People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them.
People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars.
Car companies build for suburbanites.
Suburbanites buy cars.
Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them.
We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!
They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses.
The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners.
Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes.
The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable, favor low-commercial activity, and hamper productive economic activities. Not only that, but they're unusable in inclement and hot weather, which my city experiences frequently.
I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers. A typical bike rider's coffee and book reading activities do not match a trip to Target and a local restaurant with family in terms of economic impact.
Now multiply that times every car rider who is being delayed and disrupted. All of this spending is now being delayed or even prevented.
We're going to feel really silly when we need more lanes for all the autonomous vehicles that will come online in the next 15 years. Autonomous vehicles - transportation, logistics, last mile delivery, ordering robotics services, etc. - are going to be a billion times more important than bikes.
Just go to a park or get a gym membership if you want to exercise. Or, better yet, take your bike with you on your car and drive to the countryside trails.
To your point on bike owners not contributing to the economy. They probably have a similar income, and are paying similar taxes. They are still buying groceries. But where they choose to spend their money is different. It's all still economic activity though.
If you live in car dependent suburbia, sure. And it sounds like you do.
And again, little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance.
SF in particular can be a pain in the butt. There are scearios where public transit works, and many where it doesn't. Biking there from anywhere else is not viable. I need to drive into it in cases when transit doesn't work, and the city is hostile to me trying to spend money. Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.
> Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.
Cities primarily exist for the convenience of the people who live and work in them, not for people visiting them.
That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.
On bike lanes, it takes up such a tiny amount of space relative to cars. The real problem is that they are not put in with much thought, not made very safe and are ultimately not very attractive.
But in cities with a higher level of decent bike lanes (Seattle), you’ll absolutely get many people using them. But it also depends on the culture. Reality is that Seattle is geographically constrained, and I’m sorry, there is no room for more car lanes essentially anywhere in the city without destroying property.
So finding smarter, more efficient, cost-effective ways to use that space (like bikes and public transit, which are vastly more space efficient) is a fantastic idea.
If you go all-in on car infra (eg everywhere in the USA, including places like Seattle), you still get congested roads. Cars just use space so poorly that a small increase in number of cars when the streets are full will have massive compounding effect on how long it takes anyone to get anywhere.
Besides, your city is already fully designed around the MOST EXPENSIVE form of local transit, by far. You know what might help stimulate the economy? Make it easy for someone to take a bike to a restaurant. No gas or car payment (or parking, in the city), and now you might have more money to treat yourself
The two towns close to my home (10k and 5k people each) have 3 and 2 traffic lights. It's a different world with different problems and different solutions than the ones of the cities with 1M people one hour away. It could be a different country with different legislation.
>The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable,
How? Everyone can ride a bicycle, even kids and seniors, meanwhile cars are locked behind expensive driving lessons, licenses and exams. Not to mention car ownership is inherently expensive due to fuel, maintenance and insurance requirements. E-bikes give anyone a motor assist and can carry you uphill without any problems while still being good for your health.
>and hamper productive economic activities.
Most productive economic activities just require people to show up to work. Buying something is not a productive activity by definition and nobody is suggesting that deliveries should be done on bicycles.
>I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers.
Ok now this is turning into a parody. Do you know what's even more expensive than driving a car? Building and maintaining a road for cars. European bike lanes cost almost nothing in maintenance. Sprawl in North America is actively bankrupting cities because drivers don't bring in enough tax revenue to maintain the roads they drive on. Driving to a property tax optimized big box store at the outskirts of the city doesn't bring in as much property tax as you think it does.
Obviously not since it is so widely adopted.
Right on red is an extremely useful optimization so you don't sit waiting for nothing when it is clearly safe to turn.
Roundabouts are awesome, love them.
Be pragmatic, the world is not going to replace every intersection with a roundabout, as good as they are. That's where right on red comes in as a local optimization.
But it's been a few years, and in the meantime good e-bikes are affordable for most here now, so these days there's quite a lot of bike riders all over.
Of course when the snow and ice sets in there are fewer, though a fair few carry on with studded tires and good clothing.
It took some years but there's no denying there are significantly more people riding bikes to and from work, to and from kindergarten or similar.
Build it and they will come...
[1]: https://ruter.no/planlegg-reise/aldersvennlig-transport
... Most people going into cities, whether on bikes or cars or trains or buses or the largely fictitious VTOL aircraft from the article, are doing so to _work_, not to buy stuff. "Buying stuff" has been shifting away from city centers for about fifty years, initially via retail parks, then the internet.
That's only natural, because two kinds of people want EVs in cities (with some overlap). The first kind wants less noise, less pollution and fewer gas stations inside the city - they want other people to buy EVs, but don't want a car themselves. The second wants to own an EV because it's green and efficient.
For suburbanites with off-street parking, overnight charging and few road-trips or long distance commutes, an EV is these days simply more convenient to operate, and has cheaper total cost of ownership.
For many people, the case for an EV is simply pragmatic - better convenience and cost.
True for Long Island, NY. Can’t go to to the store 0.3 miles away without driving your cage. Kids take the bus to school in even the best weather, that is if their parents don’t drive them.
Is this due to a lack of footpaths? Or just a cultural thing?
And for $100, where are the majority of consumers often located