I have two friends that died while cycling. It is kind of crazy how much people put the blinders on when looking at cars. I really wish more people could envision a different future than a car-centric one.
https://www.duic.nl/wonen/plannen-voor-merwede-bekend-het-wo...
Summary from @bicycledutch
"Utrecht, Netherlands, plans a new neighbourhood with 4 to 6K homes for 12,000 people where everything is within walking and cycling distance (including the Central Railway Station). The design deliberately makes cars unnecessary."
This is one of the top reasons my wife and I tried to build our life to get EU citizenship, and why I tell anyone from my former country who wants a better life about the Dutch American Friendship Treaty, letting any American who can employ themselves move to the Netherlands.
You can drive a car in Utrecht when you really need to, but most of the time it’s better and more convenient to walk or cycle.
It is difficult to do this type of development in the United States without a much higher degree of centralized planning and/or restrictive zoning. In the US, freedom afforded to property owners / zoning especially in more rural areas, not to mention an immense amount of open, "unused" land that makes this kind of car-centric development the norm. I imagine it's also much "cheaper" for the developer (if we ignore the cost to the commons)
Which is exactly the reason nothing is getting better, FYI.
If it's worth doing, it worth fighting tooth and nail for.
You're missing a link in the logical chain. It's hard to build transit/bike lanes in America because that requires central coordination, and Americans don't like central coordination. That's why Americans love cars so much. Driving and road construction is extremely decentralized. Few towns are sophisticated enough to build rail, but pretty much every place can pave a road, and connect it to roads to neighboring jurisdictions without too much planning. So as long as Americans prefer their decentralized system, advocating for things like transit that inherently require a level of central planning is swimming upstream against the culture.
All of those things are true because people gave up trying when it got hard to fix/improve them.
If you look at the most well-off subgroup of Americans, Asian Americans, you see some remarkable statistics. Asian Americans live an average of 87.1 years, longer than people in overwhelmingly Asian countries like Japan and Singapore. Asian American kids have higher scores on the PISA test than kids in any European country, or Japan or Korea. (Just below Singapore.) Median household income for Asian Americans is double that of Japan or Singapore. Asians don't have access to a special version of America. They participate in the same health care system, the same public schools, etc. They're just disproportionately represented in the "somewhat above median" category, and America does really well for those people.
The infrastructure and public transit sucks. Which is fine. Americans don't want public transit. They want to drive everywhere. That's why we invented the drive through. The pervasiveness of driving is why Americans have some of the shortest commutes in the OECD: https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commu....
Affordable housing may be an issue in some American cities. But most Americans don't live there. Most live in suburbs/exurbs, or satellite cities. American mortgages as a percentage of income are on the lower side for the developed world: https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-inc.... 15% in the United States, versus 23% in say France and 17% in Germany. Rents are about in the middle, but a much smaller percentage of Americans rent than Europeans.
Despite paying similar amounts on housing, we have truly massive houses in the United States: http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm. The average new house is 2,200 square feet, versus 1,200-1,300 in France or Germany.
We eat 40% more meat per capita than the EU: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/these-countries-eat-t.... We have the second-highest per-capita consumption expenditures in the world, a hair under Hong Kong, 33% higher than Switzerland, and 86% more than France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household....
Are they happy with it, compared to being uninsured, or are they happy with it compared to what it should be?
Are they happy with it because they haven't yet had non-trivial interactions with the healthcare system, and have not yet gone through that layer of billing hell?
> The infrastructure and public transit sucks. Which is fine. Americans don't want public transit. They want to drive everywhere.
Likewise, do they 'want' to drive everywhere because they've not built working public transit? Or do they actually want to spend $4-8,000 a year on buying, maintaining, fueling, insuring, licensing, and storing a car (Times two for two-car households)?
Inferring 'wants' from polls and statistics is incredibly easy to taint with whatever bias the poller brings to the table.
> Overall, how would you rate -- [the quality of healthcare you receive/your healthcare coverage] -- as excellent, good, only fair or poor?
That's quite obviously asking people to rate it on an objective scale, in comparison to some perception of "what it should be." Interestingly, half of privately insured were even "satisfied" with the cost.
> Likewise, do the want to drive everywhere because they've not built working public transit? Or do they actually want to spend $4-8,000 a year on buying, maintaining, fueling, insuring, licensing, and storing a car (Times two for two-car households)?
People like the idea of transit in the abstract, but tend to reject it when faced with balancing their other wants and needs. There's a handful of cities with decent transit (New York, Chicago, Boston, DC), but ridership peaked in all of them in 2014-2015: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/seattle-area-transit-ridership.... The only major city where ridership is growing is Seattle, which has the benefit of starting from a very low baseline.
