If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

https://streets.mn/2023/07/19/if-we-want-a-shift-to-walking-we-need-to-prioritize-dignity/

by PaulHoule • 3 years ago

608 677 3 years ago

OO000oo• 3 years ago

The same can be said for virtually any societal change. Want people to proactively fight climate change? It turns out guilting people doesn't work, but give them a dignified existence and they will immediately care about the world they live in.

gruez4• 3 years ago

but give them a dignified existence and they will immediately care about the world they live in.

What does "a dignified existence" mean as it relates to climate change?

zmgsabst• 3 years ago

Stop telling them they need to eat bugs, not take vacations, and live a worse life.

People who eat exotic steaks, fly private jets, and own outrageous fortunes forcing people into that derivation will always come across as abusive — no matter what social cause you dress it up in.

Create a world where people are prosperous and have lots of children… and they’ll care about the future.

bluGill5• 3 years ago

Think only of the now. 'This hot summer is an anomaly, things will go back to normal.'

Once get that mindset you can see how most proposed changes are not dignified. They might make the future much better, but the now is worse.

davidktr• 3 years ago

Is that so? The most dignified, people with the most money, are also causing the most desctruction.

I find it odd to say people are fighting climate change if they actively contribute to climate's destruction. Doing it for a short time with a clearly stated end date would be one thing. However, almost nobody emits less than the crucial threshold of 2 t CO2/year.

At some point you have to admit that if you aren't doing it, you aren't doing it.

eastbound• 3 years ago

Yes. I pollute because I’m a leftover. Give me a wife, children and love and I’ll care for others. Such things as people being scorned do exist.

evandale2• 3 years ago

Right?

A friendly reminder that Gates shorts Tesla and that Washington state has the most regressive tax system in the USA.

I'm nearly at my wits end when it comes to rich people preaching nonsense they don't believe in to everyone.

https://time.com/6208632/celebrities-climate-impact-private-...

Carbon credits are the equivalent to murdering an innocent person and thinking that raping 2 women and supporting the offspring morally absolves you of the original murder and 2 rapes because you assume those 2 children will go on to save the world.

adra2• 3 years ago

Nah, with people who can produce 10's-100's more pollution per person than others, making an individual choice to do better makes little difference.

Certainly learning to make small choices in the right direction (stop denying local net zero energy projects, switch away from heavy fossil fuel consumption vehicles, etc) are important individual contributions, but ultimately nothings going to get done en mass until nations start bullying each other into compliance.

South Africa is a generally developed nation and its entire energy grid are almost entirely coal. The US is pretty hard on global carbon energy initiatives because they're now a net positive oil and gas producer? Lower priced net zero tech will certainly steer the narrative as time goes on, but will it be fast enough to kill greedy self-interest in the status quo..

closeparen5• 3 years ago

This lens is underutilized in the discourse, but people feel it acutely. Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?” When you are using transportation infrastructure that’s designed with contempt for you, you know, and you don’t want to be there. See also: rail slow zones, buses that shimmy and rattle violently on imperfect pavement, how Muni trains close their doors and pull one foot out of the station just to wait at a red light. If you’ve never seen good, dignified implementation of walking and transit then a lot of this seems inherent & car culture seems synonymous with dignity. Short of tickets to Amsterdam for everyone, I don’t know how to fix it.

gruez4• 3 years ago

Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?”

I agree with the overall point that people don't want to cycle because the experience sucks, but your description feels like an unnecessarily inflammatory way to say "people are willing to pay for a more pleasant experience". Nobody says "a lot of the anti-cheap laptop stance comes down to, "what am I, poor?".

Guvante7• 3 years ago

Nothing about the post you responded to says "people are willing to pay for a more pleasant experience".

The closest is "people aren't willing to pay to improve an unpleasant experience" which isn't related to purchasing a laptop in anyway.

goda90• 3 years ago

I have literally seen people scoff at biking or riding the bus as something for poor people. It is a common sentiment.

UtopiaPunk• 3 years ago

There's an ad in rotation right now on a popular local radio station where the whole bit is that character A's car isn't working, and character B talks about the great deals at a specific car dealership. "Don't walk," he exclaims and he shares the gospel of car ownership.

Literally, the whole framing is that walking sucks and is embarrassing :(

ClumsyPilot14• 3 years ago

inflammatory way to say "people are willing to pay for a more pleasant experience"

You got it all wrong! It does noy matter how the expience feels physically.

The problem is social stigma attached to cycling.

Like tell you mates you spent 3 weeks fixing your car, or built your own house, and it was super u pleasant and you broke your hand in the process - you are cool.

But tell them you cycled to work to improvr fitness, and you are a weirdo.

pharmakom2• 3 years ago

A great post. My only nitpick is that Amsterdam isn’t a particularly good example of active travel in NL.

JDEW• 3 years ago

Why not? I’ve lived there for years, and although it’s not perfect, I think it’s very easy to get around both walking and cycling.

smodo2• 3 years ago

From an American perspective it could be. Amsterdam is the largest city in our country and it still pulls together walking, cycling and public transport in a way that doesn’t suck. Of course smaller towns have it easier in some ways because of the way Dutch towns are historically configured. What makes the large cities interesting is that they are somewhat metropolitan and still have the Dutch vibe.

pimlottc• 3 years ago

Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?”

Or this tired bit of "wit": "Oh, you're biking? Let me guess, DUI?"

whimsicalism14• 3 years ago

Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?” When you are using transportation infrastructure that’s designed with contempt for you, you know, and you don’t want to be there.

I grew up in close contact with a large urban poor population and I think the view of bikes was the exact opposite of this. Biking in the city is considered the purview of affluent white people

kccqzy3• 3 years ago

In some way it makes sense. The poor are driven by high property prices to live far away. The more affluent can choose to buy property in the heart of the city and use bikes in the city.

croisillon• 3 years ago

in my local facebook bike-to-work group i often comment about Schrödinger's cyclist: "too poor to have a car" according to some haters, and at the same time "too rich to be in a hurry" (because motorists have a real job they're driving to) according to others

inamberclad• 3 years ago

Out in the (poorer) suburbs, the only adults who bike are those who can't afford a car, or have had their license revoked.

Karrot_Kream6• 3 years ago

I grew up in a low income, immigrant suburb and the poor rode bikes. They didn't wear bike kit and they had crappy mountain bikes with franken parts, not an 11 speed electronic shift bike. Often they either couldn't afford a car or the family only had enough money for 1 car, which in patriarchal immigrant households went to mom and the kids she drove around while dad biked to his back of house or construction job.

cscurmudgeon3• 3 years ago

Thank you! OP's view is a naive outsider's view. Anyone who actually lives in the US knows you need to be rich enough to not be car dependent.

https://grist.org/cities/black-chicago-biking-disparities-in...

In reality, only rich (and white) folks can afford to live in areas that are not car-dependent.

https://granfondodailynews.com/2020/01/17/is-north-american-... > From 2001 to 2017 the number of people cycling increased the fastest among high income, highly educated, employed, white men between the ages 25 and 44.

csours• 3 years ago

I ride my carbon fiber road bike down the bike trail in the morning; when I drive home after a night of entertainment, I see laborers riding their bikes in the busy street to get home after a long day of work. I feel the irony deeply.

    We should improve society somewhat. 
    Yet you participate in society.

mxkopy2• 3 years ago

I think it depends; biking because you need to and biking for fun look very different. IME of Phoenix you could have the cyclist doing training routes in their kit and the crackhead strapped with bags of their stuff pass by on the same street.

closeparen5• 3 years ago

I've had multiple professional-managerial friends tell me they personally won't bike because that's something they left behind in their childhood or broke-student days. It's beneath them now. But you're right, people also complain about bike infrastructure projects taking space from working-class drivers to benefit white yuppies.

We see this often with urbanist topics. New multifamily construction is gentrification and colonization if you lean left, full of crime and a threat to our schools if you lean right. The only widespread agreement is that it represents the Other. The stranglehold of postwar suburban car culture on the American psyche is self-reinforcing at this point.

esoterica6• 3 years ago

The lowest income group of people is the demographic most likely to bike.

https://lede-admin.usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/si...

The chart of income vs percent who commute by bike is u-shaped but with a higher left side. Rich people bike more than middle class people but poor people bike more than either the rich or middle class. People who are on the right half of the distribution think biking is affluent-coded because they only see the right tail where it curves up and they don't know anyone on the left side of the distribution where the gradient goes the other way.

nradov• 3 years ago

Walk behind restaurants in many US cities and you'll see the cheap mountain bikes that the lower-paid kitchen staff (mostly immigrants) rode to work. This is particularly common in the SF Bay Area.

(I am in favor of improving cycling infrastructure for everyone regardless of income level.)

rz2k• 3 years ago

I have a pretty strong anti-cycling stance, because I watched my New York neighborhood that was a pedestrian paradise significantly degraded by bike lanes. The balance of walking, subways, busses, taxis and delivery trucks had worked pretty well. Bicyclists introduced the concept of failing to yield, then acting indignant and entitled.

whimsicalism14• 3 years ago

Failing to yield to pedestrians where?

e: Actually, not going to get into it but c'mon - cars kill pedestrians in a way that bikes rarely do and removing the cars from your NY neighborhood would have an obviously better impact on pedestrians compared to the bikes.

piva00• 3 years ago

You aren't anti-cycling, you are anti-uneducated assholes.

hfgjdssaghj• 3 years ago

I have a pretty strong anti-cycling stance, because I watched my New York neighborhood that was a pedestrian paradise significantly degraded by bike lanes.

A car driver, a cyclist and a pedestrian walk into a café and order ten cream cakes. When the waitress places them on their table the car driver grabs nine of them and scoffs them in his face, then he leans over to the pedestrian and whispers: “don’t let the cyclist take your one”.

laserlight2• 3 years ago

Louis Rossmann talked about cyclists not respecting pedestrians yesterday [0].

[0] NYC's toxic ebike culture almost killed 4 people; let's talk about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrtLWilSoNI

Rebelgecko3• 3 years ago

I'm impressed that being indignant and entitled wasn't a part of your neighborhood before the cyclists came in. Really does sound like paradise!

ClumsyPilot14• 3 years ago

Bicyclists … indignant and entitled

I will tell you who is entitled, driver of a 20 ton construction truck that drove over pedestrian area, where children play, to beat traffic. This was on pavement, few meters from the front door of my house.

msla6• 3 years ago

It's amazing how you post this and a bunch of cyclists come out, elbowing each other aside to be the first to act out their most obnoxious stereotypes. "Yeah, we bomb down the sidewalks at 30 and categorically refuse to yield to pedestrians while shouting 'Share the road!' at anyone using an engine, and you should be grateful we didn't get in an SUV and plow through a daycare center!"

digdugdirk• 3 years ago

"Muni trains close their doors and pull one foot out of the station just to wait at a red light"

What is the reason for this? I see it all the time in metro areas, and it always blows my mind that traffic lights aren't synced with the tram schedules.

