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Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

How exactly did you get to “the cause of reckless driving is fat people who don’t walk everywhere?” Show your work.

In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance. If you live in a city this might not be obvious to you but half the country lives in the burbs or rural areas.

Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.

Separately, the US does have an obesity problem, and exercise would help, but the biggest issue by far is dietary sugar/carbohydrates.

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> In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance.

Which is because we’ve specifically built everything such that there are large distances involved which necessitate cars. You’re taking this as that natural order of things instead of a deliberate decision, which it was. We could have just built towns and cities with the right level of density instead. Even where there aren’t “large distances” involved such as the suburbs where the grocery store and doctor’s office have to be built a half mile or so away everyone has to drive because surprise surprise we’re stupid and made it so that you’re crippled and have to drive to go any distance, not just actual long distances.

> Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.

All the roads and highways are unsustainable too, more so, in fact. The difference is the government subsidized these instead of subsidizing sidewalks or more density to create the illusion of progress. Can’t be stagnating as a society if there’s a new road!

> it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable

I call bullshit.

The smallest 50 people village in the Netherlands has sidewalks. It’s not that it’s unsustainable, it’s that nobody wants to pay for it. Or that americans build too friggin big.

What about the largest 50 person village?

Indeed. It's a very strange argument - sidewalks require significantly less to sustain.

For a start, the build quality can be a lot lower - a sidewalk doesn't need to support lorries with 13t loads.

As for maintenance, the damage to them is far less, and repairing a sidewalk would usually be a small diversion rather than the drama of a road closure.

I'm not quite sure why anyone would think sidewalks are an unthinkable burden.

$350k per mile length of a 6 foot wide sidewalk. That's what people don't want to spend money on.

Where did you get that figure?

Here's Virginia's cost guidelines for roadway[1] (2000, so the numbers are surely higher now). Even at $350k/mile, sidewalk is 2/3 the cost of a paved suburban road.

1 - https://www.virginiadot.org/business/resources/gasb-roadway_...

It depends on the city/state/county you are in and the local building codes. The city I grew up in the code was to have a sidewalk in pretty much all new construction building conditions except in some very narrow ones. It was very nice. Biking/walking was easy and 'built in'. The sidewalk at my parents house I think is the original one the builder put in, in the 1940s. With a small segment replaced because tree damage. If you DIY the cost is fairly low, just a lot of work. But if you hire a contractor to do it, the cost can spiral pretty quickly. If the cost is folded into the price of the house you would not notice it much. But to add on after the fact it can be a bit of sticker shock.

In Netherlands, if you throw a stone, you will hit a house in neighboring village. Not so in US.

(European here; but I've spent some time in US. You seriously underestimate the distances in US).

His point is that our highly dispersed environment is largely of our own making. Particularly low density suburbs, where you have to drive to get milk and eggs, you have to drive to go to school, you have to drive to work. Literally nowhere to walk - if you're relatively wealthy, you might have a neighborhood pool and tennis courts.

There's no good reason these suburbs can't be more walkable, it's mostly adding sidewalks that link to other places. And possibly smaller schools (and the 4000+ pupil high schools we get are a whole different problem).

> Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.

That is complete nonsense. Sidewalks are not a significant additional expense to the road it’s on, even at a much lower level of build quality / complexity require very little maintenance as the only damage is environmental (pedestrians and cyclists do 6 or 7 orders of magnitude less damage to the surface than sedans do, per unit of distance, add 4 for a loaded truck).

"Sidewalks are not a significant additional expense"

Depends on your definition of significant and sidewalk. It does add cost, so it's not insignificant (you can observe it with confidence). For states that are already struggling with infrastructure costs, it would not be feasible (look at PA and it's bridges).

Most states or municipalities actually have codes that the sidewalk has to follow. So it it's not legally possible to build something low quality. Technically a sidewalk doesn't have to be paved at all. In many places, you have a 3-6 foot right of way on the sides of the roads - aka a sidewalk - that does not have to be paved. This can vary by state and municipality though.

>Depends on your definition of significant and sidewalk. It does add cost, so it's not insignificant (you can observe it with confidence).

