If you are from the US and wonder whats up with the bike hippies: All cities you know are car-centric infrastructure, and i'd have a hard time seeing the problem also.
Im dutch and despite being able to ride over in 5 minutes and park my beautiful car right behind the stores, i still prefer to use my bike for daily groceries to get there faster and easier. The cities are designed for this. A bike never has to cross a 4-lane road with homes nearby.
Philadelphia reporting in: The core of my city was designed in the 17th century for horses, and grew short on money before that could be completely undone. As someone who used to put 20,000 miles on my car annually, living in the part of Philly where I do, I might drive twice a month.
That said, visiting Amsterdam was still quite the revelation. Having lived and worked in Philadelphia for over a decade, visiting other American cities often isn't as exciting as it used to be for me, and I pick up on patterns that used to be normal for me, like how everything is a fifteen minute drive to anything else.
I do still feel an odd appeal to American suburbia sometimes, but I don't think I'd go back to that kind of living if I didn't have to.
One of the best times I spent working is when I lived a 15 minute Caltrain ride, and a 15 minute walk from my work in Mountain View. I could, and often did, make the drive in half the the time for less money, but not driving also meant no time lost in traffic, waiting for other people, or dealing with all the risks of driving. Afterwards, I moved to Houston where driving is mandatory. Even though my commute wasn't as long and I worked more remotely, my mood and life satisfaction took a fairly large downturn.
I lived car-free in Boston for many years in the days before Uber and Lyft were a thing. I loved it. People always expected lack of a car to be constraining, but I actually found it liberating. Yes, I had to figure out transit, but not having to deal with parking and traffic meant I was very likely to simply hop off the bus/subway/train to check out something interesting along the way. I also appreciated the "down time" granted to me by walking or taking transit. I could zone out in a way not possible in the car, and for whatever reason that helped me relax.
I've loved cars for as long as I can remember. I've owned and built some classics.
Last year, when the price of cars (and used cars) skyrocketed, I sold my ride. (A nice Lexus IS F. 416 of the sweetest sounding horses you'll ever hear.) My plan was to wait for prices to become sane again, then make my next selection in my long line of interesting vehicles.
You know what? I've done just fine without a car. I can use my wife's/son's/daughters vehicle whenever I need to go someplace. When I was growing up we had one car for the whole family, but those were different days. Since I started my own family, it's been one vehicle for each adult that needs to get out of the house. I've learned we can get by on a lot less vehicular capacity. Still thinking about the right moves as car prices continue to decrease.
No, you read it correctly.
My children are all of driving age and must go to school/university. So they get older cars to transport themselves.
It's not uncommon in rural areas of the US.
I lived in London and took my car with me, because as it was an EV, I could get a free parking permit for it and I was exempt from the emissions tax. Honestly, the driving experience in London is terrible. When I did a few back-and-forth trips when moving between a temporary hotel and my house, it'd take 40 minutes each way to drive 3 miles through central London. It would almost have been quicker to walk, and certainly much quicker on the underground.
I ended up only using my car a handful of times the whole year, and only when I was leaving London to visit family. I lived near the A40 expressway, so going north wasn't too problematic, but going south would usually take an hour to do the first 10 miles out of London.
If I'd stayed in London, I'd definitely have got rid of the car entirely now. There's just not much use for it when public transport is good, or when things are close enough to walk (I'd usually prefer to walk most places that were within an hour's walk).
What I do see as unfair in London now is that the costs of driving are extremely punitive if you don't have an EV, and this year they massively extended the area which is chargeable. It's simply not economically viable for most people to replace a car in these cases, as they probably don't get much use anyway, but also for any non-residents, it's also extremely easy to accidentally enter a chargeable area and then you're hit with a massive charge for the day.
I think central London is actually a pretty great place to drive if you can afford it.
Westminster council doesn't tow, so you never have to look for a parking spot.
Unlike some other European cities, the odds of being harassed by police while driving are essentially non-existent. Your car can be registered in Serbia and you won't be constantly pulled over and harassed like you would be in Germany, Netherlands, France or Spain.
I even spent a month driving around without any registration plates and nobody said anything (they had been stolen, I had to physically go collect new ones from another country).
From .gov.uk
Decide if a vehicle is abandoned
Authorities must decide if a vehicle is abandoned. This is likely if at least one of the following applies:
it has no keeper on DVLA’s database and is untaxed - check vehicle tax online
it’s stationary for a significant amount of time
it’s significantly damaged, run down or unroadworthy, for example has flat tyres, missing wheels or broken windows
it’s burned out
a number plate is missing
They can legally enter land (at a reasonable time) to investigate and remove abandoned vehicles
Some people care about having a yard and not having shared walls. Anywhere that's dense enough to not need cars will be too dense for those people to get what they want. In that light, car-free city proposals sound like "let's make things worse for people who care about different things than me, so that we can make them better for me".
I briefly lived in Prague, and coming from the US, the difference was incredible. Almost anywhere I wanted to go was either within walking distance of my flat, or within walking distance of a metro stop. You could go anywhere in the city on a one or two dollar ticket. Absolutely beautiful.
