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I live in Christchurch, NZ. After a massive earthquake in 2011, I had high hopes that we might redesign the city for the next 100 years instead of the previous

I live in Christchurch, NZ. After a massive earthquake in 2011, I had high hopes that we might redesign the city for the next 100 years instead of the previous 50 (i.e. for people, not cars). Instead the city council built a few bike lanes and even then people lost their goddamn minds. "You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" "No one wants to bike into the city" Meanwhile, cyclists are steadily increasing in numbers and the centre of town is actually seeing some signs of life for the first time in decades. But heaven forfend we actually do something radical and pedestrianise the city.

WizardAustralis 7y ago
The irony here is that the bikes aren't slowing traffic, the endless road works are. Also Chch is basically one giant Wilsons parking lot now. I love the place and I intend to settle there in a few years time but it is very disheartening to see a once in the life time opportunity to solve these issues get squandered in the space of a few years.
dcolkitt 7y ago
The biggest counterpoint here is what about families? A mom with three young kids in tow pretty much needs a car to get around. Or elderly people? I can't really take my 90-year old grandma out to dinner if it requires her to bike her way to the restaurant. Thinking about non-car based transportation methods is great. But the reality is that large segments of society are always going to need some sort of car-based option. You can't just ban cars from a city center without totally excluding a lot of young people.
- vecinu 7y ago
  How are other cities solving this problem? Does Grandma never go out to dinner in Tokyo or Bogota?
  - epse 7y ago
    They bike. Or take public transport and walk afterwards. My grandparents do this, and they wouldn't have it any other way.
- Fricken 7y ago
  A friend of mine is a quadruple amputee and he uses the bike Lanes. Electric wheelchairs are micromobility. He'll never be able to drive a car.
- deanclatworthy 7y ago
  You provide adequate public transport. I’m totally with you though that in many cases this isn’t feasible. I hope in the future we share our cars more often, but I can’t see this happening until they’re mostly autonomous.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - k_ 7y ago
    Exactly. The answer isn't public transport, but adequate public transport. Of course if we ban cars we can't expect everyone to use a bike instead, or to rely on current public transport network. Train, tramway, metro, bus (, something new?) all need to be vastly reinforced (something between 10x and 100x maybe?) but there's room for that once cars are out of the picture (both from roads and parking space). Cars are convenient, but not efficient at scale (and too dangerous, for now at least). We need another solution, and I think it has to be radical to really work. But then, banning or greatly reducing car use in cities will be a tough one..
  - greggman2 7y ago
    IMO autonomous cars are going to massively increase car usage so car issues are going to get worse not better. Maybe we won't need parking lots but if autonomous cars happen people will use them for anything and everything. No more need for couriers just pop the package/document in a car. Want to run a business out of your house? No need to delivery people just pop your product in a car. Cook for sick relative, pop the meal in a car. Need grandma to watch the kids tonight, pop them in car. Maybe some of that will go to drones but the point is that a device that shows up at your door and goes to any other door in the city for opens a huge number of new opportunities.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      We could redesign the cars to be smaller and to drive more densely if they were fully autonomous and electric. Their footprint would then more closely resemble bikes. Or maybe someone will invent self driving bicycles/scooters for delivery tasks.
- samcheng 7y ago
  A mom-of-three friend of mine loves her electric Xtracycle. She mostly leaves the minivan at home, and neatly bypasses the morning school-and-office traffic. It zips along at 20mph surprisingly quickly, too. While not everyone can be that active, a steadily increasing number of people are using these micro-mobility devices. It really does improve the suburban and urban environment over cars. It's not like handicapped-accessibility considerations are going away when we start to cater to these smaller vehicles!
- rags2riches 7y ago
  Families is not a counterpoint. I have had three kids in my bike. Now my kids ride their own bikes but we meet parents with all their kids in their bikes every day. There are homes for the elderly around here that put two elders in a bike to get them out for a ride. You didn't mention shopping, but I did put all my shopping in that same bike I had my kids in. Guess what the biggest obstacle to my kids getting around on their own is? Cars! You don't have to exclude cars from cities, just make them be there in a way that also allows children to safely get around.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Most families in the developed world are having one to two kids. I rode a bike with a toddler in a toddler seat on the back until I was 8 months pregnant. You can also get little "cars" to tow behind your bike to hold two kids. I always hated cars. My kids never felt like a barrier to going far free. My marriage did. After the divorce, my kids and I eventually went car free. They are adults. They still live with me. We remain car free. We're happier this way.
    - anon9001 7y ago
