17 ms·

Almost like it would make sense to have at least legally separate pathways for motorized, less motorized (scooters, e-bikes), bicycles and pedestrians, because

Almost like it would make sense to have at least legally separate pathways for motorized, less motorized (scooters, e-bikes), bicycles and pedestrians, because they are very different forms of transport.

bluGill 7y ago
It makes perfect sense in theory. In the real world though space is limited. We cannot have separate spaces: there isn't enough room - unless you space things out so far that only only car transport makes sense, at which point why bother building paths for the other modes? Which is why suburbs don't have sidewalks: there is no place you can practically go by any mode other than car so why bother creating space for those modes.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  >suburbs don't have sidewalks Plenty of suburbs have sidewalks.
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    I grew up in suburbs that did not have a consistent network of sidewalks. Some existed but you really need 100% of roads to have one or you're suddenly walking 2 miles extra to get around the missing link. Nobody complained because why would you want to walk miles to the closest grocery store anyway?
  - bluGill 7y ago
    "Sidewalks to nowhere" don't count as sidewalks. They count as decoration.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mumblemumble 7y ago
      Former suburbs kid here. I lived about 4 miles from the nearest grocery store. I used the sidewalks in my area all the time. If you think that a sidewalk in a purely residential area only goes to nowhere, you spend way too much time looking at screens. Get out, meet, and spend some time with your neighbors.
      - jellicle 7y ago
        Great that you had a sidewalk that went somewhere. Many suburbs do not.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        if it is 4 miles to the grocery store, then you can't walk anywhere. Your ice cream will melt before you get back home. There might be a continuous sidewalk all the way, but you have better things to do with your time than walk that far.
        mumblemumble 7y ago
        You can walk to a neighbor's house. Surely that counts as somewhere? Seriously, get out and meet your neighbors.
        bluGill 7y ago
        That is all. It doesn't count. Can you walk to work, church, the grocery store, other dry goods stores, restaurants, or even your friend from years ago who moved? In cities you can do all of the above in some form (meaning you might not like the store, but at least there is one)
  - audunw 7y ago
    > Nobody complained because why would you want to walk miles to the closest grocery store anyway? I've been guests at a few different suburban neighborhoods in the US. I realize that some of these are so big and remote that it really is too far to walk to anything significant, but those I visited did have grocery stores and such within a walkeable distance, but that's not always the case, and still there's not much if any sidewalks. One did have sidewalks, but using it to get to stores was a detour compared to other roads. The other did not have any sidewalks. I walked anyway (didn't have a car) and I felt like people looked oddly at me for doing it. In Norway, almost all suburban areas have wide sidewalks now, even if grocery stores and such are far away. Kids generally use sidewalks for biking, and many kids bike or walk to school, even for a mile or more (3 for my high school, although there was school bus that I used in winter). People take walks from just outside their house to.. wherever. There's usually some park or just a patch of woods within walking distance. Maybe a shared playground or soccer field for kids. There are generally walking paths between houses at regular intervals, so houses don't act as impassable walls. If there are steep slopes and hills, there's often stairs you can walk down. I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. My mother in law house could've been a 5 minute walk from a lovely beach and supermarkets and cafes if there was just a path/stair that went down a slope from their house between other properties. Instead it's a 30 minute+ walk, along a long and winding road with an extremely narrow sidewalk, where a 100m stretch of the road for some inexplicable reason is missing sidewalk altogether (if you ask for directions on Google Maps it'll avoid this stretch, which gives you a 1 hour walk instead)
    - mumblemumble 7y ago
      > I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. Americans tend to have strange ideas about walking. If they think about it at all, they tend to think of it as something that's only done in extremis. I've discovered, for example, that, when I travel for work, it's generally useless to ask hotel staff if they can recommend any restaurants "within walking distance" when I'm staying in a suburban area. They will always say that there aren't any. Even when there are several within 500 meters of the hotel. When I am visiting the main office (also in a suburban area) I stay about 1.5km away from the building. I choose to walk to get between there and the hotel. It's a lovely walk, all sidewalks, through a quiet neighborhood. My colleagues consider this to be very peculiar behavior. If someone recognizes me while I'm on the sidewalk, they'll stop, express concern, and ask me if I need a ride, and I generally have to assure them multiple times that I'm OK and I just prefer to walk.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Still not sure why they don't have more pedestrian catwalks in cities directly above the roads. That's a whole lot less expensive than elevated roadways (you have to support ~200 pound pedestrians instead of 80,000 pound trucks), separates the pedestrians from the cars, and doesn't require any additional land. And then you could have second story pedestrian entrances to buildings, which already have elevators in them, so it wouldn't even be an issue for people who have trouble with stairs.