The best part was the corner grocery on every block. You could just stop in on your way home because the grocery was in the same physical building as your flat.
Old great and good, except for everyone else that lives on city outskirts or surrounding towns.
If public transport exists at all, it is mostly once per hour, only during business hours and hardly takes into account people with disabilities in access to the stations or buses.
Since most comments are personal stories, here's mine as usual. Until I was 29 I didn't know how to drive, and walked/bike/took transit everywhere, living in Moscow Russia, downtown Vancouver BC, Bellevue WA. I also derided suburbs to the point where my most non libertarian belief was that they should only allow short term rentals for personal-use cars, via a very large tax on ownership like iirc in Denmark but higher - so you could rent one to go to the mountains or such, and nothing else. Phase it in over few decades so society reorganizes and car-centric areas die. When I learned to drive and got a car, I kept living in walkable areas, and my opinions didn't change much.
Finally I moved to semi-suburbs (not even real suburbs, walkscore in the low 60s - not that I actually walk much) and realized I was wrong most of my life!
The walkable areas are awesome for (1) children who can't drive, (2) frequent drinkers - so me until about ~26. After that, it was just inertia. For anything else, car-centric life is vastly better and walkable areas/transit mostly suck. I didn't even realize how much inconvenience I used to endure, it's like living without good heating and considering indoor layering and being cold the normal life, but then getting good heating.
I'm not sure Bellevue or Moscow are that walkable. A walkable city is not just one where you can walk from A to B but where doing so is easy.
For instance, think about downtown Barcelona. You can go to a bakery one block away on foot, then to the supermarket on the way back, and have easy access to tram/bus/metro/bike in every other case. Sure, you often want to use the car, but for most cases it's not needed.
Within the US, maybe NY and parts of DC/Boston fit this... otherwise the lack of density makes it too inconvenient.
Bellevue WA downtown in particular is not ideal, but walkable. The only place I couldn't walk to was climbing gym, and also there's a big transit hub in the middle.
Moscow is very walkable, even in most outer "apartment block suburbs" you can do anything within 2-7min walk. Plus it has frictionless subway 5am-1:30am or so - not like in NYC; on major lines train intervals are/used to be less than 1 minute at rush hour, and 7-8mins at 1am - so, you never even need to plan, you just go. Things tend to cluster around stations so city map becomes kinda like a 4x galaxy map of stuff. Walkability tends to decrease 10-20mins away from subway stations on foot, with more industrial areas and such, although basics like groceries and some cafes would still be there.
Based on touristic experience in Europe (Germany, Spain although not Barcelona, Italy, England, etc.) it's about as walkable, across most of the city, for daily needs as European city centers.
But why would I want to walk with X groceries for 5mins (potentially in the cold, heat, rain, ...), when I could drive for 15mins in comfort and get 5X groceries in one trip? Why would I take frictionless subway to a stadium for a concert when in a car centric city traffic allows one to just uber? Why would I walk to a whatever local X is available when I can drive to the best X in a large area in the same time? Or for more specialized hobbies, e.g. climbing gyms or large swimming pools, of which there may be 1-10 per city, and 1-2 good ones, why would I plan to live near one or endure transit when I could be much more flexible if I drive to one in a car friendly city? Etc.
> The walkable areas are awesome for (1) children who can't drive, (2) frequent drinkers - so me until about ~26. After that, it was just inertia. For anything else, car-centric life is vastly better and walkable areas/transit mostly suck.
If you ever want to disabuse yourself of this (bullshit) notion, simply spend four weeks in Barcelona.
Transit sucks in countries which have prioritized car-centricity and neglected investment.
It's like you didn't read my comment. Why would Barcelona be different? I've lived in Vancouver where I had (priorities at that time) like 5 sushi restaurants within 5min walk and a number of bars and nightclubs within 5-10, and bus to my office within 1 minute. I've lived in Moscow where likewise everything was very short walking distance and subway is much better than anywhere in the US, frequency/coverage wise. And in my limited experience better (except for crowds) than e.g. in Munich or even London, only Tokyo really compares. I thought it was good and cars sucked, but I've disabused myself of that notion once I've discovered the wonders of suburbia.
Most people in the US aren't used to car-free cities unless they've traveled abroad. It's not something you realize until you experience it first hand.
One of the major objections is the lack of space in cities. Some people want physical space (>2000 sq-ft). Some want personal space (the ability to have a quiet private alone space). Both are difficult/costly to get in cities and it has nothing to do with cars.
> One of the major objections is the lack of space in cities. Some people want physical space (>2000 sq-ft). Some want personal space (the ability to have a quiet private alone space). Both are difficult/costly to get in cities and it has nothing to do with cars.
I figure I misunderstand your comment, since it sounds so off-the-wall, but according to this article (referenced by OP): https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/cars-cities-technol... , 50-60% of many cities' real estate is devoted to automobiles. So "nothing to do with cars" seems more accurately written as "almost entirely to do with cars." The same is true for having a quiet alone space, based on my experience. Cars are the problem.
