New data shows walking down 36% in USA since 2019

https://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/news/multimodal-systems/new-data-shows-walking-down-36-in-usa-since-2019.html

by goplayoutside • 3 years ago

45 86 3 years ago

lgleason5• 3 years ago

....so after all of that effort to create walkable cities, remove car lanes for bike lanes etc. this is where we end up? Not sure if trying to create more walkways, removing traffic lanes for bike etc. are the answer if this is the net result.

chemeng• 3 years ago

It seems that many of the cities that invested in those ideas had improvements.

However, compared to 2021, 18 metros observed an increase in walking activity in 2022, with California metros dominating nine out of the top ten spots. New York City ranked 10th

vcxy3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure why this article would prompt you to call out bike lanes.

there’s a noticeable rise in biking trips while pedestrian activity is dwindling as a portion of overall trips.

Beyond that, this seems highly relevant:

Alarmingly, pedestrian fatalities rose during this period

Maybe we haven't actually made any walkable cities

JeffSnazzy2• 3 years ago

Pedestrian fatalities are up in pretty much every metro, so this isn't a meaningful signal. It's still worth pursuing banning high-fatality vehicles from urban areas.

sh-run• 3 years ago

The article is one sided, but still mentions that biking is up:

Despite this, there’s a noticeable rise in biking trips while pedestrian activity is dwindling as a portion of overall trips.

They cite StreetLight Data as their source. Per GCN (which cites the same source)

bicycle trips in the US have increased by 37% from 2019 to 2022

GCN is obviously also going to have some kind of bias, but the TTI article clearly does as well.

https://www.globalcyclingnetwork.com/general/news/in-the-us-...

TulliusCicero4• 3 years ago

What effort? Most US cities are complete garbage for walkability.

When I lived in Germany, I'd see little towns of a few hundred people that were more dense and walkable than US cities 100x their size.

And bikability is even worse, sub-garbage level. People don't do it because it appears to be insanely dangerous because our infrastructure is generally shit tier, like painted bike lanes (though off street trails are often okay, where they exist).

People are mostly rational when choosing day to day transportation options. If biking was supported well they'd do it. But it's not, so they don't.

All the "Vision Zero" announcements were mostly politicians doing politician things with no real oomph behind them. There are things that can be done quickly and effectively, but the political will usually isn't there due to our horrible cultural momentum.

lgleason5• 3 years ago

The problem with mass transit in the US is that the US has a lot of wide open spaces and most places do not have the population density to make it economically feasable.

In Atlanta, for example, many parts have been removing car lanes for bike lanes and parking has become a real problem in some neighborhoods. Places that used to be free to park in charge a small fortune at times and there are not as many options to park your car in these areas.

Instead of doing development with adequate parking, they don't provide enough and charge a fortune for what we have. Between the climate and the poor mass transit it is the worst of both worlds but hey.

When I was visiting downtown Austin recently it seemed like a similar story from what I observed.

oogali• 3 years ago

I could totally be off base here but the more frequently you need to make a trip, the less likely you want to drive to complete it, and therefore pine for something in close distance, regardless if you have access to an automobile or not.

Specifically, in the context of retail, what a retailer stocks (e.g. in a supermarket) or produces (e.g. a sandwich shop) is a function of how much space they have to pay for and how many customers they can get through the door.

For example, our expectation of a supermarket is one that carries everything we may possibly want on our grocery list. Whereas our expectation of a regular market, is the limited selection that covers most of what we need. Apologies for the contrived example but the point I’m trying to make is those of us who live in denser areas are used to walking to one of these locations, or making more frequent trips, or both, but it’s not the same feeling for the other.

Putting a bike lane next to a supermarket isn’t going to dramatically increase the number of cyclists nor customer foot traffic in relation to what the store already receives. The people coming to a large supermarket are potentially buying a large weight of items across different categories.

Even if there was a targeted approach that was marketed towards cyclists (“50% off your entire order if you show up in a helmet and racing attire”, or something extreme of that nature), I don’t think that would move the needle meaningfully because the resulting transactions wouldn’t achieve a hypothetical ideal kg-per-customer ratio (or even a repeat customer multiplier).

