The End of Uber with Cory Doctorow
The article is illustrative for a number of reasons, but something stuck out to me which bugged me, which is that it&#x27;s common for people on one side of an issue to throw out minor comments which would have major implications if true, but which generally feel quite unexamined.<p>For example, cars are pitted against cycling as if one is somehow diametrically opposed to the other. But we have empirical examples of this not being the case.<p>I live in a city which is pretty car heavy (London). It&#x27;s not LA, we don&#x27;t have sprawling freeways everywhere, but the road outside my house is lined with cars on either side, there are multiple ring roads that are 2, 3, 4 lane roads, the vast majority of the city centre is not pedestrianised, etc.<p>Yet I can and do ride my bike every day, in areas both with and without cycle lanes, and so do lots of other people. The time taken for me to get from point A to point B via bicycle could not be meaningfully improved that much - if I had a direct monorail-style route it&#x27;d be a bit faster, sure.<p>Netherlands, UK, and US stats are here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;content.tfl.gov.uk&#x2F;pedal-cyclist-fatalities-in-london.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;content.tfl.gov.uk&#x2F;pedal-cyclist-fatalities-in-londo...</a><p>Very very roughly, NL is at 2.5 deaths or serious injuries per 10 million km cycled, UK is at about 10, and the US is at about 40.<p>I&#x27;m going to use this data and further make an unsubstantiated claim that in the UK, London probably has fewer accidents than a more car heavy town.<p>So yeah, it&#x27;s more dangerous than the stereotypical example of a cycling paradise, but it&#x27;s not some sort of hellscape.<p>The point then is that you don&#x27;t need to eliminate cars in order to create an environment in which people both have and exercise the ability to walk and cycle. You do need the roads to not be urban motorways.<p>But something like this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;live.staticflickr.com&#x2F;7129&#x2F;7667009494_ed377c00cf_b.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;live.staticflickr.com&#x2F;7129&#x2F;7667009494_ed377c00cf_b.j...</a><p>I think provides a reasonable balance.<p>The main part is that drivers understand that cyclists are a thing that exist. In London you don&#x27;t expect to drive about at 30mph everywhere because well, the road is thin, bicycles, buses, taxis, people stepping out, whatever. It&#x27;s not a divided motorway, you don&#x27;t own it.<p>Another example is the idea that geometry is inherently against cars. It&#x27;s inherently against cars the use of cars for commuting from a large suburban area to a small business district. But there exists no geometrical constraint that effects me driving from village&#x2F;town&#x2F;suburb A to village&#x2F;town&#x2F;suburb B.<p>This assumes again though that you have a balanced town&#x2F;country plan. If you make everything a massive big expansive road and spread out too far, then sure, cars end up predominating.<p>I guess moderation, and the use of cost-benefit analysis, is just boring. No-one wants to campaign for it, and would anyone even listen? Is it catchy?