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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

#281

Post by fnimick »

pdonis wrote: post #278
fnimick wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can in fact build a new single family home in Manhattan, if you can afford the land to do so.

Meanwhile, regardless of land price, dense housing is illegal to build pretty much everywhere that is not currently dense, due to zoning laws. Why shouldn't someone be able to build dense housing in a suburb?

What it sounds like you advocate for is that everywhere currently dense can stay dense, and everywhere not currently dense must stay not dense. That doesn't make sense unless you want the dense area to continue to skyrocket in price as more people want to live there and we have no new housing to accommodate them.

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

#282

Post by fragmede »

sdeframond wrote: post #272
wantoncl wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's cultural. In India and other places in Asia, honking is just to say "hey, I'm here, did you see me?" and prevent an accident, but it happens so frequently that sitting in traffic is a cacaphony of honking at all times. In (my part of) the US, honking is to express displeasure at whatever it is the other driver did, and is infrequent. In other places, they might as well not install a horn, because it never gets used.

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

#283

Post by fnimick »

pdonis wrote: post #276
fnimick wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's there, but here's more evidence and data to back up the assertion that suburbs are a net drain on city finances, with more cost than tax revenue from properties: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/16/where-did-the-...

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

#284

Post by fragmede »

lionkor wrote: post #219
smodo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an American perspective it could be. Amsterdam is the largest city in our country and it still pulls together walking, cycling and public transport in a way that doesn’t suck. Of course smaller towns have it easier in some ways because of the way Dutch towns are historically configured. What makes the large cities interesting is that they are somewhat metropolitan and still have the Dutch vibe.

Driving in Amsterdam sucks, parking costs you your leg per five minutes, bikes are very agressive, pedestrians fill the roads because there is more tourism than the city was designed for. Its one of the worst places in NL I've been, from a driving perspective.

Good. The fewer cars for frivolous purposes, the better

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

#285

Post by tzs »

skrebbel wrote: post #13
paulcole wrote: post #4

The thing is we (as an American society) really don’t want a shift to walking. We like the idea of walking more but won’t actually do it. Instead we’ll make up a million excuses about why we just can’t walk. 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. And I’ve lived in very rural and very suburban areas, as well…

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…

> Driving there seems positively insane to me, except if I’m shopping for a party or something and need to fill the trunk.

How much food do you keep at home? In the US many people have room for quite a bit of food at home and on most grocery runs they are filling the trunk or at least buying enough that carrying it home would be difficult.

Walking might require them to go to the store 10+ times a month whereas driving might only require 4 trips so even if walking is as fast as driving they can spend much less total time traveling to and from the store if they drive.

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

#286

Post by ytdytvhxgydvhh »

degrews wrote: post #106

I moved from Spain to the US, and I often find myself trying to explain to people back home just how miserable and even humiliating the pedestrian experience is here. Here are some other examples of things that I think contribute to the hostile walking experience in the US: * Cars parked in short driveways often extend all the way across the sidewalk. Even if you can easily step off onto the road to walk around them…

Tinted windows are such a pet peeve of mine. I get it in the tropics but in most of America the individual benefits of dark tint seem like they’d be outweighed by the collective good of better visibility through cars, enabling eye contact with drivers, etc.

The SUV craze is really to blame - in general many US states don’t allow dark tint on traditional cars but do on SUVs. And since rear windows on vans and light trucks (aka SUVs) are exempted from window tint restrictions, pull up to a typical intersection in the US and look around and you can’t see worth a damn.

Somehow it’s ok for a Subaru Crosstrek to have dark tint but not an Impreza that is the same car but lower? There are even more weird situations like the Mercedes Benz GLA compact CUV which typically has tinted windows, but not the top-of-the-line AMG trim because that one has a lowered suspension, making it a “car” instead of a “light truck”.

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

#287

Post by OfSanguineFire »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #165
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about two separate things. You are thinking of urban cycling where elderly and children commonly move about. I am talking about US rural roads, where a guaranteed paved shoulder and some lane marking now offers a respite from what bicycle tourers have historically considered a downside of cycling in the USA: sharing a lane with rural drivers. As I said, even in most of the EU one can't expect completel…

Even for rural areas, it should be separated paths. The US actually has some of those (way more than it has protected bike lanes, anyway). Fair though, a painted bike lane is probably better than nothing. > even in most of the EU Why are you saying this like the EU is some kind of exemplar? Most of the EU sucks for biking. It's better on average than the US, but most countries there aren't like the Netherlands, which…

Why do I compare to the EU? Besides that fact I am from there (and you say you’re from there, so we have a shared frame of reference), rural commuting there is vastly more common compared to the USA. Over the last decade I have lived in villages in two EU countries where the nearest shop has been over in the next village, a few km along a tertiary highway, and the bicycle serves as a common way for me and my neighbours to travel that distance – and most of my neighbours are older people, since such are the demographics of rural areas.

That gives me an idea of what minimum infrastructure and driver behaviour is required for ordinary people to cycle. And in spite of your preference for 100% separated infrastructure, that doesn’t seem obligatory and I don’t think it crosses any of my neighbours’ minds.

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

#288

Post by ufmace »

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.

This is the exact opposite of what the article is saying. When somebody is deciding whether to walk or drive to their destination, they don't pull up a scientific journal and consult the latest studies, they think about whether it feels safe and dignified. If you ignore the perceived threat of cyclists whizzing every which way while ignoring all traffic laws, you'll find fewer people choosing to walk and have no idea why.

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

#289

Post by lozenge »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #135
stateofinquiry wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grocery store example is very helpful to illustrate how its not just the quality, safety, and practicality (e.g. time) of the walk that leads to most Americans driving- there is also the fact that the whole process and experience is predicated on the expectation that you will have a personal car. Specifically: In the parts of W. Europe I have visited I observed mostly small grocery stores (esp in towns and cities…

> People may stop on thei walk home to get dinner items each night! I'm glad that people who want that have that option, but that sounds incredibly unpleasant to me. I'd much rather minimize the total amount of time spent shopping.

If the shop is on the way, then it's 0 minutes spent on transport, the only time spent is the actual time in the shop.

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

#290

Post by laserlight »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #279
bichiliad wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Did you reply to the wrong thread? Where did defense subsidies come from?
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