The best way to achieve more space in a walkable urban area is to densify. Today Manhattan has fewer residents than it did a century ago, but more and larger buildings. This is partly because people are living and working in more spacious accommodations.
It is normal for people to change opinions about something after experiencing it - in both ways. Some things look and sound bad ... until you tried it. And other things look and sound great ... until you tried it.
I hope that in the future, with autonomous public transportation service more like cabs, we can lessen the impact of cars in cities.
Currently I can imagine that it is not always easy to solve the problem with one solution, as people tend to change jobs more often than they change homes, and sometimes connections by public transportation are very inconvenient.
Where I live we have a very capillary public transport. The time to get to it and to get from it to the specific place where you have to go, is often the biggest time consuming part of the travel, and that is far from ideal
I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need to push everyone else to ride bicycles? We are happy for them, why do we need to join them?
I personally do not feel safe on a bike in a crowded city. Even if you took cars out of the equation. I also do not want to arrive to work/meetings sweaty and in need of a towel. It’s also very cold where I live. My car is warm.
There are numerous reasons I’m not interested in riding a bike. Yet I can’t go more than a day without someone from the bicycle church trying to give me a pamphlet.
The bicycle crowd feels unsafe too. The physical risks of cycling are almost entirely due to cars. Even in icy, slippery conditions, a bicycle accident poses almost no risk of dismemberment or death, except when there are cars involved.
For millions of people, cycling is a cheap, convenient, healthy and fun way to get around. This is particularly true since e-bikes became widely available. There is no way to get these riders back into cars. But almost nowhere in the US is there enough biking infrastructure to make them truly safe and separated from car traffic. This lack of infrastructure is why they can come off as a nuisance to drivers and pedestrians.
I'm sorry you feel pressured by cycling advocates to change your lifestyle. Maybe that is not the best way for them to advocate for change.
I’m living in one of the most cyclist friendly cities in Europe (according to the city officials :) ). I used to ride to work for almost 5 years until I moved too close to work so now I just walk. I love my city, I love how you can cycle, use public transport or just walk and a car is more of a nuisance here. Having said all this, the only group of people that I can’t stand and I almost hate is cyclists. They are the most entitled and loud group, even here, and for me, even as I still almost cycle everywhere when the weather allows me, I am more scared of other cyclists than I am of cars.
It is amazing how the majority of cyclists ignore all possible rules, traffic lights, traffic signs, bike paths (and we have them EVERYWHERE). You will always have some asshole on a bike grunting at a pedestrian, another cyclist or at a car, while riding with no lights on the wrong side of the street on the walkway, when there is a proper bike path right next to him. Just this winter the cycling community was outraged that after an ice rain the city didn’t clean the paths, which was almost impossible to do, all while they were riding in the winter on ice with no special tires and then complaining that while it was not even recommended to go outside, it is dangerous for them to ride their bikes.
In the end I think there is a lot left to go, especially in educating people, because as e-bikes becomes more popular, more people get access to bikes that run faster than they could ever do (and we now have more accidents because of this), it will get worse before it gets better when it comes to cycling.
I'm a careful cyclists, purely out of self-preservation, and also because traffic in general is already stressful enough without me adding to it. Plus, I care about less cars in cities and not adding to the perception of "asshole cyclist" is helpinig, a teeny tiny bit.
Still, you will get a lot of hate. Twice people have tried to run me off the cycle path followed by some unhinged diatribe about how the cycle path should not be there and that it's all a waste of taxpayer money and a bunch of nonsense. People are free to have that opinion, and I don't even especially mind of they go off on some rant about it, but they're not free to to consciously drive their fucking cars in my direction.
Then, of course, there's all the places where there aren't cycle paths. I've lost count of the number of provocations. Minding your business, cycling how you should be, and someone overtakes you – no way they didn't know you were there – and just veers in to you because "toot toot I'm a car motherfucker imma driving here now".
Then there's the pedestrians who will complain if you cycle on the cycle path because they don't realize it's a cycle path, or because they don't care. Or the cycle paths just ends with nowhere to go and you will get complaints if you go over the footpath because that's literally the only way to go other than the 80mph road (and not doing that).
Basically, you will get hate no matter what you do. Plus everything tends to be extremely car-centric anyway, so if you're not careful it's not that hard to go to "I get abuse from entitled assholes no matter what I do so fuck you all then".
No saying this as a justification, but there's some pretty bad feedback loops going on here.
Then you definitively will hate car drivers. For each cyclist that has bothered me as a pedestrian there are ten cars doing something crazy dangerous. And in my city there are a lot of bikes, as much as cars.
But I see that pedestrians are expected to deal with car behaviour, even dangerous one, without complaining. The fault is always on pedestrians or cyclist even that are car drivers the ones that kill many people or send them to a wheelchair for life.
There's just not good cycling infrastructure in most of the US. Until then, cyclists will complain about cars and pedestrians, pedestrians will complain about cars and cyclists, and so on. For every pedestrian not paying attention on a MUP infrastructure there's a Cat 6 racer.
