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

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.
- ironically, they win.
  whenever the road diet where i live, traffic improves. because it slows down to one lane and it prevents accidents.
- 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.
- All of that is beside my point.
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
- Whenever I tell people I like to walk places they always say something along the lines of "aren't you wasting your investment in your car and insurance?"
  No, I'm not. I have to pay for my insurance to get to work most days. I can still save money on gas/wear and tear by walking. This also saves carbon from the atmosphere, in theory lets me keep my car for a longer period of time, and walking is better for my physical and mental health.
By giving more space to bicycles, that space can be used by many more people at the same time. Wherever this was done, congestion reduced and traffic improved for all participants.
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.
Yep. Lots of times road traffic is worsened in order to improve bike infrastructure with no simultaneous improvement of non-bike alternatives like public transit. Not everyone can replace their cars with bikes, especially not in America.
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.
- Do you see vacant car lanes too? Cause there are plenty of it!
- Which city would that be?

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.
- If they make you angry you keep watching.
  And it's not just conservative media.
The issue is that these changes are beneficial to society but detrimental to them personally. So they try to rationalize their stance without sounding like selfish assholes.
- I think it's more that the right wing media tries to identify grievances and then provides rationalizations for them. I don't think this is an organic, ground-up process.
- It isn't even detrimental, it is just different from what they prefer. How does a bike line on a road they probably don't even live on really effect them? It doesn't.

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.

Guess some people see everything in a cost-profit margin only.
Especially when it's convenient. I'm sure they would happily look the other way if you showed them the economic burdens of having a car-centric society.
- And thinking that way about everything is obviously the wrong way to go about life and will end up failing.
- Nah, big auto has bigger pockets than the bike lobby. Plus, murica
Being European, there are plenty of profits to be made by switching to bikes. Well, unless you're a petrol station, fuck you then.
Anything the Heartland Institute publishes should never be treated as anything but toilet paper.
- Same goes for any and all think tanks
  They're all horseshit perversions that exist to push out mountains of academic-seeming material to legitimize whatever positions their funders want to legitimize to advance their interests
See Slavery (3500 BC)

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.

I don't have or want a lifted truck but I also don't want to live in a city. If that means biking a hundred miles to get anywhere I'll do it.
- Historically, rural towns had walkable centres and access to rail. Throw in a comprehensive bike network and you can live without a car easily. And I agree, I'd personally be willing to bike pretty long distances when I visit rural towns if it's safe and pleasant.

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.

Delivery trucks are fine. They don't contribute to sprawl, are driven by professional drivers, and don't need parking lots.
It's personal automobiles that are the problem.
- I was bout to write the exact same.
  Cargo trucks cna also be limited to specific times, like 6am when most people arent in the street yet
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
- Adding another lane never helped, it usually does the opposite. People will see there is "more" capacity and more people will use the road, causing even more congestion
- 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.
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.
- Perhaps the idea is to find ways to articulate things that don’t lead to such obvious cheap points being scorable.
  “Zero trucks on our roads!” <—- stupid idea that enables the cheap point
  “But zero is a stupid number to aim for” <—- cheap point
  “Well obviously not zero”
  Then don’t say zero! Use your words precisely, as if you had some responsibility for what’s going on. Be more like an engineer, and less like a kid, with your speech.
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.
Yeah I can only think of people envisioning small downtown stores only using small trucks/vans or the weird one underground cargo tracks (there is a startup in Texas pushing for that one).
Even then trucking tends to just make more sense from everything I've experienced, but what do I know
- Underground cargo tracks is a nice idea, but hardly realistic. Can you imagine ripping open the whole city to build that, and the cost of such an undertaking?
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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)
- And, all in all, they will need the same amount of goods to supply the same amount of people. And they will be substantially more expensive in comparison to a big box supermarket.

New thing goes against capitalist interests
Propaganda machine manufactures consent via anti-thing news coverage
This works on people who are generally aligned with internalized capitalist assumptions (ex. climate regulation is worse for humanity than allowing market forces to act unimpeded)
People (conservatives) are now generally against thing and will block progress out of fear, even (and especially) if they don't really understand it on a meaningful level
Status-quo is maintained through perpetuation of internalized capitalist assumptions and self-censorship by those aligned with market forces
Profit (for billionaires)

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.