      > I rode a bike with a toddler in a toddler seat on the back until I was 8 months pregnant. You can also get little "cars" to tow behind your bike to hold two kids. As adults, I can understand the appeal of being car free, but I can't help but be struck by how dangerous it seems to commute on a bike pregnant with a toddler onboard. I'm imagining biking down Market St, 8 months pregnant, with a toddler seat and two kids in tow. That's a lot of faith that nobody's going to open a car door at the wrong time or pull out into traffic without looking. I know fit dudes in their 20s that have had accidents and been seriously injured. I've never thought of myself as particularly risk adverse, but wow that seems risky.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        I was in Germany. This means the landscape was pedestrian friendly, bicycle friendly and I wasn't going terribly far. When I was six months pregnant, I took my two year old to the ER via bike because his dad had our only vehicle. The kid needed stitches, having done a bit of climbing of the furniture and busted his chin open on the wood floor -- a rather all too common injury for children that age. I was told that the stitches he needed were really rather mild for such an injury. They had absolutely seen far worse. The most dangerous place my toddler spent time was our home, where he persistently climbed the door frames and yelled for me to come catch him before he fell. He never did learn to climb down. He just counted on his young, energetic and very attentive mother to always safely catch him. (And I always did, so he was never cured of this expectation.) I desperately wished I could find some way to remove our door frames. It would have brought my stress levels down about a thousand percent.
- socialist_coder 7y ago
  > A mom with three young kids in tow Ha! Go see how they do it in Europe. Bike trailers, extra seats in the front & back, built in cargo decks, longer bikes; there are lots of fancy ways to load a lot of kids & cargo onto your bike. And don't forget that kids can ride their own bikes too! My kid was riding a bike with me to daycare at 3-4 years old. Your thinking is too car-centric!
  - inertiatic 7y ago
    I live and travel around Europe. Seeing parents riding with their very young kids is not too common a sight and every major city I've been to has traffic problems, because a whole lot of people do want to use cars and do value their convenience. Whether that's a bad thing or not is another discussion but don't try to present Europeans as some sort of superhumans.
    - socialist_coder 7y ago
      I only have experience with Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Amsterdam; but if you sit outside of a daycare in those cities in the morning you can see the multitude of people who ride their bikes to drop off their 1, 2, and sometimes 3 kids at daycare. Those cities do cycling right and it shows. So I would disagree with you. The traffic problems are caused by having cities that are only setup to make cars convenient and everything else inconvenient. Cities that prioritize the lowest bandwidth people mover are going to have major traffic problems, of course. Like you say, people want convenience. But I don't know why you think they particularly care about driving (or cycling or walking or taking the train). They just want the most convenient & cost effective thing. If that's a car, they will drive a car. If that's cycling, they will cycle. If it's the train, they will take that instead. On practically every measure, owning a car is far less convenient (unless you live in a city built around driving cars) and more expensive than not owning a car. We owned a car in Germany but only used it for weekend trips. So the point here is to change cities to not be built around cars. Make cars less convenient.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
- skrebbel 7y ago
  > The biggest counterpoint here is what about families? A mom with three young kids in tow pretty much needs a car to get around. Bakfiets: https://www.babboe.nl/bakfietsen/big https://www.babboe.nl/bakfietsen/big
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    They also now offer electric assist versions as well.
  - inertiatic 7y ago
    That's cool, how do I carry that up the stairs to my apartment?
    - enriquto 7y ago
      The same way that you carry your car.
    - jerven 7y ago
      Same way you carry your car up the stairs park it in the bike garage or your car parking spot.
      - inertiatic 7y ago
        My car gets parked across the street from my apartment building. Doesn't get stolen and doesn't care about rain. My bike spent a single winter out on my balcony after we needed the space inside the apartment for baby stuff. It's now rusty in multiple spots. My previous bike, I left on the small back yard of my last apartment, locked up. It got stolen a few months after I started doing that. So again, this is not feasible for a lot of people, myself included, and it's very privileged to think that everyone has access to a garage next to their home.
        enriquto 7y ago
        > My car gets parked across the street from my apartment building. Offtopic, but this has to end. I do not understand how it is socially acceptable to put huge pieces of your private property on the public streets. You cannot just put your washing machine on the street because you have nowhere else to put it! Why can you do that with a car?
- m1sta_ 7y ago
  Every cyclist frees up a car park.
  - bacon_waffle 7y ago
    We had a wonderful irony in local elections recently: the newly elected mayor doesn't have a driver's license, he hitchhiked to work previously as a city counselor and plans to continue that as mayor. Many of his opponents had car parking high on their platforms :).
  - bluGill 7y ago
    But they need a bike park instead. Granted you can park 5-10 bikes in the space of a car (depending on the size of the bikes and car), but we still need to have this space.
    - triceratops 7y ago
      1. Not necessarily. You can bring your bike indoors and leave it in a spare room, on a hook on a wall, or next to your desk (if in an office) 2. You've acknowledged that bikes are 5-10x more space efficient than cars. So it's an obvious win.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      > Granted you can park 5-10 bikes in the space of a car Substantially more than that. Don't forget about vertical staggering and about the space saved from not needing a safety margin between car spaces.
- deanCommie 7y ago
