Comment by rwhitman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rwhitman | Hacker News Reader

Retrofitting American suburban sprawl to be less car-centric is going to be one of the enduring puzzles of the 21st century.

The suburban model of planning championed in the 50's onwards became so deeply embedded in development projects and just the entire culture of small city planning across the country that a huge chunk of Americans are completely unaware that a less car-centric lifestyle is even possible, let alone desirable.

We're only starting to scratch the surface of understanding how much friggin work it's going to take teasing out the messes that were made by lazy cookie cutter civic planning. And it certainly doesn't help that local governments, planners and many many ordinary car-dependent citizens continue to fight tooth-and-nail to uphold the status quo in this regard.

It's great that Google is at least attempting to transform Silicon Valley, at least a little bit. I just wish that the hundreds of other communities around the country that don't have a progressive mega company in their neighborhood can get a little nudge from this type of work someday...

Here in Minnesota it's common that suburban "subdivision" neighborhoods don't even have pedestrian sidewalks. And the inhabitants think that's a good thing. I cannot even.

It snows quite heavily in Minnesota, so during much of the year those sidewalks would be unusable or hazardous.

As would the roads without the maintenance that everybody always seems to completely forget about.

Ah, but you see, roads are important. Sidewalks are for what, walking? So basically playing around.

Likewise here in Wisconsin, but we're expected to shovel our walks. I once got a ticket for failing to do so. They only ticket people if somebody complains to the city, so I probably deserved it.

Depending on where and when, sidewalks are optional for new subdivisions, and face a couple of dis-incentives: 1) You pay if the sidewalk in front of your house has to be repaired. 2) You have to shovel it.

So, there are seemingly new and nice subdivisions with no sidewalks. In addition, a lot of those neighborhoods are laid out with lots of twisty streets and cul-du-sacs that make it hard to get through by bike or on foot, so that bike commuters have to ride on the busy main roads.

Never lived in American suburbia, so I never though ot this: the cul-de-sacs are made so that a bike or even a pedestrian can not get through?

Over here (Finland), it is very common that a road is cul-de-sac for motor vehicles but you can get through riding bike or on foot.

There is also a common traffic sign to indicate this, for instance here in my neighbourhood:

https://www.google.fi/maps/@60.2285087,24.7129127,3a,15y,347...

The top sign indicates "no parking zone", i.e. you cannot park at curb unless it is marked as a parking space. The next sign is 30 km/h area (maximum speed limit in the area, no need to put a separate speed limit sign on each street) The bottom one indicates that the road splits to cul-de-sacs for motor vehicles on left and right, but you can get through by bike. (Here it is misleading, you can get through also to the left, not just to the right).

Over here (Finland), it is very common that a road is cul-de-sac for motor vehicles but you can get through riding bike or on foot.

This is common in USA if the cul-de-sac is a retrofit to a previously-through road. (If not by design, then in the breach, because someone has knocked a hole in the fence and it hasn't been fixed.) However, in the sorts of housing-only developments that have culs-de-sac designed in, the typical cul-de-sac is completely surrounded by houses with yards backed by other houses with yards, so there's nowhere to go.

Personally, I've never lived in such an environment, and when I've visited those who do it has driven me to distraction. You can't get anywhere directly! My impression is that this sort of development design is growing less popular, although maybe it's just that I more rarely visit people who live in such places.

Right, so the point is that property owners do not want to have anyone walk by on foot, because they fear they could be trespassers or loiterers that are not welcome in the area? And this is why a cul-de-sac stops not only cars but everything, with a fence.

But then that also stops e.g. children from moving about on their own in the neighbourhood.

It's kind of ironic, but regular foot traffic is a bigger deterrent to crime than isolation. After all, no one is home all the time.

Yes. A lot of newer neighborhoods are not laid out on a grid, but are designed with lots of winding streets an cul-de-sacs. Maybe it seems more pleasant that way, and it forces through traffic out onto the main roads, but does the same to bikes.

Cyclists really benefit from a "network" of alternative routes that have low traffic, and what you describe in Finland is a great idea.

