We’re using our streets wrong [video]
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God. Damn.
They’re doing something right there. Didn’t use a car a single time, and was better off for it.
I love my car and the open road, but I think I might prefer walkable cities…
It feels like a more natural way to live. America feels very rigid and disconnected by comparison.
A 5 mile bike commute sounds like it will be impossible, but it only took me about a month to acclimate to it and I'm hardy a fitness nut. Now I only drive when the weather is particularly nasty or there is too much ice on the ground. Also, the selection of affordable e-Bikes has absolutely exploded over the past couple of years and they can seriously open up opportunities if you're willing to try. Just because people say that American suburbs require a car doesn't make it true.
People's main regret is not trying it sooner!
Here in Latin America we somehow imported the car-centric culture from the USA but slowly people has been realizing it just don't fit too well our own complexities. Things like the Ciclovía[1] here in Bogotá came to be in part of that - people didn't liked how we surrended that much space for cars, and people wanted to do some workout. Why can't we take some of that space for that, at least temporarily?
The more people that have walking, cycling, and transit as an option, the fewer people may drive, reducing congestion for the folks that have no choice to drive (e.g., deliveries, service techs, etc), or those that may need/want to drive only occasionally.
Not Just Bikes (of course) had a video "The Best Country in the World for Drivers":
> The Netherlands is famous for bicycles, and putting walking, cycling, and public transit ahead of cars. Yet paradoxically, it's the best place in the world to be a driver.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
Further, by having higher density (and not even the Manhattan-levels that some folks think when they hear "urban"), you need less land, which means you don't have to pave over rural areas as much and you get more actual nature.
I too love driving and look forward to car free cities. Driving in cities sucks anyways.
The way this is presented is a bit tone deaf and stuck in the mid 2010s. No practical examples are ever given for the replacement of aging infrastructure or reuse of still perfectly good infrastructure. Costs are never broken down either nor are timelines given.
Replacing roads or streets to add dining space, small shops, homes, or any other type of purpose where taxes can be generated is better long term for municipal finances.
It did mention how things took a step forward with the uprising of parklets and on-street dining during the COVID pandemic. My town still has much of the on-street parking replaced by outdoor dining spaces, making an area that would have served a couple cars for the evening into an area enjoyed by a dozen people.
Change is possible if we want to make the change.
The negativity of car infra was very slow to appear and for a long time cars appeared to be a miracle. For some it's obvious in retrospect that we've over-invested in motor vehicle infrastructure, but for many the negative externalities are still not clear and/or ignored by the training of societal norms.
Car ownership is a terrible economic decision in many, many cases. It is just metal rusting motionless most of the time. They are a perfect example of irrational behavior. Many people would be financially better off to rent cars for long trips and rely on public transport otherwise (most rural settings aside).
Can you define what "pencil out" exactly means? I searched around and it looks like the TCO for a car ranges around $1000-$1100/month if you're buying used. At average US hourly earnings[3] of $33.03/hour, that works out to a break-even of 31.8 hours/month. If you're single and don't do anything other than commute to work (30 min each way), I agree that this doesn't "pencil out", but as soon as you have kids or a partner (twice the amount of errands to run!), it easily becomes worth it.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a41545320/average-co...
[2] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co...
It ties into the whole suburban experiment. Lots of single family detached homes on their own pieces of land spread things out, raising the need for cars to get anywhere. Those homes were sold as "the American Dream". Of course, once people are in those homes, they not only need to drive to stores to buy stuff but also to work or to other activities happening in the city proper, thus requiring more roads to build up to get there. Plus the whole stroad thing rose up as well to meet the demands of people in suburbia.
Not Just Bikes also covers interesting bits about how this whole thing is also on financially shaky footing given how much the infrastructure costs to get services out to spread out hoomes.
In 40 years, we've added a touch over 3 billion people to the planet. That's nearly double the population in under one lifetime. Everyone alive then and born within the next 24 years of 1983 are all old enough to own and operate a motor vehicle today.
Roughly 2/3 of the population is 16+. Just assuming that holds throughout history (and it probably doesn't, but for argument's sake let's pretend), there were about 3 billion potential vehicles then and 5 billion now. (Using 4.5b and 7.5b for the population counts for easier math. The real totals are a bit over).
We've nearly doubled the number of potential cars on the road.
But we didn't do that overnight. We did that over 40 years. And every 5 years or so, it may seem reasonable to make a few more adjustments for car infrastructure. Until we're here, today. And it's not until we look back that we see how much we've given over to car infrastructure at the expense of everything else.
Congestion was very low. If you're one of a small number of cars, where you never see traffic jams, there's always an empty parking space waiting for you, then it all looks quite pleasant. In other words, it was a luxury that couldn't scale to higher densities.
And if you think like an anthropologist you see this same dynamic popping up in neighboring contexts. Why do we have houses with grassy yards? Because this echos the estates of aristocrats in centuries past, where only the wealthy could afford to have land maintained as purely aesthetic gardens rather than some practical agricultural purpose. Suburbia essentially offered everyone the chance to live like a royal of days past. Except because it doesn't scale, that offer ended up being a trap many places.
