How do we even fix car-dependency in the US? It's almost like a mind virus, in that people are so utterly convinced on the need for cars, they cannot even conceive of a world in which they're not necessary.
It’s simply not possible to live decently without cars in most of the US. Ask me, I lived in Texas for 8 years without one. It’s not easy. My Sunday ritual was to spend 2+ hours each way to get a meal in Waffle House and catch some movies in AMC (plural because if I’m spending this amount of time I’m catching more than one movie lol).
The few years I spent in somewhat small town College Station, I tried using a bike. For the most part I was biking on the sidewalk because the (often drunk) kids raised trucks would never even notice a civic in front of them leave alone a bike.
There was one particular intersection which led to a highway ramp, and it had a pedestrian walk signal. I have spent up to 15 minutes for at least one driver to notice I’m waiting here to cross on the walk, hundreds of cars will pass by me taking a right on this signal without ever seeing I’m waiting to cross. So why do you think anyone who’s not homeless would keep doing that?
As someone who's about to buy a new car, I thought about this. I can bike to work. I can walk to the grocery store. I did this all through college. Then I thought, "what happens when I move?" How do I buy furniture on Craigslist? How do I pick up my girlfriend from the airport? How do I visit my friends across the Bay Area? It's a real tragedy of the commons. I'd like to save the money but I would have to sacrifice too much else unless many, many other people were willing to put up the same gamble.
I think we can start by just building it. Make it fast, reliable, and safe. Make it go places people want to go. Make it go to the grocery store, airport, and random blocks across the entire area. Look to what we did 100 years ago when a train station was a palace of transport, not a dingy slab of concrete. People want alternatives, they just want better ones than what we have now.
I love car culture. I get to have a large house with a huge yard and still live 10 mins from an urban center. I don’t want my neighbor to be on the other side of the wall. I like my wood/metal working shop, being able to raise goats and chickens and shoot guns in my backyard. I’ve lived in the heart of Manhattan for about 5 years and even though it was a great experience I would not want to go back to it. Long live car culture. That being said I run 3-5 miles on trails 5 days a week and get more than enough exercise just doing stuff around my yard so car culture isn’t effecting my ability to stay fit.
Car-dependency is a city planning issue, first and foremost. We destroyed the cores of our cities, demolishing block after block of buildings to raise interstates and parking lots.
You will never eliminate car-dependency in rural areas, and you can at best remove the need for it in suburbs with mixed-use zoning (i.e. corner stores and cafes), better funded public transit, and sidewalks.
Cities should first stop expanding interstates and look to remove them entirely. There is absolutely no need to have an interstate through urban cores. Next, you need to redesign streets to make the car part narrower and the sidewalks wider. And you need to repeal zoning ordinances that ban anything but single family homes on 80% of urban residential land. It's ridiculous that there exist single family homes within walking distance of the downtown of cities with a population in the millions when under a properly zoned system, there would be mid-rises.
Rural areas will never be free from car-dependency. Suburbs need light modifications to mixed-use zoning policies and transit, as well as infeasibly high taxes. Urban areas, where walkability should be most feasible, have to remove highways through cores, repeal oppressive zoning laws, and prioritize walkability.
The actual policies are rather straightforward. There are plenty of countries that planned around the automobile and later reverted this mistake, so there exist many playbooks for achieving this worthy goal. Unfortunately, the problem is political rather than technical: too many people are invested in the automobile for a lot of good reasons, and too many people are invested in the current land use regime which make automobiles necessary.
The population density in most areas doesn't make it economically viable. In many area the climate makes biking a messy proposition of needing shower after a ride, or to put on a bunch of rain gear etc. vs a car where you just take a shower in the morning, get in your dry car and exit clean for the office etc..
Cars are just too nice, especially when there is bad weather and once you have one, you may as well use it. You would need to have people ok with being outside in the winter for example and walking on ice.
Anecdotally among friends working in NYC, people don't walk as frequently as they used to because they're not commuting into the office 5 days per week (which generally involves 10-20m of walking). Some are working totally remote out of their apartments, others hybrid 3 days per week.
But on the flip side, some are spending that saved commuting time on exercising more, and are healthier for the change.
