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I recently found an interesting post about the driving/transit+walking divide that I'd like to discuss some here: If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity.
The basic point that this article makes is that a good and necessary measure as to whether people would actually want to walk somewhere looks like so:
I would like to use this to assert that: For 99% of modern-day American cities that are not currently pedestrian-friendly, there is no reasonable change that will ever make them so.
The problem is that, once you build a city to be car-friendly in the modern American style, with 3-4+ lane arterial surface roads and expressways everywhere and all businesses having massive parking lots that are virtually never full, the structure of your city is fundamentally unwalkable. You can toss in some sidewalks and buses, but you'll never create a landscape where people actually want to walk places. Not that literally nobody will ever walk anywhere, but where people who have money and status and can afford to keep cars will actively choose to walk and take busses to places instead of driving.
Here's a link to a Google Street View of a random road in a random medium-small city in America. It's actually fairly urban compared to the surrounding region, but I'm pretty sure nobody who has any alternatives chooses to walk there. And in fact, there aren't any pedestrians visible on that road in Street View. You can create some paths to walk on, but you can't duct-tape making walking dignified and respectable onto a region where it isn't already.
IMO, the majority of attempts to make walkable neighborhoods in non-walkable regions are not particularly useful. Usually, they're in residential areas, and you can maybe make that one neighborhood walkable, and create one little walkable urban square with some restaurants, coffee shops, light retail, a bar or two, etc. But you're not going to be able to create an area where a successful person can access everything they want to be able to do regularly with walking and transit, because they can't get anywhere but that one little urban square easily. Not saying that they aren't pleasant or that people living there don't like them, but they're never going to lead to a region or society where people choose not to have cars.
The short version of that being that pedestrians are special snowflakes who won't walk unless the built environment is just right. Meanwhile, looking at your Sioux Falls shot, the issue isn't so much "dignity" as scale. Well, that, and the fact that no one wants to walk to car dealerships. The blocks are about 0.5 mile x 1 mile. If you want to have a pancake breakfast and then head over to pick up your new handgun, that's over a 20 minute walk. It's not a matter of dignity or respect. Making the walk nicer isn't going to make it take less time.
While I lean towards defending the car culture side in the overall debate, I think I'd soften that a bit. See how much the car drivers moan when they have to wade into an environment that actually does favor pedestrians and transit at a large scale, like Manhattan. Are the car drivers special snowflakes who hate to drive unless they have massive free parking lots everywhere, lots of wide-open 45mph multilane roads, and very few pesky pedestrians who have a tendency to go every which way on a whim?
I'd say more neutrally that the desires of drivers and pedestrians are fundamentally at odds with each other. A large-scale environment that's great for walking, like good enough that Sam the Stockbroker in Manhattan, who makes enough to keep a BMW in a private garage, chooses to walk and take the train to his job anyways because it's easier and better, will inevitably be bad for cars, due to expensive and scarce parking, slow and narrow streets, and pedestrians going every which way. Meanwhile, if it's great for driving, it will suck for walking, because of the huge parking lots, huge distances between things, and narrow and poorly maintained sidewalks with intimidating high-speed car traffic only a few feet away. My overall point is more that any environment that favors one or the other cannot be changed to be the other way without basically demolishing the entire city and rebuilding everything differently.
You have to work very hard to make cars worse than walking and transit. And despite all the effort Manhattan puts into that, it's still full of cars, so the answer to your question is "no".
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Car drivers dont want to go to Manhattan at all. No one doe, really. They are forced to because its a place with concentrated economic opportunities.
Hm, I don't know. I hear that there are certain cultural advantages to going into Manhattan. Theater and art and live music and comedy, for example.
And, in addition to the current Hollywood releases, here is a list of movies playing in Manhattan (a Tuesday, btw):
20 Days in Mariupol
Afire
Antichrist
Avanti!
Biosphere
Bobi Wine: The People's President
Close to Vermeer
Contempt (le Mepris)
Earth Mama
El Agua
Ghost in the Shell
Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd
I Was Born, But...
I Vitelloni Kokomo City
Lakota Nation vs. United States
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Love & Basketball
Out Of Sight
Past Lives
Persona
Revoir Paris Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani
Showgirls
Shrapnel Sympathy for the Devil
The Lost Weekend
The Rules of the Game
The Flowers Of St. Francis
The Spirit Of St. Louis
The Unknown Country
The Beasts
The Mother and the Whore
The Wicker Man
The Lesson
Theater Camp
Umberto Eco: A Library Of The World
Walid War Pony
We Need To Talk About Kevin
While We Watched
You Hurt My Feelings
Sure that is a bit interesting. How many of those people going to Manhattan for a movie/play both drive a car there AND complain incessantly about pedestrians?
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Manhattan has an awful lot of $500/month+ parking spaces for a place nobody wants to drive to. And an awful lot of $2k/month and up (way, way up) apartments for a place nobody wants to live in. The oddball hoops you have to jump through to get a rental there suggest that the number of people who very badly want to live there and are willing to pay out the nose for the privilege remain quite high.