Moreover, New York, Chicago, and Boston are all losing domestic residents to other cities: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/04/2-very-different-migr.... DC is growing, but Metrorail ridership has been declining for a decade, ever since Uber/Lyft became available. Most domestic migration is to cities with poor or non-existent transit, like Dallas, Phoenix, etc.
> People like the idea of transit in the abstract, but tend to reject it when faced with balancing their other wants and needs.
For the most part, they just don't want to ride in a shaky, loud bus that comes every 30 minutes. It's not a matter of balancing wants and needs, it's a matter of taking the least bad out of two bad choices. Expressing the desire for transit, but not using transit probably means that people want transit... To be better, before they use it.
The amount of money that is poured into transit, though, is a pittance compared to the amount of money that is poured into private automobiles, which is a large part of why the transit option sucks as much as it does.
The reason for why large, expensive metro areas are losing small numbers of people is probably not 'people want to drive'. It's 'the cost of living is too damn high'. And it's not the buses or the subway that's driving up the cost of living, it's land speculation, foreign buyers, and rock-bottom interest rates on 25-year mortgages.
And, again, people are horrible at actually measuring how much their lifestyle choices cost them. They whoop and holler at the lower rent from living in suburban sprawl, but don't notice that the various costs of car ownership are nickel-and-diming them, and their municipality's budget.
They also don't make the obvious connection that driving everywhere and never walking is what's causing them all to get so fat.
On average, people who rate themselves as in "good" or "very good" health still spend $4,000-$6,000 on healthcare annually. Younger folks have kids, and deal with childbirth, ear infections, allergies, ear piercings getting infected, broken bones, etc. They also have routine illness (I had a bad cough this year, my wife had a sinus infection a few years ago, I had surgery for a deviated septum in high school). 78% of people 30-49 report that their healthcare is "excellent" or "good." 70% of folks 55-64 have at least one chronic condition: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/health_policy/adult_chronic_conditi.... 80% of those folks, who are too young to qualify for Medicare, report receiving "excellent" or "good" healthcare.
American healthcare is really quite good if you've got employer-provided insurance. Going back to remarkable asian american facts: Japanese Americans have an infant mortality rate 33% lower than Japanese in Japan, and also live several years longer. They have Kaiser Permanente or Aetna, just like everyone else. It's also extremely convenient, especially in the suburbs. I walked into an urgent care for my kid's ear infection yesterday, and made a next-day appointment with his pediatrician for a follow-up. We also saw the pediatrician to get our daughter's ears pierced, and visit her regularly to remind our daughter to eat vegetables before dinner. When I had a cough earlier this year, I booked a same-day appointment with an app.
> The amount of money that is poured into transit, though, is a pittance compared to the amount of money that is poured into private automobiles, which is a large part of why the transit option sucks as much as it does.
This is why I used Chicago, Boston, New York, and DC as examples. These are well-funded systems. D.C.'s Metrorail has a bigger budget than Stockholm's subway, despite having half the ridership.
> The reason for why large, expensive metro areas are losing small numbers of people is probably not 'people want to drive'.
People don't "want to drive." They want low taxes, flexibility, and big, affordable houses. The average new house in the United States is 2,400 square feet and costs $275,000 ($115 per square foot). There is no urban area in the developed world where you can buy condos that large near transit for that kind of price. I bought a house on the water in suburban Maryland for $175/square foot. To get that kind of price in a city, I'd have to go to western China.
I think a lot of it is that most of them haven't ever been outside their own country, and seen what it's like in other places. You're right about "billing hell", and of course that we get much worse outcomes for more money than anyone in the world, but if you say this to most of these "happy" Americans, they'll say something about long waits in Canada, or worse, "death panels".
Having experienced NL bike culture first hand a great deal I think it’s awesome, but it’d also be frustrating to have a bunch of rules imposed on new development at a state or federal level. This stuff has got to start locally.
Agreed - you should fight for that and support it, especially in your local community.
Most of the people in the US do not live in rural areas. They either live in urban areas that are already heavily subjected to zoning laws [1], or in suburban areas which are... Also heavily subjected to zoning laws.
The US is unique in that it adds another level of centralized planning + restrictive zoning called an "HOA" - but that level exists in addition to the municipal one.
Also, car-centric development is not cheaper for the developer. The more units they can cram onto their plot of land, the more money they stand to make. Parking requirements, and offsets, and low density zoning restrictions cut into their profits.
[1] Yes, you can name a few major cities that don't have zoning laws, but that does not cover the majority of the US.
About the density, everything is just closer together over here. Public transportation is well-built and trains work great for anything further than that. Cars are mandatory by design in the US.
It's not "just" close together like it happened. The US has made it illegal to build human-scale dense neighbourhoods for 50% years.
