4 ms·

Compare to NYC, which has no cohesive plan for people movement without public transit. It’s going to be a challenge to come out of this crisis in car-centric A

by ruddct 6y ago

Compare to NYC, which has no cohesive plan for people movement without public transit. It’s going to be a challenge to come out of this crisis in car-centric American cities. Even a small mode-shift to private cars in somewhere like NYC will cause insane gridlock, air pollution, and quality of life issues. Our cultural dislike of walking and biking is going to make healthy recovery much more difficult.

dtwest 6y ago
Are you saying NYC is car centric? It isn't, that's why it is struggling without public transit. In the vast majority of American cities a large portion of workers drive to work during normal conditions. They already have the road capacity, parking, etc needed. The car-centric American cities are actually much better suited for this crisis than NYC is.
- ruddct 6y ago
  NYC is quite car-centric by international standards. Compare to London (or Paris, or lots of other places), which in response to COVID has: * Used congestion pricing as a tool to reduce pollution/returning traffic/mode-shift to cars * Shut off large areas of their city to cars * Rapidly built pedestrian/bike networks to accommodate for non-car movement While NYC has: * Indefinitely postponed congestion pricing * Defunded bike safety and public transit improvement initiatives * Not built any cohesive bike or pedestrian systems to encourage non-car transport Of course in pre-COVID times, NYC severely lagged in both pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure/investment, and famously has some of the most expensive public-transit construction costs in the world. re: car-centric cities, agreed that somewhere like Nashville is not going to have these kinds of problems. However, a large swath of Americans live in public transit or carpool-reliant cities (NYC/SF/Seattle/DC/Chicago/Southern California, many large southern cities). Mode-shift to private transit would increase traffic 10-20+% in most of these places, which I think we can all agree is not ideal for pollution, gridlock, parking needs, public health, etc.
  - flipflipper 6y ago
    NYC did legalize e-bikes at the start of all this, a step in the right direction.
  - dtwest 6y ago
    NYC public transit usage is more similar to Paris or London than it is to any of the cities you listed. 56.5% of New Yorkers commute with public transit (2015), seems pretty on par with European standards to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_... https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/riding-bikes-buses-trains-in-european-cities/543141/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/riding-bikes-...
gipp 6y ago
I know this is a drop in the bucket, but FWIW in Brooklyn I've been seeing easily 3-4x the normal bike traffic, and bike shops consistently have long lines outside all day, every day. I've personally bought an e-bike to commute with once I can get back to the office. Hopefully this might be kind of a hinge moment for bikes in the city? Or maybe it just snaps back to normal in a couple months, who knows.
- akgerber 6y ago
  Hopefully it will be a huge moment, but without safe bike infrastructure (of which car-free or local-car-access-only areas are the best type) the traffic that comes roaring back will scare many new cyclists away. The city's failure to plan is resulting in many people buying cars — even though it is physically impossible for everyone in central neighborhoods to buy cars.
- Shounak 6y ago
  Where I live near downtown Atlanta I'm also seeing 3-4x the normal bike traffic. We don't have very good bike lanes here so most cyclists are just riding in traffic or on sidewalks. It feels like Atlanta wants to bike so badly; we just don't have the built infrastructure yet.
Ericson2314 6y ago
You make no sense: > Compare to NYC, which has no cohesive plan for people movement without public transit. Yes, NYC is far too dense for cars, but how is this a contrast with London trying to reduce car use, and which is only a little bit less dense? > Our cultural dislike of walking and biking is going to make healthy recovery much more difficult. Biking should be public transit, as storing bikes in houses and offices is a waste of spaces and bicycles. The city should have taken over from Motivate, at which point it would be political suicide not to expand to the rest of the city immediately. In particular, let me rant on this a bit. The equitable way to expand is to cover everything within `x` feet of subway, along with the densest areas not covered by transit. What they've done instead is blatantly prioritize areas where out-of-towners move to. Note this is about social class not economic: starving artists moving east to Bushwick get their bikes before rich native New Yorkers in Forest Hills, or more native but closer to a transit hub Sunnyside.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by ruddct 6y ago

dtwest 6y ago

Are you saying NYC is car centric? It isn't, that's why it is struggling without public transit. In the vast majority of American cities a large portion of workers drive to work during normal conditions. They already have the road capacity, parking, etc needed. The car-centric American cities are actually much better suited for this crisis than NYC is.

ruddct 6y ago
NYC is quite car-centric by international standards. Compare to London (or Paris, or lots of other places), which in response to COVID has: * Used congestion pricing as a tool to reduce pollution/returning traffic/mode-shift to cars * Shut off large areas of their city to cars * Rapidly built pedestrian/bike networks to accommodate for non-car movement While NYC has: * Indefinitely postponed congestion pricing * Defunded bike safety and public transit improvement initiatives * Not built any cohesive bike or pedestrian systems to encourage non-car transport Of course in pre-COVID times, NYC severely lagged in both pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure/investment, and famously has some of the most expensive public-transit construction costs in the world. re: car-centric cities, agreed that somewhere like Nashville is not going to have these kinds of problems. However, a large swath of Americans live in public transit or carpool-reliant cities (NYC/SF/Seattle/DC/Chicago/Southern California, many large southern cities). Mode-shift to private transit would increase traffic 10-20+% in most of these places, which I think we can all agree is not ideal for pollution, gridlock, parking needs, public health, etc.
- flipflipper 6y ago
  NYC did legalize e-bikes at the start of all this, a step in the right direction.
- dtwest 6y ago
  NYC public transit usage is more similar to Paris or London than it is to any of the cities you listed. 56.5% of New Yorkers commute with public transit (2015), seems pretty on par with European standards to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_... https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/riding-bikes-buses-trains-in-european-cities/543141/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/riding-bikes-...

gipp 6y ago

I know this is a drop in the bucket, but FWIW in Brooklyn I've been seeing easily 3-4x the normal bike traffic, and bike shops consistently have long lines outside all day, every day. I've personally bought an e-bike to commute with once I can get back to the office. Hopefully this might be kind of a hinge moment for bikes in the city? Or maybe it just snaps back to normal in a couple months, who knows.

akgerber 6y ago
Hopefully it will be a huge moment, but without safe bike infrastructure (of which car-free or local-car-access-only areas are the best type) the traffic that comes roaring back will scare many new cyclists away. The city's failure to plan is resulting in many people buying cars — even though it is physically impossible for everyone in central neighborhoods to buy cars.
Shounak 6y ago
Where I live near downtown Atlanta I'm also seeing 3-4x the normal bike traffic. We don't have very good bike lanes here so most cyclists are just riding in traffic or on sidewalks. It feels like Atlanta wants to bike so badly; we just don't have the built infrastructure yet.

Ericson2314 6y ago

You make no sense: > Compare to NYC, which has no cohesive plan for people movement without public transit. Yes, NYC is far too dense for cars, but how is this a contrast with London trying to reduce car use, and which is only a little bit less dense? > Our cultural dislike of walking and biking is going to make healthy recovery much more difficult. Biking should be public transit, as storing bikes in houses and offices is a waste of spaces and bicycles. The city should have taken over from Motivate, at which point it would be political suicide not to expand to the rest of the city immediately. In particular, let me rant on this a bit. The equitable way to expand is to cover everything within `x` feet of subway, along with the densest areas not covered by transit. What they've done instead is blatantly prioritize areas where out-of-towners move to. Note this is about social class not economic: starving artists moving east to Bushwick get their bikes before rich native New Yorkers in Forest Hills, or more native but closer to a transit hub Sunnyside.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]