Oh man, am I glad to be European. Walk to the bar, cycle to work, take the tram if it rains. American cities built for cars are just so sad.
That's less car-centric than America for sure. But Americans have a misguided notion that all Europeans live in quaint pedestrian-friendly town centers that look like Prague or Copenhagen. Mostly because we tend to spend our European tourism in the dense centers of the capital cities.
[1] https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/increase-paris-cyc...
My worst pedestrian experience was Salt Lake City, where the footpaths stopped suddenly and without apparent reason in the middle of the residential area I was staying in. I had to backtrack and guess a lot.
Sure, the sudden absence of footpaths can happen in Europe too (I’ve seen it in Λάρνακα, Luxembourg, and Hochstadt, though never to the same extent), but for the most part even tiny villages in Europe have better public transport and pedestrian access than the various American cities I’ve visited.
In the US there are many places where the next supermarket is twenty minutes by car away and literally impossible to reach on a bike without getting run over. In contrast, even in the smallest town I've lived in, with just 20k residents, there where three supermarkets and two specialty stores in walking distance.
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I enjoy an hours walk with the dog daily, solid lifting program, about 20 miles a week of cardio, and a vegan diet.
Doctor thinks I'm the picture of health.
This is a not a living style that we can afford for everyone. Great that you enjoy it, but enabling it for everyone is simply unsustainable.
Right now you are offloading it's cost externalities elsewhere:
Cost on Your Health: More driving = less walking = decreased life-expectancy. More driving = more air polution = decreased life-expectancy
Cost on the planet: More driving = more greenhouse gases = global warming.
If you want to learn more: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/812199726/why-sprawl-could-be... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reducing-street-s...
More driving does not exclude a healthy walking routine.
More driving != equal more net green house gases. Yes the ICE generates greenhouse gases, but check out the carbon footprint of a battery supply chain for an EV sometime, or that of the MTA, MBTA, logistical supply chain of supplying the ENTIRE nyc 5 boroughs.
Bottom line, I'm willing to engage a deepdive discussion with critical eyes, not endure a superficial antisuburbia smear campaign while being namecalled.
Walking More driving means your natural walking related to commute and errands goes to 0. There is a reason american states have a huge obesity problem compared to lots of european countries.
Cars Are you seriously comparing the carbon footprints of a personal car compared to the metro?
More driving means more green house gases. This is not about what vehicle you use, it's about the fact that urban sprawl requires a vehicle for even the most basic errands. This is unsustainable.
Not to mention do realize people can live in cities where they walk to work, walk to the grocery store, walk to gym, and walk to a restaurant?
I really fail to see this as a reasonable expectation of dialogue and exchange of ideas if you're so cemented in your views.
That is quite a generalization. Some suburbs can be like that, with houses for miles on end and nothing else. That seems like the exception though.
Plenty of suburban neighborhoods have walkable commerce nearby. I have never lived in a city. And yet, I've never lived in a place where I couldn't walk to at least a supermarket. Currently I live in very suburban (borderline rural, really) area and nearly everything I could need is within a 15 minute walk (multiple supermarkets & pharmacies, hardware store, clothing, restaurants, movies, medical, etc.)
The no.1 factor is single-use zoning. This means people live in a certain zone, and commerce happens in another zone. No amount of personal anecdotes will affect this fact.
One could say "There are suburban areas where every trip requires a car" and that's a true statement. The generalization is not a true statement.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...
Beauty is in the eye if the beholder
(You could try to find people who moved from one place to another, and ideally limit it to those whose reason for moving had nothing to do with their preferences... and poll them. I don't know how possible that is. It likely also makes a difference at what age they moved.)
I occasionally wish I had a car (say for a weekend getaway) but it’s rare enough that I’m happy to live with rentals for those occasions.
I have 3 major grocery stores (Safeway, QFC, Target) within 15 minutes walking from me. And at least 20 bars and restaurants within the same distance. Public transportation to downtown takes about 35 minutes, which isn't great, but it's okay. Uber works well if you need to be faster.
Wedgewood, Fremont, Queen Anne & Freelard all successfully resisted the mass redevelopment that Ballard has seen, compared to 15 years ago Ballard looks completely different while the aforementioned neighborhoods have not seen that same level of mass demolition.
I really don't mind the short jaunt to the Fremont bridge, but it does add some extra travel time. Never ride on the Ballard bridge; it just doesn't have anywhere for bikes to be. The sidewalks are too narrow and unprotected from traffic, and the primary traffic lanes are going 40+ mph. That whole thing needs to be replaced for the 21st century, although there may be some resistance as it's a nationally registered "historic place."
Depending on where you live and where you're going, crossing the locks is a great way to bike downtown. Also sometimes the Fremont bridge route is going to be shorter. I hate riding my bike over the Ballard bridge, but I'm not sure I'd call riding on it "risking death".
Bike access within Ballard is pretty great since the hills are a bit more manageable than in other parts of the city.
All that aside, it's pretty easy to live in Seattle and not have a car, being able to walk to groceries, bars, restaurants, parks, etc.
I would highly encourage avoiding the Ballard Bridge. IMO it's very dangerous.
Walkability in Ballard is pretty good. We're within 15 minutes walking distance of QFC and the bar/restaurant area south of Market. That said, I prefer to drive to the grocery store so I can go infrequently and buy more at once.
LA has no unified bus system. It has multiple ones and its super confusing. Each bus makes a stop nearly every minute, making every ride impossibly long. Lack of bus lanes make for shitty traffic stuck trips as well.
It's the same in London. That's why for longer rides you take the tube. Buses are for shorter rider or from getting from/to tube station.
Let’s us Stockholm as an example: 100 metro stations and 170+ suburban rail stations, 60 light rail stops, on 2.3 million people in 6,519.3 km2 (2,517.1 sq mi).
San Francisco (Nine county, Bay Area), 33 metro stations, plus 87 additional metro stops about 200 station (ACE, Amtrak, BART, Caltrain, SMART, and VTA), on 7.75 million people, In 6,966 sq mi (18,040 km2).
The station density is nearly 2.5 times higher and on less than half the population.
Data from Wikipedia.
San Francisco is only about 7 miles wide. You can walk from one side of the city to the other in about 2 hours. When I lived there, I walked almost everywhere. The only times I did otherwise was when it was a really long walk (over 45 minutes), or I needed to be somewhere fast. The bus will not get you anywhere fast, it's only about twice as fast as walking. I think that's why a lot of people use Lyft. The buses are actually quite nice inside imo, they're just slow. Plus the stigma that only poor people ride the bus.
The reason is usually because americans seem to assume that everyone is an american, so it is to clarify that I have a non-american perspective.