Parking minimums, density restrictions, street width minimums, LOS (level of service) planning, etc. all combined to make the US an unwalkable, uncyclable, unenjoyable place to be a human. As a reward the US gets about 35,000 people a year killed by drivers, and many many more indirectly through lung disease, cancer, obesity, etc. as well as parents terrified to let their kids ride a bike.
Lots of free parking though.
This is a fantastic series illustrating the effect of urban design policy in the US
Development gets done in whatever way makes best use of the available resources at the time. The overwhelming majority of the cities and towns in Europe were built out before transportation over land was slow and expensive so you had dense town centers surrounded by farmland and dense cities surrounded by even more farmland so to avoid spending precious resources on transportation. The practical limits on transportation constrained development.
By comparison huge portions of the US were built out after the advent the automobile (often tearing down and building over places that were previously more densely developed) and being geographically large there was always more land to build into so you got sprawling development because overcoming distance was fast and cheap.
The way we have more or less not built any infrastructure since the 20th century despite increasing population (and increasing clustering of the population in urban areas) is starting to catch up and incentive density but it will take time and policy sticks/carrots if you want it to happen faster than it organically would.
So yes, Europe to a large extent did win the lottery in that regard though they didn't know it at the time.
Can you explain what you mean? I’m having trouble squaring that with my model of developers, which is that they try to make money, not make efficient use of resources.
Are you talking about Europe specifically? I live in America.
There was also the General Motors street car conspiracy[2], which saw car companies buy up privatized public transit only to run it into the ground.
The fight against this future being imposed is also fascinating reading, particularly the work of Jane Jacobs[3]. She correctly saw past the hyperbole to the unfortunate consequences, fought against the vision but lost.
The reason not much infrastructure is being built these days is simply that cities are running out of money and credit. Every road built comes with a price tag for building it, and an ongoing price tag for maintaining it. The building price was so often done on credit (bonds), but the maintenance price is usually not considered. Given that roads bring in basically zero income for a city, every road built comes with an obligation for the city but no way to pay for it. In the past credit was issued on the assumption that future growth would somehow provide some payback, but after 50 years cities have hit the growth limits and still not seen any payback. Strong Towns[4] is an excellent book on the subject.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... [3] https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-... [4] https://www.strongtowns.org/book
She was indeed against highways going through the middle of cities and in favor of walkability and mixed use.
At the same time, she also opposed rationalist urban planning like Le Corbusier's clusters of towering skyscrapers. She would likely not have favored the mass building of vertical housing that many of the same people who oppose cars want in order to reduce housing prices.
My (limited) opinion, is that auto-centric opponents want dense, walkable, cyclable cities. That doesn't imply towering skyscrapers, six stories of apartments with mixed retail, office, and light industry are sufficient. That should provide enough density to make public transit a viable option, if road space is reclaimed from cars.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/16/urban-living-...
(But you'll find no shortage of people arguing for basically bulldozing the Mission and building a bunch of high-rises.)
The other has to be more organic but takes a lot of time and tends to generate a lot of resistance if 2-story zoning is turned into 6-story zoning.
This is the heart of what needs to change in the US. World-class bike cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen were just as car-centric in the 20th century as any American city. It took decades of deliberate, systematic change to make what they are today. This is just as possible for American cities as it was for their foreign peers.
>everything is just closer together over here
To this point, human-scale cities with fewer cars directly enable closer and denser habitats. Cars are a direct impediment to more livable cities. If you remove the cars, all of a sudden you have more space for people.
Would you want someone to tell you that your choices are limited because your city prefers "human scale" instead of whatever you prefer on the market that is totally doable?
While I acknowledge that in the United States the culture is extremely car-centric and that must change, some of that is history / culture / lobbying but a lot of it is because not all of us have the good fortune to be Dutch. As a result, housing choices and preferences are much different.
Making a more bike-centric culture starts with a number of things, not just bike lanes and denser cities. The city as a whole has to want it, first, and then continue to prove out the concept that bike-friendly can still be business friendly. (See: the old saw that "if my people can't park they won't shop here")
Note: I'm in favor of denser cities, but I also acknowledge that it removes choice and it's not just my opinion that matters. Also, I can't afford a house in Amsterdam.
To give just one example of these many, many, many rules, I just spoke with an architect about changes to my house and one of the rules is I need at least 2.4 metres of basically dead space where I meet the road because it's assumed I'll be sitting there in a car looking left and right before exiting. Saying "nah I ride a bike so I'm going to put a hedge up there" isn't an option.