NoZebra120vClip5• 3 years ago

I answered upthread.

Sometimes I suspect that there is signaling going on that helps the traffic signals to favor the light rail train here. Then, sometimes, I suspect that there is not.

causality02• 3 years ago

It's so strange because it isn't that people are flooding into cities and bringing their car fixation with them. As a rural/suburban person, nobody I know from here drives when they're traveling in a city because the driving experience is so miserably bad compared to driving in the country. It's the city people who think moving five feet every thirty seconds and bathing in an ocean of car horn noises is somehow compatible with human life.

Aerbil3134• 3 years ago

It's the city people who think moving five feet every thirty seconds and bathing in an ocean of car horn noises is somehow compatible with human life.

Some even manage to enjoy it. I did not believe anyone actually wanted, let alone enjoyed the misery of modernity until I experienced one such person firsthand. It blowed my mind, I was in shock for a straight day. The guy genuinely "liked" the new Transformers movie (which was beyond awful), "enjoyed" fast food, and "liked" the big car-honk-filled city center and CO2-infested loud mall. I'm yet to see a more oversocialized person. When I think of words 'deranged' and 'insane', no criminal but this guy appears in my mind's eye.

NoZebra120vClip5• 3 years ago

how Muni trains close their doors and pull one foot out of the station just to wait at a red light

There are safety and scheduling reasons for this. They are not merely trying to snub riders. For example, the light rail trains here have a standard for how long they open their doors at each station. It's something like 14 seconds. A vehicle with open doors will also allow passengers to disembark; it's a two-way passage. So should they sit in the station with closed doors, or push off a few yards down to the intersection? Now, other motorists see a train stopped at a station and they think one thing. They see a train stopped and waiting for a red light and they know that it will proceed through on green. It seems weird to imagine a train that lingers at the station as if it's boarding but it's not, it's really waiting for the light to change, and then it will pounce on the opportunity. That's less than predictable behavior, as far as other motorists are concerned.

Our transit authority reminds riders to arrive at the stop 5 minutes early. We're also reminded that if we miss this one, another one is on the way. Passengers need not inherit that toxic road rage.

closeparen5• 3 years ago

That's exactly what I'm talking about. The space is for drivers. The rules governing the space are tuned for the predictability and convenience of drivers. The light rail is just a slower, less maneuverable, very timidly driven car that we're all sharing.

It wasn't like that in The Netherlands. Urban spaces where the LRVs operate have few cars and fewer traffic lights. The train moves like it means business and anything in its way scatters. As a passenger, it feels like you & your journey matter. On Muni it's like you're in a DMV waiting room.

Doxin2• 3 years ago

Our transit authority reminds riders to arrive at the stop 5 minutes early.

For reference, In the Netherlands you only strictly need to be at the stop 30 seconds before departure, as that is when the doors close in preparation for departure.

Now, other motorists see a train stopped at a station and they think one thing. They see a train stopped and waiting for a red light and they know that it will proceed through on green.

Why in the hell would drivers need to know that? Leave the train with the doors open at the station to allow any late comers to board. When the track clears start the traffic light cycle to stop car traffic, close the train doors and depart. The drivers see a red light and hopefully know to stop, whether or not they can see a train waiting.

cscurmudgeon3• 3 years ago

Ah, let us look at the data. In reality, only rich (and white) folks can afford to live in areas that are not car-dependent.

https://granfondodailynews.com/2020/01/17/is-north-american-...

From 2001 to 2017 the number of people cycling increased the fastest among high income, highly educated, employed, white men between the ages 25 and 44.

brightlancer10• 3 years ago

That doesn't have data. It doesn't even have good summations.

How is "cycling" defined? For pleasure or for day-to-day travel? How was the data collected? How did they include/ account for the unemployed 20-somethings in poor suburbs who aren't biking to work, aren't "cycling" in events, aren't carrying the family groceries home in a basket, but are on bikes constantly going between houses (and maybe a gas station food mart)?

vivalasvega5• 3 years ago

All that means is that pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods are in demand, which is great! What if we built more and more of them?

ClumsyPilot14• 3 years ago

In reality, only rich (and white) folks can afford to live in areas that are not car-dependent

It’s just artificial scarcity, like fine art.

__MatrixMan__4• 3 years ago

Short of tickets to Amsterdam for everyone, I don’t know how to fix it.

I just got back to the US from Amsterdam. I'll never look at these awful streets the same again.

mkaic• 3 years ago

This was my experience as well. I went in fall of last year for four days to attend Blender (the 3D modeling software) Conference, and it was simply delightful. I walked to and from the conference center every day, took the metro a few times, got to ride the high-speed rail from the station that's literally integrated right into Schipol airport, and witnessed more bikers than I've ever seen in one place. All of this while the city and its infrastructure was clean, quiet, safe, and beautiful.

Then I came back to Los Angeles. For reference, one time while taking the metro I had to evacuate because one of the cars caught on fire and had smoke billowing out the windows. I wound up trapped near the Walk of Fame in Hollywood at roughly 11PM, because when I tried to catch a bus out of there, a bunch of idiots were parked directly in front of the bus stop and the bus driver was forced to just drive right past me because they couldn't pull over and stop. So then I hailed an Uber and had to wait nearly half an hour for it to arrive and pick me up because of how utterly packed the streets were with bumper-to-bumper cars.

I used to semi-jokingly tell my friends and family I wanted to move to Europe. Then I went to Amsterdam. Now I am dead serious when I tell my friends and family I want to move to Europe. Although, I'll probably go somewhere with slightly warmer weather than the Netherlands — Portugal and Spain are both high on my list of candidates currently.

sershe25• 3 years ago

The cause and effect might be reversed.

1) Most people prefer to drive... look at any country that is getting richer - people want to buy cars.

2) It is only when people cannot afford to drive or driving is too inconvenient (traffic, or narrow streets/lack of parking in Europe, or outright restrictions ), they will use alternative modes of transportation.

3) The more people are thus inconvenienced, the more public support there is for the alternative modes (simply by the numbers); moreover, an average person biking and taking transit becomes richer/nicer, so the political will to improve the experience increases even faster than the number of people; plus the experience becomes nicer even without extra investment.

It's a flywheel either way.

Now, you could argue that global warming is bad / enough freeways cannot be built / etc., sure. Maybe we cannot have nice things.

But don't argue that people want to live in urban paradise and some contrived system is simply not giving them what they want. Most people everywhere, when they can, want to drive and live in houses. Except in some places many can afford that and have the infrastructure, and in some only a few do. It's not like car ownership and traffic is that low in Europe, given how admittedly convenient it is to not have one and how relatively expensive car ownership is, esp. in relation to incomes.

TacticalCoder3• 3 years ago

It's not like car ownership and traffic is that low in Europe, given how admittedly convenient it is to not have one

Indeed. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc. are all among the countries with the highest vehicles per capita in the world (it's not as much as in the US, but then in the US people can drive starting at 16 years old, so it messes the stats quite a bit).

ClumsyPilot14• 3 years ago

1) Most people prefer to drive..

You don’t know that. You would have to run the experiment - spend equal amount of money on infrastructure for bikes and for cars. Then see.

Most British cities are tiny, you can cross most of them on an e-bike in like 15 to 30 minutes. Except London of course. But there is usually no safe way to cross them.

When I ask people in London, why are your not cycling, 95% say they are afraid of getting hit by a car. They are wrong - they will be killed by a truck. Most cyclists in London due to 4 axle construction trucks. I have seen one of the bastards illegally drive into a cycle lane, then onto a pavement where women walk with kids, and drive on that pavement to get around traffic. I have seen a BMW stuck on a bend in a segregated cycle way at Tower of London. I’ve seen a wolksvagen in a cycle lane upside down.

Go to a rich and cycling safe are of London like hackney, there are plenty of bikes. Go to an area with dangerous roads, like Surrey, no bikes

We spend insane amount of money on car infra. We just built a new tonnes in east London, the only way to cross the river for miles, and you can only cross in a car.

esoterica6• 3 years ago

Most people prefer to drive
It is only when people cannot afford to drive or driving is too inconvenient (traffic, or narrow streets/lack of parking in Europe, or outright restrictions ), they will use alternative modes of transportation.

This is literally a tautology. "People find driving more convenient, except when driving is less convenient".

But don't argue that people want to live in urban paradise and some contrived system is simply not giving them what they want. Most people everywhere, when they can, want to drive and live in houses.

Price signals are real. The fact that millions of people choose to pay large amounts of money to live in big cities and not drive instead of moving out to the sticks is proof that it is an extremely desirable lifestyle for a large fraction of the population.

jjav4• 3 years ago

Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?”

Maybe this will change now that bikes cost more than most used cars. Spending 15K on a bike is a thing now.

paulcole6• 3 years ago

The thing is we (as an American society) really don’t want a shift to walking. We like the idea of walking more but won’t actually do it. Instead we’ll make up a million excuses about why we just can’t walk.

I say this as someone who at 40 years old has never learned to drive and who has walked/bicycled/taken the bus virtually everywhere I’ve needed to go. And I’ve lived in very rural and very suburban areas, as well as mid-size and bigger cities.

I know it’s possible. It’s just that the vast majority of people don’t want to do it. And if you show them it can be done they’ll just make up a new excuse and keep on driving.

psunavy032• 3 years ago

I say this as someone who at 40 years old has never learned to drive and who has walked/bicycled/taken the bus virtually everywhere I’ve needed to go.

I say this with no mockery or disrespect, just description . . . you are not normal. I mean in a statistical sense. Not only are you part of (maybe the last) generation who salivated over the thought of getting a driver's license at 16 and getting away from Mom and Dad, for the vast majority of Americans, this is a totally unrealistic ask for day-to-day life. Either because of urban design or else living somewhere rural enough where it's infeasible.

Urban solutions do not always work across a country as vast, huge, and diverse as the US.

bluGill5• 3 years ago

Most people in the US live in an urban area, where urban solutions work. Only a small minority live in a rural area, though many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area.

jrockway• 3 years ago

As someone else who is not normal, I have to say I'm a little tired of having my taxes subsidize the roads and sewers for someone who lives in the middle of nowhere and commutes 40 miles each way by car. "But my kids NEED a backyard!" Fair enough, but afford it on your own without a handout from the government.

rewmie3• 3 years ago

(...) salivated over the thought of getting a driver's license at 16 and getting away from Mom and Dad (...)

I'm afraid this mindset needs context. If you find yourself living in a place where everything is located tens of km away, and short drives are assessed in how many hours you spend in a car, and this is further compounded by the utter lack of a public transportation infrastructure, then gaining access to a car is a basic necessary condition for autonomy.