  Ask the Dutch. How do they do it? Or do you assume they do not have young kids or grandmas? Why is it that whenever people talk about designing cities for pedestrians and bikes, someone on hackernews thinks it means eliminating all cars entirely forever. For a forum ostensibly designed for entrepreneurs, it shows a tremendous lack of imagination. Answer: * Public transportation inside cities such as buses and trams * Trains to rural areas * Park-and-ride garages for people to drive in, and park next to transportation hubs * Underground parking garages at the edges of pedestrian zones, or even underneath them, coming up directly above them * Ubiquitous bike storage and bike attachments such that yes, in fact, a mom with 3 young kids can tow them from a single bike - moms in Amsterdam and Berlin do it all the time.
  - csunbird 7y ago
    Please add extremely high prices for daily parking to the list :)
  - dcolkitt 7y ago
    The difference is that Holland is entirely flat, has an average high of 71 in the summer, and rarely if ever gets icy. The Dutch experience simply doesn't translate to most of America because of the terrain and climate. Elderly people people will die if you make them walk in the Florida summer. 7 year old children lack the leg-strength to bike up California hills. Both groups are likely to slip and crack their heads open in the icy Boston winter.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      And Tokyo and Oulu, Finland have the same weather as Holland, surely? Lots of places bike. People who don't like bike infra make all kinds of excuses, but the truth is that bikes work almost everywhere short of the Himalayas. It's just our lack of investment that holds them back.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      Our kid rode up mountains once we got her a 21 speed.
- donjoe 7y ago
  Get yourself a Bullitt [1]. For your grandma you might consider a three-wheeled version of a bicycle. My cousin's granddad stopped cycling in the city at the age of 94 since he had problems getting off the bike. He got himself a home trainer and is doing 10k/day at home now. He's turning 96 in a few days. [1] http://www.larryvsharry.com/ http://www.larryvsharry.com/
- francisofascii 7y ago
  It is a valid point, but I think "most" traffic I see have one single occupant. Perhaps we could find a way to enforce HOV like rules to certain roads and parking spaces. And also include those with handicap stickers. If we eliminated single occupant cars and were left with mothers driving with young kids we would have a huge safety and congestion improvement.
- nitwit005 7y ago
  There was a time before cars. People didn't just entrap their kids and mother at home. We've just made it unworkable due to redesigning things for cars. Cars only work with kids due to most people having smaller families these days. I actually think the car limitations is a reason family sizes have shrunk. Start imagining moving ten kids around.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Mini vans and Chevy suburbans are a thing, Utahns aren’t very dissuaded by that problem. I think it’s the other way around: Being carless with one kid can be ok, but you might need to start rethinking that at the second or third.
- theaeolist 7y ago
  There you go: https://babyccinokids.com/blog/2010/02/02/do-as-the-dutch-do-bike-on-a-bakfiets/ https://babyccinokids.com/blog/2010/02/02/do-as-the-dutch-do...
- 7952 7y ago
  Sometimes what is needed is less centralised facilities. So that shops and leisure are in closer proximity to where people live or work.
inamberclad 7y ago
Coming from the US West Coast, I was unpleasantly surprised by how anti-pedestrian certain parts felt. The biggest issue for me was the difference in right of way in New Zealand. It was unsettling walking around with a reduced right of way versus cars. Reversing that would be a major nation-wide undertaking, but I think it would benefit the pedestrian and biking atmosphere.
flukus 7y ago
> "You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" The part that always makes me laugh is when they inevitably call cyclists entitled. It's always "I demand massive amounts of probably subsidized infrastructure, to be able to drive at maximum speed all the way and to have a personal space reserved to store my car for the next 8 hours, but those entitled cyclists get in the way". Not to mention the reliance on the government to provide the infrastructure to drive on, to build the ports to import fuel, huge multi-national companies to extract and transport the fuel, multiple foreign governments and the military interventions necessary to keep them in line, all so you can get that feeling of freedom when you drive.
- dvdkhlng 7y ago
  You forgot the rather significant social cost of health issues caused by car traffic exhaust [1] and the longer term social cost of exhaust having an effect on climate [2]. [1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/nitrogen-dioxide-has-serious-impact-on-health https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/nit... [2] https://news.stanford.edu/2015/01/12/emissions-social-costs-011215/ https://news.stanford.edu/2015/01/12/emissions-social-costs-...
mwilcox 7y ago
The entire debacle with the city council wanting to spend years "reimagining what the city could be" instead of getting back to work building new infrastructure immediately is why Christchurch has taken so long to come back to life.
petre 7y ago
Of course no one wants to bike into the city when it's full of speeding cars. In France they've adopted a different attitude. Montpellier for instance has built many parking buildings at the city limits, an integrated urban transportation network while shrinking vehicle lanes and transforming them into dedicated tram lanes, bicycle lanes or pedestrian areas. They've also introduced obstacels and lots of wavy turns to make speeding through the city very hard or impossible. If you want to go anywhere by car you're virtually stuck in a never ending traffic jam. I just wonder what infrastructure ambulances, police and the fire brigade use to go from one place to another when there's an emergency. Maybe they use the dedicated tram lanes.
- magduf 7y ago
