So the US has city layouts that were exclusively designed around cars since the 50s and never had any design change.
Put into that a maximally polarized society that for one half gets all woke and concious now, trying to navigate this maze by bike that was never meant for it — while the other half upgrades their housewive tanks to completely new levels of ridiculousness every year to assert their dominance over the helpless and celebrate contempt.
What could possibly go wrong?
EDIT: Putting some constructive criticism here: Effecting change is possible. It just takes the ingredients univerally loathed in the US: Coordinated city planning and lots of regulation plus one or two decades until the results are visible, „big government“ at its finest. Currently I don't see the slightest hint of buy-in possible for that.
I still remember photos of cars passing through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in the 90s, that would be unimaginable right now if you stood there.
Suburban sprawl and its roads are down to the finest detail, exactly as regulation require them to be. There is a deep and longstanding intellectual tradition behind the whole thing, why the roads must be so wide, the curves so gentle, the homes and the shopping so far apart, the parking lots so big. All of it lovingly crafted by planners and traffic engineers in the names of safety and quality of life. That tradition looks at any place which is compact and pedestrian-friendly and says, this is a backwards and inhumane relic of the past, progress demands that we never repeat it. Where will they park?! Any such place that you see is either grandfathered, or built on hundreds of variances.
The buy in for lots of regulation and coordinated city planning is so pervasive that you’re like a fish unable to see the water.
The good news is that you don’t really need to change the degree of the regulation or the bureaucracy responsible for administering it. You just need to replace every rule with its opposite.
> Coordinated city planning and lots of regulation plus one or two decades until the results are visible, „big government“ at its finest
I'm not sure this actually needs a significant increase in regulation or "government". The government already builds and maintains infrastructure on government-owned land, according to planning rules. The change that"s needed is a change to the existing rules and reallocation of that existing land and money to more diverse modes of transit. The tough part is convincing drivers that taking some of "their" lanes of car infrastructure and parking and dedicating them to bike and pedestrian infrastructure will benefit everyone because people who drive and walk to their destination aren't taking up space on the road.
The irony is that the American suburbs are some of the most regulated places for living I've ever seen. I mean many places tell you how long your grass has to be, when you put up Xmas decoration and how big it has to be, the color of your doors...
I guess when private organisations do it it's all fine, but god forbit government tries to implement regulations.
There are bicycle advocacy groups pushing for more bike lanes in US cities. I'll strongly recommend the work and reporting by The War on Cars on this[0].
Yes it seems to be happening. It’s happening way too slow compared to how fast Paris has revamped their streets. But bike lanes, bulb outs, road diets and what not are slowly being implemented in US cities.
I can deal with my stuff without politics, but when I need cooperation like when sharing a road how do I avoid politics? Isn’t getting buy in to share the road inherently political?
I recently moved to Austin from Seattle. People had told me that people tended to be more car focused and less pedestrian/bike friendly in Austin compared to the PNW. I didn’t believe them. Look at all the bike lanes, I told myself. I could easily ride my bike to work, it’s only 7 miles. Then I saw a guy on a bike get absolutely crushed by a truck turning right without stopping. A cherry picked example but a very convincing one. I’ll be sticking to the bus thank you
I got downvoted recently here for saying that Austin is not bike friendly and you'd be really lucky to live close enough to work (or wherever you're going) for it to even be feasible. Not sure what reality people live in where they feel safe biking in Austin.
If you can afford to live downtown and you work downtown (which is a very, very small percentage of the Austin population) then yeah maybe you can bike to work, but like I said in my previous comment that is basically an edge case.
It does't help that the Google maps cycling directions are often woefully bad. I just put in my old (2 mile, downtown) Austin commute and the entirety of the suggested route was on streets I would never ride on for fear of my own safety, and my personal risk tolerance for these types of things is pretty high. There's protected bike line on most of 3rd street that can get you across the entirety of downtown and Google maps just ignores it.
That's depressingly accurate. US infrastructure is so bad.I went to Austin a month ago and there are a lot of highways outside of the main city. Biking along those roadways sounds insane.
I’ve ridden in centeal london over the last 15 years. The biggest problems have always been buses and taxis.
Riding in 2020 when everything was abandoned was great. I was in a hotel near Blackfriars during the first lockdown, and rode along Oxford street, barely any traffic at all - it’s normally chock full of buses attempting to kill you.
Ride confidently, take the lane, ignore the bus and taxi drivers who think they own the road, and it tends to be fine.
