7 ms·

> As I look out my apartment window on a Sunday morning, with pleasant weather and a walkable green neighborhood, I still count far more cars going by than peop

> As I look out my apartment window on a Sunday morning, with pleasant weather and a walkable green neighborhood, I still count far more cars going by than people on foot or bicycle. And how much dedicated infrastructure is there, in terms of space and money, for walking vs biking vs driving? People always ignore this, that driving even in "walkable" neighborhoods generally still has ENORMOUSLY more money and more land dedicated to it. If you look at how much space the road takes up, vs sidewalks and protected bike lanes, and how much money those things cost to build -- it's not even close. That, plus in the US there's usually a lack of mixed use zoning, so there's hardly anywhere to walk to (though I don't know whether this is the case for your neighborhood in particular).

mgraczyk 4y ago
At the intersection I'm looking at, it's around 2/3 for cars, 1/3 for peds, 0 dedicated for biking. However, SF is actually pretty good about this. There are two "slow streets" within 1 block of me that are mostly car-free. There are also 2 streets within 3 blocks of me that have dedicated bike lanes with raised barriers.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Sounds like what I'd expect in SF, as someone from the bay area. Much better than average for the US, but still a long ways to go.
- sagarm 4y ago
  It's not just land. Walking paths cost far less than and require less maintenance and drainage than smooth impermeable asphalt roads with curbs. "Intersections" for pedestrians are simply paths, with no signage or expensive signals required. Drivers rushing about at 20-30mph pose a danger to people on foot, on bikes, on scooters, in strollers, etc.
- scoofy 4y ago
  Slow Streets (also called open streets), and really a half measure as it stands. To make them fully low-car, they need to be one-way for cars, alternating directions, so that there is no reason to be on the street if it's not your final destination. It would also be helpful if the intersections were genuine roundabouts. I live in SF too, but calling our infrastructure "good" is really setting a low bar. We want about 10%-15% of the streets primarily serving bicycles, with pedestrians getting another 10% of roadways. That should be the goal.
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    I agree with you and the slow streets, that would be a better design. As for goals, what we currently have is good for me, where I live. There are many areas in the city where it would be impractical not to have a car. I believe the goal should be to make it possible to live without a car anywhere in the city. I don't really care about the specifics of proportions of infrastructure.
    - scoofy 4y ago
      >what we currently have is good for me, where I live. There are many areas in the city where it would be impractical not to have a car So, i see this as a bit myopic though. The combination of the rising developing countries and climate change mean that fuel should slowly increase in price over our lifetimes. We ought to prepare. Providing a network of about 10% of streets to be effectively car-free is a great way to plan for that, while allowing people to use cheaper (see: wealth building) alternatives in the meanwhile. I don't see the car going away in our lifetime, nor would i want it to, but as a low-car person myself, i feel that people should be able to bike most anywhere in town without needing to wear a helmet. Children should be able to bike to school. Grandmas should be able to bike. People don't bike because it's legitimately dangerous, even under current paradigms. It shouldn't be. A few slow streets and some bike lanes is vastly insufficient.
      - mgraczyk 4y ago
        That's not what I said. I said that right now not everyone can avoid car ownership and the goal should be to change that. I'm saying the goal should be to make it possible for nobody to need a car. I'm objecting to the 10% number, which seems arbitrary to me.
      - TulliusCicero 4y ago
        I think 10% is low, if anything. Something like the superblocks in Spain would be great.
- addicted 4y ago
  Can you imagine someone saying that a city is actually pretty good about driving because even though 75% of the houses are completely inaccessible by cars, there’s 1 road a block away that you can drive a car in and 2 more roads within 3 blocks of you? Most Americans don’t even realize how auto centric their entire thinking is.
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    No, that's not right and doesn't make sense. I can bike on the road in front, and I can even park a bike here. If the road were a block away, the driver would have to get out and walk a block to go home. And actually a lot of people do that with street parking and would say it's "pretty good"!
c22 4y ago
Why does the amount of money and land spent influence the behavior of individuals? Cars are larger than bicycles, so I would expect their infrastructure to take up more space.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  People are less likely to bike if there aren't protected bike lanes. People are less likely to walk if there are no sidewalks, etc
  - rainsford 4y ago
    This is really noticeable in places in the US where things are close enough together to walk or bike but nearly every trip is still made by car because there's no safe way to do anything else. There's actually quite a bit of stuff within easy biking distance of where I live, but up until recently there was no safe way to actually bike there because all the infrastructure was high-speed, multi-lane streets without even a shoulder. Recently the city has been investing more in wide, separated paths for biking and walking places and it's starting to make a difference.
    - Tade0 4y ago
      Unfortunately having a safe path is not enough - there's a significant cultural component. I'm currently residing in a house on the outskirts of a small (population 50k) town. The other day we were visited by a friend from around here - she drove to our place. The way to her home is 1,5km - half of which goes through the main district, with sidewalks and exclusively single-lane streets, and the other along a 30km/h street with detached houses and very little traffic.
      - californical 4y ago
        It’s also worth keeping in mind that most of her trips are likely not as easy or safe as that one. I wouldn’t expect her to get used to riding a bike when 95% of the time it’s infeasible or unsafe. It’s not worth the mental effort for most to say “is this specific trip a bike trip?” and “which are the safe routes to get there, which are probably different than my driving routes?” Most people just never try at all because there aren’t enough opportunities to make it worthwhile, and not enough safe roads to know how to navigate. If it was possible for more of her daily needs to be met by bike, with comfortable and safe infrastructure, I’d bet she’d be more open to the idea.
arealaccount 4y ago
It’s a lot harder to collect taxes from walkers and cyclists to build that infrastructure. Drivers in theory pay for the roads and everything else. Maybe not paying enough but still.
- voz_ 4y ago
  They don't come close to paying for everything else when you take into account things like quality of life, safety, and more. Not everything has a price.
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    Living in cities with high crime and police that won't stop it with self-defense bans/punishments on those that try to defend themselves seem to be a safety hazard too.
- hannasanarion 4y ago
  not at prices that people are willing to pay. Suburban-style roads are cheap to build, because developers generally pay the upfront costs and price it into the initial sale price of the development, but taxes in the period that follows aren't nearly high enough to cover the price of resurfacing, repair, and improvements that the city has to cover 20-30 years down the line. Suburbs that have gone through several such cycles are increasingly taking on debt to pay the costs of that maintenance, and older ones are now going bankrupt.
- jackvalentine 4y ago
  > Drivers in theory pay for the roads and everything else. What theory? Roads are paid for from everyday taxes/debt issue.
  - fnord123 4y ago
    Indeed. You are debunking a commonly repeated myth. https://uspirg.org/reports/usp/who-pays-roads https://uspirg.org/reports/usp/who-pays-roads > Gas taxes and other fees paid by drivers now cover less than half of road construction and maintenance costs nationally – down from more than 70 percent in the 1960s – with the balance coming chiefly from income, sales and property taxes and other levies on general taxpayers. · General taxpayers at all levels of government now subsidize highway construction and maintenance to the tune of $69 billion per year – an amount exceeding the expenditure of general tax funds to support transit, bicycling, walking and passenger rail combined.
anothernewdude 4y ago
Yup. I walk everywhere and hate walking on streets shared with cars.
Doxin 4y ago
Another thing people seem to underestimate is that cars wear down a road way faster than any other form of transport. You basically never need to maintain bicycle paths unless the soil subsides.
iso1631 4y ago
The number of bikes on my route from the hotel to work yesterday and today in Munich vastly outnumbered the cars. The main roads have good off-road cycle (and now scooter) paths with priority over side roads and decent signalled crossings. Germany is the home of the automobile, Munich is the HQ of BMW. Probably still about 4 times as much space for cars as there is for bikes though