  >They've also introduced obstacels and lots of wavy turns to make speeding through the city very hard or impossible. If you want to go anywhere by car you're virtually stuck in a never ending traffic jam. Now they just need to add a "congestion tax" like London has to penalize drivers for spewing fumes into the air in the city center.
systemtest 7y ago
I live in a 750 year old European city. The medieval center is 1 kilometer in diameter. They wanted to make the center accessible only for cars of residents and suppliers of stores (up to 11am for suppliers). There are four underground parking garages directly surrounding the center and the walking distance from a garage to any location is never more than 450 meter. Free wheelchairs are provided from the garages. This change would make the center much more liveable for residents, guests and visitors. I have never seen a collective group of people lose their shit during the town hall meeting that much. It was like the end of the world. Apparently during the 750 years history it has become mandatory to have visitors parking right on the monumental cobblestones. Walking 450 meter, even with the free provided wheelchairs, became impossible. I wonder how people survived back in 1438 without the ability to park their car right in front of the shops.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  In 1438 there was no supermarkets with huge parking lots that will lure away all your customers. It's not just that people will have to walk to you (so competition located closer will win), they will also have to carry the stuff they buy back to the car, so they'll probably not be willing to buy a lot, or anything heavier. If you're selling souvenirs or t-shirts it's not a big deal, but for people selling say wines or craft beer or olive oil, you probably want people to be able to buy a few bottles, so distance is a problem.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    From what I've heard shops tend to benefit when cars are banned, because more people spend more time in the area.
  - jnty 7y ago
    Why would you drive into the medieval centre of a city to do a large supermarket shop if you can drive to an out-of-town one already? Studies show that - particularly in Europe - most people are already walking to these shops everywhere. The 'weekly shop' is not really a thing that inner-city dwellers tend to do that often - they either rely on deliveries (cheap and efficient due to density) or smaller shops throughout the week (which often means less perishables waste.)
swebs 7y ago
>"You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" Just put the bike lanes on the sidewalk instead of in the street then. That's how it's done in Finland and it seems much safer for everyone involved.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Sidewalks are often not wide enough for 2m of bike lane and pedestrians. Bike lanes on side walks also make intersections more dangerous for cyclists.
- Fradow 7y ago
  Don't know how that works out in Finland, but there are a few of those in Paris, and while they are just as good as those on the street at certain hours, at other hours they become overrun with inattentive pedestrians that confuse them for a sidewalk. This makes those lanes dangerous for both cyclists and pedestrians as a result, and very slow for cyclists compared to a regular bike lane. A third to a half of the cyclists opt for the bus lane instead (despite it being forbidden to cyclists). And they are not slowing the traffic. In fact, cyclists move faster than cars at the particular location I have in mind.
- eemil 7y ago
  >"You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" Those points probably don't even matter. Each bicycling convert means one less parking space used, and one less car sitting in traffic.
- clarry 7y ago
  They work ok in areas that aren't particularly congested. Even then, many of these shared bike/pedestrian ways are just packed full of little things that slow cyclists down in a way a cycle lane wouldn't. They're also poorly maintained as compared to the street that gets re-paved every so often while they just fill the worst holes & cracks on the sidewalk. That's why some enthusiasts in .fi choose to cycle in traffic (even though that's not really legal if there's a bike path on the right).
alistairSH 7y ago
Ugh. We get the same thing here in suburban DC (not the earthquakes but the outright hostility towards any changes in road infrastructure that don't involve adding lanes). The main street in front of my neighborhood was recently repaved end-to-end (3 miles or so). Prior to that, it was 2 lanes in each direction, with a few left turn lanes. As part of the repave, they wanted to add a semi-protected bike lane (by removing one car lane in each direction). The outcry was ridiculous. This isn't a major thoroughfare, it's a moderately travelled neighborhood road. There's a small shopping center at one end and a school complex in the middle. Long-story-short, the government add the bike lanes. EXCEPT for in front of the schools and shopping center. So, it's half mile of 4-lane cars, then 1 mile 2 cars/2 bike, then at the school it's back to 4-car for half mile, then back to 2 car/2 bike for the remainder. And now all the non-cyclists cry "Look! Nobody uses the bike lanes!" Well, of course not. They're completely fucking useless because they come and go almost at random and don't lead anywhere. It's infuriating.
- magduf 7y ago
  I live in suburban DC too; this place is terrible for cycling. I pretty much only ride on the trails (usually W&OD, also Custis and Mt. Vernon) because they're safe.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    Luckily, I'm far enough out (Reston) that I can hop on the W&OD to Leesburg and then bail onto slightly more rural roads. Reston itself is ok, despite the silliness with inconsistent bike lanes and sidewalks. Just have to avoid the major roads.
    - magduf 7y ago
      Just watch out for armed robbers: https://www.insidenova.com/news/crime_police/bicycle-rider-robbed-on-w-od-trail-in-sterling/article_e35a657a-c7f2-11e9-b627-9f35b9e28338.html https://www.insidenova.com/news/crime_police/bicycle-rider-r...