What a bad-faith definition you're using here. By this definition if you reimbursed a road worker for a penny they dropped during their shift building the road it'd be a significant expense.

It seems you are making a bad-faith interpretation. If you read the rest of my comment you will see I gave an example of a state that it would not be feasible to build sidewalks for all roads given the current economic situation. Furthermore, your example of a worker being reimbursed for dropping a penny seems to be entirely fictious.

Do you have any actual data to support the idea that sidewalks for all roads are a feasible goal?

The idea of walking is foreign to a huge number of Americans, regardless of how fat/thin they might be. Try living in the suburbs and telling someone you’re going to walk an errand that’s 5 miles round-trip. You might as well tell them you’re going to Mars.

I grew up and lived in rural/suburban Florida (god-awful weather) and I never learned to drive. I walked everywhere (no sidewalks). People whose lives revolve around cars just can’t imagine a person walking longer than the distance from the parking lot to the front door.

Nearly everybody wishes they could drive less but nobody will actually drive less.

People drive to the gym to run on a treadmill. I can allow for some circumstances where this makes sense, but that's not always the case.

I don't do treadmill, but I used to run in the street and have since stopped. I mostly row now. My reasonings for treadmill vs running in the stret

- Safer than running on the street (crappy streets, ignorant drivers, etc.)

- I can concentrate on running, not on staying away from getting creamed by cars.

- They've got TV, I could get my garbage news fix (I don't read/watch news regularly)

- They've got bathrooms, running makes me shit sometimes, if I go out in the morning.

Of course, I stopped going to a gym because I do have an erg at home, and I don't really want to go to a large indoor location where people are huffing and puffing right now.

> it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable

"No way of preventing this, says person in only country where "this" happens."

Do you have evidence of this? If I'm reading the comments right, the person you're responding to called out rural areas. I believe many rural areas around the world do not have sidewalks (assuming you mean the paved kind) where there are miles between houses.

My comment was tongue-in-cheek. I don't have evidence that all countries on earth have sidewalks in all rural areas.

That said -- I was born, raised, and have spent most of my life in rural UK and it would be absolutely preposterous if those areas didn't have pavements.

It absolutely varies. I've done multiple long distance walks in the UK and I've definitely run across areas where's there's not only no sidewalk but a complete lack of shoulder between the road and a hedge or stone wall.

> Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.

What makes sidewalks expensive to maintain, relative to roads?

> the biggest issue by far is dietary sugar/carbohydrates

This is not clear. See this highly fascinating series on the obesity epidemic: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p.... Other suspects are HFCS and seed oils.

It could have to do with how they are paid for. When the sidewalks were repaired on my street, each resident received a bill, proportional to how many of the segments were in front of their house. When the road was rebuilt, the money came from Somewhere Else.

Yeah, Somewhere Else is ultimately the same place, but homeowners don't see it as personally flowing out of their own pockets.

Wow, that’s active, unbelievable, nonsense.

I must say I was not aware that people can be responsible for the maintenance of the sidewalk in front of their house if there is one. But it's quite common to have to shovel that sidewalk (or pay someone to do it)--at least in the city--and you can be fined if you don't. It's probably an easement on your property so you're responsible for it.

Yes having to keep the sidewalk traversable sounds like a possible duty as, as you note, you have an easement.

But having to pay for it directly sounds extremely counter-productive.

And even the first part is dubious really: there should be sidewalks most everywhere including non-residential locations or the like, which the city would almost certainly have to clear alongside the roadway. Surely in that case it’s more efficient and simpler to just clear everything uniformly?

The situation in most US cities is that there are neighborhoods with and without sidewalks. Some subdivisions have them, others don't. And it's not like you can readily add sidewalks after the fact, without wreaking havoc.

In my town, for the most part the neighborhoods without sidewalks also have extremely little car traffic, and pedestrians walk in the street without issue. The drivers also tend to behave themselves.

Changing anything that requires substantially raising the city budget is hard, because the state makes many of the rules for city budgets and taxes. Adding a large seasonal workforce and equipment for clearing sidewalks would be a tough nut to crack. They do clear the sidewalks around parks, schools, and the like. There's also a matter of the preferences of residents. For instance I don't want a ton of salt poured onto the sidewalks in front of my house, and am happy to keep it clear of snow. Every 3 or 4 houses, somebody has a snowblower that rarely gets used.