This would create a situation in which the store has too much product or if you go in the opposite direction of purchasing less product: unappealing empty shelves.

So as long as retail density remains low due to limits on how small a landlord is willing to subdivide available space for a tenant, the retailers will continue to engage in business activity that potentially encourages driving via loading up bulk/heavy items, or casting a very large advertising net to attract people outside of walking/biking distance to pack a place. Both of which the end goal is to at least cover their overhead.

When you examine dense European cities, I’m not sure you find retail shops that have the same square footage compared to American retail shops. They’re sized (and configured) to cover their overhead by servicing a small amount of customers at a time. If you were to offer an American-sized lease to a European retailer, my guess is they would turn it down unless they were already a very, very popular spot with lines out of the door.

In these conversations, I think the general focus should be on what’s occupying the physical destination (and its size) rather than availability/quality of public transit. Since in some places, the transit exists but the impetus to actually use it is minimal.

goodmunky2• 3 years ago

I’m sure it’s totally unrelated to the increase of street junkies and urban crime resulting from the post 2020 “reimagined” policing in many major cities.

kadoban2• 3 years ago

What major cities have "reimagined" policing exactly, and in what way? Why would that be related to walking, especially as the first thing that comes to mind for you?

goodmunky2• 3 years ago

I suppose if you’re not American you may not know there was a defund the police movement in 2020 along with decriminalization of “urban camping” around the same time. As a result there are less police on the streets, more crime, and many more mentally ill and addicted homeless. See my home town of Austin, Texas for example. Just yesterday a teenager was hacked by a machete maniac at our town lake. Sane people are now more hesitant to walk many of our popular streets. As a side note, traffic on pedestrian fatalities are up because the mentally disturbed and intoxicated junkies wander into traffic fairly often.

rabuse3• 3 years ago

I honestly wouldn't walk around in most U.S. cities, with all the street violence and homelessness plaguing the nation. Drug needles everywhere, trash, human feces. Why take the risk?

infotainment2• 3 years ago

It's kind of funny how easy it is to find someone who hasn't set foot in a US city in years based on comments like these.

rabuse3• 3 years ago

I literally live in Miami. I deal with it everyday.

eBombzor• 3 years ago

Live in Seattle, work downtown, walk a mile to my apartment after work. Not that far off from the description... Two words, PIONEER SQUARE

lgleason5• 3 years ago

Downtown Atlanta is also starting to approach this.

wilg7• 3 years ago

How do you know it's not dog poop?

rabuse3• 3 years ago

Because dogs tend to at least shit in the grass. A drug addict, will just pop a squat anywhere.

ryukoposting• 3 years ago

I haven't observed a substantial change in the last four years in the cities I live in and frequent. If anything, my neck of the woods in Chicago has improved a bit... not that it was ever a poo-riddled wasteland to begin with.

cableshaft• 3 years ago

I read the article and it didn't sound like any point they were making couldn't be explained as 'well we were in a pandemic during that time, and also people shifted to working from home more, so they weren't forced to move as much'.

Even the uptick in 2022 can be explained with 'well we were coming out of a pandemic, and there was an RTO push, but still bad habits are from before are hard to break'.

JeffSnazzy2• 3 years ago

As with all research, the point is not so much the explanation as the collection of data.

bartwr• 3 years ago

Wait, what? This is literally not the point of research. The point of research is to form some theory and gather data that is relevant, and then analyze statistically. Plus propose follow up theories and studies.

This is how almost every research publication in every field - from medicine, through psychology, to computer science looks like.

vcxy3• 3 years ago

The article says that biking increased and walking decreased. I don't think I can explain those things simultaneously with just "well we were in a pandemic during that time."

klooney• 3 years ago

In my suburb, everyone seems to be barrelling around on those new fangled ebike things. Probably a certain amount of substitution there.

valeg• 3 years ago

It reminded me of studies on walking and cognitive function https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15383516/

infotainment2• 3 years ago

How do we even fix car-dependency in the US? It's almost like a mind virus, in that people are so utterly convinced on the need for cars, they cannot even conceive of a world in which they're not necessary.

