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Have you been to The Netherlands? I was a tourist for 3 weeks, and it was quite a common sight to see a family with young kids coming out their apartment stairw

Have you been to The Netherlands? I was a tourist for 3 weeks, and it was quite a common sight to see a family with young kids coming out their apartment stairway, babies loading on to carriers on mom and dad’s bikes and small children riding their own. Seeing as how children are at extreme risk from cars yet can’t use them themselves, and chauffeuring your kids around because it’s not safe for them to walk or bike themselves is almost the central time sink of parenthood, it is weird to see parents as the primary advocates of car primacy.

kube-system 4y ago
Not everybody can live in the Netherlands though. The Netherlands has just the right weather, just the right geography, just the right urban planning, and just the right social climate. For a parent, it doesn’t matter how much you advocate, your kid will have their drivers license long before you can change any of the above situations.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  There are about 190 countries in the world, but I'm pretty sure there's only 1 where a car is required for having a child. (The USA.) Maybe geography isn't the central issue.
- closeparen 4y ago
  The social climate and the urban planning are no more and no less than how people in your community conduct themselves behind the wheel and at the microphone in the community hearings. Incremental bike infrastructure improvements can take a few years in very dysfunctional polities, but 16 would be an outlier, and they can also be done very quickly in healthy ones.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    My area has people who have been fighting for better infrastructure for decades. I have voted for the issue as well for decades. The social component is important. When commuters lose a lane on popular roads, they responded by voting the people out of office who were responsible for it. I know you think it’s simple, but I know from experience that it’s not. Deep car-centric cultures demand more of the same. Maybe where you’re from these attitudes seem like outliers, but in middle America, it’s really not. It’s not an awareness issue, an insignificant number of people here resent the idea. There’s no convincing them. Also, planning is definitely important. If the lanes don’t go between differently zoned areas, they’re useless for primary transport. What little success we’ve had is used against us as evidence that “nobody wants bike lanes”.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - closeparen 4y ago
      Having some people fighting for it is of course not enough, the community has to want it, but once it does it is fairly easy to make happen. This is in contrast to e.g. trains, which take decades from authorization to passenger service in the best case and often fail for technical or project-management reasons despite voter support.
- bradlys 4y ago
  The bike paths in Finland would like to have a word with you. It’s more about the culture than anything. The rest of your points are not really the biggest factors.
chrisco255 4y ago
Have you been to the United States? The idea of loading 3 kids on some bikes and riding 10 miles to school, then 15 miles the other direction to work in the midwest on a winter day (temps get into negative fahrenheit in many parts of the U.S.) (or the south/southwest on a hot 100F+ summer day) is laughable. God forbid some after school activity is another 10 miles out of your way or you need to pick up something on the way, or carry them to your parents house which is another 25 miles away.
- closeparen 4y ago
  No one is coming to put a bike lane on the kind of seasonally impassable dirt road that is reasonably found 10 miles from the nearest school. If you want to live deep in the middle of nowhere, no one’s stopping you. But when you come into the kinds of communities that actually sustain the institutions you need (school, work, etc) they aren’t obliged to give over all their public space and put their lives at risk for your truck to move as freely as possible.
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    The closest religious school I'm considering for my son is over 20 miles away currently, and obviously I can't move over night to reduce that. I also don't live on a narrow dirt road - I live in a city in a community with probably hundreds of houses There's also no reliable transit option to either location. Am I suppose to just suck it up, throw out my vehicle, and bike 90 minutes there just to drop him off?
    - closeparen 4y ago
      Car primacy is not the same thing as the ability to drive at all. Cars are obviously useful, and lots of trips wouldn't be feasible without them. But streets in populated areas shouldn't be designed around this kind of trip as the only or primary use case. People choosing the local schools, for example, should have streets on which they can can feel confident walking or cycling, and not need their own vehicles just because you're using one. I would ask you to, in your words, "suck it up" with respect to some inconvenience in your car trip for that goal. Even then, you might be surprised - adding a bike lane might remove some car throughput, but would also remove some cars. On balance it could work out in your favor. They say the car erased distance. I don't think we should go back to a primitive era of distance being literally insurmountable, but I do think it would be healthy to rediscover a bit of respect for it.