I LOVE my e-bike. I just got a tern NBD and I can finally ride on my own with a bike that fits me even when my disability flares up and I am at my most limited.
Now that my bike time has increased dramatically I have noticed aggression towards me has also increased. I've had people yell slurs out of their car windows, people rev threateningly behind me when they couldn't pass, people speed around me through intersections, etc. Mostly I've noticed it from class traitors.
In my area especially people tie cars to freedom. Public transit is practically non-existent so kids and teenagers never ride a bus or a train and assume cars are the only way to get around. This seems to be especially strong among the lower and lower-middle classes, where people struggle to get and keep their cars, and seem to have an unhealthy emotional attachment to them.
If only there were a way to allow bikes on roads without directly impeding car traffic...
My country has the most ridiculous ebike rules. Speeds are limited, and it needs to function as a bike at all times.... Among others.
This means even if you have one of those moped style ebikes, you have to unnecessarily carry around pedals (which would be impractical and awkward to use), despite having no intention of using them. Cops can just stop you and ask for them. If you can't produce them, then you're getting a ticket.
Stupid.
But I agree, I would liken it to the electric vehicle problems. Though fundamentally different due to several factors, the motivations are the same. People are making money continually from the use of automobiles. Automotive repair and maintenance shops, gas stations (or EV charging stations), all the way to road maintenance and such.... It's a monster of an industry. Nobody wants to stop that gravy train, so they keep fighting against these alternatives that save us lowly "poors" some money. (Only considered to be poor because we don't drive dinosaur burning monster trucks everywhere, so we must be too poor to afford it)
those people want you out there spending your money (aka giving it to them), all the time. This doesn't make them more money, so it's bad.
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

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.

Consider this dichotomy:

i have never been called a cockroach. i have been called gay a lot though by truck drivers.
- did they honk your horn?
Ah yes, the “science” of determining which population is composed of better people.
- Read the fucking article. It defines specifically what it means (civic engagement/interest in the common good, basically), and it is measurable.

I live in a rural area, driving is basically a requirement. I've gotten to the point where I've driven for so long that, I don't really want to drive in cities anymore. Too many stupid people. I'd be happy to drive to the city limits, then hop a bus/train/subway/bicycle/scooter/electric riding thing to where I need to go.

I only still have a car because I live in such a remote area and there's literally nowhere nearby to go if you can't drive. It's literally an all day outing if you want to go to the nearest city by any method other than a vehicle.

I've been working from home the last few years and my car only really gets use when I'm called to a site for work, or running errands on weekends. I literally only travel maybe 30 hours of driving a year. This is in contrast to doing more like 60 hours behind the wheel every month before COVID...

IDK what you people are doing in cities, but "bike friendly" shouldn't be a conversation or debate. It should be the rule. However, far be it for me to tell you city folk what to do.

There have always been jerks. I had things thrown at me from cars and cars swerving at me 40 years ago. Back then they were just random jerks and no part of some us/them mind set.

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.

what is crazy is 45mph stroads in the suburbs
- Why is that crazy? Busy roads in suburban areas are quite often in the 45-35mph range. My street is 30. The main road it connects to is 45. The major road that connects to is also 45. Where I lived previously was 40.
This is such a crazy take. You want me going 15mph on the sidewalk?
- I literally said we had to remove the bikes from sidewalks to separate them from pedestrians. What’s crazy about that?
- No, we'd want cyclists going a sensible speed on the sidewalk when the road is too dangerous to cycle on.
  Frankly if a road has traffic going >30mph on it, I'm not cycling on it without a dedicated cycle lane, and I don't just mean a thin line painted in the gutter.
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.

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
You can use DNS based adblock, but this tends to break on public WiFi networks.
One other option is to use brave as a web browser. It's a chrome derivative with a built in adblock. Most browser extensions don't work on iOS so there's not many options.
If you're open to switching browser, try out brave, it has built-in adblock
I am not sure if this works with Chrome on iOS but there is an app called Hush (yellow icon with face having tape over mouth) that works with Safari to get rid of popups. I’ve not had it very long but I tried it on this article and had no pop ups.
It's not as good as a real adblocker but you can install "ad guard" from the app store (you have to enable it in settings -> safari -> content blockers)

because a lot of people are very stupid

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.

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

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.

Unpopular opinion: because cyclists are entitled assholes 😘

- your not. but drivers thing anything/anyone that inconveniences them is 'entitled'
  a lot of streets in my city are putting up speedbumps to stop people blowing down side streets at 40mph while trying to cut around main street traffic. drivers scream at how 'entitled' the residents are being. because the road is 'for them to go places as fast as possible'.
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