How to reclaim North American cities from cars?

[Riggerjack]

@RJ. You sound just like the guys in my office!

That was intentional. As I clarified later, I am relatively bike friendly, for a cager. But some topics here have a tendency to get general support, having as much to do with signaling as agreement. This causes me to have an urge to play devil's advocate. Because if there is no dissenting opinion, we get an echo chamber, and nobody considers the problem from a different perspective, and the subject is not developed.

We can all agree that we SHOULD ride bikes, and that SUVs are killing the planet, but agreement with each other doesn't address the interests of those who have other priorities, nor does it lead to alternative solutions. Both of those are NECESSARY for an actual, working solution.

I am not so self centered as to believe that we are really solving the world's problems here. But we are participating in solving the world's problems in the sense that the world is constantly changing, and how that change happens is related to the conversations about the problem. Better conversations lead to better solutions. Better solutions infect interested parties, as people here come up with a different solution, and then members here talk about the interesting idea they heard about in their other forums.

For instance, above, I suggested a bikelanes utility. Not because I think someone here would start such a thing. But because a bike rider here, may share the idea on their bike rider's forum, where it may reach a bike friendly silicone valley aggressive CEO wannabe, who may look at running with it.

Or not. Maybe it dies on the vine, and we just have to go through life with a better understanding of the people who disagree with us. That would suck, I guess.

[distracted_at_work]

to go through life with a better understanding of the people who disagree with us.

And isn't this the most important part. The key to getting anywhere with any problem is understanding.

The rest of your comment reminds me of a quote by David Mitchell in Cloud Atlas:

My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops

[enigmaT120]

I love motorcycles, but the DOT data of risk of death per mile traveled is several times higher for motorcyclists than for bicyclists. Something like 5 times higher. What's weird is that bicycling is safer than being a pedestrian, too.

Riggerjack wrote: " As I said, I looked at the situation, and came to the conclusion that a motorcycle is probably the best solution for me. Not much safer than a bicycle, but more capable of mimicking car behavior. Then I saw how far electric bikes have come, and I'm researching this option."

[The Old Man]

I don't like bicycles:
(1) Far too much vandalism is done to bicycles when they are parked. Maybe that is just Los Angeles. This is the primary reason why I would not own a bicycle.
(2) Don't like it when bicyclists ride on the sidewalk and I as a pedestrian almost have an accident with them. Only children should be on the sidewalk; Adults should be in the street.

[ducknalddon]

(2) Don't like it when bicyclists ride on the sidewalk

Then don't cycle on the sidewalk.

[theanimal]

As I was saying above. These signs are all over Fairbanks. I'm sure there's plenty of other towns/cities that have a similar setup.

[Sclass]

A regular cyclist can outaccelerate all cars in a 40yd race but a Tesla or a sportscar. (Strong legs have more torque than internal combustion engines.) That's good enough to be safe.

Does a strong leg on a bike really have more torque than an internal combustion engine? I’ve done a back of the envelope here given some numbers from my lowly Mercedes Diesel (bore, stroke and cylinder pressure is on the top of my mind) and I’m getting peak torques > 2x that of a 150lb rider.

My physics degree is a little rusty.

The statistic of motorcycles being more dangerous than bicycles and pedestrians being more dangerous is fascinating. It may be like the statistic that SUVs are as deadly to their occupants as subcompacts according the the book High and Mighty. Apparently the frequency of rollovers (=death) is higher in the SUV and that cancels out any perceived safety advantages of the truck when it occurs.

Perhaps when things get sideways on a motorcycle you’re just done given the speeds and the location (under a semi?)

Bike argument is tough. I love riding my bike but I hate commuting on it. Mainly because of the cars and exhaust. Sigh.

Get enough bikes on the path and pretty soon we’ll have a jam. Some areas of China and Netherlands are getting awfully congested. But at least we lose the smoke.

Being forced to drive between my mom’s place in Pasadena and my home in Irvine (2hrs in LA traffic) has made me embrace shipping electrons instead of people. I’ve gotten really good at hiring people over the wires to do stuff for me over there. I can make some awfully good judgment calls with my HD cameras before I need to jump in my car and fight traffic to be there to hold hands.

[TheWanderingScholar]

A main way to decrease car dependency that is not talked about a lot is changing land use to be more efficient as American use of land is highly inefficient spatially causing sprawl that makes car use more effective than walking or bicycling, leaving more costly options such as BRTs as the only alternative.

1. Parking minimums and other spatial regulations beyond those for environmental and health reasons are ridiculous. Seriously making the developer buy more land to develop, spreading out housing.
2. Single-Family Housing is stupid. Seriously, inefficient use of land, especially with backyards which seemingly people in urban areas use rarely. Having more townhouses, duplexes can allow more people live in the same space without comprising on character of a "neighborhood", which changes depends on who you ask. Single-family housing would be nice in sub-urban areas, and rural areas. However urban regions can really afford this.
3. Homogeneous districts. Seriously, having this big swathes of housing then districts forces people to drive to areas for recreation and work. However more mixed neighborhoods allow people to just walk to work and for recreation. This provides alternatives to cars via bicycle and walking being more useful and practical (for the average American; most North Europeans seem to be made of hardier stuff ). And if someones need to go outside the city for camping? They can just rent a car. Even if someone buys their own car, they will not use as often as if the city was more sprawling.

And those are three things I really want to bring up for now.

[jennypenny]

Streetsblog article about the backwards thinking that led to the construction of the FIU pedestrian bridge that collapsed ... https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/03/16/ ... structure/

[oldbeyond]

This provides alternatives to cars via bicycle and walking being more useful and practical (for the average American; most North Europeans seem to be made of hardier stuff ).

I'd say us euros have it easy. I started biking last year and there were well-maintained, exclusive bike lanes to work, supermarket, gym, city center, other gym, hardware store, lake, hell even big box stores waiting for me. The expectation is for there to be a bike lane; its absence would be surprising to me. I live in a bigger city, but my experience growing up i a mid-size one wasn't much different. Basically I haven't yet biked in traffic. Rather I'm impressed by Americans pitting themselves against infrastructure and norms to travel by bike.

Regarding millenials, I think the mindset is more pragmatic than anti-car. In a lot of places you need a car so people get a car, but there's much less identity in it. So if biking/public transportation/zipcar are viable options, people will not dismiss them for cultural reasons.

[TheWanderingScholar]

Agreed. Since then I have learned that European bike infrastructure, especially Netherlands, is more separate from cars which is nice. So I am not going to lie, people who go up against the car culture of the US are made of sterner stuff.

And yeah it seems like millenials pretty much left behind the old cars culture of America, which some of us viewing them a tool than a cultural items worth investment in. Doesn't help that car traffic is such a pain in the cities.

And when I was planning on moving to Austin, I was kind of disappointed by the fact that public transportation is non-existant in the part of town I was going to. (Even though walking to work was viable, I still want to see downtown at least).

[jacob]

Public service announcement. Reminder from the forum rules.

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