  - _-david-_ 7y ago
    >Still not sure why they don't have more pedestrian catwalks in cities directly above the roads. I assume it would cost more in building and maintenance costs than sidewalks.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      If there is a large network building owners will happily install and maintain them. In some places the expensive store fronts are on the second floor where all the people are: they take those cat walks from building to building without putting a coat on.
      - _-david-_ 7y ago
        Maybe in some areas it may work but for most cities and many places in those cities it just won't work.
        bluGill 7y ago
        Like any system you need a critical mass of infrastructure before it takes off. Is it worth it for your situation is always a valid question.
  - mperham 7y ago
    Wouldn't the space and extra travel distance required for above-street ramps makes them impractical? If you want to rise 15 ft in the air at a 5% grade, you need 300 ft. Now imagine a ramp every block.
- zeroonetwothree 7y ago
  I've lived in different suburbs my whole life and all have had sidewalks. They don't get used as much as in cities obviously, but you still have kids walking to/from school, people walking their dogs, going on runs, etc. The only places I've seen without sidewalks would be clearly classified as "rural".
  - altoidaltoid 7y ago
    25% of Seattle has no sidewalks, including many residential areas... http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/pedestrian-program/sidewalk-development-program http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/...
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    Some cities are really good at putting in sidewalks if it is a residential area. Others don't bother putting them in neighborhoods at all. A much bigger issue is that you can't generally get to a store, across town, or to work on sidewalks.
- bjelkeman-again 7y ago
  There is no space? I am surprised. Sweden has separate bike lanes and walking paths in the suburbs. A lot of Northern Europe is the same.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  so why bother creating space for those modes. My suburb had 2 very popular parks at either end -- as kids, we always walked or rode our bikes there... on the road since there were no sidewalks. Likewise when we went to a friends house we generally walked on the road (or cut through people's yards). There are plenty of reasons to have sidewalks even if there's no commercial destination to get to, not everyone can drive everywhere they need to go. Of course, this was a time when kids were allowed some autonomy, nowadays maybe parents would drive us 2 blocks to the park. The neighborhood still has no sidewalks, but I see speed bumps and "Slow down - watch for children signs", so seems that kids do still walk on the roadway and parents are worried for their safety. I rode the school bus to school because the school was way too far to walk -- it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the school was only about half a mile away, but with no sidewalks, it wasn't realistically walkable despite the short distance. We spent more time waiting for the bus every morning than it would have taken to walk there. At the time it seemed completely normal - why would anyone walk when they could drive!? But now I pay attention to walkability and bikeability and avoid driving when I can. (not just because it's good for the environment, but it's good for me too)
  - bluGill 7y ago
    One advantage of suburbs is there is so little traffic you can let your kids play in the street.
    - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
      There are city centers like that too, it’s not an exclusive property of suburbs.
    - Johnny555 7y ago
      My old neighborhood used to be like that - but based on the speed bumps and "Slow down" signs (both official signs and signs that parents put up) that I see in that neighborhood, the traffic has increased (looks like they filled in some former farmland with apartment buildings near the back of the development), and now it's less safe for children to play or walk in the street.
