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It is outrageously expensive.

"Building 101km of cycleways across Christchurch to cost $301m", population 405000, So that is $750 per person, which is about 1% of median earnings for a year. That is paid for mostly by car owners (via petrol tax and car tax) and a bit by home owners.

And the new infrastructure is visibly under-utilised - at best a few % of traffic. You could force people to bike using laws and economics I guess... I would be interested to see a per-trip cost analysis for cyclists.

There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes everywhere - bikes are great for some trips and some demographics.

Can you point me to a report that has a cost/benefit analysis of adding bike lanes for a city? A city that isn't "ideal" for cyclists...

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nehal3m 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

301 million dollars for 101km of infrastructure is cheap compared to building highways [0]. The price of the usual infrastructure is a burden on everyone as well, not just car owners.

You shouldn't have to force anyone to choose any particular mode of transport. I think people choose what is most convenient and that happens to be cycling in urban areas where there is safe infrastructure for it.

Your question reads pretty weird to me; building cycling infrastructure makes a city more ideal for cyclists, that's exactly the point. I didn't read it yet, but I found a paper that seems interesting and in the direction of your question. [1]

[0]https://www.worldhighways.com/news/european-highway-construc... [1]https://economics.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/economics/resour...

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robocat 17 hours ago | parent [-]

> is cheap compared to building highways

How about cycleways are cheap compared to building airports?

Cycle lanes are not substitutes for highways nor airports.

	▲	MrMid 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Nor the other way round, though.

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pg314 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It is outrageously expensive.

Quite the opposite.

> Can you point me to a report that has a cost/benefit analysis of adding bike lanes for a city? A city that isn't "ideal" for cyclists...

https://www.benelux.int/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Report_Cy...

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robocat 17 hours ago | parent [-]

The paper suggests biking only 118 days per year. The car ownership costs are not "saved" - the projected savings are wrong. Ownership car costs are 0.167/km and savings by riding a bicycle are 0.349/km.

Two ignored real costs of bicycling are lack of optionality (planning ahead for weather changes, locked into transport mode) and carrying capacity (groceries, children, sports equipment, etcetera). And I'd like to see other costs of cycling (wet weather gear, helmets, locks) included.

About the quality I expected.

	▲	pg314 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> The paper suggests biking only 118 days per year. The car ownership costs are not "saved" - the projected savings are wrong. Were does it suggests that? The number 118 doesn't appear anywhere in that document. > Ownership car costs are 0.167/km and savings by riding a bicycle are 0.349/km. Where do you get these numbers from? > carrying capacity (groceries, children, sports equipment, etcetera) I do all grocery shopping for a family of four with a cargo bike. I pick up and drop off children in the cargo bike. You can think up objections all day if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that some people succeed in living car-free. Nobody is forcing you to take a bicycle. Even if you personally don't like cycling, you should still encourage others to: every cyclist you see riding around is one less car stuck in traffic with you. > And I'd like to see other costs of cycling (wet weather gear, helmets, locks) included. Then you're in luck. On page 24, they include a budget of 117 EUR for gear and accessories.

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8note 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bike lane construction tends to be lumped in with regular road maintenance, which makes it look expensive, but the really expensive part is doing repairs on the existing roads. "Building bike lanes" for 300M is more palatable than "fixing potholes and repainting" for 300M

	▲	mnau 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Depends on where you live I guess. "Fixing potholes" would be far more palatable than "bike lanes" over here.

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mkl 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This seems to be the source of that quote: https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/124611551/building-10...

Note that this is NZ dollars, and that spend is over ~16 years. I.e. ~NZ$46/year/person ≈ US$27/year/person at current rates. The article compares the costs to road and motorway costs in Christchurch.