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Comment by grardb | Hacker News Reader

This is a common viewpoint in the US, mostly because we're brought up not knowing alternatives.

It might be worthwhile to check out how cities are planned elsewhere. My wife and I recently moved to the Netherlands because we think the way they do things is much better in this regard. I would highly recommend checking out the Not Just Bikes YouTube Channel, as well as Bicycle Dutch.

Here are some videos that might be of interest to you:

- Cycling with babies and toddlers in The Netherlands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ)

- Why We Won't Raise Our Kids in Suburbia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98)

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I am not from US. I also grew up without cars and without tap water even. But it circumstances were different. For one - my parents worked 500 meters away from our home, second - my grandmother lived nearby so I didn't have to go to kindergarten, and third when I started going to school it was close enough to reach by walking.

After I started my family and moved out to a bigger city, all of these things changed. Your parents cannot help with the children because they are in another city. For me and my wife it takes about an hour both to reach our jobs. And the kindergarten we were taking our kids to was about 30 minutes (by car) away. The ones that are near our house or near our work-places had 3-year waiting lines.

And then there are winters and heavy rains. And you might have multiple children all of whom need to be taken someplace in the morning. It's just not realistic to bike, unless you somehow have everything nearby.

> And then there are winters and heavy rains. And you might have multiple children all of whom need to be taken someplace in the morning. It's just not realistic to bike, unless you somehow have everything nearby.

This depends on the country planning. In at least some European countries, the state guarantees enrollment to kindergardens/schools close to the family residence.

I actually wonder how cities (countries) that don't make such guarantee (and are not car-centered like the US) can actually survive. Assuming that all the families with multiple children use the car during winter in the morning (you've described it as a necessity), that would make the city traffic completely stuck. I don't doubt that this may be the reality in those circumstances.

I remember similar descriptions about cities like Rome, where people use the car comparatively more than other European cities. Indeed, traffic in Rome is hell, and ultimately, it boils down to insufficient city infrastructure/planning (the official take is that they can't build underground lines due to ruins), so even willing citizens have very little wiggle room.

Yes, unfortunately it takes much more than just designing a car-free village. You need good infra like public transport, more and smaller schools and kindergartens, etc. But it absolutely exists in Europe.

I live 4 km from work and take a bike most of the year, otherwise it would be the tram or maybe even a walk if time permits. I don't have kids but usually the next elementary school is a 15 minute walk tops, there is one across the street for me actually. Kindergartens are even more ubiquitous. This is a city of ~250k. So obviously, you don't just transform an existing city into this by banning cars. And there are plenty of car-first cities in Europe still. Living in the countryside without a car is certainly very inconvenient.

Also, if the health system in the US is really as bad as it always appears to us, having good coverage of family practitioners might be off the table, and I'd certainly feel uncomfortable with the hospital being an hour away if I had toddlers around, and an ambulance either taking forever to arrive or being prohibitively expensive.

Pretty key point right here: it takes a lot of infrastructure spending over a long time to build a city. Can't just snap your fingers and change how that money got spent.

Plenty of the pedestrian-friendly cities with good trains and all got built up during times when there weren't any automobiles.

They're nice to look at and great to live in. But it's not possible to transform Salt Lake city or San Antonio into New York City with the snap of a finger. Takes capital, takes time, and people need to live their lives in the meanwhile.

Transit around here is good in some bits, bad in others. House prices are about double, maybe more, if the house is walking distance to good transit. And transit isn't free. Better economics to own an inexpensive car and drive it. For a lot of people, money's tight and need to put food on the table for the family.

> Pretty key point right here: it takes a lot of infrastructure spending over a long time to build a city. Can't just snap your fingers and change how that money got spent.

Your not wrong, it’s take the Neatherlands 30-50 years to transition from a car centric culture that would make even an American blush, to the cycle centric one they have today.

But as with trees, the best time plant one was ten years ago, the second best time is now. If we keep using the excuse that you can’t build people friendly infrastructure, because there’s no other people friendly infrastructure for it to work with. Then you’ll never build people friendly infrastructure, and you’ll be forever stuck in a car dominated hell scape, where a 30 min drive to do anything is an inescapable reality.

