Because so many Australian drivers are actively hostile to cyclists.
You misspelled “murderous Psychopaths”
I know several people who believe that might-is-right on our roads and consider cyclists to be a “burden on society since they don’t pay fuel tax.”
The tragic irony is that some of them ride motorbikes and don’t see the hypocrisy of their opinions.
- Better cycling infrastructure. Yeah, no shit. We need more paths, more direct paths, and more connected paths. You should be able to go anywhere you want using a route that it at least as direct as the most direct driving route, by bike, without ever sharing a road with cars above 30 km/h, and with a minimal number of road crossings where the cars get priority.
- Use AI to identify where cycling infrastructure needs to go. 🙄 Or you could just ask cyclists. We’ve got no shortage of ideas of places that are severely lacking already. Maybe the AI could be useful once most of the basic network is done, but not today.
- Improve transport modelling to include cycling. Yes! Add in induced demand effects on infrastructure for cycling, public transport, and cars. Use models that understand traffic evaporation when reducing road widths or adding modal filters. Our transport engineers are currently woefully behind the times.
- Politicians need to actually care about cycling. Yeah, no shit.
- Make active transport funding a priority. Yup. Our councillors love to harp on about how they spent X amount on cycling infrastructure, but they never put that in context of how much is spent on roads. But also, let’s make sure that money goes where it’s most useful. Spending billions building one green bridge is great, but is still much less useful than building many kilometres of good separated bikeway for the same price. (The real answer is to do both!)
- Recognise the health benefits of cycling. Yes, but this isn’t really an actionable item. It’s just more reason to do the above items, particularly pointing to 4.
Use AI to identify where cycling infrastructure needs to go. 🙄 Or you could just ask cyclists.
I guess you didn’t finish reading that section:
A big advantage of AI is it can be scaled up. Once trained, AI models can be replicated across many neighbourhoods to identify urban design features that support cycling. It’s even more useful when combined with citizen science and rider experiences, as we plan to do.
No, I just think it’s silly to talk about applying AI to something that just manifestly does not need AI. It’s a dumb buzzword at best, an excuse to spend less money actually building infrastructure because more money is going to AI consultants at worst.
Like I said, if it were about filling in the little cracks once we have a really good overall network, I could maybe get behind it. But right now there’s just zero need for it, because the stuff that’s missing is so obvious and there’s so much of it. At least in Brisbane, the Council could decide to triple its spend on bike infrastructure and still take a decade before the big problems we’ve been calling for action on for years are all exhausted.
an excuse to spend less money actually building infrastructure because more money is going to AI consultants at worst.
How will using AI in a privately funded research project take money away from government funded infrastructure projects?
How is the government (who has to end up building the stuff) getting this AI data? They’re paying some AI company for it. Money that would be better spent directly on infrastructure we already know we need.
The better question is: without the technobro hype, what do we actually have to gain from this AI technology?
How is the government (who has to end up building the stuff) getting this AI data? They’re paying some AI company for it.
No…? The research project the article is based on is being privately funded. The data and tools will be shared with stakeholders to assist with advocacy and policy making.
First, AI is garbage at best, a shield to look busy, move money, and claim benevolence at worst.
Secondly, who is funding the AI?
If I were a company that makes more money the less people cycle or work from home, I’d rename one of my departments the AI consultant department. Then I could pay myself as much as I wanted, be able to spew buzzwords at investors/governments/naysayers, generate nothing of value (as intended), then say to all the governments and cyclists: “Sorry, we spent $X and it looks like putting more gas guzzling cars on the road is still the best solution”.
Reforming mandatory helmet laws, by either abolishing them altogether or making them applicable only on busy roads, would help. The laws deter mass uptake of cycling by framing getting on a bike as a dangerous extreme sport rather than a form of active mobility. The fact that they are applied to advertising as well, with tourism ads for Amsterdam having helmets photoshopped onto all the cyclists, further reinforces this framing and deters casual cyclists.
The two main reasons stopping me are lack of infrastructure (I haven’t ridden a bike in ages and there’s no way I’m going on a road with any traffic lol), and climate (Perth is often hot as hell, or rainy, neither of which is great unless you have a shower at work).
The heat in qld. The humidity in summer cannot be understated.
People whinge about all kinds of things as excuses for why cycling doesn’t happen. In Canada it’s “it’s too cold”. In the UK it’s “too wet”. In Brisbane I alternately see “too hot” and “too hilly” brought up as excuses.
