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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

#491

Post by sershe »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #472
sershe wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I'd much rather drive to the mountains, or a lake, or at least a nice big park, and recreate there. Walking to a store in Amsterdam or Munich or Vancouver or Moscow was neither much fun nor a lot of exercise.

You mirror my sentiments. I greatly enjoy my time in my car. I rather have a bigger home and drive to recreation areas.

Personally I don't even like driving :) To me it's a minor annoyance, like washing the dishes. But it's just SO much more convenient, so it's worth it.

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

#492

Post by Falkon1313 »

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…

Yes, many would. I've even seen people drive down to the end of their driveway to get the mail from the mailbox or put out the trash.

But also the car culture makes it so that a car is a big part of your identity and also a sort of adjunct living space; a personal safe shelter and place where you can keep your stuff. It's pretty common for people during their breaks at work to go sit in their car and eat.

People used to having cars get very anxious without it, even for a few minutes. They'll drive around in circles in a parking lot for half an hour waiting for a closer parking space to open up so they can save 2 minutes of walking, but also so that their car won't be scarily far away.

If you're not a car person, other people think you're that weird oddball who actually walks to the store and maybe there's something wrong with you.

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

#493

Post by sershe »

makeitdouble wrote: post #460
sershe wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subjectively worse, not objectively worse. I think driving is much more convenient and nice for most things I like to do. The only exceptions I can think of are if I were a kid in a car-centric area (strangely, the thinking in the US is usually reversed, kids supposedly need to be in the burbs), or if I was drunk. I don't often get drunk, so I'd prefer to drive for everything from minor groceries to outdoor activitie…

A thought exercice: would you enjoy living in a 3x bigger house and drive a small cart from room to room ? with a well adapted house it could be more convenient. Would it be nicer ?

I don't think this is very relevant. I would prefer to live in a 3x bigger house, but it would still be walkable.

A reverse (also not very relevant) thought experiment - would you prefer to live in one room that is office/bedroom/bathroom/kitchen, just because you don't have to walk at all, everything is so close, why sprawl? :)

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

#494

Post by crooked-v »

fnimick wrote: post #318
grecy wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time a politician anywhere in the world suggests adding more freeways or more lanes to freeways, I think they should be forced to live in LA for a year and do a ~1 hour commute each way in traffic. They need to see first hand what happens when you just add more freeways and more lanes. It's not good.

I had a conversation recently with someone lamenting that we didn't have roads like LA here in Boston. Saying their ideal road was 3 lanes, plus a bike lane, plus a bus lane in each direction. Imagine being a pedestrian trying to cross that! I really don't understand someone who looks at that traffic disaster and wants to build the same thing here at home.

That's someone who's never actually had to drive in LA traffic. I only had to visit once for the experience of 3 straight hours of gridlock traffic just to get across the city to be seared into my brain.

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

#495

Post by ClumsyPilot »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #160
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…

> Yet if everyone does that, the number of traffic fatalities increases. But without trees they might run into someone walking or on their porch/front yard.

Which would increase fatalities - hitting a tree prevents them from killing anyone else. The core argument is wrong.

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

#496

Post by pclmulqdq »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #484
pclmulqdq wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Failing to yield to pedestrians where? This is what you said, and what I am responding to. Also, I would suggest that deaths from drivers are probably only higher because the probability of a collision being fatal is a lot higher when one party in the collision is 2 tons, and that the fatality rate is not a good proxy for the rate of total accidents (even the rate of total accidents where someone ends up in a hospi…

> my chance of getting killed in a traffic accident are so astronomically low Are they really? You have a higher chance of being killed by a car while you are inside a building, than you are of being killed by a cyclist.

Yes, they are. A city of 8 million had ~200 fatalities last year.

Also, I'm not concerned about getting killed by a cyclist. I'm concerned about getting hit by one. Those are not the same thing.

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

#497

Post by webkike »

sershe wrote: post #489
aesclepius wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus it's objectively worse. NY/Chicago/London/Paris/Tokyo you can conceivably and easily nip out to a grocer's, bodega, cafe or pub within 10 minutes of where you are. LA? Outside of certain certain pockets like DTLA, KTown, WeHo or similar walking is tough and if your friend is across town you're SoL without a car.

But I don't want to! I literally just walked to the store and it was in absoute perfect conditions - we wanted to go for a walk anyway, the weather is perfect (sunny but not hot), the store is 10min walk from my house, the neighborhood is nice and not drive-thru so there is ~0 non-local traffic. The plan was we go for a walk, and pop by a store and get one item. But as usual it never ends up being that way, so we had…

When you live closer to grocery stores, you buy less food more often. I live two blocks away from the grocery store, I go fairly frequently, and I never have an issue with the weight I’m carrying. And I deadlift the same as you

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

#498

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

sershe wrote: post #489
aesclepius wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus it's objectively worse. NY/Chicago/London/Paris/Tokyo you can conceivably and easily nip out to a grocer's, bodega, cafe or pub within 10 minutes of where you are. LA? Outside of certain certain pockets like DTLA, KTown, WeHo or similar walking is tough and if your friend is across town you're SoL without a car.

But I don't want to! I literally just walked to the store and it was in absoute perfect conditions - we wanted to go for a walk anyway, the weather is perfect (sunny but not hot), the store is 10min walk from my house, the neighborhood is nice and not drive-thru so there is ~0 non-local traffic. The plan was we go for a walk, and pop by a store and get one item. But as usual it never ends up being that way, so we had…

Not gonna lie, having a 10 minute walk ruined by carrying a bag home sounds like you maybe need to deadlift less and cardio more or something. Or maybe get better bags?

Walking to stores is an advantage because it allows for a density of services unavailable if parking lots are a serious consideration for businesses. I can go to my local convenience store, and my barber, and a no-waste shop, and my local bar, all in one pleasant morning… plus I don’t have to worry about a dui!

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

#499

Post by LampDrewNear »

sershe wrote: post #489
aesclepius wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus it's objectively worse. NY/Chicago/London/Paris/Tokyo you can conceivably and easily nip out to a grocer's, bodega, cafe or pub within 10 minutes of where you are. LA? Outside of certain certain pockets like DTLA, KTown, WeHo or similar walking is tough and if your friend is across town you're SoL without a car.

But I don't want to! I literally just walked to the store and it was in absoute perfect conditions - we wanted to go for a walk anyway, the weather is perfect (sunny but not hot), the store is 10min walk from my house, the neighborhood is nice and not drive-thru so there is ~0 non-local traffic. The plan was we go for a walk, and pop by a store and get one item. But as usual it never ends up being that way, so we had…

You can still drive perfectly well in walkable cities.

And maybe it's just a TV trope, but do your paper bags lack handles? In Europe essentially all grocery bags have handles and are easy to carry. The amount of food you bought sounds easy to me to carry home, and I don't even lift.

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

#500

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Fricken wrote: post #307
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't agree with this at all. On one hand, it's kind of a tautology - sure, if you're in a city that is very car-dependent, it's a disadvantage to the working poor because owning a car costs money. But in the US there are also (usually older) cities with relatively great public transportation that are more walkable that also have enormous amounts of wealth inequality. Doesn't really have anything to do with inequalit…

Lack of adequate transportation has been cited as the biggest barrier to upward economic mobility https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-eme...

That certainly makes sense, and I agree, but I interpreted the parent comment ("our urban conditions are primarily reflective of the vastly unequal socio-economic structure we have at large" and "In places where the working poor are the most disadvantaged, there also tends to be the highest auto dependency") as inequality being a cause of our poor transportation infrastructure, instead of our poor transportation infrastructure making inequality worse.
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