Contrast this with some European urban centers such as the Netherlands' Randstad, where a two hour train ride from your doorstep can get you anywhere everywhere, and can actually be an international trip.

pharmakom2• 3 years ago

Urban solutions do not always work across a country as vast, huge, and diverse as the US.

US is a huge country, but people aren’t travelling across it on a regular basis.

evandale2• 3 years ago

You really don't need a car. Bikes are awesome. You can ride them with backpacks. Friends have trucks. Money pays for delivery.

Source: a normal 38 year old that never had a license

danny_codes8• 3 years ago

America being large is irrelevant. China is just as large and you don't see them struggling to figure out how to walk places. The fact is most of the US is practically empty. Connect the major urban hubs with rail and remove the cars (from urban centers) and we'll have fixed this.

paulcole6• 3 years ago

for the vast majority of Americans, this is a totally unrealistic ask for day-to-day life. Either because of urban design or else living somewhere rural enough where it's infeasible.

They can convince themselves it’s infeasible, but it is very feasible. It’s just a matter of wanting it. I wanted it enough to make it work. They don’t.

That’s 100% fine — I lie to myself about plenty of stuff to get through my day. Everybody does.

skrebbel2• 3 years ago

Can you explain this to me?

For example, my local supermarket is a 8 minute walk from my house. Driving there would take about 5 minutes, due to one way streets etc, so including the hassle of parking etc it takes about as long. Driving there seems positively insane to me, except if I’m shopping for a party or something and need to fill the trunk. Are you saying that Americans would choose the car here? Or that in America it’s a 5 minute drive vs a 25 minute walk?

Cause tbh in the latter case I’d pick the car too, despite my Dutch habits.*

I guess what I’m trying to ask is, are you sure it’s American psyche and not, mostly, the town layout as this article suggests?

*) okok I’m Dutch so I’d bike but I kept that out to stick with the wall vs car topic

bluGill5• 3 years ago

25 minute walk. And even if the supermarket is close enough to walk, it is setup for drivers. So you have to cut through someone's backyard, climb a fence, then walk all the way around to the door on the opposite side. Unless the backyard you cut across above is actually yours the real distance is not walkable, and if it is your yard the trip is not 'dignified'.

snovymgodym3• 3 years ago

It's highly situational, but speaking broadly the US usually it's a "5 minute drive vs a 25 minute walk" situation.

But even if you live 5-10 minutes from the supermarket many people will still drive because everything is designed around people driving. For example, it's very common to lack sidewalks and even when there are sidewalks, protected crossings can be sparse.

So a 10 minute walk to the store can involve you having to walk in the street or in the mud and grass, cutting across the street where there's no crossing signal, and having to walk through a busy parking lot to actually get to the building.

And even once you're in the store things are designed around cars. The size of packaging and the quantities that people normally buy in are based on the idea that Americans take their car to the grocery store once a week and fill their trunk space with groceries.

arrowsmith2• 3 years ago

Have you spent much time in the US? American cities are nothing like Europe. Everything is far more spread out with more empty land in between buildings, so all the distances are longer. And the concept of what we Brits call a "corner shop" hardly seems to exist in 'Murica - you get these huge residential zones where it's nothing but homes, homes, homes for miles and miles with no shops or anything commercial. So if you need to, say, buy a loaf of bread, or do any of the everyday chores of life that require one to leave the house, your destination is never within walking distance. It's my least favourite thing about day-to-day life in America.

stateofinquiry• 3 years ago

The grocery store example is very helpful to illustrate how its not just the quality, safety, and practicality (e.g. time) of the walk that leads to most Americans driving- there is also the fact that the whole process and experience is predicated on the expectation that you will have a personal car.

Specifically: In the parts of W. Europe I have visited I observed mostly small grocery stores (esp in towns and cities) that folks visit daily or nearly so for food. People may stop on thei walk home to get dinner items each night! Contrast that with the U.S., where you are more likely to encounter a large grocery store- except perhaps in the densest inner city (but then maybe no grocery store at all, which is another story)- where people visit once a week or so. When people go to the grocery store, they stock up. Stores are optimized for buying multiple (more than you can carry at once) bags of groceries, which you then necessarily would load into your car and drive home.

Most folks would not willingly opt to take a long risky walk through unpleasant surroundings, traverse a giant parking lot not designed for walkers, then have to march through a large grocery store for many minutes to leave with just what one could carry. Sure, folks could bring a personal hand trolley or something but this really does not address other underlying problem.

So, in the case of grocery stores the basic culture of shopping at a very large center less frequently would also have to shift for people to leave their cars. And, I would argue, so it goes with many things. Shifts to a more pedestrian-oriented culture and environment may happen with time or in certain areas, but I don't think it would be simple, quick, or widespread any time soon in the U.S. for reasons that go beyond sidewalks.

bryanlarsen3• 3 years ago

I'm half a mile from a grocery store. Perfect walking distance, but to do so I have to walk along a street without a sidewalk, cross at an unsigned intersection and then walk around a mall to get to the grocery store.

The latter is the perfect illustration of the problem. The mall was designed with a nice cut-through for pedestrians, but it got bricked up because teenagers used to hang out there and smoke.

paulcole6• 3 years ago

are you sure it’s American psyche

Yes. Many Americans would absolutely choose a 5 minute drive over a 5 minute walk.

“I have too much stuff to carry. I have to take the kids. It’s too hot/cold/windy. I’ll be late to… I have to…”

FooBarBizBazz• 3 years ago

Americans don't live in cities, or in towns, or in villages. They are farmed in facilities called "housing developments", where there are no stores.

A developer purchases large plots of agricultural land, and colludes with government to put a sprawling system of widely-separated four- to six- lane roads through it (often by widening and paving country roads until they are unrecognizable). Then, to hide this ugliness and block the resulting noise, they ring their newly-acquired fields with large earthen berms, which they cover with evergreen shrubs and chemically-treated wood-chips. At gaps in the berms they put gatehouses, with unarmed guards. Within these fortifications, they then build fanciful, curvilinear, branching systems of slower roads, like the endoplasmic reticulum of a cell, and around these fractal structures they put large, cheaply-constructed houses and driveways, which sell for $800k and above. Compared to the cities nearby, this is affordable.

Outside the berms, on the other side of the stroads, often without sidewalks, are, at best, strip malls, and, at least as often, are instead big-box stores surrounded literally by acres of blacktop parking lot. An "acre", you may recall, used to mean that which a man could farm in a day. Not this.

Now suppose you find yourself inside one of those houses inside the berms, and that you want to buy a vegetable. As the crow flies, it's possible that you are only a mile and a half from the nearest supermarket (not a very short distance, but achievable). But to get there by walking along the roads, you must first get to the gatehouse along the berm (which may or may not be in the direction of the store), and, to get there, you must traverse this fractal system of roads. The arclength may exceed the Euclidean distance from A to B by a factor of three or more. Either that, or you must violate peoples' sacred property, by cutting across yards and next to houses (which are not very far apart), and then finally scramble over the berm, amidst a shower of wood-chips.

Having achieved your escape from the "community", you must then find a way to cross four lanes of 45 MPH traffic (on a slow day). If you are lucky, there is a sidewalk, so you can walk half a mile to the nearest crosswalk. You do this separated from the whizzing death-machines by about the eight inches of grass that separates the sidewalk from the road. Do not let your mind wander. Keep your arms and legs inside the pathway at all times.

Upon finally crossing the street, you finally enter the shopping complex. It is surrounded by parking lots. Sweating and relieved that you have gotten this far with your life intact, you step into the air conditioning.

Then you buy that one vegetable you wanted for your supper, steel yourself, and conduct your return expedition.

Which, of course, is why you don't just buy what you need for today's supper. No, you didn't walk there at all. You drove there in a car, loaded the trunk with food for at least a week, and drove it home, to be preserved in your oversized fridge. Because venturing out in all that is a chore.

Back within your "community", there may be a nice, parklike atmosphere, full of what look like walking paths. But you may find that this is actually a golf course around which the houses have been built, and that -- ostensibly for safety from golf balls, or perhaps from golf carts -- these paths are often closed, in principle, to the "little people" who merely live there without additionally paying to whack a ball around. There are then petty conflicts between the golfers who have purchased special rights, and the simple pedestrians, who have the unseemly desire to locomote with their God-given feet.

An overwhelming proportion of the American landscape is like this. It can hardly be described as a culture or a way of life. It's just what people do when they have no identity and no ambition to create a worthwhile future. These people are deskilled, demoralized, and incapable of anything but consuming garbage.

A friend from Europe used to complain that, in America, the cows just stand there, whereas in Poland, the cows were mischievous and frisky. The process of domestication is further along in the US, and it degrades the people as much as it does the cows.

The good news is that these people will not have grandchildren and their houses will decay within 100 years. The bad news is that a shithole mess is going to be left behind.

Anyway, that's why they don't walk to the grocery store.

tzs2• 3 years ago

Driving there seems positively insane to me, except if I’m shopping for a party or something and need to fill the trunk.

How much food do you keep at home? In the US many people have room for quite a bit of food at home and on most grocery runs they are filling the trunk or at least buying enough that carrying it home would be difficult.

Walking might require them to go to the store 10+ times a month whereas driving might only require 4 trips so even if walking is as fast as driving they can spend much less total time traveling to and from the store if they drive.

lozenge4• 3 years ago

What the other commenters haven't mentioned is that it's a 25 minute walk... to one store... then a 25 minute walk to another store, then a 25 minute walk to a gym, etc. Whereas in Europe when you walk to a high street, there's a reasonable variety of shops and services there.

Falkon13132• 3 years ago

Yes, many would. I've even seen people drive down to the end of their driveway to get the mail from the mailbox or put out the trash.

But also the car culture makes it so that a car is a big part of your identity and also a sort of adjunct living space; a personal safe shelter and place where you can keep your stuff. It's pretty common for people during their breaks at work to go sit in their car and eat.

People used to having cars get very anxious without it, even for a few minutes. They'll drive around in circles in a parking lot for half an hour waiting for a closer parking space to open up so they can save 2 minutes of walking, but also so that their car won't be scarily far away.

If you're not a car person, other people think you're that weird oddball who actually walks to the store and maybe there's something wrong with you.

snovymgodym3• 3 years ago

American cities, with a tiny number of exceptions, are not built for walking and biking. When neighborhoods, businesses, and infrastructure are built, their design is fundamentally based on the assumption that the users of it will have a personal motor vehicle.

We're talking about what it would take to induce behavioral change on a societal level. I don't mean to be rude, but when someone comes into a discussion like this and says "well actually, if everyone lived like me it would be fine. Everyone else is just too lazy", it's essentially a non-sequitur and comes off as you trying to hold yourself in some kind of position of moral superiority.

