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If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

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Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#271

Post by verve_rat »

roboror wrote: post #194
JackFr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyclists in NYC are positive menace. They don’t need to be but they choose go the wrong way down one way streets, routinely ignore all traffic signals, ride on busy sidewalks and eschew bike lanes to weave in and out of heavy traffic. Well under 50% wear helmets. As a pedestrian in NYC I feel far more endangered by bikes than I do by automobiles. There is room for cyclists, but there has got to be some compliance wit…

>As a pedestrian in NYC I feel far more endangered by bikes than I do by automobiles. This is why legislating by "feelings" is a bad idea. Automobiles are a far larger and more lethal risk.

Safety is not the only consideration. If we don't consider comfort then people might stop walking because it is an unpleasant experience.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#272

Post by sdeframond »

wantoncl wrote: post #174
whimsicalism wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing to yield to pedestrians where? e: Actually, not going to get into it but c'mon - cars kill pedestrians in a way that bikes rarely do and removing the cars from your NY neighborhood would have an obviously better impact on pedestrians compared to the bikes.

NYC bike messengers. And rollerbladers. Not sure how it is now, but in the late 90's they were exactly as the other poster described. Fail to yield, swerving in front of buses and flipping off the drivers if they honked. Utter contempt for everyone else. I was in far more danger of getting injured by them than any vehicle, and this was Manhattan traffic. Plenty of stories of grandmas getting knocked down by rollers a…

> flipping off the drivers if they honked

Honking within urban areas is forbidden unless used to prevent immediate danger (well, in France anyway).

Honking for "educational purpose", ie to yell at someone, is a major nuisance. Every honk annoys dozens of people around the driver, wakes up babies and so on.

Friends, don't let friends honk inconsiderately.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#273

Post by convolvatron »

bluGill wrote: post #15
skrebbel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain this to me? For example, my local supermarket is a 8 minute walk from my house. Driving there would take about 5 minutes, due to one way streets etc, so including the hassle of parking etc it takes about as long. Driving there seems positively insane to me, except if I’m shopping for a party or something and need to fill the trunk. Are you saying that Americans would choose the car here? Or that in Am…

25 minute walk. And even if the supermarket is close enough to walk, it is setup for drivers. So you have to cut through someone's backyard, climb a fence, then walk all the way around to the door on the opposite side. Unless the backyard you cut across above is actually yours the real distance is not walkable, and if it is your yard the trip is not 'dignified'.

to be fair though its usually possible to find a hole in the fence, or a little path forced through the shrubs, or a plank across the drainage ditch. it always makes me wonder who else walking through this? kids? immigrant workers? homeless?

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#274

Post by vorpalhex »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #61
vorpalhex wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've discovered a core disagreement point in safety, "good for everyone" versus "good for the individual". Yes if I live near a road I want trees/big fence/whatever so drunks don't take out my house. Yet if everyone does that, the number of traffic fatalities increases. Of course it's a much harder stat to deliver who died and why versus just optimizing a single fatality count. This problem ruins a lot of really ni…

The nice thing is there's an even better way of decreasing crash fatalities. Just decrease the amount of driving.

Sure and we can fix computer security by confiscating all computers.

Not much of a realistic fix, is it?

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#275

Post by whimsicalism »

7speter wrote: post #256
whimsicalism wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people are overgeneralizing the dynamics of urban poverty from what they have observed in the last decade of home ownership trends, but affluent white flight from cities only really ended in the mid-00s-2010s (for some cities) and there are plenty of significant poor populations near urban cores able to remain because it's either where section 8 housing was built or by rent control. They just take pu…

You know how long the waitlist is for section 8 is, in say, New York? All poor people don’t just go out and ask for section 8 or rent stabilized apartments and instantly get them.

I think I likely know more about urban poverty than you do. It is incredibly hard to get a section 8 apartment, especially if you aren't a family, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to do that in urban cores as section 8 contracts are being shifted towards outlying areas.