> The physical risks of cycling are almost entirely due to cars
I'm a regular cyclist (~200km a week) and I don't really agree. I'd say at least 50% of cycling accidents don't involve cars at all (in fact, if I were personally representative of all cyclists, it'd be more like 80%!).
If you're talking accidentals likely to be fatal or result in permanent injury (which thankfully I've never had, touch wood), sure, you'd be closer to the mark, but that's a very small percentage of all cycling accidents - which is hard to prove statistically because of course the vast majority of minor incidents are never reported (even times I've ended up in hospital I'm not convinced the details of the incident ever made it into any official government statistics).
Cycling is never (*) going to be quite as safe as driving or walking, but yes, there's a lot we could to make it safer.
(*) Though I'm secretly hoping at some point someone will invent a bicycle incapable of falling over or hitting anything that's likely to result in injury to the rider. Not holding my breath though!
Except their feelings don't correlate with actual safety. Statistically, same direction rear end collisions are the least common type of collision while collisions at intersections are the most common. The bicycle infrastructure solutions the bicycle crowd comes up with increase the risk of collisions at intersections. Specifically, right hooks (where a right turning motorist turns across the path of a cyclist going straight through the intersection), left crosses (where a left turning motorist crosses the path of a cyclist going straight through the intersection), and drive outs (where a motorist entering the road from a side street crosses the path of a cyclist).
The one way to reduce the risk of intersection collisions is to ride in the center of the general purpose lane, but certain members of the bicycle crowd don't feel safe doing that. But feeling safe doesn't correlate with actual safety from a statistical point of view.
> The bicycle infrastructure solutions the bicycle crowd comes up with increase the risk of collisions at intersections
Either cyclists don't know what sort of infrastructure makes them safe, or you have an imperfect understanding of the sort of infrastructure that they would like to see.
> The one way to reduce the risk of intersection collisions is
That is one way, but not "the" one way, nor the best way. Dutch-style intersections are probably the state of the art solution when sharing the road with cars is unavoidable. Car-free cyclepaths are even safer. There are other means as well, including the elimination of right turns on red, which are particularly dangerous to pedestrians as well.
> Either cyclists don't know what sort of infrastructure makes them safe
Many cyclists have had no education, training or classroom instruction on how to cycle safely in traffic and have a distorted view of what infrastructure can do for them in terms of safety. For example, this cyclist[1] ended up in a crash because he failed to foresee the situation that could have easily been avoided. He evidently thought that the protected bike lane he was using made him safer. Yet, he could have easily been run over after being pushed out into the roadway. Someone with education and training would have realized that the motorist was not looking in their direction and they should anticipate that they won't yield to them.
> or you have an imperfect understanding of the sort of infrastructure that they would like to see.
I've seen plenty of examples of infrastructure that increases the risk of the collisions I mentioned earlier because the cyclist is hidden from the motorists' view until shortly before both arrive at the intersection. This doesn't give the motorist or the cyclist enough time to determine which of them should yield.
Infrastructure that relies on traffic lights to provide a protected movement through an intersection is the best solution in those cases, but results in longer wait times for everyone. This leads to non-compliance with traffic control signals and people who will try to beat the light to avoid a several minute wait. Unfortunately, most infrastructure I've seen relies on mutual yielding to work. Mutual yielding will work with both are moving at walking speed, but not at vehicular speed.
> Dutch-style intersections are probably the state of the art solution when sharing the road with cars is unavoidable
This doesn't address the numerous mid-block intersections where there isn't sufficient room to install one. Second, these intersections are geometrically similar to modern roundabouts (from the point of view of a motorist making a right turn at one), yet one study[2] has shown that around 71% of motorists exiting a roundabout yield to pedestrians waiting to cross or within a crosswalk. Presumably, the rate of yielding for cyclists are are moving at 15 to 25 feet per second instead of just 3 to 5 feet a second would even be lower because the motorist would be less likely to see them because the cyclist would be further away from crossing the intersection.
> Car-free cyclepaths are even safer.
They are not available in all cases.
> There are other means as well, including the elimination of right turns on red, which are particularly dangerous to pedestrians as well.
But this doesn't address the right on green problem, which is when most right hook collisions happen.
Surely that's not a protected bike lane at all? What's it protected by, a few flimsy sticks of plastic? I assume that when people talk about wanting protected bike lanes, they're talking about concrete jersey barriers at least.
To call that bike lane "protected" is like printing "please don't shoot me" on a tshirt and calling it a bullet proof vest.
Unfortunately, the definition of protection is not standardized, so one may consider flexi-bollards, parking stops, bollards, parked cars, planters, concrete curbs, and jersey barriers forms of protection. The standard term for a facility like this is cycletrack, but that term is not as commonly used.
For what it's worth, the term protected, in a traffic engineering context refers to exclusive movement through an intersection based on traffic signals. The most common example is a protected left turn as indicated by a left green arrow on a traffic signal. The other option for the left turn on either a solid green light or flashing left turn arrow is a permissive left where left turning traffic has to yield to oncoming traffic. Ironically, protected bike lanes rely on cyclists making a permissive rather than a protected movement for every intersection they traverse.
