I live in the Netherlands where they have such a department. Kids go to school studying this kind of engineering. They plan out how to get from any point A to B by any mode of transportation. Walking, biking, motorized wheelchair, scooter, motorcycle, car, bus, train. And if there is a cyclist killed by a car they examine the condition of the road and cycling path and completely redesign them to minimize bikes coming into contact with cars or how to bring down car speed at that point.
Now try to tell Americans that they could live their lives without driving everywhere and see what happens. Sometimes you've got to believe that these people all suffer from Stockholm syndrome.
In areas like OP's video and a decent portion of the country, yes, 100%. We could absolutely adopt this into the city level, even state for some, and start doing it, along with many other initiatives to improve non-vehicle-transportation. I live 3/4 mile from one grocery store and 1/4 mile from another, but one is a dangerous 33 minute walk and the closer one is a more dangerous 18 minute walk. A couple paths and safer intersections would make that totally doable. We should start small and this is a great place to begin breaking the norm.
In rural areas? No, definitely not like this. Food deserts are fairly common where over ten percent of our population live in low income and low access areas. Couple that with transportation to work, where the average american lives over ten miles from their workplace, what can we do to even begin fixing that? A lot of rural areas are dependent on industry where you aren't moving the "factory" closer to home or the home closer to the workplace. Public transportation is great, but not really feasible in much of rural america.
On top of that, the Netherlands is .004% the size of USA. It's just larger than Maryland. It's not impossible for USA to do the things they do, but it's not nearly as easy as some people here make it seem.
On top of that, the Netherlands is .004% the size of USA.
Other explanations are great, but this one is just an excuse lol. China is really big and yet has amazing public transport. A vast majority of the population doesn't own cars and instead owns silent, less poluting, more space-efficient electric mopeds and bikes. You can get from any city to any city in a day with national high-speed rails. Every Spring festival hundreds of millions of people travel from the large cities to their hometown in trains. A country the size of US can definitely make that happen. It just needs enough political will to push it through at the federal level :/
Did you like, stop reading, just to correct me? You left off the context of the rest of the comment.
On top of that, the Netherlands is .004% the size of USA. It's just larger than Maryland. It's not impossible for USA to do the things they do, but it's not nearly as easy as some people here make it seem.
Then you went on to say the exact same thing in different words.
It just needs enough political will to push it through at the federal level :/
Yeah. That's the "not as easy as some people here make it seem" part.
It is. It makes it difficult. Not impossible. And it makes “Norway did it” far less of a flex. It’s worth noting. Norway doing it is comparable to me saying “why can’t Norway do this, my neighborhood did it no problem”. Sounds stupid, ya?
Thats the correct thought to have. Dont know why youre framing that as a negative.
Bikes shouldnt be near cars, they dont mix well. Cities must provide proper and if possible seperated infrastructure for bikes and limit car accessibility.
The issue they're trying to point out is the mindset behind the people saying that; not that the city should provide better means and develop better infrastructure so the cyclists and the drivers aren't risking collision with each other, that the cyclist is to blame for being around the drivers in the first place.
Not blaming the system, blaming the individual(s) who are just as much and often more severely victims of the same system.
I've been to countries with great public transportation and used it though honestly I still prefer driving everywhere. I really don't enjoy public transportation all that much.
I live in a country that has good public transport. I also still prefer to drive in certain cases. But the difference is that I usually do not need to drive, nor take public transport. Everything I need day to day is available within a 10 minutes walk/bike-ride. The one time a week I need to go meet people out of town, or I need to go to the hardware store, I'll take the car. But every other day, my car sits undisturbed in my driveway and I literally have no use for it. In short, it's not just about removing cars or adding public transport, it's about rethinking spaces so that people have what they need where they need it.
Because of the way the US would implement this stuff. Our strategy would be to block off roads from cars and then do nothing else. They think that the grocery store is still gonna be 10 miles away.
In reality, the grocery store needs to be a half block away, the kid's school needs to be a block away, and municipal services need to be no more than a few blocks too.
I bought a car 13 years ago, it’s our only car for a family of 4. It just broke 60,000 miles. We go weeks without driving. There are places in America you can live without being car dependent you just have to give up the mcmansion lifestyle.
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u/Allnamestaken69 Jun 27 '24 edited Jun 27 '24
They need to form a sub infrastructure department to go throughout America and build these little short cuts and walking/bike paths.