"house with a yard, a few minutes drive from a walkable downtown,"
Problem is that every time you drive to that downtown you make it a bit less walkable by virtue of bringing your car. In effect, everyone there is paying a little bit of their quality of life for your parking. Sometimes, this makes sense (having a place for ambulances is good), but sometimes you end up with a tragedy of the commons.
You get sick and need a taxi to the doctors office? Need it. Tumble off the bike and break or sprain something, and you rent a car while you recover? Need it.
Do you plan on selling the house, and the buyer is a tradesman who need a truck to do landscaping or carry his tools?
You're not going to cycle always and forever. A lot of people here one day are going to get old enough where cycling is a chore, even with a ebike. At that point the hedge becomes an expensive nuisance.
Relevant: https://twitter.com/mlroach/status/1216078001709780992
"News article: can bicycles replace many car trips for some people?
That person: nobody can ever replace any car trips with a bicycle trip because I drive cross country every week with 14 hockey players and their equipment."
Those are two very different things.
Housing with yards, by and large, makes the city sprawl more, which takes away farmland.
If you want to dwell in a single family unit - that's great! You should absolutely be able to.
But other people ought to be able to be free to make different choices.
Obviously in the US more and more acreage around urban areas is being bought up and turned into housing stock and some of these areas can be quite far away, far apart, and not subject to as many zoning restrictions especially where population is already somewhat spread out (thinking of SW Ohio here, particularly)
It's not a hard boundary, and can grow as the city demonstrates a need.
The reason this isn't done is purely because of stupid zoning laws and NIMBYism.
I think the solution is pretty simple: make a state law that bans municipalities from making any zoning laws at all, and only allows the state government to control zoning.
-Cheap high-speed Internet-> It won't work in America because...
-Universal health care -> It won't work in America because...
- Mandatory vacations -> It won't work in America because...
The form of "American exceptionalism" that seems to be most common today is one of "we are uniquely important and many rules don't apply to us in the same way they would others, because of [various usually underlying differences like "freedom"/"democracy"/religious dominion/destiny]."
The difference between "we're going to reach the moon because we're special" and "let's spin up this massive program to do it in response to discovering that another nation might be dangerously ahead of us."
That last bit of logical reasoning is, in my opinion, not supportable. Let's look at the things the government already does in America in compare it to what the government does in Germany. Germany spends $11,000 per student on public education. We spend $12,800 per student. But our schools are much worse. Transit is the same story. Germany spent $250 million per kilometer to build the U55 line in Berlin. New York spent $2.2 billion per kilometer for its most recent line: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne....
So yes, America is exceptional. For whatever reason, we are uniquely bad at running public services. Contrary to popular belief, its not because of "lack of funding." (The American government does less, but in the areas it does something, like education, it usually spends more to get worse results.)
Americans understand this intuitively, and that's why they say "it won't work in America because." They may not be able to pull up statistics about how their municipal water/sewage system is poisoning kids and destroying the environment, but they perceive that their government just doesn't do a good job. When polled, they say so. Since 2006, 80-90% of people polled reported being "frustrated" or "angry" at their government: https://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/2-general-opinions-a.... Even in 1997, 2010, and 2015, all during Democratic administrations, only 1/3 of Democrats thought that the federal government did an "excellent" or "good" job running its programs. For the population as a whole in 2015, 33% said it did a "poor" job, and just 20% said it does an "excellent" or "good" job. As of 2015, 53% would rather have a "smaller government" offering "fewer services" than a "bigger government" offering "more services."
The most remarkable statistic is for millennials: https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/db/140488628178.... When you ask millenials whether they want a smaller government providing fewer services (with low taxes) versus a larger government providing more services (with high taxes), 57% want a smaller government with fewer services, while just 41% want a larger government with more services. Basically, when you ask millenials--the most pro-government demographic there is--whether they want more of a European-style government, they say "no" with a 3:2 margin.
Yes, America is exceptional. Americans hate taxes, hate their government, and frankly, on various measures, their government isn't very good at what it does.
Given how many problems Italy has had over the years with massive corruption, it's really a rational decision.
It's also super-windy. Places that have massively adopted cycling rarely have the best environmental conditions for it. Minneapolis, for example, has some of the highest bike commuting numbers in the U.S., despite it's high snowfall and frigid temperatures. We're pretty good at making excuses, and "grass is greener"-ing places that make it work.
> ... very dense city
Chicken/egg scenario here. U.S. cities are sprawling because cars both require it and make it possible.
PS it's like a different planet riding you bike around in those temperatures!
https://ecourbanhub.com/amsterdam-city-center-eliminating- parking-spaces-11200-dijksma/
My 6-year-old and I bike 4km (2.5 miles) to school every morning, 75% on dedicated bike lane. We cross 10 roads and have right-of-way at most crossings anyways. I have no safety concerns and my kid is super fit!