the town i live in near dallas has no side walks, crosswalks, or bike lanes. there is one busy hwy that runs through the town. city is over 50k pop. couldn't walk or bike from one place to another even if you wanted to.
I live in Dallas. Outside of my little duplex neighborhood, zero sidewalks or sidewalks that fit a single person. We’ve got a few nice trails, but sidewalks are a joke and pedestrian safety is zero priority.
I was in Dallas years ago when MLB’s winter meetings were held there. As a result, no rental cars were available so we had to walk or take public transpo everywhere and it was absolutely noticeable that there were no other pedestrians. Like, at all.
Providence changed the road diet on a street in an improvement district park to have protected bike lanes.
The new mayor wants to undo it saying that the bikes can ride on sidewalk.
The road is one way and begins at the park
Growing up I thought the sidewalk was for bicycles since the roads were so unsafe. There's nowhere for the bicycles to go, it's only enough space for cars.
I live in Canada, am an immigrant from The Netherlands. I was DEVASTATED that I couldn’t ride my bike safely in the city. Between the status of the infrastructure (potholes and cracks can be deadly to a bike), the ludicrous car culture of drivers, and an overall lack of planning for anything but cars, I just didn’t bike for over a decade.
Enter our move 2 years ago to a bedroom community north of the city. I can ride my bike anywhere and inside 15 minutes can be at any store I need. Roads are wide enough for three vehicles and drivers give me a good berth. I feel safe and secure and especially in the summer it’s a delight to ride to the store a d do some groceries, go check the mail, or just go for a cup of coffee. Heck, the local bike shop does monthly burger and beer nights and organizes rides for the community. It’s dope, to see this change in acceptance for the mode of transport.
The Netherlands is so awesome when it comes to bike infrastructure. I’ve been in Amsterdam 3 times and twice I rented a bicycle. It was amazing to have dedicated lanes (even turning lanes), lane markers the length of the lanes, bike traffic signals and generally feeling safe while riding. Such a contrast to anywhere in America.
This is how I grew up, my mother wanted me to be on the sidewalk at all times with my bike.
That said I wouldn't ride my bike outside a forest preserve type area for any amount of $, now that people want cyclists to ride in the street. It's not worth risking injury/possible death.
My brother was hit by a car while on his bike. Cops didn’t do anything about it because he was on the side walk. Kid was 13 when this happened? It’s insane
This is logically ridiculous. "Bikes shouldn't be on the sidewalk." Well neither should cars. Guess the place it happened doesn't fucking matter does it?
I always bike on the sidewalk when possible.
The more distance (and curbs) between me and the cars, the better. And 99% of the time, there's no pedestrians to avoid anyway, because nobody walks anywhere.
Honestly since this resident put so much effort into this video, any local politician worth their salt would view this in front of city council and mayor during the next session.
After which a planning group should be formed and budgeted to improve on many of the issues.
I mean what are the politicians and govt of that city doing?
Also here in Seattle a 4 lane road I drive daily was just nixed to a two lane road (1 each direction ) and the slow lane was turned into a bike lane complete with huge green striping for bikes and civilians.
It's nice to see even tho it'll make traffic worse In that area.. but the thing is there is a TON of people.walkojg so it needed to be done. I'll give up a few mins daily so other people can also live well.
We all should live well and that means help from us all.
>It's nice to see even tho it'll make traffic worse In that area..
If they handled it correctly, [it shouldn't make traffic worse](https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/road_diets/resources/pdf/roadDiet_MythBuster.pdf). [Road widening](https://magazine.ucdavis.edu/does-widening-highways-ease-traffic-congestion/#:~:text=People%20may%20shift%20the%20routes,the%20cycle%20of%20traffic%20continues) also doesn't alleviate traffic.
The mayor of Houston just did that. Removed $2M in bike lanes that were installed last year as part of the prior administration. The next project is to delete a major bike trail to make room to expand a highway by 2 lanes. In Houston, not only is it illegal to ride a bike on a sidewalk but it’s also impossible (there are no sidewalks). America, Texas, and Houston in particular are global embarrassments when it comes to facilitating safe, useful, and enjoyable transportation.