WizardAustralis 7y ago

The irony here is that the bikes aren't slowing traffic, the endless road works are. Also Chch is basically one giant Wilsons parking lot now. I love the place and I intend to settle there in a few years time but it is very disheartening to see a once in the life time opportunity to solve these issues get squandered in the space of a few years.

dcolkitt 7y ago

The biggest counterpoint here is what about families? A mom with three young kids in tow pretty much needs a car to get around. Or elderly people? I can't really take my 90-year old grandma out to dinner if it requires her to bike her way to the restaurant. Thinking about non-car based transportation methods is great. But the reality is that large segments of society are always going to need some sort of car-based option. You can't just ban cars from a city center without totally excluding a lot of young people.

vecinu 7y ago
How are other cities solving this problem? Does Grandma never go out to dinner in Tokyo or Bogota?
- epse 7y ago
  They bike. Or take public transport and walk afterwards. My grandparents do this, and they wouldn't have it any other way.
Fricken 7y ago
A friend of mine is a quadruple amputee and he uses the bike Lanes. Electric wheelchairs are micromobility. He'll never be able to drive a car.
deanclatworthy 7y ago
You provide adequate public transport. I’m totally with you though that in many cases this isn’t feasible. I hope in the future we share our cars more often, but I can’t see this happening until they’re mostly autonomous.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- k_ 7y ago
  Exactly. The answer isn't public transport, but adequate public transport. Of course if we ban cars we can't expect everyone to use a bike instead, or to rely on current public transport network. Train, tramway, metro, bus (, something new?) all need to be vastly reinforced (something between 10x and 100x maybe?) but there's room for that once cars are out of the picture (both from roads and parking space). Cars are convenient, but not efficient at scale (and too dangerous, for now at least). We need another solution, and I think it has to be radical to really work. But then, banning or greatly reducing car use in cities will be a tough one..
- greggman2 7y ago
  IMO autonomous cars are going to massively increase car usage so car issues are going to get worse not better. Maybe we won't need parking lots but if autonomous cars happen people will use them for anything and everything. No more need for couriers just pop the package/document in a car. Want to run a business out of your house? No need to delivery people just pop your product in a car. Cook for sick relative, pop the meal in a car. Need grandma to watch the kids tonight, pop them in car. Maybe some of that will go to drones but the point is that a device that shows up at your door and goes to any other door in the city for opens a huge number of new opportunities.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    We could redesign the cars to be smaller and to drive more densely if they were fully autonomous and electric. Their footprint would then more closely resemble bikes. Or maybe someone will invent self driving bicycles/scooters for delivery tasks.
samcheng 7y ago
A mom-of-three friend of mine loves her electric Xtracycle. She mostly leaves the minivan at home, and neatly bypasses the morning school-and-office traffic. It zips along at 20mph surprisingly quickly, too. While not everyone can be that active, a steadily increasing number of people are using these micro-mobility devices. It really does improve the suburban and urban environment over cars. It's not like handicapped-accessibility considerations are going away when we start to cater to these smaller vehicles!
rags2riches 7y ago
Families is not a counterpoint. I have had three kids in my bike. Now my kids ride their own bikes but we meet parents with all their kids in their bikes every day. There are homes for the elderly around here that put two elders in a bike to get them out for a ride. You didn't mention shopping, but I did put all my shopping in that same bike I had my kids in. Guess what the biggest obstacle to my kids getting around on their own is? Cars! You don't have to exclude cars from cities, just make them be there in a way that also allows children to safely get around.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Most families in the developed world are having one to two kids. I rode a bike with a toddler in a toddler seat on the back until I was 8 months pregnant. You can also get little "cars" to tow behind your bike to hold two kids. I always hated cars. My kids never felt like a barrier to going far free. My marriage did. After the divorce, my kids and I eventually went car free. They are adults. They still live with me. We remain car free. We're happier this way.
  - anon9001 7y ago
    > I rode a bike with a toddler in a toddler seat on the back until I was 8 months pregnant. You can also get little "cars" to tow behind your bike to hold two kids. As adults, I can understand the appeal of being car free, but I can't help but be struck by how dangerous it seems to commute on a bike pregnant with a toddler onboard. I'm imagining biking down Market St, 8 months pregnant, with a toddler seat and two kids in tow. That's a lot of faith that nobody's going to open a car door at the wrong time or pull out into traffic without looking. I know fit dudes in their 20s that have had accidents and been seriously injured. I've never thought of myself as particularly risk adverse, but wow that seems risky.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I was in Germany. This means the landscape was pedestrian friendly, bicycle friendly and I wasn't going terribly far. When I was six months pregnant, I took my two year old to the ER via bike because his dad had our only vehicle. The kid needed stitches, having done a bit of climbing of the furniture and busted his chin open on the wood floor -- a rather all too common injury for children that age. I was told that the stitches he needed were really rather mild for such an injury. They had absolutely seen far worse. The most dangerous place my toddler spent time was our home, where he persistently climbed the door frames and yelled for me to come catch him before he fell. He never did learn to climb down. He just counted on his young, energetic and very attentive mother to always safely catch him. (And I always did, so he was never cured of this expectation.) I desperately wished I could find some way to remove our door frames. It would have brought my stress levels down about a thousand percent.
socialist_coder 7y ago
> A mom with three young kids in tow Ha! Go see how they do it in Europe. Bike trailers, extra seats in the front & back, built in cargo decks, longer bikes; there are lots of fancy ways to load a lot of kids & cargo onto your bike. And don't forget that kids can ride their own bikes too! My kid was riding a bike with me to daycare at 3-4 years old. Your thinking is too car-centric!
- inertiatic 7y ago
  I live and travel around Europe. Seeing parents riding with their very young kids is not too common a sight and every major city I've been to has traffic problems, because a whole lot of people do want to use cars and do value their convenience. Whether that's a bad thing or not is another discussion but don't try to present Europeans as some sort of superhumans.
  - socialist_coder 7y ago