That's insane. I'm in Scotland and this sort of maintenance is just part of my council tax bill. Shared with everyone else in my county.

Are you part of some private community, that is able to make purchase orders on behalf of its members?

Otherwise, what you describe is not normal. The bill would be paid by whoever issued the PO. If it wasn't me, I'm not paying. If it was not on my property, then not my problem, and if it was, you have also trespassing on top.

So the only alternative that occurs to me that you are a part of some community, with common maintenance of shared property and where the bill is footed by members.

The bill is called a "special assessment." It does permit you to do the work yourself if you want, but that's much more expensive typically. Right to work on the property is called an "easement."

These measures are common in urban areas in the US.

Just adding a note that there are other easements as well. For instance the back line of my family's property grants an easement to the utilities for maintaining the electric and telecom wires.

Another way of thinking about it is that the notion of "ownership" is limited in a variety of ways. We also don't have mineral rights or control of the airspace above our house.

There is more to it than just the direct cost of the concrete.

In most cities single family neighborhood sidewalks are "owned" by the property owner, not the city. However they are an "easement" which means the property owner has no control over the property, or ability to limit access to the property but assumes all costs in maintaining, and all liabilities for injury or other city ordinances (like snow removal, grass cutting, etc) basically all the downsides of ownership with none of the upside.

for some people this makes sidewalk undesirable

HFCS is basically sugar.

Seeing sidewalks called financially unsustainable made my day.

Sidewalks are an optional extra on road building so...in his defense...you can't build a sidewalk without a road, which makes it significantly more expensive.

Only if sidewalk is really literally just a bit to the side of the road that you walk on.

As I’m not American, I don’t know if this is or isn’t how y’all use the word, but I did assume it was just the American term for a public footpath, and those don’t need to be beside a road.

e.g. the north-south paved footpath between 11 and 65 Southbrook Rd: https://goo.gl/maps/JpoTcarePZZ7Neij9 and https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/50.84552/-0.98156

And if that isn’t what being discussed here, it ought to be, because the value is in being able to get around on foot rather than specifically to duplicate the road network.

(Likewise, I don’t think it would be valid to say “ahh, but each end connects to a road”, because that’s like including the cost of the M25 in the cost of the A111).

I guess you'd have to be European to understand just how ridiculous this sounds.

(it was sarcasm, I honestly went back and forth several times about whether to add an indicator and decided it was unbecoming)

My wife and I are a one car household. On a typical day we both alt commute - I run or bike 7 miles to work and she runs/walks 3-4. We walk our daughter to and from daycare - even in the rain. These are choices we are barely able to make because we live in the near burbs of a pedestrian focused US city.

The US built infrastructure isn't just 'cheap' on pedestrian safety it is actively hostile. There are neighrborhoods that resist sidewalks for 'safety' reasons where safety means - only poor people walk and poor people are criminals. When I used to live in Phoenix Arizona, It would take me both hands to count the number of times i was stopped by police while walking because I was 'suspicious'. I would say I have a scary experience at least once a week alt commuting.

My bike lane to work goes from no bike lane to physically separated rails to trail to protected bike path to just suddenly ending and dumping me into traffic. It is ABSURD. I was once physically talked off my bike by a driver because I yelled at them for driving in the bikelane. The police who responded threatened to cite me for disorderly conduct.

I could go on.

I watch the youtube channel Not Just Bikes as a form of catharsis. I thought I had it good until I saw just how good places like the Netherlands have it.

Ha, fair enough, you got me!

I live in the Netherlands and the cycling and pedestrian infrastructure is indeed better than anywhere else I've been. Apart from maybe Denmark, I doubt there's anywhere that comes close to the Netherlands, so comparing the US to it is pretty useless.

There's still plenty to improve, and plenty is improving, to be fair. In the last few years, I've seen quite a few impressive changes in Amsterdam's cycling infrastructure, which was already amazing. Streets getting redesigned now are taking cycling very seriously.

There's also Bicycle Dutch on a similar note to Not Just Bikes, but less polished.