wilg7• 3 years ago

We provide an alternative that is better than cars

dymk• 3 years ago

Car lobby is doing its best to make sure that doesn't happen

aniforprez• 3 years ago

Public transport. Easy. Providing avenues for better buses improves not only the health of the people that use it, it provides an incentive to improve the infrastructure to provide that transport which also improves the lives of people who use cars

pmarreck• 3 years ago

germany does wonders with bikes and public transport

they also tax gas heavily, which we don't do (and probably should)

BenFranklin100• 3 years ago

Support Bus Rapid Transit. That is, dedicated bus lanes. See Mexico City:

https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/04/29/mexico-city-bus-rapid-t...

ZoomerCretin2• 3 years ago

It's not that simple. We rebuilt our cities around the car. Without changing our cities, there is no substitution for cars.

We need to rebuild our cities. Eliminating cars and adding sidewalks isn't enough; without density, you have nowhere to walk to, and transit doesn't scale.

huytersd4• 3 years ago

I love car culture. I get to have a large house with a huge yard and still live 10 mins from an urban center. I don’t want my neighbor to be on the other side of the wall. I like my wood/metal working shop, being able to raise goats and chickens and shoot guns in my backyard. I’ve lived in the heart of Manhattan for about 5 years and even though it was a great experience I would not want to go back to it. Long live car culture. That being said I run 3-5 miles on trails 5 days a week and get more than enough exercise just doing stuff around my yard so car culture isn’t effecting my ability to stay fit.

MattGaiser2• 3 years ago

Even for someone who doesn't really want a yard, what I do not want is for others to have a say in the value of my largest asset. I probably would prefer condo living for whenever I buy a property, but the tendency of many to defer maintenance is a dealbreaker as they would also have a say.

So I am going to buy a detached home as that is the only way for me to fully decide the maintenance of my property.

ramraj07• 3 years ago

It’s simply not possible to live decently without cars in most of the US. Ask me, I lived in Texas for 8 years without one. It’s not easy. My Sunday ritual was to spend 2+ hours each way to get a meal in Waffle House and catch some movies in AMC (plural because if I’m spending this amount of time I’m catching more than one movie lol).

The few years I spent in somewhat small town College Station, I tried using a bike. For the most part I was biking on the sidewalk because the (often drunk) kids raised trucks would never even notice a civic in front of them leave alone a bike.

There was one particular intersection which led to a highway ramp, and it had a pedestrian walk signal. I have spent up to 15 minutes for at least one driver to notice I’m waiting here to cross on the walk, hundreds of cars will pass by me taking a right on this signal without ever seeing I’m waiting to cross. So why do you think anyone who’s not homeless would keep doing that?

SauciestGNU• 3 years ago

I did out of stubbornness and oppositional nature, and I kept doing it and advocating for myself and now there's much better cycling infrastructure than when I started. But I'm also not in Texas, where I think there's probably some additional ingrained hostility toward the social signaling associated with bikes.

MattGaiser2• 3 years ago

Cars are just too nice, especially when there is bad weather and once you have one, you may as well use it. You would need to have people ok with being outside in the winter for example and walking on ice.

qwerpy• 3 years ago

Yes, I'm not sure why some people have trouble understanding this. I like the quiet suburban/rural life, which necessitates cars. I happen to like cars, so this works great for me.

Some people might like the city life and choose not to get a car, and that's great. They should do that.

As long as neither group is forced to subsidize the other, I don't see why we can't all get what we want.

acchow• 3 years ago

It's because cars create a problem that only they themselves can solve: low density and enormous distances created by car infrastructure and parking.

inamberclad• 3 years ago

As someone who's about to buy a new car, I thought about this. I can bike to work. I can walk to the grocery store. I did this all through college. Then I thought, "what happens when I move?" How do I buy furniture on Craigslist? How do I pick up my girlfriend from the airport? How do I visit my friends across the Bay Area? It's a real tragedy of the commons. I'd like to save the money but I would have to sacrifice too much else unless many, many other people were willing to put up the same gamble.