Outside of london there’s a big problem with car drivers though - every year in the U.K. about 40 pedestrians are killed by car drivers while they are on the pavement, yet we continue to turn a blind eye to drivers who drive on the pavement, and even those who attempt to murder people with their car get off with less than a year in prison
Infrastructure can only help so much, you have to be in a bike friendly community for it to work really well from home to your destination. Of course on the sparodic separated bike lanes it goes well, but then you get to the last few miles and you're dropped into the traffic at the mercy of people who haven't seen a bicycle until now, and you are definitely in their space not the other way around.
Because people take time to change, I think the two bandaids for the social problem are expanding separated bike lanes and then dropping people into pedestrian/cycle shared streets, not the roads.
I know I know, you didn't buy the Ultegra gear set just to sit on the big ring dodging foot traffic, but a cycling city will need to cater to the majority of commuters not the speed machines. Most potential cycle commuters are just everyday people wanting to meander into work and around the city centers.
I agree with your take that infrastructure is not enough, but I think it's still necessary, at least until there's a clear change in culture.
Over here in Paris, there still are many bike-related fatalities, and most cars are smaller than in the US, biking has been more popular (and feasible) for longer, etc. Yet people still don't pay attention. And by "people" I mean car drivers [0], bike riders [1] and pedestrians. [2]
Regarding pedestrian / cycle shared streets, it may overall be better that sharing with cars, but there have been quite a few cases involving scooters (as in Lime and the sort) and pedestrians, some of them fatal, on this kind of shared roads.
Not sure what the best approach would be to help change mentalities.
---
[0] As a motorcyclist I try to make sure people have seen me / are going to stop and check / etc and the number of people I see completely absorbed by their phone seems to be climbing every day. Also, a new fashion in Paris for the last few years is running red lights.
[1] A few years ago I started seeing signs on trucks and buses along the lines of "blind spot / if you can't see my mirrors I can't see you / don't overtake on the right", usually with some cyclist behind. I've always been surprised by this, I thought people had figured that out. My motorcycle instructor taught us to be sure to be able to see a truck's mirrors when behind. My reaction was "duh", to which he responded "you'd be surprised".
[2] Many people walk into traffic without paying attention. The City has recently started deploying blinking lights on the border of sidewalks synchronized with traffic lights.
Was it just infrastructure, or did they also invest somehow in education? Maybe Paris could learn from La Rochelle and avoid what didn't work out.
My point is that people should really have this ingrained, and not put down the phone / not do stupid things just because there's a cop looking. Because as soon as the cop turns away / is on break, the bad behavior happens again. Also, being on the lookout for cops so that you can scroll your FB feed without getting fined only detracts from paying attention to the road.
I'm in France visiting the in-laws right now and was actually surprised how bad the cycling infrastructure is compared to what I remembered. In particular around Paris. Also hardly anyone on the roads in the outer suburbs. If that is like that in most of France, no wonder that they haven't had a tour de France winner in 40 years (which really bothers the French) . If kids don't start riding early and use bikes as a mode of transport they will not get into it as a sport either.
Let's also not forget how incredibly empowering bikes are for kids, essentially they can get anywhere they want to if they can ride around on a bike.
About French drivers, I have the feeling that French drivers are very inconsiderate to every one not just bikes at least for urban traffic.
> Let's also not forget how incredibly empowering bikes are for kids, essentially they can get anywhere they want to if they can ride around on a bike.
That's true on paper, but note that in the outer suburbs, towns are usually small and kids would have to ride quite long distances (>10 km) to get anywhere useful. And winters here can be rough. Add to that narrow streets and careless drivers, and I can totally understand why you don't see many kids cycling.
Are you talking about the Paris suburbs? Sure towns are quite small but in a 10km radius there are still more people than in many other places in Europe and e.g. the city where I grew up and we all always road around on bikes. 10km was not a large distance for us after turning 10-12.
Regarding rough winters, I grew up in Germany and live in Sweden now, so saying winter in France is rough is quite funny (my French partner is laughing quite hard now)
Right, I was talking about the parents' point of view. There are always rougher winters until you get to the north pole I guess, but that doesn't change the local people's perception. Also, do they leave the snow on the road, like in France, or do they clear it up? I've also heard Canadians (from Quebec) complain about the rough winters in Paris, so there's that.
I don't know where you grew up in Germany nor am I familiar with the country, but the places I've visited (in Baden-Württemberg, around Schwäbisch Hall mostly) had amazing bike infrastructure, with paved paths in very good shape and several meters away from car roads, separated by grass, dirt, etc. I can see why parents would have absolutely no problem letting the kids bike around these paths. Also, drivers seemed much less crazy than around Paris.