> For example, this cyclist[1] ended up in a crash because he failed to foresee the situation that could have easily been avoided
In general I agree that with some defensive cycling (and driving!) you can prevent a lot of accidents, but I'm not sure if I agree with that example; the car seemed to stop for the cyclist, and then it started moving with about a second for the cyclist to react.
Usually "eye contact" is the best bet, but it's near-impossible judge from that video if that was there or seemed like it was there. It's certainly possible the driver looked to the right in the direction of the cyclist and simply missed him due to situational blindness. Cyclist assumed driver saw him, driver didn't really register the cyclist, with the video as a consequence.
What reasonable expectations are also depends on how common cycling is in the location, how common that sort of cycle path is, stuff like that. I don't even know where that video was filmed. It's always easy to judge these things after the fact from a video sipping coffee from behind your desk, but in real life it's very easy to interpret something wrong, make a mistake, or just not pay attention for 3 seconds.
I take some amount of issue with the phrasing "this cyclist ended up in a crash because he failed to foresee the situation". He ended up in a crash because the driver ran in to him. He could perhaps have prevented the crash by correcting for the driver's mistake – which would clearly have been a better outcome, and is also why these videos are useful so we can all learn from them – but it's still primarily due to the driver's mistake that the crash happened.
> I'm not sure if I agree with that example; the car seemed to stop for the cyclist, and then it started moving with about a second for the cyclist to react.
This comes down to the difference in speed of a walking pedestrian versus a cyclist. A pedestrian walking at 3 mph is moving at about 4.5 feet per second. A cyclist moving at 10 mph is moving around 14.5 feet per second. This means that a pedestrian a second away from crossing the street would only be 4.5 feet away and within the view of the motorist approaching the intersection. The cyclist, on the other hand, would be 14.5 feet away and outside of the field of view of the motorist unless the motorist made the conscious decision to look down the sidewalk to check for approaching cyclist traffic.
The video shows that the motorist is turning onto a one way street where traffic is approaching only from their left. Naturally, the motorist is going to check for approaching traffic from the left by looking at the roadway. They will see a pedestrian about to start crossing in front of them because they would still be in the field of view, but a cyclist coming in the opposite direction moving at least a third of the speed of traffic coming from the motorist's left will definitely be outside of their view.
To increase intersection safety, the number of conflicts a driver has to account for needs to be minimized and separated timewise. When you compare a conventional intersection to a roundabout, you can see that the driver preparing to enter only has to account for traffic coming from one direction and pedestrians crossing in front of them. They also have a degree of time separation between the conflicts they have to deal with when entering the roundabout and those they have to deal with when exiting it. In a conventional intersection, there really is no time separation, meaning that the motorist has to deal with more conflicts in a given period of time.
In the case of the intersection shown in the video, the number of conflicts increased because the motorist has to now check for cyclists approaching in either direction in addition to traffic and pedestrians. The more conflicts one has to check for, the greater chance that one will be missed which increases the chance of a failure to yield and possibly a collision. Just placing the blame on the motorist without looking at how the design contributed to this situation won't solve the problem.
I will say that had there been shared lane markings on the street and had the cyclist been riding in the center of the lane in the same direction of traffic, this collision would not have occurred because the cyclist would have been where the motorist was checking for traffic.
> Usually "eye contact" is the best bet, but it's near-impossible judge from that video if that was there or seemed like it was there.
This again comes down to the speed difference of a walking pedestrian versus a cyclist. Eye contact is something that a pedestrian moving at walking speed can do and they can stop in a single stride length if they realize the motorist hasn't seen them.
A cyclist moving at 10 mph is going to have a difficult time checking whether the motorist has made eye contact and by the time they realize the motorist isn't going to yield to them, they're going to travel 14.5 feet in the second they take to react and another 6 feet to come to a stop (assuming a constant 0.5 G deceleration). 20.5 feet is far longer than a stride length and will take the cyclist past the intersection, meaning a collision is practically guaranteed to occur.
> I don't even know where that video was filmed.
I believe it's on a section of Summit St in Columbus Ohio near Ohio State University. One person I know has been keeping track of crash statistics[1] since these facilities were installed. Since they were installed, the number of crashes has increased substantially.
> I take some amount of issue with the phrasing "this cyclist ended up in a crash because he failed to foresee the situation". He ended up in a crash because the driver ran in to him.
There are always going to be people who will fail to follow right of way rules in certain situations. Defensive driving involves anticipating when this may happen and take action to avoid a collision. This particular facility basically set this situation up so that it's likely to occur from time to time and cyclists need to be aware of this (especially given the crash statistics associated with this facility).
> I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need to push everyone else to ride bicycles?
Driving a car in a urban area is great for the driver but pretty terrible for everyone else:
- Congestion
- Air pollution
- Noise pollution
- Space taken up by parking
- Danger of being run over
It doesn't really matter if you walk, cycle or get public transport. These have much lower externalities.
> I personally do not feel safe on a bike in a crowded city. Even if you took cars out of the equation
This is a shame because the cars (and other motor traffic) are in fact the main danger. Retirees and children cycle everywhere in NL because it feels safe enough for them to do so.