I think the biggest shift I have noticed in watching comparisons is not a particular single change, it is a paradigm shift.

There seems to be actual thought put into how space for moving people is, should be, and will be used. It doesn't begin with an assumption of building a road and then work from there. That change in planning assumption is enormous. I'm hoping the pandemic does something to shift the US culture of infrastructure building but I am not hopeful.

In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance

Which is 100% our own fault. We could build suburbs with walkable shopping and schools, but we don't. Hell, even in my sort-of-walkable suburb (Reston, VA) sidewalks and bike lanes are both a bit of a bodge. It's on in the last year that there's a continuous sidewalk from my house to the school complex <1 mile away (but the neighborhood was built in the early 1970s). And despite that continuous sidewalk with zero major road crossings, there's still public school bus service (which actually takes longer to get kids home than walking because of the way it loops around). But, kids and parents sit patiently at the top of the street instead of walking a few blocks.

Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.

They're less expensive than roads by an order of magnitude. The only place they aren't feasible is true rural zones. But, the vast majority of Americans live in cities or suburbs - there's no good excuse for not having sidewalks in these areas.

In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance.

That is true to an extent, but it is equally true that there are lots of areas that could be quite walkable, but aren't due to lack of infrastructure. My friend lived less than a mile from the mall, but it was impossible to walk there since it was cut off by a 4 lane road with no way for pedestrians to cross. My grandparents lived in a gated community that was literally across the road from a Walmart, but the only way to get there was to drive 1 mile up the road, turn around, and drive back.

"In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance. If you live in a city this might not be obvious to you but half the country lives in the burbs or rural areas."

That seems like a problem that could be solved through zoning. Solutions that by your definition inherently put people at risk seem an easy thing to re-evaluate.

A lot of the replies to my comment about sustainability of sidewalks have been either “bullshit, just look at the roads” or “we did this to ourselves”.

I am not making a judgement about the desirability of sidewalks. Indeed I said that more would be nice.

To the latter criticism, I say, yes, we did, but it doesn’t change where we are.

To the former, I say that government monopoly on infrastructure (which means that taxes pay maintenance) combined with sprawl have led us in the US to a place where literally in many places the money does not exist to maintain the infrastructure that was already built, much less build new infrastructure.

There are lots of essays on this; here’s one: https://fee.org/articles/the-unbearable-truth-about-infrastr...

It's not so much that sidewalks are financially unsustainable--at least if they're built at the same time as the road. But, for example in the semi-rural area where I live, literally no one would use a sidewalk if there were one. There's nowhere to walk other than to a neighbor and you don't need a sidewalk to do that. And it's going to be unusable for a few months a year unless it's maintained because of snow. (And I sure wouldn't want to be on the hook for maintaining/shoveling a sidewalk on my long frontage for something no one used.)

It's also temperature. I'm not walking in 100 degrees, even 3 blocks because I'm soaked when I get there and stink.

The Spanish manage?

The spanish shut down in mid day due to heat, and stay up late to take advantage of cooler nights. We can't expect every society to just emulate the spanish (who, probably unrelated to their mid day shut down, are not in an excellent financial position now.)

Get there earlier and relax in the AC? Bring a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant? Cool off with water and baby wipes in the bathroom? Deal with being sweaty and smelly.

Whether that is worth it or not to you is up to you to decide. But you've just found another excuse for driving when walking is possible (not possible for everyone, but possible for some).

All your suggestions are lots less convenient. Carrying clothes and deoderant, having to go early and sponge bathe mtself, or putting other people off when they smell me. I shouldnt have to do those for a few blocks walk like to and from lunch.

>Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.

Doesn't this actually imply that it's the low density that is financially unsustainable, rather than the sidewalks? I mean if your settlement pattern can't even afford a place for people to walk, what the hell are you doing?

No, this is a matter of different strokes for different folks. Many people have chosen to live in low density areas even though there are no sidewalks. They have chosen for themselves what to do with their limited resources. For people who choose to live in cities because there are sidewalks there, they are the ones making the tradeoff that you like.