I think we can start by just building it. Make it fast, reliable, and safe. Make it go places people want to go. Make it go to the grocery store, airport, and random blocks across the entire area. Look to what we did 100 years ago when a train station was a palace of transport, not a dingy slab of concrete. People want alternatives, they just want better ones than what we have now.

stop50• 3 years ago

how often there is no viable alternative? How much does the car cost if i live in a this place or an similar region, including the mantenance costs over the time? use that info to get the costs per trip (costs/total miles*mile for trip). Don't use guesses, most car owners are bad at guessing the anual costs.

jsz0• 3 years ago

What's there to fix? Most people want to own cars. Those people buy cars. Why shouldn't they buy cars if they want cars?

mslate2• 3 years ago

Because it is a public health problem.

The US is 7th for GDP per capita among nations.

It is 59th among nations for life expectancy.

These are policy choices, not individual choices.

lgleason5• 3 years ago

The population density in most areas doesn't make it economically viable. In many area the climate makes biking a messy proposition of needing shower after a ride, or to put on a bunch of rain gear etc. vs a car where you just take a shower in the morning, get in your dry car and exit clean for the office etc..

ZoomerCretin2• 3 years ago

How do we even fix car-dependency in the US?

Car-dependency is a city planning issue, first and foremost. We destroyed the cores of our cities, demolishing block after block of buildings to raise interstates and parking lots.

You will never eliminate car-dependency in rural areas, and you can at best remove the need for it in suburbs with mixed-use zoning (i.e. corner stores and cafes), better funded public transit, and sidewalks.

Cities should first stop expanding interstates and look to remove them entirely. There is absolutely no need to have an interstate through urban cores. Next, you need to redesign streets to make the car part narrower and the sidewalks wider. And you need to repeal zoning ordinances that ban anything but single family homes on 80% of urban residential land. It's ridiculous that there exist single family homes within walking distance of the downtown of cities with a population in the millions when under a properly zoned system, there would be mid-rises.

Rural areas will never be free from car-dependency. Suburbs need light modifications to mixed-use zoning policies and transit, as well as infeasibly high taxes. Urban areas, where walkability should be most feasible, have to remove highways through cores, repeal oppressive zoning laws, and prioritize walkability.

The actual policies are rather straightforward. There are plenty of countries that planned around the automobile and later reverted this mistake, so there exist many playbooks for achieving this worthy goal. Unfortunately, the problem is political rather than technical: too many people are invested in the automobile for a lot of good reasons, and too many people are invested in the current land use regime which make automobiles necessary.

gen220• 3 years ago

Anecdotally among friends working in NYC, people don't walk as frequently as they used to because they're not commuting into the office 5 days per week (which generally involves 10-20m of walking). Some are working totally remote out of their apartments, others hybrid 3 days per week.

But on the flip side, some are spending that saved commuting time on exercising more, and are healthier for the change.

Javalicious• 3 years ago

I'm curious as to _how_ the data was collected for this report. Did they use camera feed data? Walk-button push counts? HR rideshare incentive data? Sending out surveys?

The article talked about trips -- but I didn't see any differentiation between commutes to work and walking in the park, for example.

GCA10• 3 years ago

I had the same question. The "source" of this information, StreetLight Data, does have a functioning website and an impressive customer list, though it mostly invokes "big data" to explain what it does.

Poking a little further, it sounds as if they're aggregating smartphone data, though we're not told much about how they get it, or how they adjust for people walking with or without their phones on.

nytesky• 3 years ago

This seems timely with trends in pedestrian deaths rising: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/podcasts/the-daily/pedest...

As a driver and pedestrian, I swear I see people staring at their phones while driving.

Probably need phone cupholders — phone locks up unless it’s mounted in its slot and enters CarPlay mode. Have to do it for passengers too, since can’t differentiate

poly_morphis• 3 years ago

A big thing that concerns me is the absurd levels of tint people are putting on their windows.

I bought a used car last year that came with 20% all around, and I removed it from the front windows almost immediately. It was so insanely hard to see outside at night properly, especially in dim or unlit areas. How do people with less than that see? I guess they don’t.

New data shows walking down 36% in USA since 2019

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