
Münster’s iconic ‘waste of space’ photo keeps on giving - Tomte
http://www.bikehub.co.uk/news/sustainability/iconic-waste-of-space-photo-keeps-on-giving/
======
kristopolous
I use primarily bike and public transit ... but given that, if you were to
measure flow, that is to say, how many people traverse a given unit distance
per unit time, how would the numbers change?

I think cars may be given a more favorable score in a metric of transport as
opposed to what amounts to a metric of occupancy.

But then there's parking ... and that's why I'm usually on the bike; with
casual non-crazy, follow-all-the-laws riding, in the inner city, I'll beat my
motorist friends by 5-10 minute margins. I often start to worry that they got
in an accident or got lost because it takes them so long. It's really
remarkable.

~~~
Symbiote
Trains might well win in that case, especially metro trains in cities. You can
move at least 500 people every 3-4 minutes, less if you try especially hard.

Cars in London average 19mph (30km/h) on "major roads" and 9mph (14km/h) in
Central London.

~~~
kristopolous
9mph? Might as well lace up a decent pair of shoes and get the heart rate up;
you'd get a pace better than that down in a couple of months without worry.

~~~
antimagic
Hardly. Average speed for the Paris marathon is about 6mins/km or 10kph. And
that's people fit enough to be able to actually run a marathon, most of whom
have substantially trained for the event, so not the average joker off the
street that prepped for "a couple of months".

The _fastest_ female runners are running at 18kph. That's Olympic standard.
The average female marathon runner runs at about 9.3kph.

Only competitive male runners would be capable of beating that pace.

Edit: Disclosure - female, and I run a half marathon in two hours That's 10
minutes faster than the average woman and around about average for the entire
field. To achieve that time I play an active sport, and train for longer
running events (I'm the fastest long distance runner in my sports club). In
kph I manage a bit less than 11, which is a long way off 14kph.

~~~
revelation
Yet all those people can easily do 20kph+ on a bike.

~~~
antimagic
Absolutely! With an electric bike, even the unfittest person can roll along at
25kph. And you don't even have to break a sweat if you don't want to!

------
icanhackit
I'm not a cyclist, rarely use buses or cars and sometimes find it stressful
dealing with the unpredictability of cyclists, but if I had to choose the best
of the three images it's the one with bikes. A bus moves along a single route
so it's inflexible. It might be able to carry all of the cyclists, but only if
they're all taking the same route.

If we break it down to range vs flexibility, while the bus is long range its
delivery capability depends on the proximity of stops to destinations. The
shoe, certainly the most flexible delivery mechanism, has a very low range for
most people. A bicycle has a good blend of range and flexibility. Cars have
excellent range yet space to park them comes at a premium, sometimes
eliminating any temporal advantages that they offer as you search for a spot
and then travel to your intended destination by foot.

Looking at latency - as in time to start moving, of course if you're living in
a regional area or the outer suburbs with a long commute the car is king.
Buses can be few and far between in these areas and while shoes and bikes have
low latency, range is the major limitation.

~~~
dalore
A bike isn't flexible in that I can't work while using it, I can't use it
whilst intoxicated, I have to find somewhere to secure it. I have to be fit to
use it. I can't use it when I'm sick or too told.

------
n0mad01
man, i really hate cars. i use my bikes everday and i just wonder about the
inefficiency and wastefulness of cars.

i understand that certain groups of people really depend on cars workwise, but
for the average joe a personal car is just silly.

whole rivers of cars trolling down the streets with only one person in it and
i wonder - car sharing - no, why, it's my personal right and as long as I can
afford it, fu*k it ...

