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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30039 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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I walk everywhere I can, and have gotten by without owning a car for the last several years. In the last four years, I've lived in both a spread-out suburb and a denser, quasi-urban area. In my experience as a dedicated pedestrian, the majority of motorists I encounter are very deferential and mindful, stopping when they don't need to or waiting much longer than is required at a stop sign when I am approaching a crossing in order to let me through. Almost every cyclist I encounter is the exact opposite, refusing to slow or turn for anyone. It's on you to get out of the way or have the cyclist shoot you a death glare for not showing them sufficient deference. They are a massive hazard and nuisance on the sidewalks. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to lack of dedicated biking lanes, but I think cyclists have a cultural problem that makes them extremely unlikable, and not just to motorists.

There might be a cultural dimension but a big part of it is that slowing to a stop and restarting is actually a significant inconvenience to a biker in a way that it's not to a driver since it requires a large expenditure of your personal physical energy.

That sounds like a convincing argument against allowing bikes as vehicles on city streets.

Rather, city streets shouldn't be built for cars. There is no real reason why people should be drivng in cities except for delivery vehicles and workers transporting tools. Streets should be built in a way that is adjusted to people and how people use the streets, not cars.

I think this line of argument gets into the issue that a lot of people driving cars in cities (probably the vast majority) do so because they are employed in the city yet live in the suburbs dozens of miles away. Which is kind of an intractable problem unless capping the density of commercial real estate (or ratio of commercial to residential) is on the table.

That's what park and rides are for. Everyone parks at the outside of an urban core. Then walk, commute, bike into the urban core.

Which is nice until your car is stolen. There’s a nice little train to a neighboring city I want to take my kids on, but theft at the parking lot for it is too high, so we drive an hour instead.

If we're fantasizing about remaking the fabric of urban America we can fantasize about effective law enforcement.

I guess?

My main experience of an American city with respectable public transport is Chicago. On the one hand, I took the metra and L a lot, and mostly liked them. On the other hand, locals had very strong opinions and advice about where it was and wasn't safe to bike/walk/park/stop at stop signs, which effects functionality a fair bit. I ended up parking at a relative's private apartment garage because he wasn't using it, but it was kind of a fluke that was was an option.

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