Substitute the word "sidewalks" with the word "roads" in that sentence and it makes as much sense. Neighborhoods without sidewalks are places where children cannot organize their own play and rely on being chauffeured to do anything. It's one of the reasons kids grow up to be so helpless and why helicopter parenting is the norm in the US.

On the plus side nobody slips on the sidewalk!

Not at all. I grew up in a classic 1960-style neighborhood (long meandering main road loop with a lot of cul-de-sac and a few connector streets, all most all the the houses were one of a handful of basic designs, no businesses and no sidewalks. We biked all over the place, walked to friends houses (mostly cutting through other peoples yards), played impromptu games in vacant lots that hadn't been built yet, explored the wooded areas at the edges of the neighborhood. We were away from home for hours at a time, organizing what we did all on our own. No cell phones either, but we naturally gravitated back home at around sunset.

Are the roads unusable? I'm guessing not; you can clear sidewalks too - central European countries seem to use a small snowplough for the pavements (ie sidewalks), the snow is ploughed on to the road, the road plough lifts the snow to a truck and it's trucked away.

Here in the US it's typical for every house to be responsible for its own sidewalk. So everybody gets it done somehow, by hand, or with a gas powered snowblower, or they hire a service. The same people who mow lawns in the summer, clear snow in the winter. Where the land is public-owned, e.g., parks, the city brings a little machine that's the same width as the sidewalks. Its main attraction is a heated cabin for the driver.

We share a snowblower with our neighbor, but it takes a pretty good snowfall for the machine to be quicker than my shovel. The city plows the streets.

No. 90% of people get it done somehow. The failure of the other 10%, and inability to ride your bike more than ten or twenty houses of sidewalk down the line, stands as testament to concept of professionalized public infrastructure.

We don't ask people to shovel the roads.

That's true. During the winter, I ride my bike in the street. My route is 100% on "tame" neighborhood streets or dedicated bike paths. The city plows the bike paths with the same priority as main roads.

We rarely had an issue with people not having sidewalks shoveled before they left for work in the very snowy city I grew up in. Perhaps it's a YMMV situation.

Why do you bike on sidewalks?

Such plows are fairly common in larger Canadian cities with heavy snowfall as well (e.g. Toronto, Montreal).

The city of Rochester, NY also plows its sidewalks, I suspect because it would be unreasonable to expect property owners to do it themselves due to the amount of snowfall. Still, it's nice to be able to walk around in the winter. Technically, the law says property owners are still responsible for keeping the sidewalks clear, but that's mostly to encourage people to disperse salt on sidewalk ice after the city plows come by and to shovel what the plows may miss.

There are ways of dealing with snow on sidewalks. Just because they require upkeep some part of the year doesn't excuse not having any.

In my experience, driving is less safe than walking in snow. Granted I am still fairly young and fit so falling over is not a serious or life threatening concern. Road users significantly overestimate their ability to drive on difficult terrain and chances of accidents are greatly increased.

In Minneapolis, sometimes the bike paths are plowed before the roads are.

It snows in Boston and New York too.

Having tried to walk from a business hotel in Roseville Minnesota to the nearest restaurant I discovered just this - and passing motorists looked at me like I was bonkers!

Heck, you couldn't even get from the hotel to the adjacent office block without walking on the road, or cutting across scrub.

Santa Clara is only marginally better. However retrofitting cycle lanes is a much easier prospect than retrofitting sidewalks, and crossings.

I remember some very friendly people in Rohnert Park, CA. We (four middle-aged men) were on a work trip and decided to walk from the Doubletree hotel to the local Walmart, some 500 meters away, just to get some exercise after 16 hours of flight and 8 hours of meetings.

Several people driving by stopped to ask: "Do you need help? Did your car break down?".

I live in a neighborhood in Palo Alto that doesn't have sidewalks, and people here walk (and bike) all the time. The reason why it works is because many of the streets are extremely narrow, and we've worked fairly hard at making certain they aren't striped down the center. For whatever reason this seems to get motorists to drive more slowly and makes it safer for everyone.