kube-system 4y ago

Not everybody can live in the Netherlands though. The Netherlands has just the right weather, just the right geography, just the right urban planning, and just the right social climate. For a parent, it doesn’t matter how much you advocate, your kid will have their drivers license long before you can change any of the above situations.

otabdeveloper4 4y ago
There are about 190 countries in the world, but I'm pretty sure there's only 1 where a car is required for having a child. (The USA.) Maybe geography isn't the central issue.
closeparen 4y ago
The social climate and the urban planning are no more and no less than how people in your community conduct themselves behind the wheel and at the microphone in the community hearings. Incremental bike infrastructure improvements can take a few years in very dysfunctional polities, but 16 would be an outlier, and they can also be done very quickly in healthy ones.
- kube-system 4y ago
  My area has people who have been fighting for better infrastructure for decades. I have voted for the issue as well for decades. The social component is important. When commuters lose a lane on popular roads, they responded by voting the people out of office who were responsible for it. I know you think it’s simple, but I know from experience that it’s not. Deep car-centric cultures demand more of the same. Maybe where you’re from these attitudes seem like outliers, but in middle America, it’s really not. It’s not an awareness issue, an insignificant number of people here resent the idea. There’s no convincing them. Also, planning is definitely important. If the lanes don’t go between differently zoned areas, they’re useless for primary transport. What little success we’ve had is used against us as evidence that “nobody wants bike lanes”.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - closeparen 4y ago
    Having some people fighting for it is of course not enough, the community has to want it, but once it does it is fairly easy to make happen. This is in contrast to e.g. trains, which take decades from authorization to passenger service in the best case and often fail for technical or project-management reasons despite voter support.
bradlys 4y ago
The bike paths in Finland would like to have a word with you. It’s more about the culture than anything. The rest of your points are not really the biggest factors.

chrisco255 4y ago

Have you been to the United States? The idea of loading 3 kids on some bikes and riding 10 miles to school, then 15 miles the other direction to work in the midwest on a winter day (temps get into negative fahrenheit in many parts of the U.S.) (or the south/southwest on a hot 100F+ summer day) is laughable. God forbid some after school activity is another 10 miles out of your way or you need to pick up something on the way, or carry them to your parents house which is another 25 miles away.

closeparen 4y ago
No one is coming to put a bike lane on the kind of seasonally impassable dirt road that is reasonably found 10 miles from the nearest school. If you want to live deep in the middle of nowhere, no one’s stopping you. But when you come into the kinds of communities that actually sustain the institutions you need (school, work, etc) they aren’t obliged to give over all their public space and put their lives at risk for your truck to move as freely as possible.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  The closest religious school I'm considering for my son is over 20 miles away currently, and obviously I can't move over night to reduce that. I also don't live on a narrow dirt road - I live in a city in a community with probably hundreds of houses There's also no reliable transit option to either location. Am I suppose to just suck it up, throw out my vehicle, and bike 90 minutes there just to drop him off?
  - closeparen 4y ago
    Car primacy is not the same thing as the ability to drive at all. Cars are obviously useful, and lots of trips wouldn't be feasible without them. But streets in populated areas shouldn't be designed around this kind of trip as the only or primary use case. People choosing the local schools, for example, should have streets on which they can can feel confident walking or cycling, and not need their own vehicles just because you're using one. I would ask you to, in your words, "suck it up" with respect to some inconvenience in your car trip for that goal. Even then, you might be surprised - adding a bike lane might remove some car throughput, but would also remove some cars. On balance it could work out in your favor. They say the car erased distance. I don't think we should go back to a primitive era of distance being literally insurmountable, but I do think it would be healthy to rediscover a bit of respect for it.