@wxcafe I don't dispute it's possible. I ask why it is necessary.

@wxcafe but you're right, i said "it's a complete illusion". maybe its possible in berlin too, if you've got a good surface and use the same lanes as cars..

I ride about 15km/h on average and I spend an awful amount of time waiting at the traffic lights..

@distelfliege yeah it definitely depends where you’re riding, I have a very favorable commute

@wxcafe but isn't it quite dangerous to ride the inner city this fast? I start to have problems to keep pedestrians safe if I'm over 25 km/h. you know those people who just step on the street carelessly when they see no car approaching.

@distelfliege I just stay in the middle of the car lane. I've never had any problem with a pedestrian, I've only ever been hit by cars. There aren't too many people walking around where I ride tho so that helps

@wxcafe eeeew being hit by cars no thanks 😷

@distelfliege I mean, it's always been the car not being careful (and I've never been really hurt)

@wxcafe good to hear! I hope you stay safe!

@distelfliege I try :)

@bhtooefr the question is, why would you demand an infrastructure that allows you to go at top speed in the first place?

I get that it is possible. I ask why it is necessary.

@distelfliege So I've got a US perspective on this, but top speed requirement here basically boils down to:

* Nonexistent or dangerous infrastructure making the few cyclists that we have prefer to mingle with the cars
* 35-45 mph (56-72 km/h) speed limits in our pervasive suburbs, and cars doing 40-50 mph (64-80 km/h) means a 15-20 mph (24-32 km/h) bicycle is too slow in car lanes
* Suburban sprawl increasing commute distances - higher speed == reduced time

@distelfliege Basically, I wonder if this advocacy of 40 km/h design speed infrastructure isn't about the situation on city streets, it's about trying to get from suburbs into a city core faster?

There's basically constant pressure to do everything faster under the current global economic systems...

@distelfliege Note that in the US, top speed requirement to get anywhere basically manifests as... the only transportational cyclists that actually stick with it are in quite good shape, and therefore can exceed 20 mph on human effort alone.

Or, they're on endless-sphere and are actually building illegal motorcycles and just flip a hidden switch so that it's limited to 750 W and the throttle only gets them up to 20 mph, when a cop pulls them over.

@bhtooefr yes. I hate how this structural shit excludes everyone but sporty cyclists and pedelec owners. :(

@bhtooefr it's not as bad here, but the cycling lobby was 99% vehicular cyclists who want to ride fast, everyone else was just unimportant to them.

it's changing now. I'm loving that! but it also means a lot of annoying discussions with the "old lobby".

@bhtooefr I would understand that if it was.

they want to start building protected bike lanes now in berlin, and we get a lot of discussion from "fast lane" cyclists, mostly sporty dudes, who complain that they wouldn't be able to pass slower cyclists on those PBL.

another bad thing in germany is, that you _have_ to use those bike lanes, you're not allowed onto the other lanes, even if your speed matches the cars speed.

@distelfliege In the US, laws requiring the use of bike lanes are somewhat rare, and they always have exceptions for if the lane is unsafe or obstructed.

So, the vehicular cyclists tend to just ride in the road and claim the lane is dangerous if challenged. (Of course, because the lane is often in the door zone or crossing a bunch of driveways (potential right hooks), almost never continues through an intersection, and is almost never protected, it often *IS* dangerous.)

@distelfliege Of course, that ignores that the vehicular cyclists here lobby /hard/ against any cycling infrastructure at all, claiming that it's all dangerous and just an attempt by the motorist lobby to get cyclists out of the way of cars.

Never mind that the arch vehicular cyclist (John Forester) is now old and doesn't ride any more, because he's too slow to ride in the lane.

(VC is a decent survival strategy when there's no or dangerous infra, but that's it, IMO.)

@distelfliege Shit, this is something that'll get me flamed a /ton/, but I've even used the sidewalk at times.

If I'm climbing a hill at 5-10 mph, on a narrow road with enough traffic that cars can't pass, that's even less compatible with cars doing 40 mph, and without any infrastructure at all, 5-10 is within running pedestrian speeds, so fuck it, yeah, I'll use the sidewalk in that case.

@bhtooefr I can relate. I have done it too. but I always pay a lot of attention to only use the sidewalk if I fear for my life, and then I always pay attention not to annoy anyone and always respect that it's a pedestrian space.

it still leads to a lot of hate directed at me but sometimes I just have no choice.

@distelfliege @bhtooefr A lot of British cyclists end up on the pavement (sidewalk) out of genuine fear for their safety (not because they want to cause trouble), but there is also a trend amongst young lads in particular to "stand their ground" and not slow down for pedestrians which of course leads to conflict (but TBH if there weren't raised kerbs, CCTV and Police patrols I expect cars would be driven on the pavement too!

@bhtooefr you nailed it!

@bhtooefr oh yes, that's also exactly the problem with our current infrastructure. in berlin, they abolished the obligation to use bad bike lanes in the 90ies, but

a) still almost no motorist knows about that, and some will attack you if you use the street
b) same problem if you claim the lane.

@bhtooefr sounds very dire...

my cycling heaven is a city where you can live in the city, where there is cycling infrastructure everywhere and at speeds around 15km/h you have green lights at every intersection and you get around in a short time without stressing out.

oh, I loved cycling in copenhagen. I loved it so much. I stayed outside the city and had to ride into CPH, but the "supercycelsti" was faster than the ones in the inner city, it was a good combo!