You're 40 years old, so I expect you to know this already, but I'll let you in on a little secret: you cannot rely on other people to the right thing on a mass scale. You can, however, rely on them doing the easy/comfortable thing.

The challenge in sustainability is to align the good with the comfortable as much as possible.

It is commendable that you've managed to live car-free so long in such a car-centric country, but we cannot rely on all 340 million people living their lives like you have.

I live in the US, and have spent time in something like half a dozen European countries, and I can tell you that there's a clear reason why Europeans walk & bike more, and it's not because "Americans are too lazy not to drive" or something like that.

projektfu• 3 years ago

I've seen people lose their jobs because they weren't willing to walk a half mile. No car, but taking Uber for that trip. It turns out, Uber is not reliable transportation. But walking usually is.

mikenew2• 3 years ago

This has not been my experience. I'm lucky to live in a very walkable part of a very walkable city, and almost every time someone comes to visit I find they've disappeared within 24 hours to "explore the area".

These are people who virtually never walk anywhere unless they have to, but you put them in the right environment and they almost can't help it.

arrowsmith2• 3 years ago

When I'm in a new city I love to go for an aimless walk with no destination in mind just to get lost, get a feel for the place and see what I discover.

Then I visited the US and quickly realised that this is a terrible idea in pretty much any American city.

lelanthran2• 3 years ago

How do you get toddlers to daycare, preteens to soccer practice, etc.

MattPalmer1086• 3 years ago

I also live car free, in London. When we had a kid all my car owning friends were telling me that I would absolutely need one now.

Nope, we just walk, or take the bus, or tube, or take an Uber if necessary. Really isn't as needed as most people think if you live in an urban area.

danny_codes8• 3 years ago

Well in a well-designed city, you could just walk to all those things. From my house in Berkeley, CA, daycare is about 400 meters from my house. There are two fields of soccer-ing size, one about 10 minutes away and one 25 minutes by foot.

The grocery store is a 4 minute walk, my hairdresser is a 1 minute walk, CVS is a 3 minute walk.

I also have an amazing park with play structures, basketball courts, tennis courts, large gracy field, a creek, picnic areas, and such about a 1 minute walk away.

I can bike to work in 20 minutes.

This could be everywhere in the US. There's nothing special about where I live except that it's development predates the automobile.

jodrellblank2• 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA "Bakfiets" ("box bike")

TulliusCicero11• 3 years ago

We like the idea of walking more but won’t actually do it.

Wrong.

The reason people don't walk is simply because walking mostly really sucks in like 95% of urban or suburban contexts in the states. Even crossing the street once can be a huge pain in the ass sometimes (e.g. strip mall to strip mall across two giant parking lots and an enormous stroad).

It is astoundingly rare to find an actual nice, not-tiny area to walk in, in terms of urban design and points of interest. To a lot of Americans, "has sidewalks" means an area is walkable, which is just...so, so very wrong.

I lived in Germany for five years, and during our annual summer trip back to the states, it was always so sad to see the pathetic state of walking and biking infrastructure everywhere we went. It's like we're not even trying...because, well, we're not. Walking here sucks because we choose to make it suck.

paulcole6• 3 years ago

People can still do things that suck if they want to do those things enough.

If you want to walk and have two legs that work, don’t whine about wishing walking didn’t suck. Get out and walk.

lotsoweiners2• 3 years ago

I like walking and walk almost everyday (not right now since it’s summer). Why would I want to walk 15-20 minutes each way though to go pick something up when a 2 minute car ride would get me there. Sure sometimes I’ll take a leisurely walk to the store on a Saturday afternoon but usually I just need something quickly.

Simulacra• 3 years ago

When I lived in Berlin from 2009-2012 I was impressed by the pedestrian friendly infrastructure and found myself comparing it to America's. Berlin's system is certainly made with dignity: Trains, trams, and busses were always clean, and the people at that time were overwhelming quiet and polite. Bicycles never given a second glance. I never felt safer without a car.

Contrast to America where trains and busses where the level of danger is considerably higher, to a degree that it is dissuading to walk. Vehicles provide safety in an otherwise uncertain society.

I like this idea of dignity, but no matter how amazing a walking/biking infrastructure is, it is only as good as the behavior of the people who use it. Until busses, subways, trains, trams, streetcars, and just walking down the street is made safer and cleaner people will continue to stick to the safety of the cars

voisin4• 3 years ago

If we want a shift to walking, we need cities to plant around 100x the number of trees they have.

Ever walk through an old, mature neighbourhood? Usually there are tons of people on the sidewalks, and a primary reason is that there are mature trees providing plenty of shade.

Then try walking in a new neighbourhood with barely any shade. It is awful.

Guvante7• 3 years ago

We had trees, they ripped them out in the name of safety.

"A drink driver might swerve off the road" killed so many old growth trees in the US.

moomoo11• 3 years ago

Wouldn't that be safer?

I would rather the drunk driver hit the tree and deal with his/her consequences, than hit my house or my neighbors during our sleep.

mc32• 3 years ago

It wasn’t one reason. Some of it came down to liability (buckling sidewalks, falling limbs in storms, pruning), public safety (baddies can hide under trees and away from choppers before FLiR), impact on utilities (100+ years ago maybe there was a sewer line and maybe a water line, but not much else in most places).

nojvek2• 3 years ago

Drunk driver dies hitting a tree. Whose fault is that really?

Could have easily hit a person, a traffic pole, another car on sideways.

I don’t understand the argument why trees are at fault here.

Trees are the ultimate carbon capture, they produce oxygen and humidity, they provide shade, something beautiful to look at. They bring in birds and tree dwelling animals like squirrels.

Trees are a magical invention by nature.

That’s why we feel amazing walking in a neighborhood with trees.

philips• 3 years ago

100%l the lack of tree cover everywhere is criminal.

Three sticking points in my experience trying to help manage street trees in a neighborhood of 400 homes:

1. Planter strips are too small. This leads to infrastructure conflicts that are costly like lifting sidewalks and exploding irrigation lines. The problem is many municipalities simply have standard streets too wide and planters too narrow.

2. Maintaining trees is an ongoing expense and if not managed by an HOA or municipality the costs explode as individuals have to pay a crew to drag out equipment for just a few trees.

3. Lack of mandatory diversity- my neighborhood is 60% ash because the builder got a good deal 15 years ago after the emerald ash borer was found out east and wasn’t top of mind in the west yet. If the EAB makes a strong foothold entire blocks will be starting from zero again.

ericmay2• 3 years ago

Then try walking in a new neighbourhood with barely any shade. It is awful.

Neighborhoods you’d typically want to walk in do have shade because they were all built a long time ago and there is somewhere for you to walk to. Suburban neighborhoods aren’t designed that way which is why even if there was shade there’s still nowhere to walk to.

I do agree we need more trees planted and more shade. Unfortunately a lot of space near and around places people would want to walk or bike to us instead covered in pavement for cars and parking.

We can do more than one thing at once though. We can make areas more walkable while we also plant trees. And we can flip state highway departments [1] so that they focus on serving the people and their needs instead of themselves or a small, vocal minority.

[1] Note that departments of transportation in nearly all states are highway and road transit departments first and do next to nothing w.r.t better means of transportation. Their entire context is cars and drivers and you can confirm this by looking at the budget.

voisin4• 3 years ago

Neighborhoods you’d typically want to walk in do have shade because they were all built a long time ago and there is somewhere for you to walk to. Suburban neighborhoods aren’t designed that way which is why even if there was shade there’s still nowhere to walk to.

I agree with what you are saying generally but my point stands even for urban cores, which tend to have little to no trees (or many trees but not mature enough for any real shade) and tons of concrete. Awful walking experience despite lots of things to do and see.

TulliusCicero11• 3 years ago

That would help, but there are plenty of walkable cities with not-great tree cover.

I don't think Barcelona or Tokyo are gonna win any awards for having lots of trees.

Silhouette3• 3 years ago

Given the conditions around the Mediterranean in recent weeks I'm not sure citing Barcelona as an example of why cities don't need trees to be walkable will be a convincing argument. Barcelona is a great place but it's also horrible to walk around at lunchtime on a hot summer day.

mlinksva3• 3 years ago

I like mature trees and love walking among them (e.g., downtown Sacramento). In 99% of the US more trees would be better (and I try to contribute by planting an acorn or other tree seed when I spy a place a sapling might not get mowed, wherever I go). But I still consider more trees a distant second to buildings closer together, without room for trees (or, as typical, empty space or junk). If there's room for many mature trees, the place is fundamentally not dense enough to be totally amazing for a life of walking, as opposed to walking tourism.

voisin4• 3 years ago

You can have buildings close together but have wider pedestrian paths with densely planted trees in front of the buildings. That’s the ideal.

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

Can't upvote this enough. In Austin, with us on track to break the record of 100+ degree consecutive days, there is a huge difference between walking along nice, shaded areas and barren sidewalks. The trees don't even need to be that "mature" - I've seen new developments plant grown trees that only take a couple years to really expand.

Like the blog post and other commenters mentioned, it's not just trees alone but especially in hotter climates it can make all the difference.

beebeepka3• 3 years ago

It's crazy to me that people need to be reminded that trees, and plants in general, lower the temperature. Sufficient amounts of dense bushes do absolute wonders. I can feel the cool, moist air from 20 meters.

Animals understand this stuff just fine, yet certain modern humans somehow have trouble with the concept.

b1122• 3 years ago

Then try walking in a new neighbourhood with barely any shade. It is awful.

Love how south-centric this statement is. In Northern countries, that's true for a month typically, otherwise "oh god please I hope the sun will shine on me".

In December, I see 4 hours of sun, where the light gets above tree tops. And that's in Southern Canada!

Not a hatred of trees, but a dislike of shade trees.

edit: until I visited Texas, I never understood why people wore hats. The sun is never hot enough here for it. It never gets as high in the sky. Yet it's a brutal beast in Texas. I can only imagine further south..

dasudasu• 3 years ago

Southern Canada is at the same latitude as Spain. Sunlight isn’t that bad even in December.

voisin4• 3 years ago

On the contrary, not south centric at all (note my spelling of neighbourhood!) - I lived in southwestern Ontario for most of my life and now live in southeastern BC. I have yet to see a new neighbourhood where I’ve thought the tree coverage was too much at any time of year! In fact, the same is true for old neighbourhoods. I just cannot imagine feeling oppressed by the shade from trees.

