Why is Riding a Bicycle in the City Turning Into a Culture War

I honestly think conservative media just tries to start as much shit as possible so they have something to talk about.

At this point they probably start out by picking some slightly complex idea that's objectively correct and then work backwards to find a way to disagree with it.

If they can distract you, they can take more from you.

Because the cities are being actively altered in a way that transfers space and other resources from cars, to bikes.

Zero sum game, resources being reallocated, obviously the people whose resources are being taken away are going to view that as a war.

Won't anybody think of the poor cars? But seriously, resources are better utilised by bicycles to the benefit of all. There are no losers here other than the oil companies and car manufacturers.
- Oops sorry I just noticed your last sentence. Yes there are losers. They include all the people whose lifestyles involve driving.
  
  Pretending otherwise is childish and lame.
I don't get why people are just one or the other. I use a car, a bicycle and I walk. I experience shitty cyclists when in my car, shitty car drivers when I'm riding the bike, and as a pedestrian, usually both groups can be shitty lol
It's only a zero sum game if they view driving as an essential and immutable part of themselves, and even then, not really.

Charging adequate prices for street parking, for example, guarantees that you'll always be able to park easily if you need to, a luxury not provided by free parking.

And then, of course, they could always just get out of their cars and immediately start benefitting from the changes.
- zero sum in that there is limited amount of space… so space from something but be subtracted in order to add it to the space of something else….
  it’s not a metaphor, it’s about the total being the same. it’s mathematical and squarely fits the definition of zero sum.
In my city the transportation infrastructure decisions are made by a car hate group. We have 400 miles of bike lanes and polling shows 3% of the population use. Bike infrastructure isn't installed for bikers, rather bikers are the excuse to obstruct and restrict vehicle traffic. As long as they use the word "safety", they get away with really dumb stuff.

I wouldn't have nearly the problem I do if bikes USED the lanes, but I guarantee I can go out right now and not see a single bike. They are entirely vacant.

To add insult, the bike I've seen at a newly converted intersection with dedicated lanes, bike turn box, and no right on red sign didn't give a rats ass about anyone or any rules, drove on the wrong side, ran a red and drive into active traffic; all the cars stopping for this moron. There is no shared responsibility and no enforcement of rules. That is my liability the biking idiot was messing with. Yes, he'd be at fault if he was hit, but the city stistics would mark that as dangerous intersection and crack down on cars harder.

So yes, I see this as a war. In my city, we coexisted before, but it wasn't a problem until this turned this into a mine vs yours situation. The passion driving fuckcars communities to take over is matched with my passion to retain functionality. You are the invading force in this war, we are playing defence. I see paths of scorched earth like scars; barren and void of purpose for which it was designated.

There is compromise, yes and I agree some can be made, in return, I want to see utilization, coexistence, and shared respect for the rules.

I see $150 million a year wasted for a incredibly small but disproportionately vocal group of radicalized individuals to actively make things suck and in their wake, after the construction, abandoned by those for whom it was built.
- Which city would that be?
- Do you see vacant car lanes too? Cause there are plenty of it!

Because everything is a culture war.

What's your favourite colour? Whatever your answer to that question is, it will determine the side you're on for a culture war next week.

To add to that, it's all to distract everyone too. If I'm busy hating on your shitty choice of color, then I'm not thinking about how my true least favorite color is wealth hording.

The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, argues that the costs of such green initiatives outweigh their benefits, suggesting that they impose unnecessary economic burdens (Heartland Institute, 2017).

Guess some people see everything in a cost-profit margin only.

Man I am so tired of the endless parade of articles with the premise "How could conservatives possibly think this?? Surely if we just take the time to carefully understand their reasoning we can blah blah blah...."

Here I'll answer the the "why" right now:
A) Most US conservatives live in suburbs and rural areas and generally hate and fear inner cities and the people who live there. They also generally hate and fear environmentalism. They also greatly resent the idea that the USA isn't the best country on earth at literally everything. They're also violently homophobic and have such deeply toxic ideas of masculinity that they consider it to be weak and "gay" to drive a smaller vehicle.

So when an urbanism advocate says they want people to give up their lifted truck to live in a city and ride a bicycle so the US can be more like Europe and East Asia to help the environment how in the world do you expect them to react in any other way?