>> For whatever reason this seems to get motorists to drive more slowly and makes it safer for everyone.

That's actually a known phenomenon. When drivers experience unusual situations (like roads without stripes down the middle), they're forced to pay much more attention to the actual act of driving.

For more, see here: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/to-make-ro...

But then, if you want to make use of these unusual situations to make people drive more slowly, and build more of them, then they come not unusual situations, and everyone gets used to them and drives normally.

Where I live (Finland), we have plenty of separate bike/pedestrian paths, so biking is overall nice, but not like Copenhagen which is a) completely flat and b) in a milder climate.

Bicyclists in Palo Alto kill pedestrians. http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/04/22/pedestrian-str...

Coconuts in Colombia kill pedestrians: http://archive.mid-day.com/news/2010/aug/280810-falling-coco...

Trucks in Palo Alto kill pedestrians http://sfbay.ca/2015/04/19/bcn57palo-alto-pedestrian-dies-in...

Drivers in Palo Alto kill pedestrians http://abc7news.com/news/driver-arrested-on-suspicion-of-fat...

Pedestrians in Palo Alto kill pedestrians http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/09/23/man-stabbed-ou...

Pedestrians in New York kill Trucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

You mean a single bicyclist in Palo Alto killed a single pedestrian, who was crossing without a crosswalk on a blind curve.

I can't find aggregate statistics for Palo Alto, but here's the 2012/2013 statistics for the New York Burroughs.

Cyclists killed 1 pedestrian (in 2013) and injured 560 pedestrians for a mortality rate of .1%.

Drivers killed 326 pedestrians and injured 24411, a mortality rate of 1.3%.

Clearly bikers are killing pedestrians and are very dangerous.

See page 2 for source:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2013-bicycle-crash...

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2012-bicycle-crash...

In Amsterdam, bikes and cars are separated from each other wherever possible. That way, bikes can ride as recklessly as they like without endangering cars.

Bikes and pedestrians are harder to separate. Pedestrians can go everywhere, and especially tourists have a tendency to not watch out when they're crossing a bike path, or even stay on the bike path for no good reason.

The worst place is behind Central Station, where a heavy flow of pedestrians from the ferries and the station has to cross a continuous flow of bikes on the bike path, while bikes from the ferries try to merge into the already chaotic traffic. We really need a bridge or tunnel to keep bikes and pedestrians separate there.

But then you'll need a separate path for everyone on roller skates.

Skating isn't a big form of transport here. Most skaters are recreational and stick to the parks. Though I did encounter a (remarkably fast!) skater in bike traffic recently, and people always give them a bit more space. (Actually it was a mixed bike/pedestrian path still in a park, but bikes try to dominate it and use it as their main thoroughfare.) Bikers would probably get annoyed if skaters try to claim their extra wide space in the most crowded bike traffic, though.

  And the inhabitants think that's a good thing.

There have been moments when I could commiserate. Less shoveling.

My parents live in a 7 year old "55 and over" retirement community in the outer suburbs in Pennsylvania. A neighborhood designed entirely for old folks.. and no sidewalks at all. There are elderly pedestrians meandering along at a snails pace in middle of the streets everywhere in their neighborhood. I'm constantly worried about running them over when I visit...

The builder and the township planners made such a blunder with the neighborhood and no one seems to understand that things could have been done differently, or could even be fixed.

They also are miles from the nearest store and have no buses or transit options of any sort, so when a resident can no longer drive a car, they're simply stranded in their house. If a single widow for instance needs groceries and can't drive they're more or less screwed if someone doesn't stop by and help them out.

As someone who lives in the heart of the city I'm just baffled by how people are comfortable with this situation. It's infuriating how everyone just accepts it

There's nothing mysterious about the situation in silicon valley really.

It's about space. Wikipedia tells me Copenhagen is 86.20 km [1] and San Jose is 466.109 km [2] but naturally silicon valley is several times larger than San Jose proper. If it was possible to just rent an apartment near where one worked, that wouldn't be an issue but we know how hard that is today.

