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Bergen's population is just over 200k. European cities or even large towns have prioritised public transportation and liveable infrastructure like this in a wa

Bergen's population is just over 200k. European cities or even large towns have prioritised public transportation and liveable infrastructure like this in a way that only New York really has in the US. I don't think there is a single 200-thousand-person city in the US where you can do a single things without a car.

jeffbee 3y ago
Do you mean that 200k is a particularly bad size of U.S. city? There are certainly smaller cities that have _some_ accommodation for cyclists, like Davis, California, or Boulder, Colorado.
- cyclecount 3y ago
  Some accommodation is nice. It's not enough to not own a car entirely.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It can be in some locations, if you're willing to take the limitations. Minneapolis has a decent network: https://go.minneapolismn.gov/final-plan/bicycling/all-ages-and-abilities-network https://go.minneapolismn.gov/final-plan/bicycling/all-ages-a... (but of course you have snow half the year). Cars are very useful, and they even exist in Europe; the reasonable best one ca do is work out a non-car commute and use it less - but it is possible to be entirely car free in many American cities (especially if you're willing to be in a smaller town that you can literally walk across).
dsfyu404ed 3y ago
I think what you mean to say is that there are few "medium" cities in the US where "techie and richer" people elect to voluntarily live without a car. You absolutely can live without a car in a lot of these cities but if and only if you want to bike. If you want to ride a lot of public transit it's gonna suck. What you can't do is do it in a trendy way that "befits your tax bracket" so to speak and prevents the white collar types from looking at you like you're inferior when you bike lock your cargo bike to the lamp post beside the liquor store. As for bigger cities, you absolutely can live without a car in Boston, DC, SF, Atlanta, Chicago, and the list goes on but toward the bottom it's gonna require more biking and less public transit.
- cyclecount 3y ago
  Living without a car in those cities is severely limiting; I tried to do that in two of those and felt it was very difficult to buy groceries and get to work quickly and do easy recreation things on the weekend. It's not even practical to stay out late in many of those cities. The only city in the US where you can live in most neighbourhoods and not be limited without a car is NY. And all of those cities you mentioned are significantly larger (600-800k).
  - dsfyu404ed 3y ago
    >Living without a car in those cities is severely limiting; I tried to do that in two of those and felt it was very difficult to buy groceries and get to work quickly and do easy recreation things on the weekend. So now we're just splitting subjective standard of living hairs? I think we can all agree that living car free in Manhattan is fine and living car free in nowhere Idaho is not but drawing a line in the middle always just turns into a dumb circle jerk. >It's not even practical to stay out late in many of those cities. That's mostly because people who think they know how other people should live don't want the bars open all night and in cases where that's not politically possible to just decree they screw with other things they can effect like public transit schedules.
    - cyclecount 3y ago
      It's really not that hard of a line to draw. Can you enjoy all of the opportunities of city life without a car? Do most people not own a car? There's one city in the US where those answers are "yes".
      - dsfyu404ed 3y ago
        Your line of reasoning reeks of Europe worship with a token exception for obfuscation purposes. There are tons and tons of people who live in places like Boston and SF and Chicago without cars and do not feel any worse off for doing so. I used to be one of them. I would go so far as to say these people can enjoy all the opportunities of city life. Are they a majority? Probably not. But that's mostly a figment of how these cities absorbed their urbanized suburbs in the 20th century.
atyppo 3y ago
NY prioritizes this stuff in a way that’s great for optics but is wasteful, ineffective, and at a snail’s pace in practice. Construction costs for subways, for example, are about $3.5B/mile [1] as of the most recent line built. Corruption is rampant in unions, contracts, and consultants. The unions are nice enough to demand positions like break room supervisor or elevator operator (to press buttons in an elevator), to other workers that no auditor or construction professional could figure out why they were at the work site, as mentioned in the below article. Not to mention a MWBE program that dictates how government funds are spent based on race and gender, which inflates construction costs further. Bike lanes and other non-car infrastructure? Good luck using them. Between police and other supposed city workers parking wherever they want with (often fake) placards to mopeds and ebikes going 20+ mph in the wrong direction, biking and walking in NYC is simply not the enjoyable experience it ought to be. Traffic enforcement might as well not exist - anyone can drive around with a paper plate from Texas or drive however they’d like because NYPD refuses to enforce traffic laws. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
- cyclecount 3y ago
  NY built this bike system in about 10 years: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc-bike-map-2022.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc-bike-map-2022.... It's pretty impressive and works well. But yes, the Subway is criminally underfunded (it's ran by the State of NY actually). Nonetheless, despite how bad NY is, it's still the best in the US.
  - atyppo 3y ago
    Yep, hence my usage of NY when referring to the MTA. With regard to the bike network in NYC, many of these are vanity projects. Many of the “protected” crosstown bike lanes in Midtown for example, have about 4 feet of room. If someone in a car decides to fling their door open, you don’t have many options to avoid it. Many of the other bike lanes are not usable in substantial parts, such as Schermerhorn St in Brooklyn due to rampant illegal parking. All this is to say that NYC DOT is after a number measured by the number of miles of bike lane, not by cyclist safety. The only “Amsterdam style” bike lane we really, truly have in Manhattan is along the rivers which is way beyond overcrowded on weekends.