Nonetheless, there are lots of people in urban areas living in section 8 housing and it is a substantial part of the story around urban poverty and how people still afford to live in urban cores.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#276

Post by pdonis »

fnimick wrote: post #252
pdonis wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for those with property taxes. Plus a portion of the purchase price of a house is the developer recovering these infrastructure costs when a neighborhood is built.

If you read the link you would realize that property taxes don't even cover 25% of the ongoing maintenance cost. The rest comes out of the general tax pool at everyone else's expense, regardless of whether we live there or not.

> If you read the link you would realize that property taxes don't even cover 25% of the ongoing maintenance cost.

I don't see this anywhere in the article.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#277

Post by tzs »

> Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!” Immediately after saying that, your friend hops in their car and drives across the parking lot to the Starbucks to which they could easily have walked.

> Why does walking feel so intuitive when we’re in a city built before cars, yet as soon as we return home, walking feels like an unpleasant chore that immediately drives us into a car?

Because when they are on vacation they are a tourist. They are interested in exploring the area and discovering things that are new or different to them. They are taking a break from their normal busy routine and are free to relax.

Walking is a wonderful way to explore a new area and see what shops and attractions and sights are there.

When they get back home they are no longer a tourist. They already know where everything is in their area and what it has to offer. They are back to their normal life with too many responsibilities and not enough time. When they go somewhere in their area traveling there is not a delightful opportunity for exploration and discovery. It is a bothersome chore that is getting in the way of what they want to do.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#278

Post by pdonis »

fnimick wrote: post #255
pdonis wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many living in suburbs like to pretend they are in a rural area Suburbs are not rural, but they're not urban either. The population density in most suburbs is too low to support the kind of walk-everywhere infrastructure that a true high density urban area can (and should) provide. The real issue is that many people fail to realize that there is no problem with that . Having different areas for people to live with…

How does mandatory single family zoning and parking minimums factor into your "feature?" When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build, they're forced into suburban living even though that is not their preference.

> When people want to live somewhere dense, and that's illegal to build

It's not illegal to build everywhere. That should be obvious since there are lots of dense urban areas.

I could just as easily ask why I'm not allowed to build a new single family home in Manhattan. The obvious answer is that Manhattan is not a suburb. The equally obvious answer to why you can't build dense urban housing in a suburb is that it's not a city. Unless you are arguing that everywhere should be a dense urban area, there are going to be different areas with different densities and different kinds of housing. That's just a fact of life that everyone has to deal with.

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#279

Post by cscurmudgeon »

bichiliad wrote: post #192
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really? Tokyo is very oriented towards pedestrian traffic, considering shinkansen and most rail service - yet satellite suburban sites, like Saitama, etc have tiny residential rows that literally don't fit both a car and a pedestrian. And that's where most people live. Yet Japan is highly pedestrian. Now, South America. Most if not all urban centers of 1M are extremely well covered by bus networks. And they have to,…

You can find a ton of much worse examples than the US, but the US is just vastly far behind Europe (i.e. Spain, to which OP was comparing the US to). Plus, it's worth mentioning that while Tokyo has a lot of mixed-traffic streets, the streets are small, have very low speed limits, and have strong restrictions on the size and type of car that can actually be within the city. It's less like you're walking in traffic an…

Unpopular opinion: We (US) should stop subsidizing Europe's security while they are better than us and can afford to do so.

https://cvafoundation.org/does-the-us-subsidize-european-def...

Re: If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity

#280

Post by psunavy03 »

paulcole wrote: post #155
psunavy03 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this as someone who at 40 years old has never learned to drive and who has walked/bicycled/taken the bus virtually everywhere I’ve needed to go. I say this with no mockery or disrespect, just description . . . you are not normal. I mean in a statistical sense. Not only are you part of (maybe the last) generation who salivated over the thought of getting a driver's license at 16 and getting away from Mom and D…

> for the vast majority of Americans, this is a totally unrealistic ask for day-to-day life. Either because of urban design or else living somewhere rural enough where it's infeasible. They can convince themselves it’s infeasible, but it is very feasible. It’s just a matter of wanting it. I wanted it enough to make it work. They don’t. That’s 100% fine — I lie to myself about plenty of stuff to get through my day. Ev…

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