StreetCowboy

His arms are as red as Miss Riding Hood’s gloves now. He reckoned 75 km was the longest he’d ever ridden, but compared to mountain biking, it was easy. Anyway, he gave up before the hard part, and had one pint of cider then switched to lemon and lime.

Zone-based planning regulations. Minimum parking regulations. Road design that places traffic speed as a higher priority than access for people. Lobbying by construction firms. Planning processes that larger developers can more easily manipulate.

They might be Russians who want no part in a war against their cousins in Ukraine.

I offered our Visiting Consultant from the Netherlands a ride over the weekend - not that I was worried about him having trouble with withdrawal symptoms, and the fear that not being in his bike for a week he might go into a local coffee shop gasping for hash - no, it just seemed like a chance to show off our city while he was idle over the weekend. It might have been nicer if it hadn’t rained, but the rain was never so heavy that it would have been safer to stop, and he’s Dutch! I took him the length of the village next to where I live, past the office and round a few suburbs and lunch at the char kway teow stand. He’s volunteered to join us again tomorrow, so I am not the only one that thinks my shopping bike is still riding nicely. I am not sure of a nice countryside ride within comfortable range on the shopping bike, so maybe we’ll just rake round almost Rawang, and he can see the countryside from the highways

Specifically to the question of why and how the wealthy would oppress the poor, from the post I quoted. The “fifteen minute city” allows people to dispense with many of the trappings of wealth - reducing our carbon footprint - and perhaps freeing many people from the rat race treadmill of wage-serfdom. When you provide a service that your neighbours want, and can live on frugal resources, the tax man and Elon Musk can whistle.

Perhaps it was an honest misunderstanding. Perhaps he was a victim of false facts and mid-reporting by others. What is more interesting is the stream of reactionary bile that he untapped.

They increase the divide between rich and poor by driving the working man into gig economy serfdom, and paying minimal wages to young people, preventing them from saving and getting on the asset ladder.

The biggest fish are the ones that get away. Like the one-armed fisherman, who caught a fish ->| that big

To be fair, "the plan" offered in this thread is only the straw man of a poster on a social chat thread in Thailand, with no links to real proposals by any agency, and linked to a misinterpreation by a third-party web site. There are many people who think that urban planning should be based around people, not cars, and, from what we have seen on this thread, many people who think that urban planning should be based on driving, not residents. It seems that some people think "I'm all right, Jack - it's our grandchildren who will have the problem, let them sort it out". "Yerdedoanthair, bytheway. A millionlemmingscannaebewrang"

Keep making up your stories, if it helps maintain your prejudices. In the meantime, perhaps you might like to educate me by explaining how Waze works?

Waze diverts traffic onto unsuitable roads, causing congestion on roads that cannot cope with it, while doing little to alleviate congestion on trunk roads. It is of limited use for those that know the roads, and less for those that don’t, other than route finding, for which other applications are just as good.

I love making up stories as well. Yerdedoanthairbytheway. Thisfifteenminnit<deleted> is noansense. Howamah supposedtaewalk firfifteenminutes wi' ma gammy hip? The elderly and infirm will probably get dispensation to walk for longer to reach the same places. If you can't walk, i don't understand why you wouldn't just cycle there. SC

I can't really comment as I don't know your neighbourhood. The people I know where I live that are pushing for fifteen minute cities live in the neighbourhood, one of the guys cycles along the highway to work. It's easy to assume that other people are hypocrites, but not so easy when you know them personally. It's easy to work up ill-feeling towards people you don't know. At the moment, there are people saying something like "We need to reduce emissions by a large percentage and at the same time capture carbon", and there are other people saying "Even if I scrapped my car, it would be a tiny fraction of a millionth of the world carbon emissions". Until people can understand that an inch in the right direction is better than a mile in the wrong direction, our grandchildren will have a very hard time of it.

There is talk about pushing for "fifteen minute cities" in the general sphere of public discussion. THis thread addresses a different topic from the topic that is discussed in the wider context of "fifteen minute cities" - (possibly deliberately) misinterpreting it as an affront to people's liberty to form traffic jams. There are those - such as highway builders - who would rather that cities were car-centric rather than people-centric. You and I are lucky to have grown up in places where people could get about the town - I have seen many places since then where the town was built for cars rather than people.

