Yes, both Rome and Naples are in the "South" of Italy, and the situation is worse there than in the North.

Milan, Ferrara, Bolzano, Modena, Bologna are just some Northern cities where cycling is encouraged and I can see them trying to get a better infrastructure; but unfortunately there's still a long way to go.

> and there's a whole lane for drivers to overtake safely.

But do they actually use it? Last time I biked on a dual carriageway I had cars and lorries passing at 60+mph with a centimetre gap. I've given up cycling for the most part as I disliked basically every ride feeling like it was almost my last.

Dual carriageways are ok for cycling when the AADT for a particular road is below about 30k. Above that, cyclists would be an impediment to traffic flow as a following motorist would be waiting a long time for a safe gap in the second lane to overtake, especially when the speed difference is above 100%.

Thats absoluyely not true. There is the so called principle of dual causality. If you hit a car you might have to pay 50% depending on situation. If its clearly the biker its still 0% for the car.

EVs are much safer - they both accelerate and decelerate faster and most EVs have regen braking by default - this means a) they get up to speed quickly b) drivers aren't worried about slowing because they can get back up to speed much faster c) as soon as the foot comes off the pedal the car start decelerating immediately.

This makes for a more chill ride - I'm much more aware in EVs than I am in my remaining ICE vehicle (a minivan).

That said, poorly laid out bike lanes are systemically dangerous.

The electricity mostly comes from fossil fuels too.

The reason I mention it is because it's unfair from the start. That we ever allowed such unsustainable transport to become the norm is a huge part of the problem.

Probably something about the worldwide climate catastrophe caused by humanity continuing to burn fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate.

But once upon a time the UK had higher cycling rates than the Netherlands.

How did the Netherlands manage to overcome this back in the 70s and the UK has not?

> The roads are paid for in a large part by road taxes and fuel taxes. Cyclists pay zero towards it in direct taxation, apart from general taxation that everyone pays anyway. Why should cyclists be able to free load off of infrastructure paid for by tax-paying vehicles, and dictate that they are built to favour cyclists when they are not contributing a single penny?

The bulk of road funding is from general taxation in most places (including the UK, I think?). To put a bit of a spin on your argument, most tax is paid by urban areas, with rural areas generally being a funds sink. So, should rural areas really get roads at all?

See how silly that is?

I always find this argument really funny because I wholeheartedly agree that taxes should be relative to the usage/damage of roads. But when you actually look at the numbers pretty much anywhere in the world it's always the cars and trucks being subsidised by the rest of the population.

YES, PLEASE let me pay for only bicycle infrastructure, I hate having to pay for your car.

Here in the UK, roads are paid for by general taxation. The fuel duty has been frozen for a long time (15 years?) so the general public are in fact subsidising motorists. "Road Tax" was abolished in 1937 due to the ridiculous attitude that some motorists get about "owning" the roads - this seems to be exactly your kind of attitude.

I wonder if you've thought about the logical conclusion of your "ideas" when applied to electric vehicles? They don't pay VED (emmissions tax, which is often referred to as "road tax" by idiots) and they don't pay fuel tax, so what are they doing on "your" public roads?

In my locale, in the US, local roads are paid for by property taxes. The higher traffic state and Federal roads are paid for through a combination of fuel and income taxes. Cyclists tend to avoid those roads due to safety and distance. Cycles are prohibited on our equivalent of the motorways.

Most cyclists in the US also have cars, and are paying for license, registration, and insurance. Higher insurance rates are necessary because cars get in more crashes.

Meanwhile, bikes take up less space and do negligible damage to roads, and to other things like vehicles and stationary objects.

A more useful model is that we all pay to subsidize heavy trucking.

But also, each person paying for goodies that they don't use but someone else does, is kind of how a modern society works. It would be vastly more expensive to administer a society in which each person is charged a fee in precise proportion to the facilities and services that they use. Maybe in the future with AI.

> Life is too short to care about these trifling matters really though isn't it?

I wouldn't call people's ability to be mobile a "trifling matter". In fact, I'd say it's fundamental to a free and equitable society. People should be able to move around safely and freely and the car is failing to be the solution to that.

Life is too short to spend it in a car. People hate driving. But they do it because there's no other choice. The infrastructure is car first and their bodies have atrophied to the point they can't get around without assistance.

I've seen people literally lose their minds as they sit in their car stuck in congestion day in, day out. Driving has become an adversarial pursuit that leads to anger and frustration. This is your life, and it's happening one traffic jam at a time.

A good life is not one where you utter "you absolute bellend" at least once every single day as you make your way to work.

I am a (UK) cyclist, and I pay both road taxes and fuel taxes.

(For the car that I also own, to be clear)

You can really tell when somebody just repeats motorist propaganda and has never actually looked at the finical structure behind infrastructure.

Your attitude is also deeply sad and cyclical. People wanting to improve the communities they live in is a bad thing. How about the 1000s of people dying every year is not an important topic.

Imagine if there were 1 major commuter trains going into london crashing and killing everybody in the train, and this happened multiple times a year? Would you consider that an important problem?

> there are IMO better causes to champion

Like what?

Transportation, and cycling as part of that has a major influence on climate change, energy consumption, public health, accessibility, retail shopping, community building and much more.

Have ever engaged with that research?

Just to reply to myself instead of each post calling me dumb individually:

I said we all pay via general taxation, so yes you me everyone pays for roads if we use them or not. Vehicle users also pay in addition to general taxes the direct taxes for their usage in terms of road tax and fuel duties (N.b. that road usage fees per mile are on the cards for EVs). Cyclists pay none of these (unless they also own a car)

If there is a huge government subsidy for something, you'd be a fool to ignore it

this argument against common sense bike infrastructure is one of the most common, most wrong, and most dumb

bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users in fact subsidize motorists, in all countries, everywhere. this isn't up for debate. so under your own logic, motorists should have no right to the roads, because they're "freeloading" and "not paying their fair share". sigh.

ironically, even the most ardent bike infra advocates don't actually think that. they just think the money they're paying shouldn't be expropriated exclusively for motorists, while they themselves get close to nothing, especially when bika infra is so comparatively cheap and efficient (it actually SAVES the government and the public money)

the benefits of bike infra are obvious and self evident. less pollution, less noise, more mobility for children and the disabled. it benefits motorists too, because it takes traffic off the roads, and saves parents time and money having to ferry their kids around all the time etc etc.

tbh people like you seem just like hateful selfish misanthropes.

ideas are only one part of a successfully functioning sociotechnical system. The bike intersections won't work if users behave differently (just like how automobile traffic is terrible if you get different driving styles mixing).

Which in turn means only most aggressive cyclists stay on the road. In London more than half cyclists jump the red light.

lol are you serious? A "bike path" with f*cking trees and lightposts right in the middle? It looks like one of those EU-funding scams.

I’ve always thought of the Netherlands as Infrastructire Country, so much of that territory has been significantly altered over the last four or five thousand years that it’s leaked into their world view.

Problems can be solved with enough time, rough consensus and effort. It seems like such a weirdly outdated modernist view when living in other places.

Its amazing, its almost as if driving is better when a huge amount of trips are instead done with transportation systems that require far less space and are far better for the environment.

Its as if drivers benefit just as much from good driving alternatives as non-drivers. But somehow this is consistently ignored by the 'pro-driving' crowd.

You are literally improving the overall efficiency of the whole system at minimal cost.