QuercusMax3• 3 years ago

Unless all your shade trees are evergreens (unlikely) there's this thing called "autumn" when the leaves fall off the trees and they don't provide shade any more.

mlinksva3• 3 years ago

I spend lots of time walking through old, mature neighbourhoods with mature trees. Usually the sidewalks are empty, because stuff is too spread out to be walkable, and there just aren't enough people for sidewalks to be full. Yes, mostly in the US, but I've also observed this outside the US. Leafy+dense enough to be vibrant areas are really nice, but the exception. The thing that really makes new neighborhoods awful for walking isn't lack of shade, it's everything else about the new neighborhood, typically built in an extremely car-centric manner.

kccqzy3• 3 years ago

I observe that in a 1950s neighborhood with mature trees. The sidewalks are only for people to exercise themselves (jogging) or their dogs, not as a means to get to a destination.

scruple• 3 years ago

I'm curious what the rates of walking are in Sacramento now, given that it's got that whole "City of Trees" moniker and is also hot as Hell during the summer. I've honestly never been there in the summer, so I couldn't even share anecdotes. I'm not finding anything useful on Google.

What you say makes sense, when I walk in my own (new-ish development) neighborhood in Orange county, I specifically go to the areas where trees are more developed and provide more shade.

gochi• 3 years ago

I don't think the tree has much to do with it. While shade is important and should be even more so going forward, the general scale of new neighbourhoods compared to old ones is dramatically different.

It's like homes used to be so much closer to the sidewalk, it was just a couple of steps to reach the sidewalk and get going, but now it's these giant football field widths separating homes from the sidewalk, and then massive 4 lane sized roads separating sidewalks on either side. I'm exaggerating of course but the point is still there, the scale is just so different planting trees won't solve it.

This difference in scale creates such a different atmosphere, where sidewalks are just for dog walkers and bored baby sitters, not for regular commute. It's like if you want to talk to your neighbour from the sidewalk you have to bring a megaphone.

brightlancer10• 3 years ago

I don't think the tree has much to do with it.

I do. I lived 25+ years in Atlanta and I walked all over downtown, midtown, Buckhead, Little 5, Westside, etc. and a lack of trees means you BAKE walking more than a block.

There are lots of really nice, shaded neighborhoods in Atlanta. But anywhere there's a business that you'd walk to, you BAKE.

Aerbil3134• 3 years ago

People walked under sun since forever. That's what hats are for. What you're really saying is walking under the sun crosses a discomfort threshold for you which driving and walking under shade doesn't.

tmnvix• 3 years ago

Unfortunately trees are often seen as a danger to car drivers on roads over a certain speed limit so traffic engineers dislike them.

closeparen5• 3 years ago

One of the fundamental axioms of traffic engineering is you can't have trees too close to the edge of the road, because drunk/speeding drivers might get hurt. It is not just that the neighborhoods are mature enough for trees to have grown in, it's that they predate this science.

https://highways.dot.gov/safety/rwd/provide-safe-recovery/cl...

QuercusMax3• 3 years ago

Then those traffic engineers are idiots, because they should be designing the roads so that people don't feel like they can safely drive at speeds that will endanger themself and others.

spixy2• 3 years ago

Yes. Something like this https://twitter.com/Cobylefko/status/1682029080538136579

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

I walk everywhere and never think about this. There are going to be times you need tog et from A to B without being in an environment perfectly designed for aesthetics or convenience the whole way. Where I live, is something is very poorly designed (eg the path with two unnecessary 90-degree turns joining a crossing to the main path), people just wear a trail across the grass which shows the optimal route.

whispersnow2• 3 years ago

Agree and disagree with the article. Was an intern at a local governance, Americans with disabilities act (ADA) office for a year. It was a city with history, and not a very good city planning at the start. Yes, need to compliance, reality is, it is very hard. Like you built everything on top of a single MySQL and then facing the scalability challenge so you will need to re-shard every other 6 months - and worse, as re-architecture a city faces much more complex problems.

cheschire• 3 years ago

It sounds like you actually don't disagree with the article at all.

whispersnow2• 3 years ago

The disagree part is the complexity for compliance is under stated. Implementation is way more complicated than what the author has described even at the end there is a good sentence one there is a long way to go. IMHO, it is too ideal, still.

Some problems is not solvable, at all. After a year taking note and consolidate notes of the public hearings, there are items that's leaving there forever. No progress. No solution. Not possible by design. And it is not something like, you can migrate from MySQL to CRDB. How to do that to a historical city?

Anyway, hope this make it more clear :-)

WirelessGigabit• 3 years ago

Well, as long as municipalities offer a fraction of what you can make on the free market those systems will never be adequate.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 3 years ago

This article kind of skips out on safety. Many of the urban areas that have the density for walking, often have issues of homelessness and open drug use that makes people feel unsafe walking, especially with children.

myshpa• 3 years ago

That kind of points to other systemic problems of your society.

slifin2• 3 years ago

It must be easy to ignore a homeless population if you can just drive past them

mlrtime2• 3 years ago

So I have two immediate options, buy a car or fix SF or NYC's mental illness or drug problems, which should I chose to protect my family?

hairofadog• 3 years ago

If you were driving past and saw a friend walking or rolling there, what would your first thought be:
>“Oh, no, Henry’s car must have broken down! I better offer him a ride.”
>“Oh, looks like Henry’s out for a walk! I should text him later.”

To me, this is a great way of framing it. I sometimes see people walking along a stretch of road and I feel for them because I know that no human would be waking along that stretch unless their life was in a bad place.

eimrine• 3 years ago

I love how the author puts dignity over safety. So timely.

bobthepanda2• 3 years ago

They go hand in hand; unsafe infrastructure is inherently undignified to use. It is both unsafe and undignified to walk in a dirt ditch due to lack of sidewalks.

chimpanzee• 3 years ago

The pyramid structure is used to illustrate that upper layer concepts are supported by the bottom layer concepts. So, in this case, dignity is less essential than safety. Given safety, one can begin to develop dignity.

EgregiousCube• 3 years ago

In the "pyramid" style graphic the author uses, dignity being above safety implies that dignity is less essential than safety, not more.

liveoneggs• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

OfSanguineFire6• 3 years ago

I spent a few weeks recently cycling from LA to the Mexican border across non-coastal Southern California. Zero complaints about cycling in that part of the USA: I was pleased by how many hard shoulders had been turned into bike lanes, and drivers seemed courteous.

But man, was walking in towns a drag. If I left the bike safely at a hotel and wanted to stroll over to a restaurant or supermarket, every intersection was button-operated traffic lights where pedestrians wait ages for their turn to cross. Then, the pedestrian light flashes for almost too little time to cross the six or seven lanes of traffic. The sheer width of ordinary US roads must have a deterrent effect.

TulliusCicero11• 3 years ago

I was pleased by how many hard shoulders had been turned into bike lanes, and drivers seemed courteous.

But how many are protected bike lanes, instead of just paint? Painted bike lanes are only helpful for relatively confident cyclists, and obviously do virtually nothing to actually protect people on bikes. Imagine if we started replacing sidewalks with painted walk lanes!

The sheer width of US roads must have a deterrent effect.

Yup. In Munich, not only are roads generally not as wide, but if they're even sorta of wide, they get a pedestrian island or two.

OfSanguineFire6• 3 years ago

Painted bike lanes of this sort are quite common in the EU (and even a step up from painted shared lanes), I can't regard the US ones I experienced as inferior. Moreover, because the roads are often as multi-lane and wide as I described, cyclists over in that painted lane might even feel well removed from the main flow of vehicles.

Mizoguchi• 3 years ago

A lot of improvement could be make by just enforcing the laws. Many cities across the US allow sidewalk parking for example. My neighbor has a Tesla Y and his charging station is literally on the sidewalk, he can afford the car but not a house with a garage.

standyro2• 3 years ago

Weird complaint because it says a lot about political dysfunction in American society when a (mostly) self-driving car costs about $40,000 but a reasonably decent house in those cities where those cars are built cost about 15-20x at around $800,000. Let’s get rid of arbitrary suburban zoning codes that keep the status quo that makes density and walkability a low priority for “neighborhood character”

jeffrallen2• 3 years ago

I liked lots of this, but I really disagree with the night shot. What about the dignity of the people living along the bright (overly) lighted sidewalk, who lose their dark skies and dark bedrooms?

Street lights suck, and should be absolutely minimized, and turned off at 22h. If you feel intimidated by the dark, you can solve that for yourself: don't shine your fears into my windows.

JoshTriplett4• 3 years ago

Agreed. I wish there were a standard practice of turning off streetlights between certain hours, to reduce light pollution.

danny_codes8• 3 years ago

There is actually a simple solution, which is to put red lights on street lamps instead of white lights. You can buy LEDs which emit only in frequencies that won't disturb circadian rhythms.

They are a bit more expensive, but I think the reason we don't do this is because planners/governments are probably unaware of the problematic nature of light pollution.

lancebeet• 3 years ago

I'm confused by this sentiment. It's possible to illuminate the sidewalk without shining in through people's windows (or cause excess light pollution, for that matter), especially if the sidewalk is the only thing you need to illuminate and the lamps can be built lower. It's also not unjustified fear. The risk of being subjected to violent crime such as robbery, assault or rape is higher when there is no illumination.

thex10• 3 years ago

excuse me, what? No, if I need to walk through late at night, I want to be safe. You have some options: - put the bedrooms away from the street - invest in some curtains - live somewhere more pastoral???

jeffrallen2• 3 years ago

pastoral

Got cows in the backyard and a bright light shining in my window in front. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

At least my house protects the cows from the light...

elric3• 3 years ago

The light won't make you safer. It might make you feel safer, which is a different thing entirely.

uoaei2• 3 years ago

It's as easy as bending and cutting some sheet metal into shrouds so the light doesn't enter residential windows.

My place has this problem and I'm not sure why it does. The solution seems so cheap and obvious to me. Just shape the shroud so the beam only shines downward.

Moldoteck5• 3 years ago

Recently I've seen that in our city new street lights on minor roads near buildings usually have a special form and lower height specifically to counter this problem

aeternum3• 3 years ago

I don't like the word dignity for this. I think a clearer term would be priority.

We want to encourage people to be pedestrians so pedestrians should have priority over cars. In some countries, pressing a walk button actually triggers the stoplight to cycle to yellow then red for cars. Why not implement that more frequently? Also favor putting cars/roadways through tunnels rather than pedestrians. Surface can be nice parks.

routerl• 3 years ago

Priority is a ceiling which can shift; see the history of public transit in LA, before car companies destroyed it.

Dignity is a floor; it is very difficult to lower a floor.

ttymck2• 3 years ago

What don't you like about the word dignity in this context?

aeternum3• 3 years ago

It is imprecise and unmeasurable.

Do intersections that implement pedestrian scramble somehow increase dignity? I don't know.

They do increase pedestrian safety and pretty clearly give pedestrians priority over vehicles via the exclusive use of the intersection for awhile.

badrabbit3• 3 years ago

Just throwing it out there but it would be nice if there were a lot more pesestrian and bike only roads built separate from car roads. Big cities already have recreational walking trails that typically follow some sort of a drainage or sewage "river".