@distelfliege One thing is that from the US perspective, the federal government explicitly encouraged the development of extremely spread out suburbs and the decay of the urban core, as a way to harden cities against nuclear attack (by making them too big to strike).

And then, this encouragement caused migration from the cities to the suburbs, especially of middle and upper-class white people, who then closed new suburbs off to black people (with literal gates).

@bhtooefr I read about that, even how city cores were left to decay after the whites had moved out.

I didn't know it was for the reason of a nuclear attack, though. that's interesting. doesn't make it less fucked up, but it's.. weirdly interesting!

@distelfliege @bhtooefr

I suspect there are lots of grown men (not just young boys) who like to treat anywhere on the road as a racetrack.

Admittedly I go fast sometimes especially with the pedelec (yes, I found the codes to customise the controller response) 😆 but only on good road surface in clear area and if its busy and there are kids/slower cyclists I slow down (cycling is popular in East England, sometimes it is almost like DE or NL at busy times).

@vfrmedia 💜 @bhtooefr

@bhtooefr @distelfliege I think S-pedelecs must go on the road in most places (unless the signs specifically say otherwise).

in NL there is a trend to ride both normal pedelecs (25 km/h, can be modded to go about 30 km/h and s-pedelecs on the bike path, but this can be *too* fast and leads to crashes (I've noticed a lot more reported in the "112-nieuws" section of Dutch news websites)

@MightyPork lol I have no idea. I myself like 15km/h and I can reach 20-25 but after that it gets too stressful for me. I have to watch out for pedestrians and stuff too. how can you do that if you're that fast..

@distelfliege yeah not in the inner city, i usually ride like 15 too

@schmittlauch @distelfliege The max speed might not be the most important factor though, making sure cyclists don't have to accel- and decelerate all the time (traffic lights, crowded combined cycle- and footways, cycle lane parking).
And total segregation shouldn't be the outcome of it all.

@schmittlauch that's what I experienced in copenhagen. the bike traffic was not that fast, but it was fluid! you had green lights and nearly all the intersections. it was such a pleasure, and doable for older people, for not so sporty people, and it wasn't totally segregated eigther. it was segregated enough though.

@distelfliege Ivthen have seen some strawmen walking - some people I met really advocate for that.
I guess it's important that, like in Copenhagen, the infrastructure allows different speeds. Slow people shouldn't be afraid of slowing everything down, while faster cyclists shouldn't get stuck forever at 12km/h.
"Radschnellwege" should allowvhigh speeds though, because they're well segregated.

@schmittlauch @distelfliege The Dutch do it right, put the bike lanes up on a curb on faster streets and make sure cyclists feel safe. Unless people feel comfortable having their kids on their bikes and the elderly feel comfortable riding, ridership will be too low for the political clot needed to get safe infrastructure built. Ie, you need to get voters on bikes.

If folks feel they have to bike tour de France speeds commuting to work that's not going to happen.

@intherain also lives and livable cities for people are more important than speed, if you ride or drive at a speed where you can't instantly stop when a child runs across your path, you're simply too fast.

the time you need to get from A to B at a speed where you don't hit anyone is the time we have to put in for getting around.

for people who want to be faster there could always be public transport in trains and trams..

@intherain @schmittlauch @distelfliege Although that gives a chicken and egg problem - you have to have the infrastructure to get the political clout to get the infrastructure.

Truly good infrastructure can't be done as guerrilla infra (you can lay down paint and even bollard delineation, but you can't move parking, make raised lanes, that kind of thing).

Although, AFAIK, the Dutch actually got theirs through "Stop de Kindermoord" - literally, "stop the child murders".

@bhtooefr @intherain @schmittlauch I think that is the key. a society needs to stop normalizing all the killings in traffic!

@distelfliege @bhtooefr @intherain @schmittlauch
Hopping on this convo.

I'm really inspired by the #velotopia concept of Steven Fleming (@behoovingmoving@twitter.com), where the whole city infra is built around cycling. There is fast cycling space vertically segregated from slow cycling and walking space, and buildings are built so that people can ride right into their homes & shops etc.

The web page gives a glimpse http://cycle-space.com/the-velotopia/ but the idea is more elaborated in their book named Velotopia.

The idea is to start building this on brownfields & other disregarded places, so that opposition is low, and by time tip the scale for cycling en masse.

@Stoori @bhtooefr @intherain @schmittlauch thanks for the heads up! This sounds interesting!

@bhtooefr @schmittlauch @distelfliege NYC started out with one decent incremental step: parking-protected bike lanes, where you don't need to pour concrete just switch up the parking and bike lane. But the current mayor doesn't have it as a priority so things have stalled :(. Well, there's the also the problem that for a lot of us all our energy for activism is going to pushing back against the current regime so cycling has moved down the priority list a bit :/

@intherain @bhtooefr @schmittlauch understandable:(

@schmittlauch no objection to that. I'm just tired of how vehicular cyclists keep complaining about being slowed down as if that was the only thing that mattered.

@schmittlauch that opposite wish is a strawman, I think.

I didn't say that everyone should be at pedestrian speed, 20km/h and also 15km/h is hardly pedestrian speed. (if we're not talking about sporty long distance runners.)

I can for example walk to work (5km) in 50 minutes, and I can cycle to work in 20 minutes, even 15 minutes. and that's while I'm going at 15km/h

I'm pretty happy with that.

also in my experience if you're above 25km/h you are becoming a danger to pedestrians, because you just can't stop for them fast enough any more, if necessary.