I don't think it's that controversial of a statement to say that people who like urban spaces really like them and are willing to pay and make other sacrifices to live there (small spaces and lots of possibly annoying neighbors nearby), and people who like rural spaces also really like them and are willing to make different sacrifices to live there (nothing close by, moderate drive to get to 1 or 2 small grocery stores, hardware stores, bars, etc and maybe very long drive to get to any more or bigger of the above).
There are people who like it, a small amount. There are a greater number of people who like not having to drive to their job because it is so close. The people driving there don't want to be there at all, they wish they could magic their office to a different location not in Manhattan.
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Do you actually think that there is nobody who would want to be in Manhattan, except for that it affords them opportunities to make money? I spent some time in NYC and found certain parts of Manhattan extremely appealing. Sure, I understand for that a lot of people who feel a much greater desire for space than I do, it could be unbearably crowded and restricting. For bug-men like me, though, having so many different things to do, in such a small and walkable/transit-accessible environment, Manhattan’s appeal is evident.
There is always somebody who wants something. But most people are there to collect money, yes.
Roughly 1.7 million people live in Manhattan, a great many of whom were born there and have lived there for their entire lives. They have roots there - deep social networks, connections to their local neighborhoods and communities, and to the activities offered by those communities. Is this another one of those delusional posts where a non-urbanite assumes that nobody actually likes living in cities, or feels any connection to the cities where they live?
No, I'm merely commenting on the commuters and the people who live in Manhattan because of proximity to their work. This will be the majority of people in Manhattan during business hours.
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….Is a 20-minute walk seriously considered a major imposition by people? My walk to work each morning from the nearest rail transit stop is roughly that long, and I make that walk twice a day without it feeling remotely unreasonable or burdensome.
Taking a young child to daycare by walking and train and then more walking and train to get to work? No thanks. That's burdensome.
That's why daycares and primary schools are built in the residential areas in most places.
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When those people are used to traveling the same distance in five minutes, yes. I've done a similar walk many times, from an apartment I lived at to my favorite bar. It really sucks to wake up and remember "Fuck, I've got to walk back to the watering hole to pick up my car.".
That said, I've never had a commute that was more than a 10 minute drive in my adult life, and my commute time is usually zero (walk out of my apartment to my car that I use for my delivery job). My sister drives an hour one way to commute to her job and I think she's insane.
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Depends entirely on the climate.
I’m definitely acutely aware of that. I live in a city which is renowned for having possibly the best year-round climate in the entire country, if not the whole world. What we consider inclement weather is still better than what many cities in the U.S. experience even at their best. As I’ve looked into moving to a different part of the country, it has become increasingly clear to me how necessary car ownership would be in many of the places I’m targeting, the weather being the main reason.
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I mean I don’t find it one in good weather, but I’m much hardier and in better shape than the average American(who let’s remember is obese). I do very much appreciate the option to drive inside my truck during heavy rain or temperature extremes.
Maybe part of the reason the average American is obese is because they drive everywhere, and walking 30 minutes a day would have tremendous benefit.
I don't think the exercise itself would do a lot to undo a terrible diet, but I do wonder if the convenience of a car prevents a lot of "fuck, I'm weak!" moments that might serve as wake-up calls?
I think walking 30 minutes every day would add up over time.
You're probably right, there's a lot of low hanging fruit if you're starting at zero.
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Transit and walking lovers don't realize that most car-dependent Americans in the suburbs can get to most of where they want to go door-to-door in less than 20 minutes. Your total commute is probably roughly 1 hour each way, while American car commutes are generally 20-30 minutes.
Even the highest quality transit systems (Hong Kong, Japan, and the like) will struggle to get people door-to-door in less than 40 minutes. Density can address this, by putting stuff very close, but it comes with a whole bunch of other problems.
I think this needs to be qualified with…something. It’s clearly not true for many things like shopping, restaurants, and not necessarily true for work.
And cars would often be even slower in the same environment!
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That would be extremely unusual.
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I get everything I need within 10 minutes. I haven't been more than 15 minutes from my apartment in two weeks. I walk most of the time and sometimes cycle. There is no point on being relegated to a field far out in the middle of no where and have to travel far to get places when you can live by your destination. Tokyo is absolutely massive and no car based city has ever grown to that size. Also in downtown Tokyo almost everything is available within far les than an hour.
Commute isn't the only travel. It is everything else that happens and is easily accessible.
That's true because of density, not transit. Even with high frequencies, transit trips generally start at over 20 mins door to door minimum
Los angeles is 18 million while Tokyo is 37 million. Tokyo is a globally unique city, but I have no reason to believe a car based megacity that size can't exist, it just doesn't already
Absolutely false. Here's a random example of two popular destinations near major transit hubs, taking 50 mins to 1 hour. Traveling from a less central location will take even longer. Try a few routes for yourself. https://transit.yahoo.co.jp/search/result?from=%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E6%B1%A0%E8%A2%8B%E6%9C%AC%E5%BA%97&to=%E9%9B%B7%E9%96%80&fromgid=&togid=&flatlon=&tlatlon=&via=&viacode=&y=2023&m=08&d=01&hh=09&m1=4&m2=6&type=1&ticket=ic&expkind=1&userpass=1&ws=3&s=0&al=1&shin=1&ex=1&hb=1&lb=1&sr=1
The idea with a walkable city isn't that you can go to the other side of the city, it is that you don't have to. The amount of goods and services available within a short distance is more than enough and the vast selection of destinations near by provide all that is needed as well as plenty of opportunities and things to explore.