Some PMs know B-all about parties in their house.

Older cities, generally yes. Urban sprawl and suburbia, not so much. The fifteen minutes is measured by foot or pedal, rather than SUV or motorbike, I believe.

When people take a sensible idea - like planning for liveable cities - and then misinterpret it into an oppressive restriction, and use that perverse misinterpretation to lampoon the original idea, then discussion can be difficult. I can explain as best I can, but I can’t understand it for you.

“15 minute cities” is not a movement restriction idea, it is an urban planning idea. Urban developments should be planned to allow people easy and convenient access to daily necessities such as schools, clinics, shops etc. For longer journeys, for example if you have a specialist career that is not suited to distributed working, then transit should allow you convenient access to urban centres, or for universities, hospitals, art galleries and other facilities that benefit from economies of scale.

Like any hunt, the joy is in the chase

Our Cycle With The Cops ride went as well as could reasonably be hoped for, bar accidentally stopping my Strava recording when I took photos of the massed start. If I could see the pipe band, I’d have taken photos of them. The start was hampered by the inflatable portal collapsing when they ran the ticker tape blowers off the same air pump, and any start with >2,000 riders is going to take a while to get going. 2,000 people cycling through KL city centre on a Saturday night is bound to cause a bit of disruption, but when it’s organised by the Police, to whom are you going to complain? “So it’s clear the police have no problem with cyclists going through red lights…”; though we did not rely on that precedent for the ride home. I had ridden into town in the afternoon to pick up the jerseys, and to check the route to and from the start. My buddy suffered a broken gear cable on the way into town, but luckily he rides with a spare, and fifteen minutes at the side of the highway avoided arriving too early at the start line. It did mean we were not near the front row of the starting grid… Once the ride got started, riders got more spread out, and we did our best to keep the pace up. Those are roads you can’t normally ride at 30+ kph because of traffic and traffic lights. We were stopped by traffic at Bukit Bintang five km from the finish, but we had our finishing medals shortly after ten. After a brief pause, it was back on the road. Pubs here are closing at midnight, generally, so we concluded that we should stop at the nearest of our regular haunts, and just managed to squeeze in five before they brought down the shutters. So the only disappointment was that I had lost the Strava data from the start of the Police ride until we got to the pub through operator error, and my buddy had made a similar error, losing data from the end of the police ride to the final hill before the pub. So you’ll just have to take my word that it was a fair brisk ride, once we got going.

See if I was pedalling up Guthrie Highway and I came upon a bloke on a roller sled with 6 or 12 yelping huskies? I’d wait patiently behind him until I could see how much the huskies had in reserve, and how they reacted to the passing motorcyclists; and then I’d follow a bloke who looked less fit than me as he passed, and put the hammer down to get beyond him - the first rule of running away from lions is “I don’t need to run faster than the lion, I need to run faster than you”

I know this is not exactly what you were looking for, but I hope you find it interesting, and enjoyable enough to post ride reports afterwards https://primalpooch.com/urban-mushing-solution-high-energy-dogs It had me fantasising about racing up the Guthrie Highway on a Sunday hauled by a yelping team of huskies ”But how would I stop them chasing the cyclists?” ”Dinnae worry aboot that - it’s how ye stop them catchin’ the cyclists ye need tae wurry aboot”

I use Strava. I also have a spreadsheet tracker where I record weekly mileage, and any maintenance, so I should know when I last replaced my chain n etc.

Did I mention that a few weeks back, after I’d washed my bike, the rear bearing started clicking something dreadful; I blamed that on the water we’d been through, but I took it into the shop, and he replaced the bearings. well, after the long ride to Kuala Selangor, and a couple of other rainy rides, I washed the bike, and the clicking noise has come back. My buddy and I opened up the bearing, packed it with as much grease as it would hold, and had a look at the wear on the cones; the drive side cone is quite marked, and if I assume that the cup is the same, then a new hub is on the cards. Anyway the grease deadened the clicking, which now comes back intermittently. The shop didn’t have a suitable replacement hub, and I think it will be easier - and cheaper - to get a new wheel. The wheel is original - 36,000 km old, and it has not been pampered. Anyway, this is my bike after the last visit to the shop, while I enjoy my dinner. As you know, at Loco the same waiter covers the outside tables and the drive-through business.

Whitfernofer, like?