mgraczyk 4y ago

At the intersection I'm looking at, it's around 2/3 for cars, 1/3 for peds, 0 dedicated for biking. However, SF is actually pretty good about this. There are two "slow streets" within 1 block of me that are mostly car-free. There are also 2 streets within 3 blocks of me that have dedicated bike lanes with raised barriers.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
Sounds like what I'd expect in SF, as someone from the bay area. Much better than average for the US, but still a long ways to go.
sagarm 4y ago
It's not just land. Walking paths cost far less than and require less maintenance and drainage than smooth impermeable asphalt roads with curbs. "Intersections" for pedestrians are simply paths, with no signage or expensive signals required. Drivers rushing about at 20-30mph pose a danger to people on foot, on bikes, on scooters, in strollers, etc.
scoofy 4y ago
Slow Streets (also called open streets), and really a half measure as it stands. To make them fully low-car, they need to be one-way for cars, alternating directions, so that there is no reason to be on the street if it's not your final destination. It would also be helpful if the intersections were genuine roundabouts. I live in SF too, but calling our infrastructure "good" is really setting a low bar. We want about 10%-15% of the streets primarily serving bicycles, with pedestrians getting another 10% of roadways. That should be the goal.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  I agree with you and the slow streets, that would be a better design. As for goals, what we currently have is good for me, where I live. There are many areas in the city where it would be impractical not to have a car. I believe the goal should be to make it possible to live without a car anywhere in the city. I don't really care about the specifics of proportions of infrastructure.
  - scoofy 4y ago
    >what we currently have is good for me, where I live. There are many areas in the city where it would be impractical not to have a car So, i see this as a bit myopic though. The combination of the rising developing countries and climate change mean that fuel should slowly increase in price over our lifetimes. We ought to prepare. Providing a network of about 10% of streets to be effectively car-free is a great way to plan for that, while allowing people to use cheaper (see: wealth building) alternatives in the meanwhile. I don't see the car going away in our lifetime, nor would i want it to, but as a low-car person myself, i feel that people should be able to bike most anywhere in town without needing to wear a helmet. Children should be able to bike to school. Grandmas should be able to bike. People don't bike because it's legitimately dangerous, even under current paradigms. It shouldn't be. A few slow streets and some bike lanes is vastly insufficient.
    - mgraczyk 4y ago
      That's not what I said. I said that right now not everyone can avoid car ownership and the goal should be to change that. I'm saying the goal should be to make it possible for nobody to need a car. I'm objecting to the 10% number, which seems arbitrary to me.
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago
      I think 10% is low, if anything. Something like the superblocks in Spain would be great.
addicted 4y ago
Can you imagine someone saying that a city is actually pretty good about driving because even though 75% of the houses are completely inaccessible by cars, there’s 1 road a block away that you can drive a car in and 2 more roads within 3 blocks of you? Most Americans don’t even realize how auto centric their entire thinking is.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  No, that's not right and doesn't make sense. I can bike on the road in front, and I can even park a bike here. If the road were a block away, the driver would have to get out and walk a block to go home. And actually a lot of people do that with street parking and would say it's "pretty good"!