Another thing I wondered is how under most city streets there is already wiring and tunnels and some infra. Is the cost that unreasonable to convert roads one by one so that cars go underground and intersections overlap to avoid stops, then all you need is exits to parking spaces and low-speed residential streets. Cars get to go a lot faster with little stopping in cities (which will reduce freeway jams), less pedestrians die, self-driving cars would do well there too. Flooding is the main issue I can think of but given climate change, they need to make cities much more flood tolerant and making more floos tunnels/digging might be needed anyways.

In my ideal city, these roads will also have systems for small package delivery/transport and garbage disposal where people will select the type of garbage and put it in a box, upon validation they get credits for it if it gets recycle but also less package waste because the package delivery system won't need to have boxes with your address on it, it would just be the stuff, as-is. And this will work with grocery delivery and even high volume destinations like warehouses to walmarts which also require a lot of packaging and waste. Now imagine this delivery system as a subway for packages and imagine adding humans to the mix, delivering them to destinations as if they were packages and then you need a lot less cars and parking space waste. That type of transportation removes the downsides of public transportation like sharing space with a lot of people and being picked up/dropped off ar specicific points and then having to walk to the destination.

Just random ideas to put out there for anyone who reads and knows the subject better.

bryanlarsen3• 3 years ago

Big cities already have recreational walking trails

Those are a great example of the problem. Often those recreational walking trails are very nice, but they don't go anywhere functional.

badrabbit3• 3 years ago

Perhaps they could be extended to do so? Because houses near them already list them as a feature to have near you.

lozenge4• 3 years ago

Milton Keynes tried separating pedestrians and cyclists, it is mostly considered a failure.

Reasons include- they built the place so well for cars that everybody owns a car- poorly lit underpasses- confusing layout- crime and the feeling of being alone if somebody were to attack, due to no cars passing by and no shop windows.

https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/blog/2012/04/27/they-buil...

https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?t=46081

"You have to cycle quite a long way to get anywhere useful - Signage is appalling. If I hadn’t had the map I would have got quite lost. [the cycle paths don't follow the grid system]"

Tunnels are quite dangerous, having cars at high speed for long distances is extra dangerous. Having them leave the tunnel is either a highway junction or a stroad. There is one in Boston though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5pPKfzzL54

badrabbit3• 3 years ago

Milton Keynes tried separating pedestrians and cyclists, it is mostly considered a failure

That's not what I was suggesting, I was suggesting restructuring cities so that pedestrians and cyclist have their own road network accessible to residential streets and businesses. This road network would complement artery/busy car roads as opposed to being a sidewalk next to them.

Where I am, cycling on the sidewalk is prohibited but i see people use it all the time, even where is a bike lane because cars don't take enough care, especially if you wear a helmet. There are many "memorial" roadside spots where cyclists and pedestrians were killed by cars. Walking with someone is also hard because even smaller busy roads have loud cars that make it harder to talk. But the one time my family lived close to a walking/biking trail, everyone started taking routine recreational walks (weather permitting)

Most of the reasons you mentioned are easily solvable except the first one, it would indeed require businesses placing signages and retargeting to include foot traffic. But if you think about it, if these complementary roads are parallel to arterial car roads, food trucks and street vendors will flock there. I also see people walking their dogs next to unpleasant busy car roads when they really prefer the type of roads i spoke about, but also dog parks and other recreational human friendly spot could be exclusive to these roads. Milton keynes seems to have had an implementation/planning problem.

Tunnels are quite dangerous, having cars at high speed for long distances is extra dangerous. Having them leave the tunnel is either a highway junction or a stroad. There is one in Boston though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5pPKfzzL54

Freeways already have cars at high speeds for long distances. What I am proposing isn't making the tunnels very fast, just slightly faster than existing roads but also actually faster because less pedestrians and stopping. A 30mph road might become 45mph not 60mph. The right lane would be slow enough to take a ramp to/from parking lots.

I was also suggesting the tunnels for artery roads, not huge highways. And unlike boston, there would be no addding lanes, above ground would be converted to pedestrian roads and/or metrorail where it makes sense. This can be done one road section at a time, roads would dip into a tunnel and then dip out. Sidewalks would be replaces with space for offramping. Places with underground parking fit even better. Another huge advantage of this is that there could be much more grass/soil/greens above ground making the city cooler and more flood resilient. Boston replaced a highway but used that to add more lanes. They had their railway add more stations according to that video but if they went my that would be done to begin with above ground where there are cars now

akira25012• 3 years ago

"People should walk!"

Pictures of miles long suburban corridors with no services or business along them.

Maybe.. people don't walk there.. because there's no _reason_ to be walking there.

If you want people to walk, give them a reason other than "I don't like cars."

slothtrop2• 3 years ago

That's what "15 min cities" is about. The YIMBYs also push for accessible amenities, through zoning changes, to make areas more walkable.

akira25012• 3 years ago

Yea.. I'm sure the "planned economy" will work this time.

mint2• 3 years ago

You just cited a chief complaint that people against a car dominated culture have about car culture as if they never thought of it, never thought of one of their own major arguments?

Moldoteck5• 3 years ago

Yes, problem is complex but also easy fixable in long term: abolish parking reqs & allow building dense buildings & force building nice sidewalk+trees+bike lane+ safety islands on every street renovation. This way there is no upfront cost to rebuild everything instantly, instead same public resources will be used(street renovation money is already allocated) and the town will become more walkable gradually

wnc31413• 3 years ago

I think what's being noticed here, as in many urbanist conversations, is that our urban conditions are primarily reflective of the vastly unequal socio-economic structure we have at large.

In places where the working poor are the most disadvantaged, there also tends to be the highest auto dependency. (Think American South, Panama City, Panama etc)

To Soap box for a moment, almost all of our problems are reflective of our vast inequality. Our ability to live more sustainably, enjoy greater opportunity, ability to form new businesses, household formations, civic function etc. ultimately are limited by the degree of inequality a nation faces.

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

Don't agree with this at all.

On one hand, it's kind of a tautology - sure, if you're in a city that is very car-dependent, it's a disadvantage to the working poor because owning a car costs money.

But in the US there are also (usually older) cities with relatively great public transportation that are more walkable that also have enormous amounts of wealth inequality.

Doesn't really have anything to do with inequality, in the US at least it's mostly just reflective of when cities were built and developed. Pre-WWII cities like NYC and Boston have (again, relatively) great public transit options and huge walkable parts, while newer cities (often in the South) developed around the car.

patothon• 3 years ago

Poor people can’t live in the places you’re describing so they’re going out of the public transit coverage

Fricken• 3 years ago

Lack of adequate transportation has been cited as the biggest barrier to upward economic mobility

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-eme...

whimsicalism14• 3 years ago

The problem is that the shining example of low-inequality urbanism (Western Europe) achieved this by having effectively the most exclusionary immigration policy in the West for two centuries.

Europe may have great biking culture and equality, but they have effectively sacrificed pluralism.

wnc31413• 3 years ago

This is a very interesting angle on a trade off that I (as an American) have not considered and be interested to read about.

Justsignedup• 3 years ago

I have to agree with a lot in this article: I just walked down a street in staten island... very narrow, just enough for me and nobody next to me. Many spots just push you onto the road by trees and signs. Winding. And many spots with no shade so it is unpleasant in the summer.

But walking is just one aspect of the equation. You need public transportation to be convenient, fast, and reliable. Without that, when I need to go more than a few steps away, I will drive.

That's the point. There are very complex challenges, but the only real fix is a massively efficient transportation system combined with pedestrian areas, to encourage everyone capable to prefer that over driving.

degrews• 3 years ago

I moved from Spain to the US, and I often find myself trying to explain to people back home just how miserable and even humiliating the pedestrian experience is here.

Here are some other examples of things that I think contribute to the hostile walking experience in the US:

* Cars parked in short driveways often extend all the way across the sidewalk. Even if you can easily step off onto the road to walk around them (not all pedestrians can), it just feels like a slap in the face to have to do that.

* Cars have much higher and stronger headlights, with the high beams often left on, and drivers are generally much less mindful of them. As a pedestrian walking at night on under-lit streets, you are constantly getting blinded.

* Tinted windows (even the mild level of tint that most cars in the US have). The whole experience of being a lone vulnerable pedestrian among a sea of cars is made even worse when you can't see the people in the cars (but you know they can see you).

* Often the only option to get food late at night are fast food places, which become drive-thru only after a certain time. Having to go through the drive-thru on foot is obviously a terrible experience, and they will often refuse to even serve you.

IG_Semmelweiss• 3 years ago

really?

Tokyo is very oriented towards pedestrian traffic, considering shinkansen and most rail service - yet satellite suburban sites, like Saitama, etc have tiny residential rows that literally don't fit both a car and a pedestrian. And that's where most people live. Yet Japan is highly pedestrian.

Now, South America. Most if not all urban centers of 1M are extremely well covered by bus networks. And they have to, since most of the population cannot afford a car. However, the moment you step off the old city centers, you are literally walking on the main road, sharing space with speeding cards and buses driving like maniacs. You will often find a major road has literally no sidewalk, only dirt, weeds and sewage.

Compared to those situations, the US is a walking paradise.

The problem of distance is very different from the problem of safety and confort in the US

bichiliad• 3 years ago

You can find a ton of much worse examples than the US, but the US is just vastly far behind Europe (i.e. Spain, to which OP was comparing the US to).

Plus, it's worth mentioning that while Tokyo has a lot of mixed-traffic streets, the streets are small, have very low speed limits, and have strong restrictions on the size and type of car that can actually be within the city. It's less like you're walking in traffic and more like the car is intruding on a pedestrian space.

valtism• 3 years ago

re: Japan, I think it has to do with having higher density, meaning many things are within shorter walking distances.

I also think Japan is generally a lot more pleasant to walk in than the US

Aeolun4• 3 years ago

Yet Japan is highly pedestrian.

Japan’s cars are mostly small, civilized and without tinted windows.

Sidewalks next to large roads generally have a barrier that clearly separates the bike/pedestrian traffic from the cars.

If there’s roads where there is no separation between cars and pedestrians the speed for the cars is generally limited to 30km/h.

Streets also have natural speedbumps in the form of lantern and electricity poles essentially standing on the street, instead of the sidewalk.

I certainly feel safer walking here than anywhere in the US.

mm007emko2• 3 years ago

"Often refuse to serve you" means that they sometimes do? I tried to go through a drive-thru on a bicycle in Czechia and they told me to fuck off.

ben_w2• 3 years ago

Was drive-thru the only late night food option in that bit of Czechia? That felt like the pertinent part, not being able to get any in some places.

