4 ms·

I find the increase in popularity of the pro-pedestrian / pro-bike / anti-car sentiment interesting. It seems like it increased 10x in the last few years.

newsbinator 5y ago
I suspect it's no coincidence this shifted when so many more people stopped driving to and from work everyday.
alamortsubite 5y ago
It's a huge win everywhere it catches on. Let's hope it's a generational thing and it accelerates.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  I think it is, at least to some extent. The younger you are, the more likely you'll be the ones dealing with the effects of climate change, and car-dominance is a big part of that. It's pretty top-of-mind for a lot of us.
zozbot234 5y ago
The sentiment is mostly popular in dense city centers where it does make a lot of sense. Manhattan NYC has always been "anti-car", as has London UK. The car will still be king in less dense areas.
- letouj 5y ago
  There are plenty of small-to-medium-sized cities (25K–250K) with sufficiently intact city cores and higher-density corridors where it's still very reasonable to imagine increased cycling uptake if the infrastructure were just put in place. It's not about making every person ride a bike on every trip, it's about making more bike trips possible for more people. Obviously someone who lives in Montana five miles from the nearest stoplight isn't going to be using a bike for their primary transportation, but there's a big spectrum in between that and midtown Manhattan.
  - vanilla_nut 5y ago
    In all fairness, improved cycle infrastructure is also great out in the "middle of nowhere" far from stoplights -- even if you're not road cycling, it's a great way to get out, see the countryside, and get some exercise. Where my parents live, it's absolutely brutal to try to get outside and get some exercise, because the roads are unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists. Improving that setup would let my parents do activities without hopping in a car -- even more valuable as they get older and less capable of driving a multi-ton pile of steel at 60MPH everywhere they want to go.
a2tech 5y ago
The volume has certainly increased. I'm not positive that the number of people pushing it has really increased but the volume has.

newsbinator 5y ago

I suspect it's no coincidence this shifted when so many more people stopped driving to and from work everyday.

alamortsubite 5y ago

It's a huge win everywhere it catches on. Let's hope it's a generational thing and it accelerates.

ryukafalz 5y ago
I think it is, at least to some extent. The younger you are, the more likely you'll be the ones dealing with the effects of climate change, and car-dominance is a big part of that. It's pretty top-of-mind for a lot of us.

zozbot234 5y ago

The sentiment is mostly popular in dense city centers where it does make a lot of sense. Manhattan NYC has always been "anti-car", as has London UK. The car will still be king in less dense areas.

letouj 5y ago
There are plenty of small-to-medium-sized cities (25K–250K) with sufficiently intact city cores and higher-density corridors where it's still very reasonable to imagine increased cycling uptake if the infrastructure were just put in place. It's not about making every person ride a bike on every trip, it's about making more bike trips possible for more people. Obviously someone who lives in Montana five miles from the nearest stoplight isn't going to be using a bike for their primary transportation, but there's a big spectrum in between that and midtown Manhattan.
- vanilla_nut 5y ago
  In all fairness, improved cycle infrastructure is also great out in the "middle of nowhere" far from stoplights -- even if you're not road cycling, it's a great way to get out, see the countryside, and get some exercise. Where my parents live, it's absolutely brutal to try to get outside and get some exercise, because the roads are unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists. Improving that setup would let my parents do activities without hopping in a car -- even more valuable as they get older and less capable of driving a multi-ton pile of steel at 60MPH everywhere they want to go.

a2tech 5y ago

The volume has certainly increased. I'm not positive that the number of people pushing it has really increased but the volume has.