B) This is a population that's addicted to hate, fear and opposition like a drug, and conservative politicians and news orgs are the dealers. They need to periodically find something new to tantrum about. If there is no reason to hate something then a reason will be created. This was the case with LED lightbulbs, with COVID, with Romneycare, and so on and on and on. The 15 minute city conspiracy theories are not some sort of new unprecedented pattern of behavior.

Apologies as this is off topic, but does anyone have suggestions for how to minimize the extremely intrusive advertising that kind of ruins reading articles like these? 2/3rds of my mobile screen is covered with ads. If it matters I'm on iOS and use Chrome for my default mobile browser. I'm aware of the privacy implications of those choices.

Firefox with uBlock Origin or Rethink DNS on Android cab block ads, the best you can do on iOS is DNS adblocking with something like Adguard

Because the powers that be created both r/fuckcars and pushed anti 15 min city bullshit. They now play both sides using research done by former wall street quants now working for major think tanks

You went a tad too conspiratorial there.

A large part of this is about control. E-bikes are affordable, easy to use, and make it easy and cheaper for anyone, even poor people, to get around. The upper classes do not want the lower classes free on any level.

Sorry this is just bullshit.

I don't think the upper classes spend any time thinking about us at all, certainly not thinking about how to prevent us being "free".
- Ask yourself this: if these e-bikes were extremely expensive and so expensive that only the rich could use them, would rich people complain?
  
  The upper classes do not always explicitly think about things, like "oh, a Democrat is in power, seems like a great time to price gouge" or "hmm, all the other top leaders are firing people and price gouging since there's a liberal in power, I should do it too" but these things do happen. Doing things to treat lower classes harshly isn't always specifically talked about and planned, it's just something those at the top do because they know others will as well and they also don't believe the lower classes will recognize it and fight back politically, especially when the more religious party always favors the rich and religion helps increase class complacency.
  
  I'm not against people making money or being successful, but there is a certain level of exploitation that goes on and it's not always explicit and it's not always planned out in clear language and it still happens

There should be zero delivery trucks clogging city streets. Zero.

Good luck with that. And the bike-riding population will do all their shopping far outside the city, where shops still survive? A cargo bike is nice for personal shopping, for deliviering letters or small packets, but you won't be able to fill the shelves of a supermarket this way. And whoever thinks about using freight trams for this, sit down and actually think this idea through for a change.

Sure, if you focus on the "zero" part of the phrase you can score a cheap point. Now focus on the "trucks" and the "clogging" part. A van can stock up a small to medium store just fine, and a walkable neighborhood doesn't need big box stores to begin with (and small business ownership is a plus for economic conservatives too). And with fewer cars carting individuals around, delivery vans can move in and out much more efficiently without clogging up anything.
Many smaller businesses could be served just fine with cargo bikes. And once every inch of free space is no longer clogged up by parking cars, it'll be easy to assign loading zones for bigger vehicles that supply supermarkets and the like. Now make those electric and everything becomes much quieter and less polluted. Then people will actually enjoy coming to the city centre again so business there can thrive.
So, why do we need a supermarket? Is there any reason a supermarket couldn't be replaced with it's contingent parts? A butcher, a veggie shop, a convenience food shop, a pharmacy, a bakery, and a condiments shop?

I don't see why they have to be stapled together when separate works just fine. All of which could fairly practically be stocked individually by small light duty trucks, or even a bike with a decently sized trailer.

I also don't see why even if you staple everything together, a cargo tram wouldn't work. Have two, a passenger tram that works one route, and a cargo line that runs by the loading bays of local stores. They can be switched on and off the overarching infrastructure without interfering with each other.

It would be a paradigm shift for the US, but I fail to see how it would be an unworkable one.
- Is there any reason a supermarket couldn't be replaced with it's contingent parts?
  
  Mainly just economics. Supermarkets tend to have cheaper prices, and it’s probably a result of consolidating the operations to share resources (loading docks, refrigeration, payroll, etc)
- How do you think any of those are getting goods? If you ban trucks you'll just get cargo vans and then lots of smaller cars. Or they'll go out of business and people will complain you can't live in the city and move to suburbia. Again.
If I had a dime for every time somebody made this reply, I’d have a lot of dimes.

Nobody has ever said that. What people are saying is that the private automobile is the worst way to move masses of people in cities. They command ungodly amounts of space, make everything more expensive thereby, and aren’t even good at moving masses of people.