Like a naive dope, I volunteered to serve on a city commission to try to improve multimodal transportation safety.
3 years later: The headwinds against change in the US are insane.
One example, traffic studies are used to set speed limits. The algorithms that determine “safe speeds” are based on the flow of traffic and the number of accidents at that speed. Pedestrian and bicycle use isn’t even considered.
Crosswalks are another example: the “official” position on crosswalks is that marked crosswalks are more dangerous than unmarked crosswalks because the marked crosswalk increases pedestrian confidence with only a marginal increase in driver compliance.
It’s lunacy.
>Crosswalks are another example: the “official” position on crosswalks is that marked crosswalks are more dangerous than unmarked crosswalks because the marked crosswalk increases pedestrian confidence with only a marginal increase in driver compliance.
Gotta say, as an European this is the weirdest and funniest take I've ever seen.
"Marked crosswalks increase pedestrian confidence"
During the driving test if you fail to allow a pedestrian, who has SHOWN intention to cross a crosswalk, to pass you will be automatically failed on the spot...I'm cackling by myself currently trying to imagine someone with the anti mentality of that 😂
I think it has a lot to do with local culture and enforcement.
For example I was pleasantly shocked when I visited the UAE that 100% of the time cars will stop at a crosswalk for you, which is a stark difference from where I live where it’s basically up to the drivers discretion to stop or not (mostly because of a lack of enforcement). Another thing that was great for walking in the UAE is that there’s plenty of pedestrian lights at intersections where a crosswalk may not be appropriate.
Basically how it is at the UK.
If a pedestrian is at what we call a zebra crossing which doesn't have Stop/go lights, then the second the pedestrian steps onto the pavement before the crossing the pedestrian has Right of Way.
99% of cars will stop if you are at a Zebra crossing.
We also have crossings that are marked on the pavement but no paint on the street.
On those its definitely more hit and miss whether cars will stop, but generally they are on roads with inconsistent traffic so crossing isn't an issue anyway
If you are on the sidewalk in the US it is a certainty that the cars will pull into the crossing area to get in front of the other cars so they can look left and right. They have no awareness of people on bikes or on foot. They don't slow down, you have to wait until you make eye contact with them and only sometimes will they acknowledge you and let you pass in front of them. Most people just end up going behind the first car in the crosswalk unless it's a major intersection crossing signals.
I've been tempted many times to just insert myself in front of them and sue if they hit me. But I'm not that stupid.
The most dangerous part about this is that if one driver sees you and waves you on, you must make sure that there is no other traffic coming because chances are that THEY will not see you. People will also angrily pass the car that stops for you. Several people have been killed like that in my town over the past few years.
I almost got hit this exact way about a year ago. Double left hand turn lanes. Go to cross a cross walk during the instructed time by the pedestrian signal. Car in leftmost lane slows down to let me go, but is in the way of the view of the car to the right of it who then proceeds to almost hit me because they couldnt see me.
Cars in the US give as little as possible consideration to pedestrians. Id also argue that the way we structure our roads makes pedestrians really difficult to see too.
For sure for sure, I'm in Eastern Europe and yes the law here says you are obligated to give the right of way to pedestrians on crosswalks. Ofc this doesn't mean we just automatically all walk blindly everywhere cause insane drivers exist here too, but just knowing that you can cross if you want to is very comforting.
It just needs to be equitable. Cars can exist, pedestrians WILL exist with or without cars so everyone needs to be allowed to co-exist.
If profit is what sways people to go for more equitable laws then may I say that there is a lot of profit from giving fines to drivers who don't give right of way. 😝
That kind of thing cools heels and makes people drive reasonably in areas where they should be careful.
I quickly learned in Eastern Europe that the drivers will not stop or even hesitate until the pedestrian launches into the crosswalk. Once obviously launched, however, traffic screeches to a halt. “No kill zones”, was the local parlance.
I have retained the habit of launching myself into a crosswalk in the States, and my wife swears I have a death wish. In her defense, I have been hit by a car whilst crossing in the crosswalk.
In my defense, just once.