It’s all bullshit.
The evidence tells us pretty clearly. Infrastructure is the whole thing. With good infrastructure, people will cycle in any weather. It’s what happens everywhere in the world, every time they build actual good infrastructure.
And for what it’s worth, I find it much easier to cycle in Brisbane’s summer than its winter. Our winters are an awkward in-between temperature where you can’t rug up properly because if you do you get too hot while riding. But it’s too cold to go out in shorts. Speaking objectively, those Canadians are closer to having a good point. Warm weather doesn’t make your tyres slip; doesn’t require snow to be ploughed off of the path.
Those are all legitimate reasons to not ride. Don’t be “that guy” who has to force his way of life on others to feel validated.
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, except the pro-car crowd who come up with every possible excuse to avoid building better infrastructure for non-car uses.
except
Yes, except the pro-car people.
Why are you so angry
If I ride in summer to a meeting, I’m going to need a shower and a full change of clothes. That’s not practical. Sure, at can implement infrastructure (showers) everywhere, and places to store our sopping wet sweaty clothes maybe, but it’s just not going to fly.
Definitely introduce infrastructure, and get people on bikes.
But let’s not live in fantasy land that the humidity makes riding to work in summer a no for most people, who need to be clean, dry, and have non sweat soaked clothes at work.
That comes down to infrastructure though.
My workplace has a bike storage room, change rooms, showers, irons and lockers, so the problems you’re describing as impractical are quite practical for me.
That’s nice. I just don’t see showers and change rooms, with bike storage and whatnot becoming the norm. It would be great if it did, but I think it would be a long way off. Fingers crossed though
But that’s just…straight-up not true? Just ride a little bit less intensely. It’s really not that bad. I’ve done it for years—including in a city far hotter and more humid than Brisbane.
Or yeah, have a shower. It’s pretty easy. Most office buildings, schools, universities, and hospitals have EoT facilities. And you can skip the morning shower at home.
I remember reading on the Conversation years ago one problem is we’ve been trained to see everyone on the road as equal. That’s not the case, someone in a car is surrounded by steel in a one tonne machine that can go 100km/h, but they’re the one missing out when stuck behind a cyclist or a cycle lane is implemented. Spaces need to be planned with a focus on the movement of people first, then cars.
We also need more complete cycling infrastructure. You look at the cycle lanes on maps and the paths look like a minecraft village. They’re disconnected and don’t link up anywhere. Also, a metre of green paint at the edge of a three lane road where the speed limit is 80km/h is not cycling infrastructure.
I used to ride the 33kms into the city for work, but that’s because I like cycling and got all the gear for it. The ride was either on paths or quiet roads but more could be done to link up sections and make the ride faster.
There was another article about the ‘cycling donut’ effect in Melbourne where people close to the CBD could walk or take trams, further out people rode because it was that sweet spot of a distance, and beyond that people drove or took public transport because everything was too far away.
Australia is a perfect candidate for cycling infrastructure because our cities are mostly flat, it never gets as cold as it does in Europe or NA, and the heat is generally more of a dry heat which can be avoided with some shade and a breeze. Our cities should be designed around 3-speed town bikes instead of cars.
Because we live IN A FUCKING OVEN
Bicycle freeways, put them in every city over 100k pop.
I live 42 km from work, and I have school drop off’s and pickups on the way. I can’t live where I work, and the kids education opportunities means I can’t have them educated where Iive.
Bikes and public transport are welcome but won’t help my situation.
Our towns and cities are largely lacking the medium density mixed use neighbourhoods that make it nice to cycle. We can fix it, but it’s going to take time.
I hadn’t ridden properly for a couple of decades, then after Covid inherited a bike and decided to ride on some bike tracks. Had a great time and now I try to ride anything 10km and under.
It took a little while to get used to riding on roads, but I’ve overcome that.
Also, I’ve noticed that there are lots of great bike tracks but even more missing links to join them all together.
So many reasons. Not everyone lives close enough to the city. Not everyone wants to ride a bike. Not everyone has showers available at their work. Not everyone would feel safe riding a bike, especially women. Then there’s the big one - the weather.
What fucking shithole do you live in where women don’t feel safe riding a bike?
Women don’t generally like riding bikes home after dark through dimly lit streets and parks etc. Pretty universal thing.
Not really. In places that are not absolute shitholes, that is a normal and safe thing to do.