    I only have experience with Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Amsterdam; but if you sit outside of a daycare in those cities in the morning you can see the multitude of people who ride their bikes to drop off their 1, 2, and sometimes 3 kids at daycare. Those cities do cycling right and it shows. So I would disagree with you. The traffic problems are caused by having cities that are only setup to make cars convenient and everything else inconvenient. Cities that prioritize the lowest bandwidth people mover are going to have major traffic problems, of course. Like you say, people want convenience. But I don't know why you think they particularly care about driving (or cycling or walking or taking the train). They just want the most convenient & cost effective thing. If that's a car, they will drive a car. If that's cycling, they will cycle. If it's the train, they will take that instead. On practically every measure, owning a car is far less convenient (unless you live in a city built around driving cars) and more expensive than not owning a car. We owned a car in Germany but only used it for weekend trips. So the point here is to change cities to not be built around cars. Make cars less convenient.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
skrebbel 7y ago
> The biggest counterpoint here is what about families? A mom with three young kids in tow pretty much needs a car to get around. Bakfiets: https://www.babboe.nl/bakfietsen/big https://www.babboe.nl/bakfietsen/big
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  They also now offer electric assist versions as well.
- inertiatic 7y ago
  That's cool, how do I carry that up the stairs to my apartment?
  - enriquto 7y ago
    The same way that you carry your car.
  - jerven 7y ago
    Same way you carry your car up the stairs park it in the bike garage or your car parking spot.
    - inertiatic 7y ago
      My car gets parked across the street from my apartment building. Doesn't get stolen and doesn't care about rain. My bike spent a single winter out on my balcony after we needed the space inside the apartment for baby stuff. It's now rusty in multiple spots. My previous bike, I left on the small back yard of my last apartment, locked up. It got stolen a few months after I started doing that. So again, this is not feasible for a lot of people, myself included, and it's very privileged to think that everyone has access to a garage next to their home.
      - enriquto 7y ago
        > My car gets parked across the street from my apartment building. Offtopic, but this has to end. I do not understand how it is socially acceptable to put huge pieces of your private property on the public streets. You cannot just put your washing machine on the street because you have nowhere else to put it! Why can you do that with a car?
m1sta_ 7y ago
Every cyclist frees up a car park.
- bacon_waffle 7y ago
  We had a wonderful irony in local elections recently: the newly elected mayor doesn't have a driver's license, he hitchhiked to work previously as a city counselor and plans to continue that as mayor. Many of his opponents had car parking high on their platforms :).
- bluGill 7y ago
  But they need a bike park instead. Granted you can park 5-10 bikes in the space of a car (depending on the size of the bikes and car), but we still need to have this space.
  - triceratops 7y ago
    1. Not necessarily. You can bring your bike indoors and leave it in a spare room, on a hook on a wall, or next to your desk (if in an office) 2. You've acknowledged that bikes are 5-10x more space efficient than cars. So it's an obvious win.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    > Granted you can park 5-10 bikes in the space of a car Substantially more than that. Don't forget about vertical staggering and about the space saved from not needing a safety margin between car spaces.
deanCommie 7y ago
Ask the Dutch. How do they do it? Or do you assume they do not have young kids or grandmas? Why is it that whenever people talk about designing cities for pedestrians and bikes, someone on hackernews thinks it means eliminating all cars entirely forever. For a forum ostensibly designed for entrepreneurs, it shows a tremendous lack of imagination. Answer: * Public transportation inside cities such as buses and trams * Trains to rural areas * Park-and-ride garages for people to drive in, and park next to transportation hubs * Underground parking garages at the edges of pedestrian zones, or even underneath them, coming up directly above them * Ubiquitous bike storage and bike attachments such that yes, in fact, a mom with 3 young kids can tow them from a single bike - moms in Amsterdam and Berlin do it all the time.
- csunbird 7y ago
  Please add extremely high prices for daily parking to the list :)
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  The difference is that Holland is entirely flat, has an average high of 71 in the summer, and rarely if ever gets icy. The Dutch experience simply doesn't translate to most of America because of the terrain and climate. Elderly people people will die if you make them walk in the Florida summer. 7 year old children lack the leg-strength to bike up California hills. Both groups are likely to slip and crack their heads open in the icy Boston winter.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    And Tokyo and Oulu, Finland have the same weather as Holland, surely? Lots of places bike. People who don't like bike infra make all kinds of excuses, but the truth is that bikes work almost everywhere short of the Himalayas. It's just our lack of investment that holds them back.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Our kid rode up mountains once we got her a 21 speed.
donjoe 7y ago
Get yourself a Bullitt [1]. For your grandma you might consider a three-wheeled version of a bicycle. My cousin's granddad stopped cycling in the city at the age of 94 since he had problems getting off the bike. He got himself a home trainer and is doing 10k/day at home now. He's turning 96 in a few days. [1] http://www.larryvsharry.com/ http://www.larryvsharry.com/
francisofascii 7y ago
It is a valid point, but I think "most" traffic I see have one single occupant. Perhaps we could find a way to enforce HOV like rules to certain roads and parking spaces. And also include those with handicap stickers. If we eliminated single occupant cars and were left with mothers driving with young kids we would have a huge safety and congestion improvement.
nitwit005 7y ago
There was a time before cars. People didn't just entrap their kids and mother at home. We've just made it unworkable due to redesigning things for cars. Cars only work with kids due to most people having smaller families these days. I actually think the car limitations is a reason family sizes have shrunk. Start imagining moving ten kids around.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Mini vans and Chevy suburbans are a thing, Utahns aren’t very dissuaded by that problem. I think it’s the other way around: Being carless with one kid can be ok, but you might need to start rethinking that at the second or third.
theaeolist 7y ago
There you go: https://babyccinokids.com/blog/2010/02/02/do-as-the-dutch-do-bike-on-a-bakfiets/ https://babyccinokids.com/blog/2010/02/02/do-as-the-dutch-do...
7952 7y ago
Sometimes what is needed is less centralised facilities. So that shops and leisure are in closer proximity to where people live or work.