a hyperbole of the idea of freedom, questionable whether a force for
prosperity.

~~~
gambiting
From my personal perspective - taking a bus to work would take at least an
hour each way, usually more depending on the traffic. Add standing at unheated
bus stops in winter = no thank you. By car I get to work in 15-20 minutes. At
the temperature I like, listening to music I like. That easily saves me a good
few hours each week for other activities - learning, relaxing, family time.

I could cycle, like I did while I was at uni - but that leaves a problem of
getting sweaty, can't really cycle in a shirt, and cycling in winter is
miserable.

Am I an "avarage joe" going to work from 9-5, or am I being wasteful? You tell
me. I know what I'm going to continue doing :-)

~~~
stinos
_but that leaves a problem of getting sweaty_

which usually could be solved in at least two ways. In a better world your
employer would supply showers so you could at least clean yourself. Secondly,
unless you have some condition or your way to work exists solely of tour-de-
france-like cols, it should be possibly to commute that without or with a
minimum of sweating. Key is training and cycling below the threshold you start
sweating. What I ususally do is ride to work at an easy pace (about 5km/h
slower on average than what I usually do) which results in no or a just a
little bit of sweating, while when riding home again I ride at my usual pace
or faster if I feel like it - that is the training part.

For the rest: yes cycling in winter can be a quite unpleasant experience and
sbarre's comment is very well put

------
stupidcar
Transport For London had a similar poster back in the 60s, advocating the uses
of buses:
[http://www.planetizen.com/node/68574](http://www.planetizen.com/node/68574)

------
rhaps0dy
I'm thinking of a possible regulated solution to this... What would be the
inconvenients of banning car circulation inside cities? EDIT: Well, it would
be much harder to carry "big" amounts of personal property. Maybe only allow a
taxi-like van service? Or taxis.

~~~
masklinn
> What would be the inconvenients of banning car circulation inside cities?

Depends how the city is setup. Most major metropolis and almost all US ones
are designed mostly if not solely for cars, banning cars requires significant
improvements to the transportation infrastructure in general, both adding
public transport and making existing ways more walkable and cyclable. Even in
non-US cities the transition tends to be rocky (e.g. I believe Paris is
progressively making the inner city less drivable and further improving public
transport, the transition phase is no fun as driving becomes very tough but
not-driving is not a great option).

You also have to figure out stuff like deliveries and garbage collection,
which generally require trucks going through.

But some cities are planning it, Hamburg is trying to become car-free within
20 years for instance. Freiburg also has the "pilot" district of Vauban which
was laid out with peripheral car parks (owners must buy a parking spot or sign
a declaration of no car ownership) and following filtered permeability (the
further in you go the less convenient cars become, and the more convenient
walking or cycling). There are also no parking spot inside the neighbourhood.
Cars are not outright forbidden (they're allowed "at walking pace" for pickup
or delivery) their absence is mostly a consequence of social consensus.

~~~
Jacqued
Paris is gradually phasing cars out, in several ways, but even today most
Parisians are non-drivers, especially the younger ones, and not-driving is a
great choice. Of course people who live in the suburbs need a car but even
there, public transportation is slowly catching up.

There is an ongoing general effort to make cars painful to use, that had been
unfolding year after year over the last decade. I think that's a great
strategy to kick the cars out of the city.

\- Remove parking spots. Every year, hundreds to thousands of parking spots
are removed throughout the city. (Shared bikes and cars have been great for
this as they took an astonishing amount of space from regular parking and made
use of it instead of just forbidding parking)

\- Add bus and bike lines at the expense of regular car lanes.

\- Regularly hike parking prices. This year parking went up 15%, and
residential parking went up 200%.

\- Hike fines for parking infringement Today fines are 17/33€, there are talks
to increase them to 60/135 next year.

\- Slow down cars overall. 90% of the city is to be limited to 30kph soon
(regular city limit is 50). Many areas are limited to 20kph.

\- Add speed traps and red-light traps all over.

\- Entire districts are planned to go car-free in the next few years.