You want to increase the capacity of your road? You can:

spend millions adding lanes and possibly destroying houses

turn a lane into a dedicated bus lane

turn a lane into a bike lane

hell, pedestrian areas have higher people capacities than car lanes
- Yes, you are right. You are talking of moving people inside cities. I am talking about a) getting in and out of the city and b) moving goods into and out of cities. None of the usual demands in this group ever even starts to address this.
It's not exactly some unsolvable logic puzzle. This is a problem not everywhere has, it's pretty simple.

Two solutions.

First, you create a second way in. It can be anything from dedicated streets for cargo with all the loading docks to shared warehouses at the edge of the city and underground tunnels like Disney. The main idea is to dedicate most streets to people and bikes, which can have all the storefronts

Or the easy way we could do far more quickly... Instead of slicing space you slice time. Limit deliveries from 4am to 7am, maybe an afternoon slot if necessary. The idea being people get the prime time, and you work out the logistics with that constraint

For better logistics, limit the size of the trucks and do shared distribution centers as a buffer for normal shipping times.

Ideally, you do #2 while transitioning to #1. Put a slowly increasing off hour delivery tax and create an incentive. The logistics will magically come together as the tax grows
- Limit deliveries from 4am to 7am
  
  Oh boy I sure do love being woken up at 5am because the loud-ass delivery truck is restocking the grocery store.

Unpopular opinion: because cyclists are entitled assholes 😘

Bicycles on their own don't turn people into assholes, the same way toaster ovens or flip-flops don't do it, so we have to assume there is some percentage of the population that are assholes no matter what they drive. So before letting them loose in the city, would you rather equip an asshole with a multi-tonne metal murderbox or with a bicycle? The more assholes on bikes the fewer assholes with the means to murder people.
Counterpoint: r/idiotsincars (or !idiotsincars@lemmy.world)

Also there's a whole dictionary term created for car drivers called "road rage".

So going by statistics, car drivers are entitled assholes.
What do they do that makes you consider them entitled?
- They want all the protections of the road laws but want to follow none of them

Forcing bikes into conflict with cars is of course going to create problems. When I first started riding being on a sidewalk was fine. If that wasn’t available there was usually a sufficiently wide breakdown lane. Only fools and couriers rode in busy urban environments. But with the big push for bikes both municipally and on the basis of personal preference they had to get bikes out of conflict wirh pedestrians on sidewalks, but in built-up urban environments where there isn’t any room to put in proper bike lanes. It’s just a recipe for inflamed tempers. Even on roads that are more suburban, a couple of 18mph bikes blocking a 45 mph road is stupid even if they have a right to be there. But we need more bikes.

No, riding on the sidewalk was never "fine". I know it FEELS more safe, but cyclists are struck more often and killed more often per km of sidewalk than road. And I am never okay with pushing risk off on other people because I'm afraid to accept it myself; even if riding on the sidewalk were safer for me, it is less safe for everyone else, so I don't fucking do it.
- Dude(ette), I’m over 50. It was “fine” in the sense that it was what we all did and there were rarely any rules against it. I don’t know where you’re getting that I said it was acceptable in the modern context, in fact I stated pretty much the opposite. You’re making controversy where there really isn’t any.

Because cyclists are narcissistic people who think the vast minority of people who live in cycling distance of their work and everything else and never get enough from the store or anywhere else that is problematic to carry back home (seriously, do these people ever actually get anything of substance?) think they need entire city blocks completely dedicated to them while giving a big middle finger to people who just want to get to where they're going directly because they CAN ferry any decent amount of goods back and forth.

Not to mention their massive ableism that ignores people who cannot easily walk or ride for any decent distance and denies them direct access to places. Cities already do this to a point where there's no actual free parking anywhere for people, even parking dedicated for them which, in the suburbs, every single parking lot has spots right next to the building for them so it's as easy as possible to access. Most cities rely on garbage paid parking decks and lots far away from most things people need to get to, and even if they have spots for those people, they're still not as accessible as the vast majority of places in suburbs.

Cyclists are basically like vegans and religious people: ignorant, hateful, and annoying. It's not "turning" into a culture war: it is a culture war, with rich, fortunate elitists on one side and the rest of us on the other.

Yes the "rich, fortunate elitist" trying to commute on a $200 bike instead of a $60,000+ SUV that spews noxious gases.
Poe's Law, thou art a bastard.