  - 7y ago
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Suburbs don't have sidewalks because the real estate developers got out before the newly formed city government wrote regulations defining what a house had to include in order to be sold. Since then, it has been "traditional" to subject pedestrians to the dangers of auto traffic.

bluGill 7y ago

It makes perfect sense in theory. In the real world though space is limited. We cannot have separate spaces: there isn't enough room - unless you space things out so far that only only car transport makes sense, at which point why bother building paths for the other modes? Which is why suburbs don't have sidewalks: there is no place you can practically go by any mode other than car so why bother creating space for those modes.

whatshisface 7y ago
>suburbs don't have sidewalks Plenty of suburbs have sidewalks.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  I grew up in suburbs that did not have a consistent network of sidewalks. Some existed but you really need 100% of roads to have one or you're suddenly walking 2 miles extra to get around the missing link. Nobody complained because why would you want to walk miles to the closest grocery store anyway?
- bluGill 7y ago
  "Sidewalks to nowhere" don't count as sidewalks. They count as decoration.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    Former suburbs kid here. I lived about 4 miles from the nearest grocery store. I used the sidewalks in my area all the time. If you think that a sidewalk in a purely residential area only goes to nowhere, you spend way too much time looking at screens. Get out, meet, and spend some time with your neighbors.
    - jellicle 7y ago
      Great that you had a sidewalk that went somewhere. Many suburbs do not.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      if it is 4 miles to the grocery store, then you can't walk anywhere. Your ice cream will melt before you get back home. There might be a continuous sidewalk all the way, but you have better things to do with your time than walk that far.
      - mumblemumble 7y ago
        You can walk to a neighbor's house. Surely that counts as somewhere? Seriously, get out and meet your neighbors.
        bluGill 7y ago
        That is all. It doesn't count. Can you walk to work, church, the grocery store, other dry goods stores, restaurants, or even your friend from years ago who moved? In cities you can do all of the above in some form (meaning you might not like the store, but at least there is one)
- audunw 7y ago
  > Nobody complained because why would you want to walk miles to the closest grocery store anyway? I've been guests at a few different suburban neighborhoods in the US. I realize that some of these are so big and remote that it really is too far to walk to anything significant, but those I visited did have grocery stores and such within a walkeable distance, but that's not always the case, and still there's not much if any sidewalks. One did have sidewalks, but using it to get to stores was a detour compared to other roads. The other did not have any sidewalks. I walked anyway (didn't have a car) and I felt like people looked oddly at me for doing it. In Norway, almost all suburban areas have wide sidewalks now, even if grocery stores and such are far away. Kids generally use sidewalks for biking, and many kids bike or walk to school, even for a mile or more (3 for my high school, although there was school bus that I used in winter). People take walks from just outside their house to.. wherever. There's usually some park or just a patch of woods within walking distance. Maybe a shared playground or soccer field for kids. There are generally walking paths between houses at regular intervals, so houses don't act as impassable walls. If there are steep slopes and hills, there's often stairs you can walk down. I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. My mother in law house could've been a 5 minute walk from a lovely beach and supermarkets and cafes if there was just a path/stair that went down a slope from their house between other properties. Instead it's a 30 minute+ walk, along a long and winding road with an extremely narrow sidewalk, where a 100m stretch of the road for some inexplicable reason is missing sidewalk altogether (if you ask for directions on Google Maps it'll avoid this stretch, which gives you a 1 hour walk instead)
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    > I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. Americans tend to have strange ideas about walking. If they think about it at all, they tend to think of it as something that's only done in extremis. I've discovered, for example, that, when I travel for work, it's generally useless to ask hotel staff if they can recommend any restaurants "within walking distance" when I'm staying in a suburban area. They will always say that there aren't any. Even when there are several within 500 meters of the hotel. When I am visiting the main office (also in a suburban area) I stay about 1.5km away from the building. I choose to walk to get between there and the hotel. It's a lovely walk, all sidewalks, through a quiet neighborhood. My colleagues consider this to be very peculiar behavior. If someone recognizes me while I'm on the sidewalk, they'll stop, express concern, and ask me if I need a ride, and I generally have to assure them multiple times that I'm OK and I just prefer to walk.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Still not sure why they don't have more pedestrian catwalks in cities directly above the roads. That's a whole lot less expensive than elevated roadways (you have to support ~200 pound pedestrians instead of 80,000 pound trucks), separates the pedestrians from the cars, and doesn't require any additional land. And then you could have second story pedestrian entrances to buildings, which already have elevators in them, so it wouldn't even be an issue for people who have trouble with stairs.