Yes, I think the generous interpretation is that it isn't the sidewalk, but perhaps the sewage, water, electricity, comms, and maybe garbage collection that become expensive in less dense areas. All stuff that is related to the sidewalk, but not actually the sidewalk.

No. Distances are high because of low density. Sidewalks are financially unsustainable because of low density. People are obese also because they don't walk because of low density.

Low density is caused by car culture pushed by car manufacturers and oil companies.

Because I don't want to live in some 3x3 postage stamp with close neighbors and people peering in and no yard, let alone an apartment sharing walls between people. Screw high density, I've lived in it and it sucks. Oh and I am extremely fit, obesity is bad choices not "car culture".

You should visit other countries.

>In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance

Let's change this to a proactive mode.

How far is too far to walk or cycle?

What would it take for you to increase that distance?

I tried walking around Salt Lake City when I was there, but I kept having to backtrack because the sidewalks suddenly stopped.

I actively resist putting sidewalks in my neighborhood, and actively bought into this neighborhood because it lacks them

Why? Because do not want to incur the costs of maintaining them, nor the liability that comes with them from either a city stand point, or injury standpoint

If sidewalks where maintained by the city, including snow removal, and repairs, then maybe. but the fact is in most location they are an imposition on the property owner that comes with large costs and liabilities.

Rules for these things vary by state. Personally I view your take on cleaning sidewalks off of snow (again which vary by state) as really concerning and antisocial.

The other issue here is that you still pay for the roads, maintenance, police patrols, rest stops, expansion, environmental degradation, snow removal, insurance for cars, gas infrastructure, and all of those things related to roads but since you don’t get a specific bill in the mail with the line item for roads that you don’t think you’re paying for them or a huge cost for them. How much does it cost to have car accidents as the leading cause of death of teenagers? Who knows. But it’s gotta be more expensive than shoveling your sidewalk off.

>>and antisocial.

OK And? I fully admit I am anti-social.

>>The other issue here is that you still pay for the roads, maintenance, police patrols, rest stops, expansion, environmental degradation, snow removal, insurance for cars, gas infrastructure, and all of those things related to roads but since you don’t get a specific bill in the mail with the line item for roads that you don’t think you’re paying for them or a huge cost for them.

The cost is not the problem for me, and I would prefer to get a bill for every single one of those items. Honestly if city employed people to remove the snow from the sidewalks and sent me a bill like they do trash collection I would have less of a problem with them. That is not what they do though...

>How much does it cost to have car accidents as the leading cause of death of teenagers?

Solve that problem by getting teens off the road.

> Honestly if city employed people to remove the snow from the sidewalks and sent me a bill like they do trash collection I would have less of a problem with them. That is not what they do though...

I'm not kidding - the other day some kids walked by and asked if they could shovel my sidewalk and driveway before I got the chance to do it myself and I just paid them to do it. How cool is that? Why do you need the city to solve your problem here? If money isn't the issue... I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

> Solve that problem by getting teens off the road.

How can you do that when they have to drive everywhere? Do you not see how circular this is? Once they grow up they become adults, and then they die on the road too as yet another leading cause of death.

Because not everyone has neighborhoods of kids offering to shovel snow, I even tried to contract it out however most of the companies around here want commercial contracts not residential snow removal, and the ones that do offer "best effort" time tables where their commercial customers come first.

The last home I had with sidewalks the city would fine you if they were not cleared in 24 hours, contractors would come 3-5 days later

>How can you do that when they have to drive everywhere?

never said it would not create other problems, I solve the teens dying problem the same way everyone solved the COVID problem, just lock down. it "worked" then right ;)

Ah crap didn't realize I was dealing with a COVID denier. Nothing more to say here.

it is amazing the leaps some people take. If you did not have full throated support for every terrible policy every government enacted in their panic around covid, I must be a "COVID Denier"

I bet since I oppose Vaccine Mandates I am also an "anti-vaxxer" as well right? even though I am vaccinated from every illness for which there is a vaccine I am eligible to get including COVID.

If you do not support authoritarian government you must be anti-science, this is an amazing timeline..

I’m talking about sidewalks and roads and you turned the conversation to COVID lockdowns. Whatever you want to call yourself, I’m not interested in engaging further.

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