I grew up in a smallish university town (USA) and have lots of fun memories biking around. It was three or four miles to downtown along a river with a trail through the woods most of the way there. Thinking back it was awesome to be able to go down to grocery store or the downtown when I was 12-16.
Well it is definitely cheaper, but I would hazard a guess it's not always faster from the burbs. For me it is because I am a 30 minute ride and in car traffic it is 45m-1h. So it checks all the boxes you mentioned. But people still drive here. I think convenience is subjective too, since I find it convenient to not deal with car parking in the CBD and I don't find the cycling inconvenient, but others would consider the cycling inconvenient enough that an extra 15 minutes in the car doesn't worry them.
The difference is not having to worry about the weather (too hot, too cold, wet) and even aside from that, carrying an extra set of clothes even in ideal conditions. And you’re obviously limited as to how much you can carry.
Speaking as someone who cycles as a hobby and for transport around the city (commuting and leisure).
As a cyclist both for sport and commuting, I have to say shared paths with pedestrians are often more dangerous than riding on roads with moderate traffic. Pedestrians are usually completely unaware of their surroundings and just suddenly walk left/right without looking. And an accident with a pedestrian, while typically not as serious as an accident with a car still can result in serious injuries.
The countries that got cycling infrastructure right are the Dutch and Danish. Also Germany and Sweden are improving a lot with their infrastructure.
However, we also need to change attitudes and enforcement of rules toward cyclists. The problem is that often police and judges also only drive cars and walk, which leads to cases where cyclists are hit hard for infarctions, but drivers or pedestrians get a slap on the wrist even if their actions result in serious injury.
I used to commute from Flatbush to Chelsea in NYC via bike. Other than tourists chilling in the bike lane, no problem. The rattiest cab and National Guard hummer deferred to my ratty little bike. Now in SoCal, I don’t even feel comfortable walking my kid in a stroller on the left side of the road without some shithead roaring round the corner honking at me cause god bless America roads exist for your Expedition.
I have a 7mi commute I do by bike, 50% is along an isolated channel, the rest is city. At first I tried to find the shortest path, meaning more city than channel, now I do the opposite, I'd rather enjoy the peace even if it means 2-3 more miles.
Articles like this makes me realize how privileged I am, living in the Netherlands with such good pedestrian/bicycle infrastructure. The law here is also in favor of more at risk road users, so a car is more or less by default financially liable in an accident with a pedestrian [0]. There are exceptions, but overall this makes you really careful to not hit even the most reckless of cyclists.
[0] https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0006622/2018-03-15
I believe that part of the problem might be that people have lost "traffic reflexes" and situational awareness during lockdowns. Anecdotal evidence: as a cyclist I now encounter a lot more people suddenly stepping from the sidewalk right in front of me without looking. It feels like every week has a years worth of hairy situations when compared to pre-covid era.
NotJustBikes did a great video on how safe streets are amazing for a child's freedom. Sadly I know of no location in the US I'd let my child cycle to school.
Making it a crime to kill people with your car would be a start. If you're sober you can pretty much kill people with no fear of meaningful consequences.
Aren't there vehicular manslaughter laws in the US? In Romania you have them for DUI, breaking general traffic laws (going through a red light, not respecting pedestrian crossings, etc).
Unsettlingly often, the verdict in cases like that is "the driver was not at fault" or "the driver could not have foreseen that" or "the pedestrian did something unexpected" or "the pedestrian should never have been there in the first place".
And of course! That's the way it has to be. It is so easy to accidentally kill someone when you are driving a big vehicle that in order for anyone to drive at all, they need some degree of protection from the law.
While visiting family at the beach in New Jersey this summer, I was glad to see bicycle lanes had been painted and were being maintained. Then came the first bike — going the wrong way. Keep in mind, these routes consist of parallel, block-separated one-way roads (one each for north and south), so there's only one way for bikes to go on either road. This is a problem because, typically, drivers only look in one direction when turning onto said one-way roads. Often, they'll briefly check the other way for pedestrians, but bikes may come up fast.
Anecdotally, I've noticed an uptick in bikes in the area, and I've witnessed many drivers (including myself) get into close calls. While the other comments about urban planning and properly designing "bike friendly" streets are correct, bikers must share some responsibility and avoid making bad decisions.
Also, on the topic of pedestrians: there are unfortunately many people who hold a "car first" mentality, and simply won't stop for walkers. Fatalities among pedestrians and bicyclists in the US have a significant cultural component that mustn't be overlooked. Perhaps better pedestrian infrastructure would encourage better behavior.