When where one's work is twenty miles or more from one's living space, one just isn't going to easily bike to work. There could be bike path with wind-tunnel and it still wouldn't be possible [edit: for most, average office workers, certainly possible for some].

Silicon Valley's permanent, festering housing crisis, now spilling to San Francisco, is pretty much the culprit for the unliveability and unbikeability problem. How could it not be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose,_California

Was with you until that "twenty miles ... still wouldn't be possible." I ride my bike 20 miles to work frequently; its nowhere near as flat as Silicon Valley (Iowa is hilly). And the weather is often worse here.

So maybe readjust 'not possible' up a notch or two?

Really, I meant say "no easy", in fact I did:

When where one's work is twenty miles or more from one's living space, one just isn't going to easily bike to work.

I slipped and said "not possible" later so jeesh, sorry. I meant "It's possible for it to be easy enough for the average person". I've commuted further distances myself but the average worker isn't going to do it. Sad but there you are.

True its a stretch. But compare an hour on a bike, vs an hour in traffic. It might be a wash.

As for the effort, the average person can do a whole lot more than they think. I ride with 20,000 Iowans in a weeklong 400+ mile ride every summer - aged 6 to 60 - 40 to 100 miles per day, pretty average people.

The only thing that makes the average person unable to do this is, they think they can't.

"As for the effort, the average person can do a whole lot more than they think."

Sure, the average person can do a lot more than they think but most average people won't do that lot-more unless something fairly extreme compels them and that doesn't especially likely in any future moving forward.

"But compare an hour on a bike, vs an hour in traffic. It might be a wash."

One get fit enough to ride two hours/day on a bike everyday, sure. But I don't think one can get fit enough to not be tired after the experience. I recall years ago talking to a professional bike messenger friend - I asked her if she got used to it after a while. Her answer was that she got used to the experience but that she just always felt tired.

Most people wouldn't want that because it would mean life after work wouldn't exist.

It might be 20 miles by car, however most places in SV are only a few miles from Caltrain. Just take your bike onboard.

This is why Caltrain has the highest (I think) number of bikes onboard of a commuter rail line in the nation.

However, please do note that the Copenhagen city proper is geographically just a minor part of the metro area, and only about quarter of the metro population. The metro area is, as mentioned in your link, 2,778.3 km2, five times that of San Jose proper.

If you're going to compare metro areas, you should do the same for San Jose: 6,979 km2.

This is in fact even larger than the Randstad (4,300 km2). I'm not going to bike from Amsterdam to Rotterdam (in fact, I find that too far to commute no matter what method of transport I have). If the housing problem in Silicon Valley is really so big that it's hard to find a house within 10 km of the office, I can see how it's going to be hard to get people to commute by bike.

Yes, of course, but anyway Copenhagen is not really quite as dense as the small area of the city proper would lead you to believe.

(Looking at Wikipedia, the San Jose metro area actually seems to be very concentrated in the city proper, with almost 1.9 million in the city proper and only 56 000 outside it. )

Is it? I thought all of Silicon Valley was pretty densely populated, and that's more than just San Jose.

In any case, biking works best when distances aren't too big. Amsterdam is probably the bike capital of the world (more bikes than people), but biking from a suburb on one side of the city to one on the opposite side is pretty rare (except for the more dedicated biker, obviously). You're a fool if you take a car into the city center (many people don't even own one), but around the edges, cars work fine.

Although my wife, who is not a dedicated cyclist at all and usually commutes by car, has had a time where she regularly cycled 17 km to Schiphol.

Wikipedia is wrong if it means the effective metropolitan area surrounding San Jose is just San Jose. People live and work spread across the entire Silicon Valley area, that is indeed why that term is used most often for the region. Since housing is expensive and difficult to find and expensive, workers wind-up spread out at close to the maximum drivable to distance, putting them at far from an easily bikable distance.

"Geographically, Silicon Valley is generally thought to encompass all of the Santa Clara Valley, the southern half of the Peninsula and southern portions of the East Bay."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley

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