I read the article and it didn't sound like any point they were making couldn't be explained as 'well we were in a pandemic during that time, and also people shifted to working from home more, so they weren't forced to move as much'.
Even the uptick in 2022 can be explained with 'well we were coming out of a pandemic, and there was an RTO push, but still bad habits are from before are hard to break'.
The article says that biking increased and walking decreased. I don't think I can explain those things simultaneously with just "well we were in a pandemic during that time."
I'm curious as to _how_ the data was collected for this report. Did they use camera feed data? Walk-button push counts? HR rideshare incentive data? Sending out surveys?
The article talked about trips -- but I didn't see any differentiation between commutes to work and walking in the park, for example.
I had the same question. The "source" of this information, StreetLight Data, does have a functioning website and an impressive customer list, though it mostly invokes "big data" to explain what it does.
Poking a little further, it sounds as if they're aggregating smartphone data, though we're not told much about how they get it, or how they adjust for people walking with or without their phones on.
As a driver and pedestrian, I swear I see people staring at their phones while driving.
Probably need phone cupholders — phone locks up unless it’s mounted in its slot and enters CarPlay mode. Have to do it for passengers too, since can’t differentiate
A big thing that concerns me is the absurd levels of tint people are putting on their windows.
I bought a used car last year that came with 20% all around, and I removed it from the front windows almost immediately. It was so insanely hard to see outside at night properly, especially in dim or unlit areas. How do people with less than that see? I guess they don’t.
I honestly wouldn't walk around in most U.S. cities, with all the street violence and homelessness plaguing the nation. Drug needles everywhere, trash, human feces. Why take the risk?
I haven't observed a substantial change in the last four years in the cities I live in and frequent. If anything, my neck of the woods in Chicago has improved a bit... not that it was ever a poo-riddled wasteland to begin with.
I’m sure it’s totally unrelated to the increase of street junkies and urban crime resulting from the post 2020 “reimagined” policing in many major cities.
What major cities have "reimagined" policing exactly, and in what way? Why would that be related to walking, especially as the first thing that comes to mind for you?
....so after all of that effort to create walkable cities, remove car lanes for bike lanes etc. this is where we end up? Not sure if trying to create more walkways, removing traffic lanes for bike etc. are the answer if this is the net result.
What effort? Most US cities are complete garbage for walkability.
When I lived in Germany, I'd see little towns of a few hundred people that were more dense and walkable than US cities 100x their size.
And bikability is even worse, sub-garbage level. People don't do it because it appears to be insanely dangerous because our infrastructure is generally shit tier, like painted bike lanes (though off street trails are often okay, where they exist).
People are mostly rational when choosing day to day transportation options. If biking was supported well they'd do it. But it's not, so they don't.
All the "Vision Zero" announcements were mostly politicians doing politician things with no real oomph behind them. There are things that can be done quickly and effectively, but the political will usually isn't there due to our horrible cultural momentum.
It seems that many of the cities that invested in those ideas had improvements.
However, compared to 2021, 18 metros observed an increase in walking activity in 2022, with California metros dominating nine out of the top ten spots. New York City ranked 10th
[+] [-] infotainment|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramraj07|2 years ago|reply
The few years I spent in somewhat small town College Station, I tried using a bike. For the most part I was biking on the sidewalk because the (often drunk) kids raised trucks would never even notice a civic in front of them leave alone a bike.
There was one particular intersection which led to a highway ramp, and it had a pedestrian walk signal. I have spent up to 15 minutes for at least one driver to notice I’m waiting here to cross on the walk, hundreds of cars will pass by me taking a right on this signal without ever seeing I’m waiting to cross. So why do you think anyone who’s not homeless would keep doing that?
[+] [-] inamberclad|2 years ago|reply
I think we can start by just building it. Make it fast, reliable, and safe. Make it go places people want to go. Make it go to the grocery store, airport, and random blocks across the entire area. Look to what we did 100 years ago when a train station was a palace of transport, not a dingy slab of concrete. People want alternatives, they just want better ones than what we have now.
[+] [-] huytersd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wilg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZoomerCretin|2 years ago|reply
Car-dependency is a city planning issue, first and foremost. We destroyed the cores of our cities, demolishing block after block of buildings to raise interstates and parking lots.