inamberclad 7y ago

Coming from the US West Coast, I was unpleasantly surprised by how anti-pedestrian certain parts felt. The biggest issue for me was the difference in right of way in New Zealand. It was unsettling walking around with a reduced right of way versus cars. Reversing that would be a major nation-wide undertaking, but I think it would benefit the pedestrian and biking atmosphere.

flukus 7y ago

> "You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" The part that always makes me laugh is when they inevitably call cyclists entitled. It's always "I demand massive amounts of probably subsidized infrastructure, to be able to drive at maximum speed all the way and to have a personal space reserved to store my car for the next 8 hours, but those entitled cyclists get in the way". Not to mention the reliance on the government to provide the infrastructure to drive on, to build the ports to import fuel, huge multi-national companies to extract and transport the fuel, multiple foreign governments and the military interventions necessary to keep them in line, all so you can get that feeling of freedom when you drive.

dvdkhlng 7y ago
You forgot the rather significant social cost of health issues caused by car traffic exhaust [1] and the longer term social cost of exhaust having an effect on climate [2]. [1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/nitrogen-dioxide-has-serious-impact-on-health https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/nit... [2] https://news.stanford.edu/2015/01/12/emissions-social-costs-011215/ https://news.stanford.edu/2015/01/12/emissions-social-costs-...

mwilcox 7y ago

The entire debacle with the city council wanting to spend years "reimagining what the city could be" instead of getting back to work building new infrastructure immediately is why Christchurch has taken so long to come back to life.

petre 7y ago

Of course no one wants to bike into the city when it's full of speeding cars. In France they've adopted a different attitude. Montpellier for instance has built many parking buildings at the city limits, an integrated urban transportation network while shrinking vehicle lanes and transforming them into dedicated tram lanes, bicycle lanes or pedestrian areas. They've also introduced obstacels and lots of wavy turns to make speeding through the city very hard or impossible. If you want to go anywhere by car you're virtually stuck in a never ending traffic jam. I just wonder what infrastructure ambulances, police and the fire brigade use to go from one place to another when there's an emergency. Maybe they use the dedicated tram lanes.

magduf 7y ago
>They've also introduced obstacels and lots of wavy turns to make speeding through the city very hard or impossible. If you want to go anywhere by car you're virtually stuck in a never ending traffic jam. Now they just need to add a "congestion tax" like London has to penalize drivers for spewing fumes into the air in the city center.