Is driving in an urban area really great for the driver? Genuine question, btw.
Everytime I’ve driven in EU capitals, I’ve been more frustrated than ever while driving. In every scenario walking, cycling or a tube would’ve felt more pleasant and quicker.
Traffic light after traffic light, constant congestion. What a mess. 20 minutes for a few kilometers.
Depends a bit on the city, where in the city, etc. Once you go outside of the inner city things usually tend to be better, but not always. Capitals are probably worse than average. "Tube" implies London and London is definitely worse than average.
When I lived in Bristol (England), it wasn't so bad for the most part (not that I had a car). Some smaller cities can still be pretty bad though; e.g. inner city traffic in Cork (Ireland) is just horrible. I was quite a bit faster cycling to the city centre from work than some coworkers were with cars, especially if you take parking in to account.
It usually isn't. I have a car, a motorcycle, a bike and a public transit pass. I almost never use the first two unless I'm heading outwards, and even then.
Driving might be faster, but with traffic and parking it's unpredictable. Public transit lets you see read on the way. Cycling gets you exercise and a usually entertaining ride.
But some of us _want_ to bike and find it unnecessarily dangerous at present because of all the privately-owned vehicles driving far too fast, far too close to us. It's not the ambulances or the delivery vans that put us in danger -- there aren't enough of them to make a difference. The danger consistently comes from roads that are designed to maximize the speed and convenience of drivers rather than the safety of everybody else.
My kids' school is 3Km (2mi) from where we live, a short bike ride away. However, can my family ride to school in the morning? Not at all, it's too dangerous for kids to ride with all the traffic, but it doesn't have to be this way. With simple traffic calming measures like having narrower residential streets the cars wouldn't be driving much faster than the bikes. This isn't science-fiction, it's how things work in plenty of livable cities around the world.
So, don't drive a bike if you don't want to, but me driving my bike doesn't put you in danger, and I wish I could say the same about your car.
The car infrastructure built to provide you that comfort has very big negative externalities to others. Among them:
1/ The massive amount of space dedicated to cars, taken away from pedestrians and cyclists. Cars are the most space-inefficient way of moving people around, if anything they should be the _least_ prioritized in public space allocation.
2/ Streets become hostile places to pedestrians, to children, to communities. Why do children not play outside anymore? No, its not the phones+internet, its the cars. Phones+internet are symptoms. Streets have been made into traffic sewage.
3/ Economics. If you need a 1500kg / 15000$ machine to carry a 70kg adult to a nearby grocery store, then there is something fundamentally wrong with your city planning. Alternatives should be there by default: walking and cycling infra is the solution. Cars were meant to give us freedom, it seems they took it away from us.
4/ Air pollution. EVs will partially solve it and no I am not going to wait for them, many micro particles PM are from tires wear and tear and engine (I dont have full details).
5/ Inclusivity. Cars are only for adults 18+. Children and teens have no mobility freedom. They are hostage to their parents to go from A to B. American suburbs are the most teen boredom place for a reason. Elderly and disabled are also restricted. Cycles are much more inclusive to all these groups. And cycle infra is not only for bicycles: its for mobility chairs, three-wheeld cycles, basically any humans-on-wheels vehicle.
This is not about bicycles, its about civil rights issue. Bicycles just happen to be one of (the preferred, the most visible?) method of traveling at a human scale.
>” I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need to push everyone else to ride bicycles?”
Stop and reflect a moment that essentially any development in the US over the past 60 years was built in a manner that REQUIRES cars and assumes cars are the default and that pedestrians and bikers are annoyances that do not belong and were not planned in.
Hmm why in that world would bikers need to advocate loudly for change?
> I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need to push everyone else to ride bicycles?
I have never understood why the automobile crowd feel the need to push everyone else to accommodate their desires and their restructuring of towns and landscapes around cars. Not to mention their sacrificing safety for people not in cars!
If you want to be a car person, OK: you be you. But they don't deserve the primacy they have managed to seize.
I never understood why does the car crowd feel the need to push everyone else to drive cars?
They make the thoroughfares dangerous and increase the distances between things so much that the only way to exist is to have a car. They require paving huge areas so that temperatures are more extreme since there's so few tree anymore. Driving is extremely stressful, always worrying that someone could die if anyone driving stops paying attention for a second.
There are numerous reasons why I'm not interested in driving. Yet [sic] I can't go more than a day without someone from the car church complaining that their "rights" are being infringed.
One of my favorite youtube channels at the moment is Not Just Bikes. And, it's right in the name: it's not just about bikes. It's about trains, busses, pedestrianization, mixed-use zoning, more options for housing density besides single family homes with front lawns. We waste so much potential with car dependency. Bikes are just one of the puzzle pieces.
The bicycle crowd isn't pushing for people to ride bicycles, they're pushing for basic, safe, all ages and abilities cycling infrastructure so they're not killed by a car.
