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

streets.mn

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

#541

Post by neuronic »

msla wrote: post #520
reducesuffering wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was a car you'd have been dead. 20 people in the US died today because of that. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...

"Be glad you weren't killed, you ungrateful swine" isn't the tone cyclists should be taking in a thread about dignity.

I perceive your tone as purely hostile and frankly pretty ignorant, so maybe don’t talk about tone.

Aside from that, hating a form of mobility is weird. People that are assholes in cars will be assholes on bikes and vice versa.

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

#542

Post by neuronic »

msla wrote: post #522
rz2k wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pretty strong anti-cycling stance, because I watched my New York neighborhood that was a pedestrian paradise significantly degraded by bike lanes. The balance of walking, subways, busses, taxis and delivery trucks had worked pretty well. Bicyclists introduced the concept of failing to yield, then acting indignant and entitled.

It's amazing how you post this and a bunch of cyclists come out, elbowing each other aside to be the first to act out their most obnoxious stereotypes. "Yeah, we bomb down the sidewalks at 30 and categorically refuse to yield to pedestrians while shouting 'Share the road!' at anyone using an engine, and you should be grateful we didn't get in an SUV and plow through a daycare center!"

What’s amazing is that you have formed an absurd hostile image of bicyclists in your head and actually post as if that was normal.

When confronted, you immediately suspect a concerted action against you by a group of bicyclists. Sounds very paranoid to me.

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

#543

Post by Moldoteck »

jeffrallen wrote: post #80

I liked lots of this, but I really disagree with the night shot. What about the dignity of the people living along the bright (overly) lighted sidewalk, who lose their dark skies and dark bedrooms? Street lights suck, and should be absolutely minimized, and turned off at 22h. If you feel intimidated by the dark, you can solve that for yourself: don't shine your fears into my windows.

Recently I've seen that in our city new street lights on minor roads near buildings usually have a special form and lower height specifically to counter this problem

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

#544

Post by Zpalmtree »

beebeepka wrote: post #141
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…

How is increase of drunk driving suicides a bad thing? I hate this argument. Let's cut the trees because certain people just can't help themselves. Infuriating for all sorts of reasons

Cmon brah, people committing suicide isn't good

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

#545

Post by sershe »

itsanaccount wrote: post #524
sershe wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

From my comment: "Now, you could argue that global warming is bad / enough freeways cannot be built / etc., sure. Maybe we cannot have nice things.

But don't argue that people want to live in urban paradise and some contrived system is simply not giving them what they want. "

I just don't like the hypocrisy.

However, it's the comments like this that make me think that for any equivalent level of far-, left is worse than right. The right wants to decide how you should live your life; so does the left, but the left does it in this vindictive, holier-than-thou ninny kind of way ;)

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

#546

Post by Moldoteck »

briandear wrote: post #420

It was over 100 degrees where I was in the Houston area. I don’t want to walk anywhere. Nicer sidewalks won’t change profuse sweating. All of the bike and walk crowd seems to have never been to Houston in the summer. It’s 80 degrees in Cupertino right now and 96 degrees in Houston as I type this. That’s a huge difference in what is comfortably walkable. Nobody likes walking in 100 degree heat. When I lived in Europe,…

Barcelona is hot too but somehow it works, bc less cars and more trees(especially near sidewalks) means nicer walking even in hot summer "Greater Houston is 10,000 square miles with 7.5 million people. Greater Amsterdam is 1000 square miles with 2.5 million people." - yes, we know that american towns are inferior because of parking requirements and local zoning, yes the problem is more complex, but does this mean it's not a problem or ppl just should start slowly fixing it? (Like abolishing parking reqs, zoning laws and just pass a law that forces companies to build a nice sidewalk&bike lane when a street is renovated, slowly fixing the problem). We can't know for sure walkable city will not work in Huston because laws generally prohibit building one with those stupid requirements

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

#547

Post by Moldoteck »

akira2501 wrote: post #93

"People should walk!" Pictures of miles long suburban corridors with no services or business along them. Maybe.. people don't walk there.. because there's no _reason_ to be walking there. If you want people to walk, give them a reason other than "I don't like cars."

Yes, problem is complex but also easy fixable in long term: abolish parking reqs & allow building dense buildings & force building nice sidewalk+trees+bike lane+ safety islands on every street renovation. This way there is no upfront cost to rebuild everything instantly, instead same public resources will be used(street renovation money is already allocated) and the town will become more walkable gradually

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

#548

Post by sershe »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #508
sershe wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a great link: "Vehicle ownership starts to grow quickly when countries reach income of about 2,500 per capita in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms. Rapid growth continues until income per capita reaches about 10,000. Saturation level is at about 850 vehicles per 1,000 people." The limiting factor for having tons of cars is income. https://www.imf.org/-/media/Websites/IMF/imported-flagship-i... [pdf with per-…

I fail to see how this accounts for difference in car vs bike infrastructure.

Countries at "income of about 2,500 per capita" are not exactly known for their car infrastructure. Moreover, by necessity with low car ownership they cannot have car-centric cities - most people don't have cars. I mean have you been to Hanoi or Belize City, or some place similar?

Yet, despite crappy roads, short distances and chaotic traffic (and good climate, in many cases), people get cars as soon as they can afford them - instead of staying on bikes and mopeds that they are already otherwise using. Until, if IMF is to be believed, they reach 0.85 cars per person.

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

#549

Post by esoterica »

JackFr wrote: post #172
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.

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…

Your feelings are wrong.

There were 2000 pedestrians killed by cars in NYC from 2018 to 2021 and only 12 killed by bicycles.

https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian...

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

#550

Post by doix »

sershe wrote: post #501
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Most people prefer to drive.. You don’t know that. You would have to run the experiment - spend equal amount of money on infrastructure for bikes and for cars. Then see. Most British cities are tiny, you can cross most of them on an e-bike in like 15 to 30 minutes. Except London of course. But there is usually no safe way to cross them. When I ask people in London, why are your not cycling, 95% say they are afra…

Here's a great link: "Vehicle ownership starts to grow quickly when countries reach income of about 2,500 per capita in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms. Rapid growth continues until income per capita reaches about 10,000. Saturation level is at about 850 vehicles per 1,000 people." The limiting factor for having tons of cars is income. https://www.imf.org/-/media/Websites/IMF/imported-flagship-i... [pdf with per-…

But you're assuming that people want to own cars to make short journeys.

When I lived in Edinburgh, I had a car but I would never use it within the city or anywhere that I could get to on a train/bus. This attitude was pretty common among my entire social circle.

Reading all your comments in this thread felt surreal to me. I guess I'm in an anti-car bubble, because I've never met anyone with your opinion before.

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