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Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

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Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#181

Post by cyclecount »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #174
cyclecount wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mentione…

>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 middl…

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".

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#182

Post by eimrine »

itsoktocry wrote: post #165
smikhanov wrote: post #91

Rotherhithe tunnel in London screams to be repurposed this way -- to become "colorfully lit, art-lined" thing where psychologists give input on how to make it more welcoming

> where psychologists give input on how to make it more welcoming I'm sure the psychology field is full of pseudo-scientific, un-replicable research into what makes something "welcoming"!

The most dangerous thing about psychology is not just being full of un-replicable reseach but being forced by governments as a source of common sense with "doctors" licensed as a real doctors. So I feel that minuses in your karma.

Designers can do anything more welcoming by use some special colors and shapes though.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#183

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

flurdy wrote: post #162
Tade0 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In suppose it's not a question of money, but the lack people willing to take such a position. It's not a glamorous job and most have better things to do with their time.

CCTVs for a long bridge/tunnel might be enough. As it would take quite a while to leave they do not seem like an ideal mugging place?

Drunk people, homeless shelters. It's a choatic area in Amsterdam, will attract lots of things and certain people don't care about CCTV, hoodie is enough to cover up. Police is always understaffed in nights of a weekend so they just don't really look forward to a new hotspot they need to go and check up on. Just happened last week that a friend jumped in between a 16 year old boy being beaten up, the police eventually came but left quickly and didn't want to call an ambulance because of lack of resources, he had to go to the ER himself. Turns out it was so bad he needed surgery the next day.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#184

Post by wunderland »

jtr1 wrote: post #177

What sort of civil society groups are there advocating for this kind of infrastructure in Norway? I’m always curious how people organize to achieve these outcomes. I live in a medium sized city in the US that is badly in need of better cycling infrastructure. There are a few organizations here, but vision is lacking or has been beaten out of them. I’d love to have some sort of organizing / policy toolkit that factors…

The civil society groups and local governments that advocate for this sort of thing exist in the US too.

What Norway doesn't have (and much of Europe) is a powerful auto lobby that has prevented this sort of infrastructure for decades and forced cities to be built in giant suburban sprawls.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#185

Post by LeanderK »

ghaff wrote: post #112
trabant00 wrote: post #22

Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads? I've seen plenty of places that do both very well, like Spain. Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time. I get it, when there's not cycling infrastructure everybody is forced to take the car even if it doesn't make any sense, like for short trips, good weather, single passenger, no…

>Why are they always ignored in these threads? Is this an American thing? I don't know but Vespa-type scooters are very uncommon in the US. Motorcycles are less rare but are widely considered (with some justification) to be dangerous as a form of transportation. (It doesn't help that there are some crazy motorcyclists out there though of course many aren't.) May have something to do with the type of road infrastructu…

> I don't know but Vespa-type scooters are very uncommon in the US

why? They are also quite common in germany for people living in the city and very useful to get around in the city. I personally bike but I see the appeal.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#186

Post by dsfyu404ed »

cyclecount wrote: post #181
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 middl…

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".

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.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#187

Post by dsfyu404ed »

goodpoint wrote: post #118
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare; but in the end you still have to deal with monetary budgets that represent limited societal supply of labor and resources. You may try to take a moral high ground and say that people are more important than $X million, but those money also represent potential housing, cancer treatment research, green energy investment, etc that…

> It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare Many of those "numerical calculus" measure only savings in time, fuel, etc and attribute ZERO value to saving lives, improving quality of life and even improving mental health. Such calculations are not pragmatic, they are highly ideological.

Ideologues everywhere use statistics as a pretext for their lies. Water is wet. More breaking news at 11.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#189

Post by Macha »

CalRobert wrote: post #114
k4rli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not everything must be about increasing profits, but being responsible with the public purse to the benefit of all is a worthy goal. Of course, if you do that you quickly find many car-oriented projects shouldn't have been built in the first place. Also: * It is unkind and unhelpful need to make personal attacks based on the poster's national origin or religion. * A Catholicism-oriented email provider doesn't mean th…

> * A Catholicism-oriented email provider doesn't mean they're from the US. For instance, they might live in Ireland, another country with horrifically bad urban design and a lot of Catholic people

I'm sure you're aware since you live here, but for the benefit of other HN users, Catholics in Ireland and Catholics as perceived by US media are quite different. US media perceives Catholics as one of the more conservative and devout Christian variants, and my understanding is that even within Catholic institutions the US branches are considered much more conservative than Rome. However, between the decline in the Catholic Church's societal influence and the various abuse scandals that led to that, your median self-reported Catholic in Ireland is much less religiously focused than the imported born-again churches and actual overt religious devotion is much less common in Ireland overall.

So even living in Ireland, with the census figures claiming the Catholic share is as high as you mention, I too would assume anyone who is actively and outwardly religious enough to seek out an email provider on that line is American or at least influenced by American religious culture. Add to that that our population of devout Catholics are aging, so are also not the demographic who generally seeks out niche email providers anyway.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#190

Post by amadeuspagel »

wunderland wrote: post #184
jtr1 wrote: post #177

What sort of civil society groups are there advocating for this kind of infrastructure in Norway? I’m always curious how people organize to achieve these outcomes. I live in a medium sized city in the US that is badly in need of better cycling infrastructure. There are a few organizations here, but vision is lacking or has been beaten out of them. I’d love to have some sort of organizing / policy toolkit that factors…

The civil society groups and local governments that advocate for this sort of thing exist in the US too. What Norway doesn't have (and much of Europe) is a powerful auto lobby that has prevented this sort of infrastructure for decades and forced cities to be built in giant suburban sprawls.

In germany, the car industry is way more important and powerful then in the US and it was able to prevent the EU ban on combustion engines, and yet germany has more walkable cities then the US.
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