• k_o_t
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    4 年前

    And the sad thing is that any city in the world could get to the level of Copenhagen or even Amsterdam within like five to ten years in terms of bicycle infrastructure. But all attempts of the good people crumble against the ignorant and dumb people in power.

    As a person who is actively engaged in a local group of people who advocate for bicycle infrastructure improvement and extension, I can only compare my frustration and desperateness to my attempts to convert people to veganism.

    Our mayor is an idiot who doesn’t know shit about bicycle infrastructure, all the people elected to control the city are insanely corrupt and don’t give a shit about people, and it doesn’t help that there are multiple groups of clinical idiots who actively advocate against bicycle infrastructure. It seems that they have absolutely zero knowledge about how urbanism should work.

    This is almost an actual quote from a person I tried to talk to in one of those anti-bike groups.

    “Oh hey, it’s just this lane, we just need one more lane, pleaseeeee uwu? And this traffic light and pedestrian crossing, let’s remove that from all streets. And please half this sidewalk and increase the speed limit for cars to 150 km/h and it’s going to solve traffic problems forever. Sorry what? This is already a fucking !!!16!!! lane highway with a 130 km/h speed limit that is constantly in traffic jams regardless? naaaah, we just need one more lane, and also please ban bikes and pedestrians and remove half the buildings in the city and make them parking lots, thanks :) uWu”.

    An interesting fact from Copenhagen that just completely broke me recently: “Ten years of bike infrastructure investments in Copenhagen cost about the same as a 3 kilometer bypass for cars somewhere on the border of Copenhagen”.

    I’m ready to completely give up, I can’t deal with idiots any more, please ship me illegally in a barrel to Amsterdam so that I can spend the rest of my life in there riding a bike and happily terrorizing the car owners that still live in Amsterdam.

      • k_o_t
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        4 年前

        yeah, I live in russia, and yes, we do group rides somewhat often to raise awareness, however, imo inflexible and uneducated on the matter politicians present a much greater challenge than the northern climate: as shown by surveys done in cities like copenhagen, most cyclists don’t care about environment, health and safety of other people, the overwhelming majority (63 % of people iirc) cycle because it’s the fastest and most convenient means of transportation

        so virtually no shift is going to happen unless the city government is going to start to aggressively roll out cycling infrastructure and penalize and make driving a car more difficult and costly