For a surprising (to me) historical perspective, a video recently posted to YouTube [1] shows a remastered film taken from a car driving through midtown Manhattan in 1945. There seem to be no crosswalks or lane markings, and pedestrians cross wherever they like [2]. Market Street in San Francisco at around the same time looks similar [3]. I wonder what the pedestrian fatalities were like in those days.
My personal data point is that parking lots are becoming ever more dangerous. This is a societal issue. My father told me that parking lots are for people. But over time I see people driving faster and with less care in parking lots.
Turn on red while the pedestrians get the signal to walk.
Drunk driving is very common.
Driver licensing requirements are extremely low (you have a pulse) and driver education is ridiculous compared to any other developed nation.
Road and intersection design is deadly wrong just about everywhere, traffic moving while people crossing, etc.
You could look at how other countries are improving this (look at Sweden) but let's be real - the US will never learn from other countries, that would obviously be a sign of some sort of weakness - redesigning roadways, nah, it's cheaper for people to die.
Please do not swerve into nationalistic flamebait in your comments here. It generally leads to nationalistic flamewars, which are tedious and nasty and the kind of thing we're trying to avoid.
And as a resident of Sweden, while many things are going well, it's clear planners still don't understand how travel by non-car works.
Most importantly, in the quest for safety, convenience for non-car traffic is almost always sacrificed, making car travel all the more enticing. This is the wrong feedback loop to have.
Semi-recent example. Problem: number of accidents involving people crossing the street too high. Solution: remove zebra crossings. Now don't get me wrong -- this has reduced street crossing accidents. But it has also made foot travel much more inconvenient, because you now have to either walk much longer to find a crossing, or wait for all traffic to pass and then make a mad dash for it. (As a side effect, car travel got a bit more convenient because there are now fewer places you're expected to stop.)
This repeats in all shapes and styles constantly. In the name of safety, cyclists are re-routed for almost a mile (!) around what was previously a hundred-yard straight line.
The underlying problem, I think, is that planners see that car people are trying to get somewhere. They don't seem to realise that pedestrians, cyclists, etc are also just trying to goddamn get somewhere. These activities are almost universally treated as a hobby or pastime. (You see this even on the local Craigslist-type sites, where bicycles are not under the "vehicle" category where I would expect them, but under "hobby".)
Point taken, I don't know enough about individual solutions on the ground but fatality numbers are better, not just in Sweden but in multiple European countries.
Ideally pedestrian and cycling should be prioritized and vehicle traffic should be separated by rerouting, bridges, tunnels, barriers, and other physical means (probably cycling / pedestrian too).
@democracy disagrees. The continued pollution/negative externalities by car mobility and the associated tax breaks (at least in my european country) are also making a car a net negative.
The reason why cars are prioritised is because they are objectively the most useful vehicle. By far. A bicycle is really a joke in comparison when you actually consider the usefulness, and even though I love to ride my bike sometimes when the weather is nice, I can also realise that it really is a luxury to spend money on bike paths in addition to already existing roads for cars AND public transport. Especially in colder climates like Sweden where they will be largely empty for most of the year, it's pretty obvious why this isn't a priority really. Why is it "wrong" to prioritise the most useful transportation?
But cars are not the most useful transportation. They are immensely inefficient, in terms of space needed, pollution, cost etc. If it would be supporting the most useful modes of transportation we would only support public transport and bikes/scooters for short distances.
Turn on red while the pedestrians get the signal to walk.
This is an almost daily problem for me as a pedestrian. A high proportion of drivers are, unfortunately, assholes. It's baffling to me that they can't bear to wait 5 or 10 seconds at a light.
I can’t believe how often I start walking when I have right of way and the driver slams on their breaks and throws their hands up, honks, or cuts me off. Then when I’m driving I understand why pedestrians wave me on: it’s better to be wrong and alive.
I believe I’ve seen designs for busy intersections, that pop up spike strips along the oncoming side of each crosswalk for as long as the pedestrian crossing light for that crosswalk is active. Big disincentive for being an asshole, that.
I don't think the rule is the problem. I think the problem is a lack of enforcement of the rule. Each car is meant to come to a complete stop before proceeding, and then only proceed if it is clear. Basically, no one stops. So all of those drivers are breaking the law and running the red light.
If pedestrian fatalities are increasing as cars become "smarter" or "autonomous" then this is a cause for concern.
I am always baffled by some of the driving coming from supposedly super-duper-AI-enhanced cars. You would have thought that it would be impossible for a Tesla to break the speed limit, burn over a pedestrian crossing that kids are waiting at, or to make a turn without using a turn signal, yet you see this happening fairly often.