c22 4y ago

Why does the amount of money and land spent influence the behavior of individuals? Cars are larger than bicycles, so I would expect their infrastructure to take up more space.

mgraczyk 4y ago
People are less likely to bike if there aren't protected bike lanes. People are less likely to walk if there are no sidewalks, etc
- rainsford 4y ago
  This is really noticeable in places in the US where things are close enough together to walk or bike but nearly every trip is still made by car because there's no safe way to do anything else. There's actually quite a bit of stuff within easy biking distance of where I live, but up until recently there was no safe way to actually bike there because all the infrastructure was high-speed, multi-lane streets without even a shoulder. Recently the city has been investing more in wide, separated paths for biking and walking places and it's starting to make a difference.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    Unfortunately having a safe path is not enough - there's a significant cultural component. I'm currently residing in a house on the outskirts of a small (population 50k) town. The other day we were visited by a friend from around here - she drove to our place. The way to her home is 1,5km - half of which goes through the main district, with sidewalks and exclusively single-lane streets, and the other along a 30km/h street with detached houses and very little traffic.
    - californical 4y ago
      It’s also worth keeping in mind that most of her trips are likely not as easy or safe as that one. I wouldn’t expect her to get used to riding a bike when 95% of the time it’s infeasible or unsafe. It’s not worth the mental effort for most to say “is this specific trip a bike trip?” and “which are the safe routes to get there, which are probably different than my driving routes?” Most people just never try at all because there aren’t enough opportunities to make it worthwhile, and not enough safe roads to know how to navigate. If it was possible for more of her daily needs to be met by bike, with comfortable and safe infrastructure, I’d bet she’d be more open to the idea.

arealaccount 4y ago

It’s a lot harder to collect taxes from walkers and cyclists to build that infrastructure. Drivers in theory pay for the roads and everything else. Maybe not paying enough but still.

voz_ 4y ago
They don't come close to paying for everything else when you take into account things like quality of life, safety, and more. Not everything has a price.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  Living in cities with high crime and police that won't stop it with self-defense bans/punishments on those that try to defend themselves seem to be a safety hazard too.
hannasanarion 4y ago
not at prices that people are willing to pay. Suburban-style roads are cheap to build, because developers generally pay the upfront costs and price it into the initial sale price of the development, but taxes in the period that follows aren't nearly high enough to cover the price of resurfacing, repair, and improvements that the city has to cover 20-30 years down the line. Suburbs that have gone through several such cycles are increasingly taking on debt to pay the costs of that maintenance, and older ones are now going bankrupt.
jackvalentine 4y ago
> Drivers in theory pay for the roads and everything else. What theory? Roads are paid for from everyday taxes/debt issue.
- fnord123 4y ago
  Indeed. You are debunking a commonly repeated myth. https://uspirg.org/reports/usp/who-pays-roads https://uspirg.org/reports/usp/who-pays-roads > Gas taxes and other fees paid by drivers now cover less than half of road construction and maintenance costs nationally – down from more than 70 percent in the 1960s – with the balance coming chiefly from income, sales and property taxes and other levies on general taxpayers. · General taxpayers at all levels of government now subsidize highway construction and maintenance to the tune of $69 billion per year – an amount exceeding the expenditure of general tax funds to support transit, bicycling, walking and passenger rail combined.

anothernewdude 4y ago

Yup. I walk everywhere and hate walking on streets shared with cars.

Doxin 4y ago

Another thing people seem to underestimate is that cars wear down a road way faster than any other form of transport. You basically never need to maintain bicycle paths unless the soil subsides.

iso1631 4y ago

The number of bikes on my route from the hotel to work yesterday and today in Munich vastly outnumbered the cars. The main roads have good off-road cycle (and now scooter) paths with priority over side roads and decent signalled crossings. Germany is the home of the automobile, Munich is the HQ of BMW. Probably still about 4 times as much space for cars as there is for bikes though