thoughts...
Oct. 6th, 2007 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertToday is a lovely day here in Milwaukee, sunny and very warm for this time of year, 29°C. I’m pretty much over the concrud, and rode my bicycle downtown to my favorite market and had some coffee and cinnamon bread. It’s nice to be back on the bicycle, and out on the familiar roads.
I’ve read much about cycling here and in Europe, and it was interesting to see a bit in person.
I didn’t do any cycling in Germany, and I think it would be as terrifying as driving a car there would be. Here I’m a confident cyclist, whether out in the country on the edge of a road with a 55 MPH (88km/h) speed limit or in the city with cars everywhere turning in all directions. I know the American bike safety experts’ advice and the traffic laws and I might look bold to the uninitiated but it’s actually careful adherence to recommended safe practice and to the law.
It was great to see all the people on bicycles in Germany, and to see all those utilitarian bikes with the cargo baskets, fenders, covered chains, and all. Here it’s either junk bikes or people like me with fancy expensive high-performance machines. On the other hand, essentially everything I saw a cyclist do in Germany was exactly something American bicycle safety experts warn to never, ever do if you want to live. I’m sure it’s legal over there and it sure seemed the motorists were looking out for the pedestrians and cyclists in a way they never do here, but I’d have no idea how to fit in on a bike.
Some of the difference surely has to do with different urban patterns. I was always just amazed to see, wherever I was staying, that just down the street, just a few hundred meters away, there was der Bäckerei, there was die Apotheke. We have parking lots bigger than the walk from home to the shop. We honestly, literally do. I suppose high-speed cycling isn’t required if you are only going a kilometer or two. No need for Lycra clothing and aerodynamic aids.
Here, the nearest shop is probably kilometers away, and any place you actually want to get to could easily be 10, 15, 20 km away. The market I went to this morning is 22 km away, right about an hour by bicycle for me. It’s not a trip you are going to make by bicycle at 9km/h mixed up with the pedestrians off to the side of the road. There’s a reason I’m out there in the road with the fast traffic, wearing my Lycra clothing and riding my fancy aerodynamic machine, just to go to the bakery. The reason is that you were expected to drive a car to get there, just as you are to get everywhere else, and it’s correspondingly distant. It has to be distant, what with the space all those parking lots take up. Different worlds.
[Edit: I am aware that urban design generalizations are shakier than electric power plugs. There are outer suburbs in Europe, Manhattan is technically part of the USA. I am interested in how ordinary or how special the places I stayed in Germany are, though. It seemed ordinary. If I lived two hundred meters from a bakery, or just down the road from the subway, you wouldn't be able to shut me up about how nice it is. No one seemed so excited about it over there.]
I’ve read much about cycling here and in Europe, and it was interesting to see a bit in person.
I didn’t do any cycling in Germany, and I think it would be as terrifying as driving a car there would be. Here I’m a confident cyclist, whether out in the country on the edge of a road with a 55 MPH (88km/h) speed limit or in the city with cars everywhere turning in all directions. I know the American bike safety experts’ advice and the traffic laws and I might look bold to the uninitiated but it’s actually careful adherence to recommended safe practice and to the law.
It was great to see all the people on bicycles in Germany, and to see all those utilitarian bikes with the cargo baskets, fenders, covered chains, and all. Here it’s either junk bikes or people like me with fancy expensive high-performance machines. On the other hand, essentially everything I saw a cyclist do in Germany was exactly something American bicycle safety experts warn to never, ever do if you want to live. I’m sure it’s legal over there and it sure seemed the motorists were looking out for the pedestrians and cyclists in a way they never do here, but I’d have no idea how to fit in on a bike.
Some of the difference surely has to do with different urban patterns. I was always just amazed to see, wherever I was staying, that just down the street, just a few hundred meters away, there was der Bäckerei, there was die Apotheke. We have parking lots bigger than the walk from home to the shop. We honestly, literally do. I suppose high-speed cycling isn’t required if you are only going a kilometer or two. No need for Lycra clothing and aerodynamic aids.
Here, the nearest shop is probably kilometers away, and any place you actually want to get to could easily be 10, 15, 20 km away. The market I went to this morning is 22 km away, right about an hour by bicycle for me. It’s not a trip you are going to make by bicycle at 9km/h mixed up with the pedestrians off to the side of the road. There’s a reason I’m out there in the road with the fast traffic, wearing my Lycra clothing and riding my fancy aerodynamic machine, just to go to the bakery. The reason is that you were expected to drive a car to get there, just as you are to get everywhere else, and it’s correspondingly distant. It has to be distant, what with the space all those parking lots take up. Different worlds.
[Edit: I am aware that urban design generalizations are shakier than electric power plugs. There are outer suburbs in Europe, Manhattan is technically part of the USA. I am interested in how ordinary or how special the places I stayed in Germany are, though. It seemed ordinary. If I lived two hundred meters from a bakery, or just down the road from the subway, you wouldn't be able to shut me up about how nice it is. No one seemed so excited about it over there.]
