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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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In the context of NYC though, these points are largely invalid. It's dense, walkable, transitable, employers don't expect cars, grocery stores are close enough to walk to, let alone bike. If you must drive (which is entirely reasonable for some use cases) it's a pain because of the traffic (as it's so dense even a small portion of drivers cause congestion). Less than half of NYC even owns a car, something like ~20% in Manhattan.

For a significant number of trips, cycling can not just be an alternative quirky choice (like rollerblading), but the ideal mode - direct to your destination, cheap, faster than transit or a car (due to bypassing transfers or traffic), no need to find parking, and with some cargo or kid capacity if you have the right bike.

Safety is one of the big blockers though, which is why cycling advocates want more infrastructure.

And yes, this does trade off against drivability, but NYC is definitely not Pareto optimal in this regard - there's room to improve design for cyclists without significantly showing down drivers.

I agree 3 sucks, but it doesn't have to be as awkward as your making it out to be. Filling in the gaps doesn't make it impossible for cars to function.

I will concede that very dense places are different.