So, I'm going to break this into a couple of points to maybe try and make threading work for us.
there’s the simple reality that being behind a bicyclist is inconventient and makes every trip more time consuming
ORIGINAL PARAGRAPH BASED ON MISREADING: This is one of a couple of places where you make a lot of assumptions - about the geography of a city, about infrastructure, about where people live and work. I'm getting a bike soon because of the simple observed reality that it's faster and simper for Chris to get between campus, home, and the places where we both live and eat and shop and play because she consistently bikes and I walk or drive. Also it's easier and cheaper for her to park when she gets there. That's because we both live in a geographically dense area and tend to stay within about a two-square mile radius.
ADDED PARAGRAPH THAT MAKES SENSE: While I misread your sentence (I just totally dropped the "behind" from the sentence), the point about assumptions actually still works. While I could make your inconvenience complaint about buses, it's actually the case (I've watched) that within even the hilly parts of the city, just staying behind a biker usually has the same effect, time wise, as trying to maximise fuel efficiency by avoiding acceleration. Which is to say you that, in an area like Oakland/Shadyside/Friendship in Pittsburgh where there are lots of stop signs, it doesn't actually slow you down appreciably.
That geographical density has other consequences as well - such as the fact that it would completely overwhelm our infrastructure if everyone that had the means to drive drove everywhere. You just could never create a city like Pittsburgh (forget new york) that operated on the basis of that being "normative." So what you're describing as normative can't possibly be so...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-05-24 11:23 pm (UTC)From:there’s the simple reality that being behind a bicyclist is inconventient and makes every trip more time consuming
ORIGINAL PARAGRAPH BASED ON MISREADING: This is one of a couple of places where you make a lot of assumptions - about the geography of a city, about infrastructure, about where people live and work. I'm getting a bike soon because of the simple observed reality that it's faster and simper for Chris to get between campus, home, and the places where we both live and eat and shop and play because she consistently bikes and I walk or drive. Also it's easier and cheaper for her to park when she gets there. That's because we both live in a geographically dense area and tend to stay within about a two-square mile radius.
ADDED PARAGRAPH THAT MAKES SENSE: While I misread your sentence (I just totally dropped the "behind" from the sentence), the point about assumptions actually still works. While I could make your inconvenience complaint about buses, it's actually the case (I've watched) that within even the hilly parts of the city, just staying behind a biker usually has the same effect, time wise, as trying to maximise fuel efficiency by avoiding acceleration. Which is to say you that, in an area like Oakland/Shadyside/Friendship in Pittsburgh where there are lots of stop signs, it doesn't actually slow you down appreciably.
That geographical density has other consequences as well - such as the fact that it would completely overwhelm our infrastructure if everyone that had the means to drive drove everywhere. You just could never create a city like Pittsburgh (forget new york) that operated on the basis of that being "normative." So what you're describing as normative can't possibly be so...