jeffbee 3y ago

Do you mean that 200k is a particularly bad size of U.S. city? There are certainly smaller cities that have _some_ accommodation for cyclists, like Davis, California, or Boulder, Colorado.

cyclecount 3y ago
Some accommodation is nice. It's not enough to not own a car entirely.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It can be in some locations, if you're willing to take the limitations. Minneapolis has a decent network: https://go.minneapolismn.gov/final-plan/bicycling/all-ages-and-abilities-network https://go.minneapolismn.gov/final-plan/bicycling/all-ages-a... (but of course you have snow half the year). Cars are very useful, and they even exist in Europe; the reasonable best one ca do is work out a non-car commute and use it less - but it is possible to be entirely car free in many American cities (especially if you're willing to be in a smaller town that you can literally walk across).

dsfyu404ed 3y ago

I think what you mean to say is that there are few "medium" cities in the US where "techie and richer" people elect to voluntarily live without a car. You absolutely can live without a car in a lot of these cities but if and only if you want to bike. If you want to ride a lot of public transit it's gonna suck. What you can't do is do it in a trendy way that "befits your tax bracket" so to speak and prevents the white collar types from looking at you like you're inferior when you bike lock your cargo bike to the lamp post beside the liquor store. As for bigger cities, you absolutely can live without a car in Boston, DC, SF, Atlanta, Chicago, and the list goes on but toward the bottom it's gonna require more biking and less public transit.

cyclecount 3y ago
Living without a car in those cities is severely limiting; I tried to do that in two of those and felt it was very difficult to buy groceries and get to work quickly and do easy recreation things on the weekend. It's not even practical to stay out late in many of those cities. The only city in the US where you can live in most neighbourhoods and not be limited without a car is NY. And all of those cities you mentioned are significantly larger (600-800k).
- dsfyu404ed 3y ago
  >Living without a car in those cities is severely limiting; I tried to do that in two of those and felt it was very difficult to buy groceries and get to work quickly and do easy recreation things on the weekend. So now we're just splitting subjective standard of living hairs? I think we can all agree that living car free in Manhattan is fine and living car free in nowhere Idaho is not but drawing a line in the middle always just turns into a dumb circle jerk. >It's not even practical to stay out late in many of those cities. That's mostly because people who think they know how other people should live don't want the bars open all night and in cases where that's not politically possible to just decree they screw with other things they can effect like public transit schedules.
  - cyclecount 3y ago
    It's really not that hard of a line to draw. Can you enjoy all of the opportunities of city life without a car? Do most people not own a car? There's one city in the US where those answers are "yes".
    - dsfyu404ed 3y ago
      Your line of reasoning reeks of Europe worship with a token exception for obfuscation purposes. There are tons and tons of people who live in places like Boston and SF and Chicago without cars and do not feel any worse off for doing so. I used to be one of them. I would go so far as to say these people can enjoy all the opportunities of city life. Are they a majority? Probably not. But that's mostly a figment of how these cities absorbed their urbanized suburbs in the 20th century.

atyppo 3y ago

NY prioritizes this stuff in a way that’s great for optics but is wasteful, ineffective, and at a snail’s pace in practice. Construction costs for subways, for example, are about $3.5B/mile [1] as of the most recent line built. Corruption is rampant in unions, contracts, and consultants. The unions are nice enough to demand positions like break room supervisor or elevator operator (to press buttons in an elevator), to other workers that no auditor or construction professional could figure out why they were at the work site, as mentioned in the below article. Not to mention a MWBE program that dictates how government funds are spent based on race and gender, which inflates construction costs further. Bike lanes and other non-car infrastructure? Good luck using them. Between police and other supposed city workers parking wherever they want with (often fake) placards to mopeds and ebikes going 20+ mph in the wrong direction, biking and walking in NYC is simply not the enjoyable experience it ought to be. Traffic enforcement might as well not exist - anyone can drive around with a paper plate from Texas or drive however they’d like because NYPD refuses to enforce traffic laws. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

cyclecount 3y ago
NY built this bike system in about 10 years: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc-bike-map-2022.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc-bike-map-2022.... It's pretty impressive and works well. But yes, the Subway is criminally underfunded (it's ran by the State of NY actually). Nonetheless, despite how bad NY is, it's still the best in the US.
- atyppo 3y ago
  Yep, hence my usage of NY when referring to the MTA. With regard to the bike network in NYC, many of these are vanity projects. Many of the “protected” crosstown bike lanes in Midtown for example, have about 4 feet of room. If someone in a car decides to fling their door open, you don’t have many options to avoid it. Many of the other bike lanes are not usable in substantial parts, such as Schermerhorn St in Brooklyn due to rampant illegal parking. All this is to say that NYC DOT is after a number measured by the number of miles of bike lane, not by cyclist safety. The only “Amsterdam style” bike lane we really, truly have in Manhattan is along the rivers which is way beyond overcrowded on weekends.