, the stamp duty alone would be a waste of money. For my colleagues, I recruited a couple last year from a company that wound up, they went from a 20 minute drive in one direction to a 40 minute drive in the other direction, Many travel radially across the city to get here, and large industrial/manufacturing plants are typically NIMBYed in development or if the sprawl grows around it, suddenly there’s noise and activity restrictions.
I could get work locally outside my area of expertise, but I’d be stunting my career and dropping about $50 grand a year in earning potential.
I 100% support public transport and personal mobility, but also recognise the limitations.