- _-david-_ 7y ago
  >Still not sure why they don't have more pedestrian catwalks in cities directly above the roads. I assume it would cost more in building and maintenance costs than sidewalks.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    If there is a large network building owners will happily install and maintain them. In some places the expensive store fronts are on the second floor where all the people are: they take those cat walks from building to building without putting a coat on.
    - _-david-_ 7y ago
      Maybe in some areas it may work but for most cities and many places in those cities it just won't work.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        Like any system you need a critical mass of infrastructure before it takes off. Is it worth it for your situation is always a valid question.
- mperham 7y ago
  Wouldn't the space and extra travel distance required for above-street ramps makes them impractical? If you want to rise 15 ft in the air at a 5% grade, you need 300 ft. Now imagine a ramp every block.
zeroonetwothree 7y ago
I've lived in different suburbs my whole life and all have had sidewalks. They don't get used as much as in cities obviously, but you still have kids walking to/from school, people walking their dogs, going on runs, etc. The only places I've seen without sidewalks would be clearly classified as "rural".
- altoidaltoid 7y ago
  25% of Seattle has no sidewalks, including many residential areas... http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/pedestrian-program/sidewalk-development-program http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/...
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  Some cities are really good at putting in sidewalks if it is a residential area. Others don't bother putting them in neighborhoods at all. A much bigger issue is that you can't generally get to a store, across town, or to work on sidewalks.
bjelkeman-again 7y ago
There is no space? I am surprised. Sweden has separate bike lanes and walking paths in the suburbs. A lot of Northern Europe is the same.
Johnny555 7y ago
so why bother creating space for those modes. My suburb had 2 very popular parks at either end -- as kids, we always walked or rode our bikes there... on the road since there were no sidewalks. Likewise when we went to a friends house we generally walked on the road (or cut through people's yards). There are plenty of reasons to have sidewalks even if there's no commercial destination to get to, not everyone can drive everywhere they need to go. Of course, this was a time when kids were allowed some autonomy, nowadays maybe parents would drive us 2 blocks to the park. The neighborhood still has no sidewalks, but I see speed bumps and "Slow down - watch for children signs", so seems that kids do still walk on the roadway and parents are worried for their safety. I rode the school bus to school because the school was way too far to walk -- it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the school was only about half a mile away, but with no sidewalks, it wasn't realistically walkable despite the short distance. We spent more time waiting for the bus every morning than it would have taken to walk there. At the time it seemed completely normal - why would anyone walk when they could drive!? But now I pay attention to walkability and bikeability and avoid driving when I can. (not just because it's good for the environment, but it's good for me too)
- bluGill 7y ago
  One advantage of suburbs is there is so little traffic you can let your kids play in the street.
  - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
    There are city centers like that too, it’s not an exclusive property of suburbs.
  - Johnny555 7y ago
    My old neighborhood used to be like that - but based on the speed bumps and "Slow down" signs (both official signs and signs that parents put up) that I see in that neighborhood, the traffic has increased (looks like they filled in some former farmland with apartment buildings near the back of the development), and now it's less safe for children to play or walk in the street.
- 7y ago
jessaustin 7y ago
Suburbs don't have sidewalks because the real estate developers got out before the newly formed city government wrote regulations defining what a house had to include in order to be sold. Since then, it has been "traditional" to subject pedestrians to the dangers of auto traffic.