(Here in Berlin I have to plan around Sunday trading rules in a way I didn't back in the UK, but we have Spätis, so there are options).

jhot• 3 years ago

I live in the US in a "platinum rated" bike city (so there are a relatively high amount of bike commuters) and have gone through drive throughs on my bike a handful of times. Every time I have been served but told not to do it again.

Rebelgecko3• 3 years ago

Yeah, I've had decent luck walking thru in Los Angeles. Some places will turn you away but some don't care.

__MatrixMan__4• 3 years ago

I've had some luck asking a stranger in a car to trip the sensor and then back up so I can order and walk though. Once your order is in its more work to say "no" than it is to say "yes but don't do it again"

cstejerean• 3 years ago

The first one doesn't seem unique to the US.

I just spent the last 2 months i Europe and on many side streets there is no place to safely stop a car which means pulling into the sidewalk is the only option. So I frequently had to step into the street to walk around a stopped delivery van or similar.

elric3• 3 years ago

You're probably not supposed to stop a car in those places, and when you do, you're supposed to stop on the road, never on the sidewalk. Steep fines for that in Belgium at least, though the odds of getting caught are slim.

lrem• 3 years ago

In most places that's illegal and they'd be risking a likely-too-low fine.

Mordisquitos• 3 years ago

The whole experience of being a lone vulnerable pedestrian among a sea of cars is made even worse when you can't see the people in the cars (but you know they can see you).

It's even worse than that. You don't know they can see you, you know they could see you but you cannot know if they do see you. That's terrible for pedestrian safety.

tvaughan2• 3 years ago

I often find myself trying to explain to people back home just how miserable and even humiliating the pedestrian experience is here.

Same. I’ve lived in Los Ángeles and Amsterdam, and it is impossible to explain to my friends and family just how awful the quality of life is in LA precisely because of the difference in attitudes and priorities over cars. Perhaps some have “nicer” (aka bigger) houses in LA than they would have in Ámsterdam, but once they leave their front door everything is objectively worse

grecy• 3 years ago

Every time a politician anywhere in the world suggests adding more freeways or more lanes to freeways, I think they should be forced to live in LA for a year and do a ~1 hour commute each way in traffic.

They need to see first hand what happens when you just add more freeways and more lanes. It's not good.

msla6• 3 years ago

Los Ángeles

Why the accent? Is it not the one in California?

sershe25• 3 years ago

Subjectively worse, not objectively worse. I think driving is much more convenient and nice for most things I like to do. The only exceptions I can think of are if I were a kid in a car-centric area (strangely, the thinking in the US is usually reversed, kids supposedly need to be in the burbs), or if I was drunk. I don't often get drunk, so I'd prefer to drive for everything from minor groceries to outdoor activities ~100% of the time.

jjav4• 3 years ago

Perhaps some have “nicer” (aka bigger) houses in LA than they would have in Ámsterdam

The (insane) cost of housing in LA doesn't exactly lead to people having bigger houses (or often affording any house).

ytdytvhxgydvhh2• 3 years ago

Tinted windows are such a pet peeve of mine. I get it in the tropics but in most of America the individual benefits of dark tint seem like they’d be outweighed by the collective good of better visibility through cars, enabling eye contact with drivers, etc.

The SUV craze is really to blame - in general many US states don’t allow dark tint on traditional cars but do on SUVs. And since rear windows on vans and light trucks (aka SUVs) are exempted from window tint restrictions, pull up to a typical intersection in the US and look around and you can’t see worth a damn.

Somehow it’s ok for a Subaru Crosstrek to have dark tint but not an Impreza that is the same car but lower? There are even more weird situations like the Mercedes Benz GLA compact CUV which typically has tinted windows, but not the top-of-the-line AMG trim because that one has a lowered suspension, making it a “car” instead of a “light truck”.

dymk4• 3 years ago

In most states (all?) it's illegal to have a tinted front window, yet people still have them, because it's not enforced. IMO cops should be citing people left and right for tinted windows and tinted license plate covers. You'd think they'd already be taking advantage of such an easy revenue source.

vegetablepotpie• 3 years ago

I was surprised by SUVs being able to have more window tint, and I looked it up, and you’re right [1]. For windshield and drive side windows it’s the same as a sedan, but for rear windows it can be darker for passenger comfort.

Apparently in Alabama at least, the manufacturer determines the designation [2]. So you might be able to call Subaru about the Impreza and have them call it “an SUV” to get that sweet rear window tint.

[1] https://www.suvradar.com/can-suvs-have-tinted-windows/

[2] https://www.alea.gov/dps/highway-patrol/alabama-tinting-regu...

Zak• 3 years ago

SUVs having different rules is bizarre, but I'm confused as to how this impairs your ability to make eye contact with drivers since it doesn't apply to the front windows.

inferiorhuman4• 3 years ago

  just how miserable and even humiliating the pedestrian experience is here

I ended up talking to some woman yesterday who mentioned she loved to come back to Oakland because of how walkable it is compared where she is now in the central valley. I was amused at the whole exchange because while Oakland and San Francisco do a decent job, they're by no means great.

  Cars parked in short driveways often extend all the way across the sidewalk.
  Even if you can easily step off onto the road to walk around them (not all
  pedestrians can), it just feels like a slap in the face to have to do that.

One of the big things I noticed when comparing the pedestrian experience in Manhattan (and to a lesser extent the outer boroughs) to San Francisco is that New York lacks the curb cuts that encourage this kind of behavior. You spend a lot less time walking around parked cars or having to keep an eye out for someone who's in a hurry to exit "their" driveway.

In San Francisco, at least, there's a big tug of war about where your driveway ends and the curb begins. Suffice to say blocking the curb is one of those things that's almost never enforced.

Also this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/155z0eo/frien...

Aeolun4• 3 years ago

Damn, that’s some damning contrast. The city looks so much better without all the cars.

toddmorey• 3 years ago

Adding even MORE to the insult is this part from the article: "many agencies will simply remove pedestrian facilities to reduce the cost of compliance". I see that so often: having to cross the damn intersection three times just to continue across, and all the light timings favor cars. It's a big middle finger.

rconti2• 3 years ago

I see this all the time. It makes me SO angry. They do the same thing for construction. "Oh, sorry, the bike lane is closed for the next 2 years. Sorry, sidewalk closed. Walk 10 more minutes for the next 2 years."

chrismcb3• 3 years ago

It is illegal in most places to park a car on the sidewalk. I don't know of anyone, at least the big chains, that will serve a pedestrian in a drive thru. If you live in a more walkable part of town there is usually an all night diner.

johnnyanmac6• 3 years ago

If you live in a more walkable part of town there is usually an all night diner.

Oh I wish. On the contrary, it feels most everything closes around 9pm here and it hurts as a night owl. Heck, so many cafes seem to close around 6-7pm.

bit_logic• 3 years ago

People in this thread are really talking past each other. I've been to the nice Asian mega cities with great and clean subways and buses. And I've lived in the American suburbs. You can't make the American suburbs like the mega cities by just making them walkable.

Everything in a mega city works together to make transit work. Those tall buildings? They provide great shade no matter how sunny it is which is critical for walking to bus stops and subway stations. Also, the walk itself is so much more interesting, random stores to stop at and places to eat and go to. Density makes transit work.

You can't just put random stores in a suburb and make it "walkable" and expect the same thing. Just as everything in a mega city works together to make transit work, everything in a suburb works together to make cars work.

We need to give up on the mass transit solutions that work for dense cities (subways and buses) for suburbs. It's a waste of money and completely the wrong solution. It hasn't worked for decades and never will.

Shut down bus systems for suburbs and use the government funds to give out ride sharing (either Uber or government run) credits for everyone to use (low income can get more credits). That's what a suburb is designed for, point-to-point travel such as cars. And invest massively in real protected, useful bike lanes and stop trying to kill e-bikes with regulations (which a lot of cities are trying to do). e-bikes are finally a real alternative to cars in suburbs, it has just the right amount of travel speed and ease to challenge the car, but it's already under attack. Ride sharing credits and e-bikes, these are the solutions for suburbs. Stop trying to fit a square peg (buses and subways) into a round hole.

113• 3 years ago

Those tall buildings? They provide great shade no matter how sunny it is which is critical for walking to bus stops and subway stations.

Did you just make this whole post up? This is obviously wrong.

asm0dey• 3 years ago

Well, TBH in Europe you usually don't have an option to get food late at night :)

BolexNOLA• 3 years ago

I’ve never heard the experience described as “humiliating,” which is incredibly surprising because just seeing that written out (and your thoughtful elaboration) made a lot of things click into place for me.

cafard• 3 years ago

Actually, the tinted windows worry me because I don't know whether the drivers do see me. Vanishingly few drivers would deliberately run over a pedestrian, but plenty are distracted or otherwise inattentive.

fallingfrog• 3 years ago

I was looking at an old map of my city- and 100 years ago, there was a well run trolley system that could take you to any place in the city within a few minutes. Now, we’re told that such a thing is impossible.

cglong• 3 years ago

This article was originally published at https://streets.mn/2023/07/19/if-we-want-a-shift-to-walking-...

dang• 3 years ago

Url changed from https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/28/if-we-want-a-s..., which points to this.

seydor• 3 years ago

just looking at the photos in the article, the main detractor seems to be the distances and how sparse and big everythging is. i dont think any european city is like that

angusturner• 3 years ago

I’m an Aussie, and after living 3 months in LA I think it was the most poorly designed city I’ve ever been to for this exact reason - I felt unable to walk practically anywhere!

It felt like my options were drive or taxi. And we know what LA traffic is like.

I can’t speak to other US cities, and it is possible that certain areas of LA are less terrible than where I stayed. (But I will say, I was in quite an affluent area which had no business being unwalkable and without public transport).

But it really opened my eyes to how good we have it in Australian cities (which themselves are still far behind many European cities).

mixmastamyk• 3 years ago

Santa Monica, Hollywood, Burbank, Los Feliz, Downtown, Pasadena, Long Beach, are all rather walkable.

nojvek2• 3 years ago

What part of australia are you from?

tzs2• 3 years ago

Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!” Immediately after saying that, your friend hops in their car and drives across the parking lot to the Starbucks to which they could easily have walked.
Why does walking feel so intuitive when we’re in a city built before cars, yet as soon as we return home, walking feels like an unpleasant chore that immediately drives us into a car?

Because when they are on vacation they are a tourist. They are interested in exploring the area and discovering things that are new or different to them. They are taking a break from their normal busy routine and are free to relax.

Walking is a wonderful way to explore a new area and see what shops and attractions and sights are there.

When they get back home they are no longer a tourist. They already know where everything is in their area and what it has to offer. They are back to their normal life with too many responsibilities and not enough time. When they go somewhere in their area traveling there is not a delightful opportunity for exploration and discovery. It is a bothersome chore that is getting in the way of what they want to do.

nologic01• 3 years ago

Bipetalism is a homo sapiens superpower. We are healthly and happy when we walk serious distances. A lot of people discovered that during the pandemic.