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That seems remarkable. Where do you live that this is possible? Even in very walkable cities, walking just takes forever. There are hills, stoplights, the need for umbrellas or boots, etc... My walk score is in the mid-90s and I'm still more likely than not to take my car somewhere every day. Even if going to one location is convenient, stringing together multiple errands would take approximately forever by foot.
In terms of commutes, you must also be quite fortunate. In the U.S. at least, the places with the longest commutes are also the places with the most transit. As of 2018, New York state was longest with 68 minutes round trip, followed by MD, NJ, MA, CA, and IL. You have to walk, wait, ride, (optionally transfer, walk, wait), then walk to your final destination. Whereas with a car you just simply drive there directly.
Walkable usually goes hand in hand with cyclable no? At least in Europe this is the case. 15 minutes on a bike covers quite a lot of useful area if you're living near the city centre, even when I lived in what was considered an isolated outer suburb in an Irish city it took 20 minutes on a bike to make it into the city centre.
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I am not sure that means much. In all of those states, the vast majority of commuters drive to work. So rush hour traffic is going to drive much of that, esp since areas with large amounts of public transit are dense and have worse traffic: Major cities in the states you list also rank very high in traffic congestion.
Moreover, you seem to imply that slow commutes are caused by public transit, and hence that the same commute is faster by car. That is unlikely to be the general rule, given traffic during rush hour. People prefer to drive to work when possible; if they take public transportation, it is at least in part because in their particular case, it is more convenient than driving.
Finally, you are ignoring obvious confounding variables. Eg: Places where people use public transit the most are also places that tend to have more expensive housing. Many people with long commutes in those areas have long commutes in part because they live farther away.
Not in places with decent systems. In NYC during weekdays, subway trains run every 6 minutes or so, which means the average wait is 3 minutes. Less time than it takes to park.
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I live in a reasonably walkable university town. It is far from the most walkable city. Dentist and hair dresser are 4 blocks away. Gym 7 blocks. I have three grocery stores within 10 minutes. A bunch of restaurants within that range. By bike I have three more gyms, and about 100 stores within 10 minutes. I can go to a spa, liquor store, hockey rink, museums and a train station within 10 minutes by bike.
Not my city or my country but checkout one of my favorite cities, Frieburg: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Freiburg+im+Breisgau,+Tyskland/@47.9952955,7.8320398,14z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x47911b26560bd665:0x41f6bb7a5df57b0!8m2!3d47.9990077!4d7.8421043!16zL20vMHB0ajI?entry=ttu
There is a huge amount to do within 2-3 km of the central part.
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You even mentioned one of these cities by name!
Hong Kong and Seoul and Tokyo should support such a lifestyle, work-related travel aside (depending on which area you live in and work at). I don’t have experience with mainland Chinese cities, but I’d expect most of the tier 1 cities at least to be similar. I’d also expect other large Japanese cities to be similar.
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No, I’m perfectly aware of that. I have ridden in cars untold numbers of times in my life, including in very suburban areas, and I have plenty of experience with how that lifestyle works out in terms of time. Transit/walking advocates simply believe that the tradeoff is totally worth adding an extra 20-30 minutes to a commute in order to access the other lifestyle benefits that come from not driving. Sure, there are a minority of very dumb and/or dishonest transit advocates who pretend like people who live anywhere outside of a major metro area have to drive an hour just to get to the grocery store, but I think the vast majority of people on all sides of the debate acknowledge that cars do in fact significantly reduce overall commute time for most people, at the expense of other considerations.
This has not been my experience at all. I think "arguments as soldiers" is the default mode, with transit supporters refusing to acknowledge any downsides such as crime, inefficiency, cost, etc...
And of course car supporters refusing to believe anyone would actually want to have a transit-based lifestyle.
People who support doing a cost/benefit analysis are rare and should be treasured.
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It hit 106 outside this week. The only people walking between home and grocery are those who can’t afford to drive.
The story is probably different up north. I hear Chicago has a decent hub-and-spoke construction where that 20 minute walk buys you a lot more. Then again, I’m sure it’s miserable in December.
I think the counterpoint is that lacking an environment where people can stay in air conditioning more or less all the time, fewer people would live in DFW(which has always been this way). Obviously, that isn’t always appealing to people who want to live in DFW, but considering the only way DFW is becoming walkable is if we lose a nuclear war and have to rebuild for poor people, it’s academic anyways.
DFW?
Presumably Dallas-Fort Worth.
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20 minutes to the rail, no. 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store, a lot.
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