No shit. Not only do we simply not have sidewalks, drivers in their gigantic dumb-phone-enabled SUVs and lifted trucks have no incentive to not drive like complete jackasses at all times until they pancake someone. It’s absurd to me that 1) roads are no longer built to be pedestrian-friendly and 2) drivers aren’t constantly ticketed for driving like assholes.
Disclaimer: I’m an NYC-SoCal transplant. But god damn I wish these drivers weren’t so bloodthirsty for road rage ultra kills.
I recently drove from socal to Colorado Springs and the only cops I saw were speed traps at state lines or pushing burned wrecks off the I-15. I feel like they could be doing a little better.
My second major
bike accident (first was being doored) was getting rear ended by a minivan. She treated me like someone in a vehicle, not a, you know, bike. There’s a real disconnect for some people driving a multi-thousand-pound steel piece of equipment where they project their sense of safety on fleshy human bodies at all times.
I would say the sad answer is don’t. Biking in these three feet wide unseparated American bike lanes on 30mph and up (i.e. 35-40mph and up in reality) roads really feels like tempting fate.
I don’t bike anymore, but I don’t accept that answer. If someone can be pulled over for speeding, talking on their phone, or any other reason, they should be pulled over for e.g. tailgating a cyclist. There’s no reason why that shouldn’t be the case. But I don’t have skin in the game right now.
Maybe this is a cause of the increase. But the root cause itself is the really abysmal way we design our streets that creates unsafe conditions. The Not Just Bikes channel addresses this frequently with examples from The Netherlands where they have a stronger focus on acknowledging humans suck and designing for safety, e.g: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_0DgnJ1uQ
I walk a lot and have to regularly deal with distracted or dysfunctional drivers as I cross multiple busy roads and poorly designed intersections regularly. Very few incidents that I experience involve drivers looking at phones, under 10%. Usually it's people zoned out, or only looking at where they want to go, or just not giving a shit.
This is unfortunately very true, even for societies which are much more sensitive to this issue. As a regular cyclist in my hometown of Berlin/Germany I sometimes see so much as every third car driver looking at or obviously typing on their phone although this is illegal and of course dangerous.
I only commute by bike in Paris, France. The infrastructure has so much improved that if the city continues to protect bikes and pedestrians, there will be a point where I don't care if drivers aren't attentive (thanks to protected bike lanes everywhere, larger sidewalks, car max speed soon limited to 30 km/h on all streets, Idaho stop for bikes at almost all traffic lights, car ban in some districts on Sundays, no more "send uniques" for bikes, better signs, camera and speed traps, "coronapistes" that duplicate the subway map, etc).
I generalize but infrastrucures changes everything to a point where a city can easily get rid off car (give us a few years...). It's all infra since that's the only thing that changed here in the past decade: we finally dare to bike now, only because it's protected enough we don'fear for our life every few meters nowadays. For this reason, biking has become the default for most of my friends and colleagues. And the last few who haven't swichted are either taking the metro/RER or walking. The last drivers are professionals (who need to move heavy things and the infra does not support electric cargo bikes yet), old and fuck-you-momey rich boomers who still see biking as being weak, some families (who can afford to still live in Paris?!) but same issue as cargo bikes, and lost tourists (why the hell do huuuge tourist buses are allowed in so dense blocks?!).
There have been some trials of cameras that detect phone usage. They ran one just as an experiment in Australia and found on one road in one day they found hundreds of phone users driving.
I haven’t heard of any of them being put in place for actual enforcement yet though.
Yeah, blaming other people is a great way to get no improvement ever. What could you, personally, do differently to reduce the risk of causing pedestrian fatalities? Why aren't you?
Well, one, is personally, I have texted and driven before, and I don't do that anymore, because I rear-ended a person while doing it. The temptation is too high so I put the phone in the trunk while I drive.
Second, I support any legislation to penalize texting and driving with penalties similar to or beyond what drunk driving currently gets. I am happy to support a criminal penalty of second-degree murder (i.e. ~25 years in prison) for impaired driving leading to death.
Put into that a maximally polarized society that for one half gets all woke and concious now, trying to navigate this maze by bike that was never meant for it — while the other half upgrades their housewive tanks to completely new levels of ridiculousness every year to assert their dominance over the helpless and celebrate contempt.
What could possibly go wrong?
EDIT: Putting some constructive criticism here: Effecting change is possible. It just takes the ingredients univerally loathed in the US: Coordinated city planning and lots of regulation plus one or two decades until the results are visible, „big government“ at its finest. Currently I don't see the slightest hint of buy-in possible for that.
I still remember photos of cars passing through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in the 90s, that would be unimaginable right now if you stood there.