Taken together, these changes really do add up and, as we already have good
public transportation, there are fewer and fewer reasons to own a car in
Paris. I think the good approach here is to start by removing cars in the city
center, then gradually kick them out of the outer boroughs as infrastructure
allows it.

~~~
masklinn
Yes you're right my comment comes across as way overly negative with respect
to the liveability of not driving in Paris, even though I almost never drove
there (and hated every second of driving I had to do). Thank you for the
expansion and details.

------
jedrek
I love how these threads are always full of people who spend 3 hours a day
commuting and treat the fact that they chose to live 90 minutes from work as
other people's problem.

~~~
moogly
For many people, that's not really a "choice". It's what they can afford.

------
PebblesHD
Hate to say it but sadly a bike is almost impossible to integrate into my
normal routine. I live almost 1.5hr from my workplace by car on a motorway,
riding is simply impossible. Sadly, the majority of the Sydney work force is
in the same boat, living out west and driving in every day, such a waste but
public transport is a joke. I ride a motorbike whenever possible but some days
theres just too much stuff to carry in with me, laptops, samples etc. to make
it practical full time.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
You Australians brought it on yourself, living in a big ring around the edge
of your continent! Has to be the most difficult public transportation
situation possible.

------
randomsearch
Whether intended or not, these images and their derivatives are a daft
oversimplification of a complex problem.

What's the problem we're trying to solve here? Is it that our city streets are
too narrow for cars? I guess not, I'm assuming that the problem is the more
general one: how best to organise transportation, particularly commuting. The
picture seems to imply "cars are big, and therefore bad", which is facile,
because it looks at a single parameter in isolation within a very complex
problem.

Here's some other factors that need to be considered: routes (Do people
originate from the same points? Do they head to the same destination?), city
planning (we can shape the commutes that people have to make), government
policy, the need to be present in the workplace, the time of working shifts,
the relative economic cost of oil, environmental issues, transport subsidy,
investment, political ideology, cultural norms, social cohesion, the education
system, weather, inequality, health, physical geography (hilly? wet?
cramped?), population density, network effects, communication between
commuters, mechanisms for sharing public spaces...and so much more.

I use public transit all the time, but for the love of god let this meme die.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Did you list 'speed' in there? Because that's the biggest fallacy. Its not
just about square feet; multiply that by how long the space is occupied per
journey. Bicycles can be 1/3 to 1/10 the speed of a car.

Then add in the congestion factor. Bicycles on the road impede cars. We like
to ignore that, bicyclist can be militant about their right to use roads. But
the sad fact is, they get in the way of cars. Which reduces cars to the speed
of bikes in city driving. That's just a tremendous waste.

I know, everybody should be on bikes. But in the mean time, the most efficient
vehicles in terms of road use Min(sq ft X time spent on the road) are being
squandered. I mean cars.

~~~
andygates
There's a caveat here: in urban journeys, the average speed of just about
everything is 'teen mph. The speed argument applies when traffic is free-
flowing, but not during congestion.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Absolutely. But as bicycle use increases we hit, not a sweet spot, but a 'crap
spot' where nobody wins. Need a transition plan. Separate bicycle lanes might
work.

------
RLN
For me this is very nice to see. I'm moving to the Netherlands at the end of
the month and am excited to be moving to a city where cyclists own the roads
rather than cars. This is a stark contrast to London where cars rule and I
cycle in constant fear of being hit by a bus or an overzealous taxi driver. I
think city planners have a duty to make cycling and public transport first
class while deemphasising cars.

~~~
the-dude
A little bit of nuance : cyclists do not own the roads. Motorists, cyclists
and pedestrians share the roads.

Every motorist also drives his bicycle every now and then and so he knows what
it is like and will accommodate.

Which city BTW?

~~~
riffraff
my limited experience, but corroborated by discussion with other people, is
that in the Netherlands (and Belgium) cyclists actually own the road, i.e.
they always seem to get right of way and give little crap about
pedestrians/cars/motorbikes.

~~~
makeitsuckless
Do not mistake Amsterdam city center with the rest of the Netherlands.

