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If they’re going to make people ride bikes and scooters in traffic, then it should at LEAST be legal to do the Snow Crash thing where you use a hook-shot-style harpoon to catch free rides from cars.
I’m so happy this is becoming more mainstream. Huge props to people like NotJustBikes for such effective propagandizing.
It was something I never could put words to until NJB showed up. I had already moved to NYC to get away from the burbs and driving.
And then I took the orange pill.
Yep. The combination of moving to New York City and reading “death and life of great American cities” really pushed me into being anti car culture. That and looking back at growing up in the suburbs where I couldn’t do anything without a car. Age like 10-17 sucked. I was so jealous of the kids that lived in the city and could go out and do things.
Why do we insist on putting the bike, car and pedestrian main pathways on the same corridor?
Split them up.
Space and cost
Ok absolute mood
I was in very bike-friendly Copenhagen last summer and yes, it was nice. I do think in order for cars to move out of cities, we need to focus more on public transportation in the suburbs of big cities, so people could easily access the city without paying an arm and a leg for parking.
I lived in a suburb about 20 min outside of Philadelphia in high school, and It was nice hopping the train in and out, then getting into my car and driving home.
Yeah, parking really kills it.
In Houston, by the time you’ve paid for the parking and the light rail ticket you’ve spent more than you would paying for extra gas and for a space in the parking garage at your destination.
So public transit ends up costing more AND adds 30-60 minutes to the commute, plus a 5-block walk in 115°. Why wouldn’t I take my air-conditioned recliner?
Yeah, NYC is horrible for this too, and even the parking in NJ across the river is ridiculous if you want to ride in from there. There is a train, but that’s gotten expensive too. It’s just a shitshow.
I’m not anti-car or bike but we really don’t have a good system in place for either when it comes to cities.
As a resident, I just use a monthly pass and it’s cheaper than when I had a car and the insurance, gas, and maintenance in a lower cost of living area.
Sure, the MTA isn’t perfect, but you can access a lot of the city through the trains and buses. If you’ve ever driven in the city it can be a lot worse when you include parking. If we were to convert buildings into parking, you would end up with a ton of sprawl and a less walkable city.
The Danish public transit infrastructure is a joke and there isn’t any political will to improve it so it’s just unreliable and extremely expensive.
I did have a very confusing time taking a bus out of Copenhagen. I got yelled at by a driver but I didn’t understand how to pay (I thought you paid on the bus?) And there was no instruction on how to do it and no one would help. He just let me get on, but he was mad about it, lol.
I figured out how to pay for my trip back though, due to a very kind lady.
If you’re ever in Copenhagen again, there are 24, 48 and 72 hour tickets that are a bit more expensive than figuring out the system but worth it for short visits.
Also, there’s a variant that gives access to almost all museums and lots of other interesting places.
Take a look at Oulu. If you don’t live in the city center, you can ride your bike to get there. The lames for light traffic are numerous and we’ll maintained. The busses are fine, as long as you are mindful if the schedules.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in a cult. Other times I feel like everyone else is in a cult. Is that bad?
I think that might be what it means to have an opinion tbh…
Love to see Snow Crash references
This anti-car shit is starting to become another brainless cult. The issue with North American urban planning was never with the cars themselves, but rather with our over reliance on them. Bike paths, public transport, better walkability, and mixed zoning are all great things but cars are still very useful tools. Banning them entirely will cause more problems then it will solve.
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Are you an idiot? I’m criticizing the mentality of the movement. The anti car movement is heading head first into extremism by removing nuance and only viewing things in black and white. Your comment actually demonstrates my point.
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I’m not talking about the post, I’m talking about the anti-car movement in general. There are a lot of people who really do boil down their worldview to “car bad, no car good” without any regard to nuance or context. The number of these people is increasing and they’re annoying
The Netherlands is flat. Lots of US cities are not bike friendly due to hills.
Good news! There’s a new technology called an ‘e-bike’, which makes this problem (and wind, and sweat, and physical condition) completely irrelevant.
Physical condition is still relevant. If nothing else, being lighter extends your battery range. I have a couple of E-bikes. My 230lb/104.3kg ass can only manage to extend the range of the bikes to about 30 miles per charge, without pedaling. My friend’s daughter who is more like 105lbs/47.6kg, gets almost 50 miles per charge, without pedaling.
St. Petesburg is flat, but it doesn’t have a lot of bikes. Moscow is hilly(and called city on 7 hills) and has more bikes. Sooooo, extrapolating US should be better for bikes than Netherlands.
Changing urbanism culture doesn’t mean that everywhere needs to be exactly like the Netherlands, if a place is too hilly there are still better solutions than car-centrism.
I’ve never been to Amsterdam, but I am always skeptical whenever someone claims to me that any city isn’t a shithole.
Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, New York City, New Haven, Paris, Toronto… hard pass. Being that close to that many other people is fucking gross.
Antisocial people existing doesn’t mean that cities should be planned to cater mainly to them…
So don’t live in a city. But for those of us who do, and enjoy doing so, our cities shouldn’t be built to cater to you, they should be built around catering to those of us who enjoy living in them.
Edi: Blah, replied to wrong comment.
How much “space” does one person, or even a family need? When you were in those cities, where did you stay? There is a big difference between visiting a downtown core and living in a near-to-downtown neighborhood. Still not everyone’s cup of tea, sure, but if we all lived in an acre property we would collectively go bankrupt from infrastructure costs alone.
Fuck bikes.
Counterpoint: Read panels 6 and 10 again. (The ones beginning “We’ve ceded” and “People approach” if I’ve messed up my counting somehow).
It really doesn’t matter to me, I hate big cities, and am currently in the process of selling my home to leave one.
And that’s totally fine. You do you. But
- Why do those who like cities have to live in a car-centric hellscape
- More people on bikes makes cities more bareble even for people who for some reason like driving because more bikes = less traffic jams and less noise
- Why does biking automatically mean big city. Small cities are in theory even better for that since they tend to be more compact. Stuff is less spread out even if the relative density is lower.
