4 ms·

> beauty of a car free environment. ... you can see how your street might look without that noisy road and those dirty cars. Beautiful. But I see that picture-

by Tempest1981 3y ago

> beauty of a car free environment. ... you can see how your street might look without that noisy road and those dirty cars. Beautiful. But I see that picture-perfect pathway, and wonder the cost and time to maintain the vegetation. Bicycling through California suburbia, I see mostly dead lawns, ever since the droughts began. Few people (or cities) have time/money/motivation to create beautiful gardens. So I'm imagining a dusty gravel pathway instead.

Foreignborn 3y ago
While nothing is truly maintenance free, methods like hardscaping, xeriscaping and even permaculture planting methods like STUN (okay a harder sell but still) are easily doable. In the longer term, the emergent benefit is that bicycle friendly infrastructure incentivizes density which saves on money and maintenance.
NegativeK 3y ago
If it's publicly maintained, instead of bushes and grass, it could be well designed xeriscaping with local plants and gravel/rock. That's basically what the front of our house is, with very minor drip irrigation (that I wish we would get rid of.)
DoneWithAllThat 3y ago
There is no drought. A few very small sections of California are categorized as “abnormally dry”. That’s all.
samstave 3y ago
Soon: "Enhance and beautify your commute with Vision Pro, now with automatic urban blight removal - gone are the days of seeing strip malls, now strip parks. Homeless encampments? Adult recreation areas! Litter? Flowers!" -- But in serious, this will be amazing once Civil Engineers, Urban Planners, Landscape architects etc - can use this, but have it also calc "cost of options" for each - and have it do Environmental Impact analysis based on the plan, AND Title 24 implications... which are always fun to deal with especially in cities such as San Francisco. (Title 24 are the codes for efficiency, safety etc for new builds basically - but they can be a pain in the ass to navigate when planning in urban areas in California.. Environmental Impact studies cost a boatload and are usually lamented about for things like "Protect the Frogs of Marin" (which affected a lot of building aspirations especially in wealthy areas, such as Marin - but ARE very important when determining if a new development on top of some natural habit is going to F-up the surrounding ecosystem over the next N years)
tokai 3y ago
Why do you assume that maintaining some bushes should be significant over maintaining a road?
- persolb 3y ago
  Seems reasonable to me. I cut the simple bushes in front of my house back from the path much much more often than the township does anything with the road. Manpower wise, the bushes along the path probably take as much average labor as the road. Maybe material/gas to resurface the road every 10 years would make the road cost more per year.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    There is a bike trail near our house, and the plowing and mowing and tree clearing along it takes way more man-hours than the once-a-decade resurfacing. Not sure what the comparative costs are, and a road would have similar maintenance if it was that close to trees (a bike path is just a narrow road).
QuercusMax 3y ago
Lawns are incredibly stupid in California. There are so many more appropriate ways to cover ground. There are definitely choices better than a dusty gravel pathway.
not2b 3y ago
We took out our front lawn and replaced it with a drought tolerant garden with redwood chips, succulents and other drought tolerant plants. It looks much better than it used to look, and we got part of it paid for by money from the Santa Clara County water district (though we paid most of the cost).
- bombcar 3y ago
  They need to be maintained also; five or ten years in with "minimal maintenance" and the redwoods have weeds growing through them. Maintenance is hard.
  - not2b 3y ago
    It's considerably less work than maintaining the grass lawn that it replaced, which needed to be mowed and weeded. Also, you use quotes here, but I'm not sure who you're quoting, it wasn't me.
lIIllIIllIIllII 3y ago
what you probably need is just more vegetation, and vegetation that is naturally suitable for the climate/microclimate, that will grow... naturally and without the need for upkeep. Like, if nature itself needs upkeep, something other than lack of upkeep is the issue.
- ssl-3 3y ago
  It still needs manual upkeep. Nature has a way of planting things that don't even necessarily belong on the same continent in spaces where they are undesirable. See, for example: Kudzu. We introduced it intentionally, and nature's own mechanisms have it literally growing beyond control -- blanketing (and typically killing) anything in its path in the US South, including mature trees.

Foreignborn 3y ago

While nothing is truly maintenance free, methods like hardscaping, xeriscaping and even permaculture planting methods like STUN (okay a harder sell but still) are easily doable. In the longer term, the emergent benefit is that bicycle friendly infrastructure incentivizes density which saves on money and maintenance.

NegativeK 3y ago

If it's publicly maintained, instead of bushes and grass, it could be well designed xeriscaping with local plants and gravel/rock. That's basically what the front of our house is, with very minor drip irrigation (that I wish we would get rid of.)

DoneWithAllThat 3y ago

There is no drought. A few very small sections of California are categorized as “abnormally dry”. That’s all.

samstave 3y ago

Soon: "Enhance and beautify your commute with Vision Pro, now with automatic urban blight removal - gone are the days of seeing strip malls, now strip parks. Homeless encampments? Adult recreation areas! Litter? Flowers!" -- But in serious, this will be amazing once Civil Engineers, Urban Planners, Landscape architects etc - can use this, but have it also calc "cost of options" for each - and have it do Environmental Impact analysis based on the plan, AND Title 24 implications... which are always fun to deal with especially in cities such as San Francisco. (Title 24 are the codes for efficiency, safety etc for new builds basically - but they can be a pain in the ass to navigate when planning in urban areas in California.. Environmental Impact studies cost a boatload and are usually lamented about for things like "Protect the Frogs of Marin" (which affected a lot of building aspirations especially in wealthy areas, such as Marin - but ARE very important when determining if a new development on top of some natural habit is going to F-up the surrounding ecosystem over the next N years)

tokai 3y ago

Why do you assume that maintaining some bushes should be significant over maintaining a road?

persolb 3y ago
Seems reasonable to me. I cut the simple bushes in front of my house back from the path much much more often than the township does anything with the road. Manpower wise, the bushes along the path probably take as much average labor as the road. Maybe material/gas to resurface the road every 10 years would make the road cost more per year.
- bombcar 3y ago
  There is a bike trail near our house, and the plowing and mowing and tree clearing along it takes way more man-hours than the once-a-decade resurfacing. Not sure what the comparative costs are, and a road would have similar maintenance if it was that close to trees (a bike path is just a narrow road).

QuercusMax 3y ago

Lawns are incredibly stupid in California. There are so many more appropriate ways to cover ground. There are definitely choices better than a dusty gravel pathway.

not2b 3y ago

We took out our front lawn and replaced it with a drought tolerant garden with redwood chips, succulents and other drought tolerant plants. It looks much better than it used to look, and we got part of it paid for by money from the Santa Clara County water district (though we paid most of the cost).

bombcar 3y ago
They need to be maintained also; five or ten years in with "minimal maintenance" and the redwoods have weeds growing through them. Maintenance is hard.
- not2b 3y ago
  It's considerably less work than maintaining the grass lawn that it replaced, which needed to be mowed and weeded. Also, you use quotes here, but I'm not sure who you're quoting, it wasn't me.

lIIllIIllIIllII 3y ago

what you probably need is just more vegetation, and vegetation that is naturally suitable for the climate/microclimate, that will grow... naturally and without the need for upkeep. Like, if nature itself needs upkeep, something other than lack of upkeep is the issue.

ssl-3 3y ago
It still needs manual upkeep. Nature has a way of planting things that don't even necessarily belong on the same continent in spaces where they are undesirable. See, for example: Kudzu. We introduced it intentionally, and nature's own mechanisms have it literally growing beyond control -- blanketing (and typically killing) anything in its path in the US South, including mature trees.