The plot twist is that another homo sapiens superpower is inventiveness and adaptability. So we have invented powered mobility and changed our world to take advantage of it.

We have more or less adapted to that new mobility-on-steroids reality but our legs are still made for walking. And fossil fuel based mobility is in any case unsustainable.

The final act is when we realise that we must adjust the intensity of usage of our various inventions to achieve optimal quality of life for the long term.

Walkable cities is a major piece in solving that puzzle. Less pollution, more space, more natural, more fun. Life need not be overengineered in all its aspects.

pgt• 3 years ago

The main impediment to walking in South Africa is getting robbed at knife point or gun point. Dignity is the last thing on my mind.

rcme• 3 years ago

Maybe dignity is part of it, but the main issue (in the U.S.) is that everything is very spread out and very few places have the requisite density to support walking. I don't care if it's the most dignified experience ever. I'm not walking 30 blocks to go to a coffee shop.

pfannkuchen• 3 years ago

If we want a shift to walking, we need to either a) develop cities much more slowly and organically with a car prohibition (1800s simulator) or b) copy the layouts of cities that developed under a natural version of (a).

There is also another issue in the USA specifically, which is that certain people don't want to live around certain other people. This has driven a lot of the suburbanization in the USA AFAICT. I'm not sure what to do about it, exactly, but what's being done currently does not appear to be working.

uwagar• 3 years ago

wish sidewalk (footpath) isnt concrete but natural and wider not just shoulder to shoulder for 2 people. and no fear of cyclists zipping past.

presentation• 3 years ago

While true, I don’t see how suburban America could ever become walkable without just scrapping the project and starting fresh. The foundations to build on are hopelessly incompatible with pedestrian life.

phendrenad2• 3 years ago

Walkable cities have hit a snag I never imagined: People who think that making cities walkable is a front for totalitarian control of citizens, requiring passports to travel in/out of cities or between "walkability zones", and that everyone who advocates for walkability is in on this conspiracy.

I'm starting to believe that we can't have nice things, and wonder how we ever did.

TacticalCoder3• 3 years ago

I don't care that much about the "safety" as described in TFA: there's a big mall across the street of where I live now, so I walk there. The sidewalk is a bit hectic: I don't care. What I do care though is that it is safe: as in, it's not an hellhole of a shit city where the risk of being mugged is high (well I did martial arts in the past so at least they'd get some for their money).

You aren't getting people to walk or bicycle if your city is a shithole where thieves are roaming free.

Fix insecurity in public transports. Fix pee/urine odors in the subways. Then I'll consider using your public transport (which I do now use, here, in Luxembourg, because it's both pristine and feels mostly safe: except around the train station but, well, nothing can be perfect I guess).

But if you city is insecure and your subway stations stink and buses feels like a place where little gangs makes the law, then, fuck it, I'm using my car.

briandear• 3 years ago

It was over 100 degrees where I was in the Houston area. I don’t want to walk anywhere. Nicer sidewalks won’t change profuse sweating. All of the bike and walk crowd seems to have never been to Houston in the summer. It’s 80 degrees in Cupertino right now and 96 degrees in Houston as I type this. That’s a huge difference in what is comfortably walkable.

Nobody likes walking in 100 degree heat. When I lived in Europe, certainly walkable towns were awesome. Although, I do remember being on subways in Paris that didn’t have air conditioning in July and it was straight up miserable to be packed into a sardine can surrounded by sweaty aromatic people, then exiting the station to be greeted by a blast furnace on the surface and then walking multiple blocks to the destination.

Taking a taxi was air conditioned comfort and a welcome luxury when I could afford it. I am not knocking Paris, but making the point that the ideology of eliminating private transport in favor of being out in the elements is a regression, not an improvement.

There should be balance when it comes to transport options. Streets can be improved, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of cars entirely. Make it great for all modes of transport. A great example is when Houston ripped up driving lanes to add bike lanes — other than hobby cyclists, those lanes are rarely used unless it’s on one of the six days a year that the weather is nice enough. The bike lanes made traffic worse while benefiting just a few die-hards that cycle as some sort of social protest rather than as a legitimate means of navigating this huge city.

Why not make motorcycle and motor scooter lanes instead of bike lanes? Why do people insist on trying to turn Houston into Amsterdam? Houston isn’t Amsterdam. Greater Houston is 10,000 square miles with 7.5 million people. Greater Amsterdam is 1000 square miles with 2.5 million people.

Trying to make places with very hot weather “walkable” is about as logical as building a ski resort in Austin.

Moldoteck5• 3 years ago

Barcelona is hot too but somehow it works, bc less cars and more trees(especially near sidewalks) means nicer walking even in hot summer "Greater Houston is 10,000 square miles with 7.5 million people. Greater Amsterdam is 1000 square miles with 2.5 million people." - yes, we know that american towns are inferior because of parking requirements and local zoning, yes the problem is more complex, but does this mean it's not a problem or ppl just should start slowly fixing it? (Like abolishing parking reqs, zoning laws and just pass a law that forces companies to build a nice sidewalk&bike lane when a street is renovated, slowly fixing the problem). We can't know for sure walkable city will not work in Huston because laws generally prohibit building one with those stupid requirements

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

I didn't have a car between college and my late 30s. I thought I was a pro-walking chauvinist but turns out I was just a single guy living in NYC. Within a year of our first kid, I was living in the burbs with a large SUV.

Anti car people tend to be single or at least childless and they fail to understand that the majority of Americans aren't like them. About 40 percent of households have kids under 18, ie 60-80% of American adults have kids of the age where having a car is immensely helpful. So while these people also recognize that it's annoying to press the button to turn the light green or to walk around a parked car, those are nowhere near the top of their life's concerns.

So I think the "we want" is a bit presumptuous in the headline. The guy who wrote the article is a city councilor and an avid biker but what he doesn't seem to be is a parent, so his concerns are skewed a certain way vs the mass of the population.

Like I said, I get the love of walking and walkable spaces, but I see now that this is way more interesting when you are single. As a parent you also get excited about things like tossing all your groceries into the trunk.

Kuinox5• 3 years ago

That's because you live in a car centric place. In a well designed city, a car is optional. I recommend watching Not Just Bikes videos on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes/videos

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

You might have missed or forgot the start of my post where I told you I lived in NYC (an immensely walkable city) without a car for 20+ years.

And that I gave it up quickly and gladly for a more car-based life once kids came.

The whole point of my post is a shift in perspective. Just curious, how many kids do you have?

mlrtime2• 3 years ago

I'm 100% with OP. Also lived in NYC for 10 years without a car. I had everything I needed within a 10 minute walk including my commute to work. Have you ever seen a family struggle to get two strollers down to a subway?

After having kids , a single family house and a car is 100% better.

After reading most of the replies in this thread I'm guessing it is mostly filled with younger people without kids... notice I'm saying mostly, not all.

JJMcJ• 3 years ago

A major street like El Camino or Stevens Creek (to take Silicon Valley examples) will be 100 feet curb to curb. With right turn on red, and even worse, left turns active while the pedestrian walk light is on, crossing them is a harrowing experience.

Not only undignified but it feels very dangerous.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 years ago

Every morning, I get up at 5AM, and walk 5K.

1/2 mile of it, is on the local high school running track.

That’s because the neighborhood after the high school (where I would prefer to walk) is actively hostile to pedestrians. No sidewalks, no shoulders, lots of blind curves, and a ton of distracted drivers. It’s dangerous as hell.

In fact, I often smell weed, when cars pass me.

At 5:30 AM.

That’s a great way to get started on a productive day.

slater• 3 years ago

Or folks coming off a night shift...

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 years ago

They are heading towards the train station (not away from it).

In any case, it doesn’t matter. They are DUI. Pot may be a bit better than alcohol, but I’ve seen some … interesting … decisions made by drivers on it.

No one would drive around sipping on a can of beer, but no one thinks twice about blazing 420 behind the wheel.

pkulak• 3 years ago

The more you think about it, the more you realize that most people's vacations are to places where they don't have to drive everywhere. People get on cruises because "they have everything". Disneyland is just walking around to stuff. Vegas is basically one strip with huge sidewalks and a whole bunch of stuff. Resorts are... resorts. Yet no one seems to want to have any of that when they are not on vacation.

dn3500• 3 years ago

I'm disappointed this article repeats the misconception that ADA mandates removing non-conforming curb ramps. It does not. In fact it prohibits removing curb ramps on the grounds of non-compliance. Some interpretations of ADA require ramps at every corner of every intersection, but this hadn't been fully tested in court last time I checked.

This is in 28 CFR 35.151(i): "Newly constructed or altered street level pedestrian walkways must contain curb ramps or other sloped areas at intersections to streets, roads, or highways." Some traffic engineers try to weasel out of this by claiming that after they remove the approach (the short bit of sidewalk that connects the main sidewalk to the ramp), the walkway no longer interesects the roadway. But that was not the intent of ADA, and legally it's not true.

romusha• 3 years ago

Good, please discuss things like this more. No one wants to live an indignifies life like the climate activists typically (not all) promote. I come from a developing country and I certainly do not want to go back to live like I did. The people in developed country certainly wouldn't

chunk_waffle• 3 years ago

I thought (and hoped) this post was going to mention the bizarre american phenomenon where people driving by a person walking have the urge to scream something at them.

sph• 3 years ago

Also happens in England: https://youtu.be/t1V_qz9I1Nk

rceDia• 3 years ago

Local zoning in US dictates many sidewalk placements. For example, Stafford, VA literally has sidewalks to nowhere. There are strips of sidewalk in front of a business or development un-connected to anything-there is no walking on those sidewalks. They are more like lawn ornaments: fun to look at but serve no purpose.

paul_funyun• 3 years ago

How about more driveable cities? There are a few walkies out there, but a stated preference for walking usually comes down to sour grapes (can't afford a car or a move to the burbs), or poor urban planning making driving more onerous than it should be. Dignity is car ownership and the infrastructure to make the most of it.

fragmede5• 3 years ago

How about not. It's not sour grapes that people prefer walking, and even if you had a government program to give everyone a car, what then? Congratulations, you've just made more traffic. Car's don't scale. They are super convenient and I will admit to having one (sometimes two!). But being unable to afford one doesn't deal with what to do when it breaks down, or gets stolen, or is towed, or gets clamped for unpaid parking tickets. There is no dignity in having a shitbox car that's 20 years old and falling apart and is just threatening to break down on you.

mbs1592• 3 years ago

Because cities should be designed foremost for people, not cars.

supazek• 3 years ago

I just LOVE the hustle and bustle of the big city!

If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

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