systemtest 7y ago

I live in a 750 year old European city. The medieval center is 1 kilometer in diameter. They wanted to make the center accessible only for cars of residents and suppliers of stores (up to 11am for suppliers). There are four underground parking garages directly surrounding the center and the walking distance from a garage to any location is never more than 450 meter. Free wheelchairs are provided from the garages. This change would make the center much more liveable for residents, guests and visitors. I have never seen a collective group of people lose their shit during the town hall meeting that much. It was like the end of the world. Apparently during the 750 years history it has become mandatory to have visitors parking right on the monumental cobblestones. Walking 450 meter, even with the free provided wheelchairs, became impossible. I wonder how people survived back in 1438 without the ability to park their car right in front of the shops.

ivanhoe 7y ago
In 1438 there was no supermarkets with huge parking lots that will lure away all your customers. It's not just that people will have to walk to you (so competition located closer will win), they will also have to carry the stuff they buy back to the car, so they'll probably not be willing to buy a lot, or anything heavier. If you're selling souvenirs or t-shirts it's not a big deal, but for people selling say wines or craft beer or olive oil, you probably want people to be able to buy a few bottles, so distance is a problem.
- adrianN 7y ago
  From what I've heard shops tend to benefit when cars are banned, because more people spend more time in the area.
- jnty 7y ago
  Why would you drive into the medieval centre of a city to do a large supermarket shop if you can drive to an out-of-town one already? Studies show that - particularly in Europe - most people are already walking to these shops everywhere. The 'weekly shop' is not really a thing that inner-city dwellers tend to do that often - they either rely on deliveries (cheap and efficient due to density) or smaller shops throughout the week (which often means less perishables waste.)

swebs 7y ago

>"You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" Just put the bike lanes on the sidewalk instead of in the street then. That's how it's done in Finland and it seems much safer for everyone involved.

adrianN 7y ago
Sidewalks are often not wide enough for 2m of bike lane and pedestrians. Bike lanes on side walks also make intersections more dangerous for cyclists.
Fradow 7y ago
Don't know how that works out in Finland, but there are a few of those in Paris, and while they are just as good as those on the street at certain hours, at other hours they become overrun with inattentive pedestrians that confuse them for a sidewalk. This makes those lanes dangerous for both cyclists and pedestrians as a result, and very slow for cyclists compared to a regular bike lane. A third to a half of the cyclists opt for the bus lane instead (despite it being forbidden to cyclists). And they are not slowing the traffic. In fact, cyclists move faster than cars at the particular location I have in mind.
eemil 7y ago
>"You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" Those points probably don't even matter. Each bicycling convert means one less parking space used, and one less car sitting in traffic.
clarry 7y ago
They work ok in areas that aren't particularly congested. Even then, many of these shared bike/pedestrian ways are just packed full of little things that slow cyclists down in a way a cycle lane wouldn't. They're also poorly maintained as compared to the street that gets re-paved every so often while they just fill the worst holes & cracks on the sidewalk. That's why some enthusiasts in .fi choose to cycle in traffic (even though that's not really legal if there's a bike path on the right).

alistairSH 7y ago

Ugh. We get the same thing here in suburban DC (not the earthquakes but the outright hostility towards any changes in road infrastructure that don't involve adding lanes). The main street in front of my neighborhood was recently repaved end-to-end (3 miles or so). Prior to that, it was 2 lanes in each direction, with a few left turn lanes. As part of the repave, they wanted to add a semi-protected bike lane (by removing one car lane in each direction). The outcry was ridiculous. This isn't a major thoroughfare, it's a moderately travelled neighborhood road. There's a small shopping center at one end and a school complex in the middle. Long-story-short, the government add the bike lanes. EXCEPT for in front of the schools and shopping center. So, it's half mile of 4-lane cars, then 1 mile 2 cars/2 bike, then at the school it's back to 4-car for half mile, then back to 2 car/2 bike for the remainder. And now all the non-cyclists cry "Look! Nobody uses the bike lanes!" Well, of course not. They're completely fucking useless because they come and go almost at random and don't lead anywhere. It's infuriating.

magduf 7y ago
I live in suburban DC too; this place is terrible for cycling. I pretty much only ride on the trails (usually W&OD, also Custis and Mt. Vernon) because they're safe.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  Luckily, I'm far enough out (Reston) that I can hop on the W&OD to Leesburg and then bail onto slightly more rural roads. Reston itself is ok, despite the silliness with inconsistent bike lanes and sidewalks. Just have to avoid the major roads.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Just watch out for armed robbers: https://www.insidenova.com/news/crime_police/bicycle-rider-robbed-on-w-od-trail-in-sterling/article_e35a657a-c7f2-11e9-b627-9f35b9e28338.html https://www.insidenova.com/news/crime_police/bicycle-rider-r...