As someone who lives in a major city in the US with a dense walkable city center, the health care system in cities is frequently a mess of bureaucracy and completely overwhelmed by demand.

The suburbs (not rural though) have much more accessible… everything really. Go to a Target (a “basically anything that’s not food but also some food” store) in an inner city and they’ll either be out of half the things you need or simply not stock them at all. Suburban stores are fully stocked and prices are lower, with larger sizes available.

The same dynamic exists in healthcare to the point if I actually have real healthcare needs, I go out to the suburbs. I went to the ER in the city one time because I had cut myself pretty badly while cooking. The person who was stitching me up had to stop halfway through to rush and deal with 3 gunshot victims who had all come in at the same time. I sat there with a bleeding, half-stitched hand for 2 hours until they could get someone else.

Much of this was driven historically by racism, redlining and white flight, but it still doesn’t change the fact that health care in cities is more expensive, significantly more burdened and way more of a bureaucratic machine.

We have school and kindergarten by walk. The work is doable by walk if you have tons of time, but normally we use public transport.

These things are doable in cities, the city however have to be build to allow it.

Where I come from, big city etc. there seems to be not much time advantage of taking a car vs. taking a bike. After all a bike is very easy to park close to your destination and it's not affected as much by traffic jam (due to rudimentary cycling infrastructure and the ability to use side streets that are too narrow for rush hour drivers to consider).

WRT child transport: child transport bikes are seeing a rising adoption here, so it is feasible to bike to work and drop of your kid on the way. Kids will stay dry below the bike's rain cover, though of course the parent who cycles will need some upgrade to his clothing compared to what's needed when going by car (finding cloth that is both rain-tight but doesn't cause sweating takes some experimentation).

If you want to look at the spectrum of possibilities, have a look at e.g.

https://www.babboe.com/

https://www.bakfiets.nl/

https://www.urbanarrow.com/

http://www.nihola.com/home.html

https://yubabikes.com/

(just enumerating what bikes I see on a regular basis, this list would go on and on)

PS: you may also want to factor in the time spent on maintenance and bureaucracy (dealing with car insurance etc) and the extra monetary effort involved with owning a car vs owning a bike.

I checked out the second link and this is IMHO an interesting and thoughtful YouTube channel. These are not words that I co-locate often.

The linked video discusses the deep effect that urban planning can have sociologically; e.g. if a neighbourhood isn't walkable, kids don't walk, and if kids aren't out walking, kids not being out on their own can become normalised, and even lead to censure/punishment for children's independence.

Which seems crazy (to me, anyway) and very much at odds w/ what we want kids to grow into, e.g. that they be independent and active.

Talk about unintended consequences.

The Netherlands also have the advantage of being completely flat.

That is true. Oslo unlike Amsterdam is not at all flat, with many having 100-200m of height to climb on their way home if going downtown for work or shopping.

However, electric bikes are changing that equation drastically. With an e-bike those climbs are not an issue at all. So there's been a good uptick in people who ride bikes here.

Of course, e-bikes are quite expensive compared to regular bikes, but compared to owning a car they're quite cheap. So for someone living in Oslo, having an e-bike and renting a car a few times for the long trips can be a very good deal.

There are other countries with cycling cultures that aren’t flat.

Sweden is very not flat, and they have plenty of extremely well used cycle infrastructure. Hell their kids cycle to school in snow.

It's debatable, though, whether riding a bike in the snow is really such a great idea.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2019.1...

> - Cycling with babies and toddlers in The Netherlands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ)

what happens when kids are 10yrs old. they prbly get their own bikes?

Heh, from what I've been able to tell, they get their own bikes much younger than that!

thats awesome. Would love to live in a city like that. Prbly not practical here in chicago with frigid winters.

edit: looks like dutch do cycle in winter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViaDwkkXzC8

That's correct. Biycle paths are very well kept. Winters in the Netherlands are pretty mild though, temperature hovers around 2-6c the whole time, and it only snows once or twice a year. The hard parts are the wind and rain.

I assume it's not practical at present, but there are places with similar weather where it is practical: https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU?t=36

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