You should give it a try! It's a lot of fun. In Chicago (as an example) you can drive your car downtown, park it, and rent a bike with the Lyft app. They have bike stations all over the city. Try to rent one near the lakefront and bike up and down on the car-free lakeside trail. Its safe, fun, and you can get around the city really quickly.
If you want to understand what cyclists are upset about, be adventurous. Ride in the urban core and then work your way outwards to the suburbs. You may develop an understanding for their perspective!
"car free city" is a bit of an oxymoron. How do ambulances and fire engines access buildings to administer emergency services? How do deliveries to stores work? No city can actually function without automobiles.
The reality is that there's sections of the city that are pedestrian only. I lived in Barcelona for two years, and that's how it worked. There are some pedestrian roads that have benches and storefronts, but there's automobile traffic one street over. The article describes the superblock system: basically the interior of the block is pedestrian only, but the larger exterior streets have car traffic. No one is more than a block away from car traffic at any time.
My point exactly: the term "car free city" is click bait. "Car free cities" are not even remotely car free, I'm glad you agree.
Also how do you conclude that I didn't read the article when I refer to Barcelona's super block system, and reference it's mention in the article? Do a better job reading comments.
Severless refers to the fact that someone else is provisioning the server. By that standard, my friend that never uses public transit or bicycles, and Ubers everywhere is "car-free".
No not your point.. that point was already made in the article, noone is saying here (and no reasonable person would think?!?) that car-free means 100% car free, you are overly nit picking at a term for unknown reason.
On the one hand, by the principle of charity, what was meant was that modern cities can't function without automobiles, not that ancient Sumeria required automobiles. Straw man.
On the other hand, by the principle of charity, what's being argued is that modern cities can't dump all automobiles immediately; not the idea that modern technology is too feeble to allow a city design without automobiles to function at all. Straw woman.
On the third hand, by the principle of charity, what is being argued is that most automobiles can be dropped from large parts of modern cities with more gain than loss; not that entire metropolitan and suburban areas can drop cars without inconvenience. Straw pronoun of your choice.
In other words, none of the arguments here are what they appear to be about superficially. They're really about degree of difficulty - is that underestimated or over-estimated? vs the benefits: more or less than you'd think. To argue that, you need details, which are in short supply until the experiments get not just to your city but to your block.
It's in good part an argument about network effects - and we aren't used to taking those into account properly.
Where I live, the standard argument as bike lanes/routes were being (expensively!) built downtown was: "Nobody even uses them!" Which was true as long as the bike routes were all less than a couple kilometers long. Now bike traffic is picking up as routes lengthen and multiply; so I rarely if ever hear that argument. Now what I hear is "you still need a car" because few bike routes are very long as yet, rather than objections to bike lanes in the middle of streets (or displacing streets) existing at all. Soon it will be "where I live you still need a car." Finally, when the lanes are built out, which they will be, the argument will be "I just like the convenience of a car."
My own view now: "I didn't expect this, but I really like that my neighborhood is quieter; which it is because there's now a pocket park right where an intersection used to be, one block from me. Just that change has made a remarkable difference. Damned nice to sit there in relative silence. Watching bikes hum by from time to time."
Right, and those cities were miniscule by today's standards, and their municipal services were terrible. How many times did London burn down before the 20th century? How effective was medieval London's emergency medical services?
> those cities were miniscule by today's standards
Rome had a million people in it 100 BC. There were still large cities. Also most large cities today (Tokyo, Shanghai, London, Paris, New York) have strong public transport systems and most people don't need cars. So you can have large cities where most people live a car-free lifestyle.
> How many times did London burn down before the 20th century?
I think fire codes being enforced & developments in building techniques helped reduced fires, not just that we can drive fire trucks to situations.
They had horse carts then. People weren't cycling to get around. A car is simply a horse cart without the cart and occupies about the same amount of space
Car-free small town just sounds weird. If it a small town there isn't much cars to begin with, and people who live there likely need a car to travel to other towns for work or finding shops that have the specific inventory that people need.
Living in an small apartment at the city core in a world city is a very different experience. Among other things, those places tend to have subways and people tend to live in quite smaller living space. Unless parking is subsidized, parking costs alone can cost more than rent in a small town, while parking in a small town tend to be free.
Almost no significant urban area is going to be totally car free (unless you're one of a handful of towns/cities across the world - often tourist destinations - where it really is basically impossible to use a car, Venice being the archetypical example), but I've been to small towns in various parts of the world where car usage is far far lower than what we're generally accustomed to in much of the developed world. And they're almost all vastly nicer places to visit than those where the infrastructure dedicated to high-speed automobile travel dwarfs everything else. I imagine those that live there are those that have made peace with a limited-car-usage existence. Some of them aren't even especially dense - it's just a lifestyle choice to make shorter/slower trips mostly (on foot, or by bicycle etc.), and reserve the car for the occasional longer trip into a bigger town for whatever can't be obtained locally.
If it is a "small town" then the actual town itself is likely to be easy to get around without a car. I looked at a local town of 15,000 people and it's only 4km across. You could bike that in 10-15 minutes.
