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Comment by PeterSmit | Hacker News Reader

This sounds like a very American answer. Have you been to such an event in any other place, like Europe?

Near me is the largest open air weekend market of the Netherlands. Do you know how everybody gets there? By bike, public transportation, walking, etc. And then some small percentage that arrives by car.

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> This sounds like a very American answer. Have you been to such an event in any other place, like Europe?

Of course, and I've been to the mecca of public transit, Japan!

And guess what -- outside of the super-dense cities, most Japanese people drive cars. I spent some time in a Japanese city about as dense as a California suburb. Two train stations in the entire city. A car or two in every driveway. I've also been to smaller cities in various European countries and it's the same story.

People need to stop pretending that the world looks like Copenhagen or Tokyo. In reality, most of the world is not dense.

This is an article explicitly about _urban_ mobility. If you're going to exclude large, dense metropolitan areas, are you even addressing the arguments being made here?

Define "urban".

from google: "in, relating to, or characteristic of a town or city."

I am not sure what point you are trying to make

The point is that bicycling is not realistic outside of very, very dense cities. Most places that reasonable people call "cities" would not qualify. Even in Europe and Japan, which have world-class public transit, only a handful of cities have useful subways or usable bicycle infrastructure. Everywhere else, people drive cars.

People who are advocating for bicycles as a primary form of transit are using a hyper-narrow definition of "urban," in which most cities would not be considered urban, and that is deceptive and wrong.

The word dense is in the second sentence of the wikipedia article on cities. It is inherent to discussion of urban transportation. You seem to be using the word city loosely, but it's a rather specific term.

Even though I agree the policies here apply to a small fraction of the world's area, it affects a sizable fraction of the population.

> The point is that bicycling is not realistic outside of very, very dense cities

Bullshit. I grew up in a small village -- 300 people or so live there. It's a couple of kilometers from two other villages in the 2000-500 range. There's one school for the area shared between the villages. The daycare I went to was located in one of the other villages. I biked (alongside my parents) for 5 kilometers on non-separated roads to get to daycare at the age of 4. I biked first 2 kilometers to school every single day until 7th grade where I then had to bike 12 kilometers each way. It sounds tough if you don't bike. If you've done it your life whole it's just a mode of transport. Taking 30-40 minutes on the bike was faster than taking the bus too.

It's not dense because the same people opposing pedestrianization also oppose density.

If we let people build a couple Amsterdams or Londons in America, we could just self select and those that want to cycle and walk can do so, and those who want to drive can do so - just in separate places.

Copenhagen is not super-dense, not even very dense. Berlin is even less dense than Copenhagen, yet both cities are very pleasurable for using the bike as your sole means of transportation.

Copenhagen would be the 3rd densest city in America and would represent less than 1/3 of a percent of the population. America is huge with a ton of space and people have spread out.

> , most of the world is not dense.

But most people in Japan live in the super-dense cities. So we are literally discussing solutions that work for most people

And yet ~70% of Japanese households own cars.

Owning a car and using it daily is not the same thing.

It's funny that foreigner says Japan is fine without personal cars. That's because tourists don't visit random local middle sized cities.

Yes, you are right. Bikes make sense only in dense urban areas or if you're relatively close to commerce or work. That's still a big minority of people, but getting onto bikes and out of cars is great where it's a possibility.

If you aren't that close, you can have hybrid transportation. Take a bike to a bus or train.

Better zoning would help too.

> most Japanese people drive cars

Citation needed.

People who drive cars usually have a need for them. Cargo hauling for example.

> Two train stations in the entire city.

Probably wasn't a large city. I've been to some really small cities that had two train stations. You could walk between stations.

> A car or two in every driveway

For the most part, Japan doesn't have driveways. Even in less populated centers, they might have a parking space, or a garage, but not a driveway. It's a waste of space. Even street parking is limited. Some people may have two cars for whatever reason but I doubt that is the norm.

I'm wonder what region you were at that saw this many cars.

Interestingly, the number of cars in Japan is roughly the same as the number of bikes in circulation.

46% of people use their own car for commute in Japan, but it's 9.5% in Tokyo. Sorry this is written in Japanese but you can use translate. https://todo-ran.com/t/kiji/18920

Having lived and traveled all over Europe without a car, I can say with confidence that urban environments of a wide range of density are incredibly well-served by public transit, pedestrian routes, and bikes. Cars are necessary in lots of cases, but the vast majority of day-to-day activity that requires a car for me here in the US would have been silly to use a car for in Europe.

My European city in Portugal, has several routes that have one bus per hour, stop at 21h, and decrease their routes at weekend.

Shoppings and several city services are located on the city outskirts only reachable by car or taxi.

You can cycle around on the city centre and then enjoy the roads that are organised like motorways around the center.

Lots of fat Germans, Polish, Hungarians, and British. Heven't visited other European countries, so couldn't tell you about others.

As to a solution; How about recumbent trikes? Beats dissing foreign nations based on biased preconceptions of healthy lifestyles.

Yes, unless you happen to live in top European cities, those that make the top list where to live in Europe, you get there by car.

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