In the overcrowded center of Amsterdam, the locals know and understand "the
dance" (the last thing a cyclist wants to do is come to a full stop every 20
meters, because it is much more "expensive" for a cyclists than it is for a
pedestrian or driver, so instead of playing by the rules of right of way we do
the dance of give and take), with the exception of tourists (who don't know
the dance and give off confusing and confused body language) and cars (usually
from out of town) stupid enough to drive in the city center in the first
place.

------
cmsmith
The analogy could go from car:bike:bus to another photo of [miles of single
family houses]:[a handful of apartment buildings]:[one high rise apartment
with a park around it]. Perhaps in an ad campaign for SF redevelopment?

------
tsotha
The cyclists make sense, but where I live you can picture the bus with one guy
on it.

~~~
throwaway7767
> The cyclists make sense, but where I live you can picture the bus with one
> guy on it.

That was my city around 7 years ago. Public transit was very underutilised and
the general mental image people had of it was that it was for children, old
and poor people. Then the city councils in the area got together and started
to really put money into improving the routes and service. It was hard to
justify politically because of the existing attitudes, but seven years later,
almost all of the buses I see have >50% occupancy with mostly regular middle-
class people, even outside of rush hour. During rush hours have to send extra
buses as they fill up fast.

So I think part of it is to break out of the cycle of public transit providing
shitty service, people not using public transit because of shitty service, and
the service getting shittier because there's even less political will to put
money into it with fewer passengers.

------
vdnkh
I'd like to see this picture redone with dumptrucks and semis. My commute each
day forces me onto a road clogged with shipping routes and truckers with
little regard for a tiny 2-door Honda. They take excessive space, excessively
pollute, and contribute excessively to congestion and it's only getting worse
[0]. They're unfortunately necessary, but I'm hoping that in the future the
driverless truck will be programmed to stay out of the left lane.

[0][http://www.tstc.org/reports/thetrucksarecoming.pdf](http://www.tstc.org/reports/thetrucksarecoming.pdf)

------
TheGunner
The biggest problem with this is quiet often public transport is poor quality
and expensive and bike lanes non existent. I'm lucky enough to cycle to work
which takes 15 minutes, due to where I live taking a bus would mean doing a
massive V across the city taking over an hour to a job I could walk to in
30/40 minutes, there is no incentive for me to use public transport at all and
I see that mirrored a lot where I live. 10 mile journeys that would take hours
by public transport but 20 minutes in a car, can I then judge people for
driving, of course not.

~~~
randomsearch
Cycling can also be very dangerous in big cities. It's much more dangerous to
cycle than to take a train in London, for example.

------
unfamiliar
Each mode of transport is just optimised to a different metric. Nobody ever
claimed cars were the most space efficient mode of transport, so this argument
is very much a strawman. They are however much faster, easier and have longer
range than bikes and walking, and have more spatial and temporal freedom than
public transport. This is why they are so popular.

------
tempodox
Yup, the man / car / space requirement relation is completely insane. Sadly,
this won't stop car traffic. Human psychology dictates that we'd rather be in
control presiding over our own demise in dire traffic accidents than be much
safer with other transportation means but less in control and more exposed to
unwanted company.

~~~
unfamiliar
You say that like its a bad thing; I make that tradeoff consciously.

~~~
tempodox
It's a bad thing if you wanted to minimise environmental impact (and space
requirement is a part of that) or maximise transport security. You are free to
make any tradeoff you want, but in this case the environment has to suffer the
consequences of your choice. Externalising costs doesn't make them go away.

------
hedgehog
Although I love cars the noise, smell, and space they take are pretty
significant. This month in staying in a small town with no cars (they stop
about half a mile outside) and the peacefulness is very pleasant.

------
SixSigma
Electric bicycles and petrol scooters are sadly missing from the discussion.

------
moogly
Yes, and industrial chicken farms are also space efficient.