As for getting to the next town it would be common to have a railway station (or bus station) with regular trains every 15/20/30 minutes. Easy enough to ride down to the station, hop on a train to the next town or big city.
Finally "Car-free" doesn't usually mean zero cars. Many households would still own them. But it does mean that it is reasonably possible not to need one and certainly not for every journey.
I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum. There’s not a lot of difference in the feeling of standing around and wanting to go somewhere further than you can walk. It’s really that simple.
How much money you really saving traveling 10 extra miles to save $5 on groceries in your $30,000 car that costs $2000 a year to insure and $60 a week to fill up?
What's dramatically off? Average new car price in the US is $45,000+, average insurance is $1500 a year and will vary by state,location,car,gender,age, etc. Average US commute is 41 miles a day, so I GUESS $60 of gas at $3/gallon is more like 2 two weeks in a modern popular vehicle like a Ford F-150. But yeah, dramatically off. Totally.
Its not more of a time savings to drive in a car dependent city. It's certainly not a time savings to check out the competition that's spread out 5 miles apart.
I live in a walkable area. Have 3 grocery stores in a 10 minute walk, several bookstores, clothing stores etc. Plenty of competition and I don't have to spend most of the transit time traversing giant parking lots.
I'll take that as a "yes." No, I own a home in a major metro. Believe it or not, I can bike to get groceries, but that's uncommon. Most people generally choose not to. They still have a choice here.
In a 10-minute walk you have 3 grocery stores. In a 10-minute drive, I have 30 to choose from with specialty stores I haven't even gotten around to exploring yet. There's no comparison whatsoever.
You generally don't own a home in a "car-free" city.
A 10 minute drive is not comparable to a 10 minute walk in any way.
Not sure where you are getting at with the specialty store thing - the nicest stores are always in cities, either a walk/bus/metro ride away. People in cities do more than ... walk to places. :)
What it really comes down to is this: a preference to live/work/etc in and around big-box parking lots and highways (where 70% of the land is parking), or to do the same in walkable neighborhoods with minimal parking (space replaced with more cool stuff).
Why do you think "car-free" cities are homeless? My neighborhood has apartment buildings obviously, but it also has some single family homes and condos which can be bought and owned. Obviously a single family home there is more expensive than one a 40 minute drive out but it's actually still less expensive than a suburb of Toronto or Vancouver.
Car-free doesn't just mean just skyscrapers. It just means not-shit design centered around metal boxes instead of people.
Your numbers are an order of magnitude off. No suburban (not rural) American has to drive more than a mile or two to a grocery store, and if they commute by car, there are likely several on their route. They also can drive to far more stores in ten minutes than you can walk to, including time spent parking (which is negligible).
Most people buy used cars, and spending more on luxuries isn’t related to the necessary cost of transportation. You’re doing the equivalent of using the price of first-class train tickets to argue that rail is expensive. Your insurance numbers are also very high, and a safe driver driving an average car would be paying half as much.
The median commute is ~20 minutes, which is way less than 20 miles due to speed limits and traffic. An F-150 is also not a common commuter vehicle, and pickups are a minority even in truck heavy areas like Texas.
Your original comment about price savings being minimal is also wrong; the savings on a single item at Costco is often more than $5 compared to a downtown store.
I paid $2500 for my car. In the 26 years I've been driving I've spent a total of $12k on 5 vehicles. I pick up $150 in groceries, pay $1000/yr for insurance and spend $60 every other week to fill up.
Do you think that's remotely near the norm? Average used car price is currently more than double your lifetime spend [0]. Even pre-pandemic it's pretty close. And is that 12k including maintenance? I'm guessing not!
Maintenance is negligible. A set of used tires can be had for $200. If it's not part of the drivetrain, most fixes can be done in a couple hours for a couple hundred bucks. I've maybe spent $2000 on brakes, tierods, alternators, and starters. I buy cars that are easy to maintain yourself. If I can't fix it, I sell it for parts or junk it.
Avg price doesn't matter. You can find plenty of cars in the $3-5k range that are mechanically sound but have aesthetic issues.
Imo, buying a brand new car is the biggest waste of money ever.
It's expensive in those areas because it's a better way of living, and more people want to do it (supply/demand). Nobody is competing to live in cookie-cutter suburbs where you need to drive 30 minutes everywhere - that's why it's cheaper. Suburban infrastructure is also massively subsidized by cities.
Also - renting is fine. Housing ownership as an investment vehicle is unsustainable.
I don't know where this romanticizing of car free cities & no cars comes from, but it has gotten a hold in the eco / environmentalist camp and is being spread like shit on a farm.
It's false advertising. Copenhagen for instance has a very nice climate and is a compact and flat city which lends itself nicely to bicycle transport, not all cities are equal by a long shot.
I don't think anyone has ever said they are against cars outright, just hinting at transport being a utility and personal cars being more of a luxury in cases where better public transport would suffice.
Just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg
Im dutch and despite being able to ride over in 5 minutes and park my beautiful car right behind the stores, i still prefer to use my bike for daily groceries to get there faster and easier. The cities are designed for this. A bike never has to cross a 4-lane road with homes nearby.