You will never eliminate car-dependency in rural areas, and you can at best remove the need for it in suburbs with mixed-use zoning (i.e. corner stores and cafes), better funded public transit, and sidewalks.
Cities should first stop expanding interstates and look to remove them entirely. There is absolutely no need to have an interstate through urban cores. Next, you need to redesign streets to make the car part narrower and the sidewalks wider. And you need to repeal zoning ordinances that ban anything but single family homes on 80% of urban residential land. It's ridiculous that there exist single family homes within walking distance of the downtown of cities with a population in the millions when under a properly zoned system, there would be mid-rises.
Rural areas will never be free from car-dependency. Suburbs need light modifications to mixed-use zoning policies and transit, as well as infeasibly high taxes. Urban areas, where walkability should be most feasible, have to remove highways through cores, repeal oppressive zoning laws, and prioritize walkability.
The actual policies are rather straightforward. There are plenty of countries that planned around the automobile and later reverted this mistake, so there exist many playbooks for achieving this worthy goal. Unfortunately, the problem is political rather than technical: too many people are invested in the automobile for a lot of good reasons, and too many people are invested in the current land use regime which make automobiles necessary.
[+] [-] jsz0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lgleason|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acchow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gen220|2 years ago|reply
But on the flip side, some are spending that saved commuting time on exercising more, and are healthier for the change.
[+] [-] cableshaft|2 years ago|reply
Even the uptick in 2022 can be explained with 'well we were coming out of a pandemic, and there was an RTO push, but still bad habits are from before are hard to break'.
[+] [-] vcxy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JeffSnazzy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Javalicious|2 years ago|reply
The article talked about trips -- but I didn't see any differentiation between commutes to work and walking in the park, for example.
[+] [-] GCA10|2 years ago|reply
Poking a little further, it sounds as if they're aggregating smartphone data, though we're not told much about how they get it, or how they adjust for people walking with or without their phones on.
[+] [-] valeg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nytesky|2 years ago|reply
As a driver and pedestrian, I swear I see people staring at their phones while driving.
Probably need phone cupholders — phone locks up unless it’s mounted in its slot and enters CarPlay mode. Have to do it for passengers too, since can’t differentiate
[+] [-] poly_morphis|2 years ago|reply
I bought a used car last year that came with 20% all around, and I removed it from the front windows almost immediately. It was so insanely hard to see outside at night properly, especially in dim or unlit areas. How do people with less than that see? I guess they don’t.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rabuse|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] infotainment|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryukoposting|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wilg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodmunky|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kadoban|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lgleason|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|2 years ago|reply
When I lived in Germany, I'd see little towns of a few hundred people that were more dense and walkable than US cities 100x their size.
And bikability is even worse, sub-garbage level. People don't do it because it appears to be insanely dangerous because our infrastructure is generally shit tier, like painted bike lanes (though off street trails are often okay, where they exist).
People are mostly rational when choosing day to day transportation options. If biking was supported well they'd do it. But it's not, so they don't.
All the "Vision Zero" announcements were mostly politicians doing politician things with no real oomph behind them. There are things that can be done quickly and effectively, but the political will usually isn't there due to our horrible cultural momentum.
[+] [-] vcxy|2 years ago|reply
> there’s a noticeable rise in biking trips while pedestrian activity is dwindling as a portion of overall trips.
Beyond that, this seems highly relevant:
> Alarmingly, pedestrian fatalities rose during this period
Maybe we haven't actually made any walkable cities
[+] [-] sh-run|2 years ago|reply
> Despite this, there’s a noticeable rise in biking trips while pedestrian activity is dwindling as a portion of overall trips.
They cite StreetLight Data as their source. Per GCN (which cites the same source)
> bicycle trips in the US have increased by 37% from 2019 to 2022
GCN is obviously also going to have some kind of bias, but the TTI article clearly does as well.
https://www.globalcyclingnetwork.com/general/news/in-the-us-...
[+] [-] chemeng|2 years ago|reply
However, compared to 2021, 18 metros observed an increase in walking activity in 2022, with California metros dominating nine out of the top ten spots. New York City ranked 10th
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]