It’s much more efficient to just build traffic calming. It’s so nice. North America could be a biking paradise while maintaining 2 or 4 lane roads, it just isn’t. I oppose these kind of "“solution”"s aren’t as good as stuff that’s been proven to work in both traffic flow, people flow, cost, and safety.
Americans love their cars. There will be people who disable it to drive 80mph on surface streets at night and hit someone who didn’t want to add an additional half mile to go to the crosswalk.
Biking is great for cities, unless you’d have to cross most of it to reach work, hospitals, or healthy foods and bring them home. I’ve known people that did it, but I don’t think most of the country could qualify as a paradise, even if we tore down and rebuilt cities from the ground up.
Plus, it doesn’t address the needs of those that can’t bike, or maybe even not walk. The elderly, the disabled, the temporarily sick, and even kids considering the way the world has gotten populated ( bigger numbers mean the percentage of predators also returns bigger numbers of those).
And it really only works in some cities, and would require shifting all of the shipping to retail connections. You can’t get supplies from a train to a warehouse on pedal power realistically, nor from warehouse to citizen available stations like stores.
Unless you’re suggesting a total death of modern civilization. Which is cool, but not at all going to happen. Because without the supply infrastructure that gets materials from suppliers to where the goods need to be, they can’t get there. Even if we went back to horses and carriages for that, we’d still need well built roads that connect things. Doing that leaves biking in the same category it does with cars, so the only improvement is in not having to suck exhaust. Which would be great, just not sure it’s a realistic thing
The article even helps with priorities, with special outrage for speeding in school zones. Fine, let’s start there. It ought to be an easy argument that every school zone should prioritize pedestrian safety, and be difficult to speed in. Even if it’s as simple as directing through drivers elsewhere, it’s a win
Part of the way to build a nation with good bike infrastructure is to bring all those things closer together. People that bike don’t want to need to cross most of the city to reach places they want to go, so they are going to find somewhere to live where they don’t have to. Also importantly, bike infrastructure doesn’t mean no automobile infrastructure, it just means less of it, not the least because less is needed.
Buses and lorries. We transport the people on the buses and cargo on lorries, just like we do now.
This is what people mean when they talk about car brain - you’re so focused on the need for a car that you forgot that cars aren’t even used for moving your examples.
Busses take forever because they stop at every block and only drive predetermined routes. It turns every 10 minute drive by car to an hour+ long trip which doesn’t work with our culture where people need to work 16 jobs in order to get by.
You might as well be arguing for transporter technology as that’s just as likely as a solution.
Buses are slow because of the traffic caused by cars, and have few routes because of the number of people using cars instead. Getting rid of the cars solves the bus problems, genius.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen a city bus stuck in a traffic jam which is the only way cars would slow them down. They’re slow because they’re stopping every block and only come so often so each transfer comes with a 15+ minute wait. This is the same reason Amtrak is slow and they don’t have to deal with traffic either.
It’s much more efficient to just build traffic calming. It’s so nice. North America could be a biking paradise while maintaining 2 or 4 lane roads, it just isn’t. I oppose these kind of "“solution”"s aren’t as good as stuff that’s been proven to work in both traffic flow, people flow, cost, and safety.
Americans love their cars. There will be people who disable it to drive 80mph on surface streets at night and hit someone who didn’t want to add an additional half mile to go to the crosswalk.
There’s a limit to it though.
Biking is great for cities, unless you’d have to cross most of it to reach work, hospitals, or healthy foods and bring them home. I’ve known people that did it, but I don’t think most of the country could qualify as a paradise, even if we tore down and rebuilt cities from the ground up.
Plus, it doesn’t address the needs of those that can’t bike, or maybe even not walk. The elderly, the disabled, the temporarily sick, and even kids considering the way the world has gotten populated ( bigger numbers mean the percentage of predators also returns bigger numbers of those).
And it really only works in some cities, and would require shifting all of the shipping to retail connections. You can’t get supplies from a train to a warehouse on pedal power realistically, nor from warehouse to citizen available stations like stores.
Unless you’re suggesting a total death of modern civilization. Which is cool, but not at all going to happen. Because without the supply infrastructure that gets materials from suppliers to where the goods need to be, they can’t get there. Even if we went back to horses and carriages for that, we’d still need well built roads that connect things. Doing that leaves biking in the same category it does with cars, so the only improvement is in not having to suck exhaust. Which would be great, just not sure it’s a realistic thing
The article even helps with priorities, with special outrage for speeding in school zones. Fine, let’s start there. It ought to be an easy argument that every school zone should prioritize pedestrian safety, and be difficult to speed in. Even if it’s as simple as directing through drivers elsewhere, it’s a win
Part of the way to build a nation with good bike infrastructure is to bring all those things closer together. People that bike don’t want to need to cross most of the city to reach places they want to go, so they are going to find somewhere to live where they don’t have to. Also importantly, bike infrastructure doesn’t mean no automobile infrastructure, it just means less of it, not the least because less is needed.
Buses and lorries. We transport the people on the buses and cargo on lorries, just like we do now.
This is what people mean when they talk about car brain - you’re so focused on the need for a car that you forgot that cars aren’t even used for moving your examples.
Busses take forever because they stop at every block and only drive predetermined routes. It turns every 10 minute drive by car to an hour+ long trip which doesn’t work with our culture where people need to work 16 jobs in order to get by.
You might as well be arguing for transporter technology as that’s just as likely as a solution.
Buses are slow because of the traffic caused by cars, and have few routes because of the number of people using cars instead. Getting rid of the cars solves the bus problems, genius.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen a city bus stuck in a traffic jam which is the only way cars would slow them down. They’re slow because they’re stopping every block and only come so often so each transfer comes with a 15+ minute wait. This is the same reason Amtrak is slow and they don’t have to deal with traffic either.
North America isn’t getting rid of its commuter highways anytime soon.
Cars can still exist. We have so much space for it.