Thinking of it like this, as status symbols that didn't scale, lots of things like the trend towards McMansions makes more straightforward sense.
And to be clear, I'm not some sort of density zealot. I just think the options should be more diverse, rather than the current system in the US which prioritizes cars at the cost of everyone else, even in contexts where it clearly simply does not work.
The fact that some people think we need to separate different modes of transportation is the reason why people aren't trying alternative modes of transportation like cycling. Legally, there's a single set of rules of movement that apply to all vehicle drivers:
1. Keep to the right side of the road
2. Yield to through traffic before entering a roadway
3. Yield to oncoming traffic when making a left turn
4. Make right turns from as close as practicable to the right edge of the roadway
5. Make left turns from as close as practicable to the center of the roadway
6. The vehicle in front has the right of way over the vehicle behind (first come, first served).
Follow those rules no matter what vehicle you're using and there really aren't any issues. I've ridden tens of thousands of miles over nearly 20 years on roads and never had a problem by riding in a predictable manner, signaling my intentions in advance, and following those rules.
Try walking on the road in any business district and see how long it is until you get a ticket for jaywalking or illegally walking in the road.
And while a rural highway with little to no shoulder may be legally open to pedestrians and bikes, it's practically inaccessible since sharing a road with 50 mph traffic (which means real-life 60+ mph speeds) is risky.
What law are you referring to that makes it illegal for pedestrians to walk on the road facing traffic on a road in a business district.
> since sharing a road with 50 mph traffic (which means real-life 60+ mph speeds) is risky.
I've done it plenty of times and motorists simply change lanes to pass me. Most motorists are only comfortable going 60 mph of they're able to see at least 700 feet or more in front of them. That gives then at least 7 seconds to see a cyclist and the cyclist that much time to see them in their mirrors. That's enough time to tell whether the motorist is slowing down or changing lanes to pass. If they aren't, then you can ride off road to avoid a collision.
In my years of experience riding on roads with 50 mph+ speeds, every motorist either changed lanes or slowed down well before they caught up with me based on what I could see in my mirrors.
RCW 46.61.250 - Where sidewalks are provided and are accessible, it is unlawful for any pedestrian to walk or otherwise move along and upon an adjacent roadway
As for rural cycling, since there are few cyclists in the USA, there's not a lot of crash data, but rural crashes are around 3X likely to result in a fatality than urban crashes.
Data from the UK is easier to find:
Rural roads were also deadlier than those in urban areas, with a total of 140 cyclists dying in 2020 - meaning that fatalities on rural roads accounted for 64 per cent of the overall number.
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/cyclist-deaths-on-rural-r...
A charitable interpretation of my original assertion would be: "all other roads are shared infrastructure that can be legally used by those who are walking" would not include roads where sidewalks are provided and are accessible.
> As for rural cycling, since there are few cyclists in the USA, there's not a lot of crash data
In urban areas, most fatal cyclist related crashes involve wrong way cyclists, cyclists who are not using lights at night, and cyclists who are cycling under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. As for rural crashes, while there are higher speeds involved, riding in a conspicuous manner that ensures that motorists have to slow down and change lanes to pass as opposed to squeezing between you and oncoming traffic can go a long way towards mitigating the risk of being involved in a crash.
From my own experience living in a city centre without bicycle infrastructure; it was really hard to get relatives to enjoy going out on the bicycle. Now when I live in an area that has separated bicycle paths to most places it was become much easier. I have no problem with riding with cars, so I understand why one would like to argue that is the solution, but it took me at least a decade to hone those abilities to be comfortable.
What criteria are you using to make that assertion? From a safety and efficiency standpoint, operating a bicycle as one would operate any vehicle (animal driven like an Amish buggy, farm equipment, etc) does work because it allows one to utilize the existing transportation network and by following the rules of movement, other vehicle operators know what to expect.
Stating that something doesn't work because it doesn't lead to a large number of people utilizing a particular form of transport is a red herring. The criteria you're using basically says that modes of transportation like buses and motorcycles don't work because not many people use them and the mode share is not increasing. But for the people who do make use of those modes of transportation and existing cyclists, it does work for them because they're able to utilize the existing transportation network and can get to where they're going.
- auto industry pushing propaganda videos
- a president impressed with the autobahn and the military justification for roads (it did used to take a car a week or more to go cross country)
- "white flight"
- years of lobbying for favorable laws. It used to be you could walk in streets. Then "Jay walking" became a thing and all sorts of car friendly laws
- years of auto friendly ordinances that subsidize car ownership (free parking, requirements to build parking)
The list goes on, but as the saying goes, you don't miss it until it's gone
> user-generated urbanism
> Infrastructure as a communications project
I admire and liked my experience with using streets like Amsterdam and similar, something that has really irked me is the disregard/naivety for why this doesn't and wouldn't work here and why it works in Europe, for example. We have size here vs anywhere else