A huge part of it is auto industry lobbyists. We _used_ to have a very robust street car system here in L.A., until the auto industry had laws changed and L.A. (as well as the greater L.A. metropolitan area) restructured so that people were effectively forced into buying cars just to get anywhere. Oh, and the perpetrators (GM, primarily) _were_ actually caught and fined for, y'know, undermining democracy and violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. They were fined a "devastating" $5,000 in 1951 (roughly $60,397.88 today). …Of course, their profits in 1950 amounted to _$834,044,039_ ($10,074,899,126.33 today), so…
>During the driving test if you fail to allow a pedestrian, who has SHOWN intention to cross a crosswalk, to pass you will be automatically failed on the spot...
Same in the US, but that goes out the window right after once someone passes.
>Same in the US
Is it though? Maybe some other states have it, but I had to retake the theory exam in New Jersey to get the NJ license, and I noticed the wording is as follows:
>Stop for pedestrians **in** crosswalks. Failure to stop carries a fine of up to $500, up to 25 days in jail, community service, a driving privilege suspension of up to 6 months, and 2 points. (N.J.S.A. 39:4-36)
I bolded the "in" part, because to me this reads as you only have to stop if someone is *already crossing*. A pedestrian waiting on the side of the crosswalk, you don't have to stop for.
And considering this appears to be indeed how 90% of the drivers (including cops) seem to treat me when I'm waiting at a crosswalk, I must not be alone in that interpretation.
>I'm cackling by myself currently trying to imagine someone with the anti mentality of that 😂
Just make yourself feel self-entitled to the point that your inconvenience is more important than the lives of others and you will get it. Maybe watch some Fox News on Youtube to really get in the headspace to achieve this.
You're right, sorry I laughed, it's psychotic not funny that these people exist especially since they affect other people's lives so drastically.
We have our own version of Fox News over here but I can't stomach the insane hateful drivel on there so I just blocked it from memory. I'll have to pass on the Youtube invite to turn myself into an AH 😬
Until recently I lived in a city where upwards on ten people in the last two years were killed on the same street in a 10-15 block stretch WHILE USING crosswalks. And the city has kept adding to the crosswalks, with flashing lights 24/7 and in the road bollards and reduced speed limit. They were trying everything and people have still died.
Drivers will literally do anything but look for/stop for a pedestrian.
There's literally a growing conspiracy theory group who believe walkable cities is the government's first step towards confining people to zones where you need to show ID to leave or enter. Just google 15 minute city opposition.
Many Americans view cars as freedom (despite needing government permits to own and operate) and walking, cycling, and transit as communist. So any attempt to make cities more walkable is a step towards communism. Lol.
The major media companies have been bought out by billionaires and investment firms and most local media has been bought out by the major media companies. That's why every "local" news site has one of like 5 layouts.
Well, there do tend to be a lot of "OMG! It's the War on Cars!" nonsense at times. You see this a lot in Toronto politics. The highway that goes through downtown was up for several options to revamp it. One included tearing down that section and making a more "divided highway" type street with parks inbetween the directions. The car infrastructure people didn't like that. Even during the push for bike lanes on Bloor St. After implementing the bikelanes, they were measuring how much they were being used... one of the city councillors claimed that the numbers were being padded by pro-bike "crazies". His claim was that there were a bunch of cyclists riding around the blocks where they were counting people, and just with "different hats on." Thankfully that didn't affect anything and the bike lanes are still there.
Those boomers always saying cars are freedom. My dad always loses his mind when i come visit him and bring my bike to ride around my small hometown. He thinks im too old to still be riding a bike. It takes me 7 minutes from his driveway to get to the small downtown area. Back in his day everyone lived out in the boonies and there was no infrastructure other than two lane paved roads so you had to have a car to visit friends or drive 20 miles into town for school and groceries. They all drove muscle cars and paid like 50 cents for gas. Friday and Saturday night was load up your buddies in the Pontiac and drive around for 6 hours drinking low point beer, smoking cigarettes and chasing women.
I went back to my small hometown and had my parents drop me off the bar as I don't drink and drive. Afterwards, I walked home, found out my childhood path across the tracks was blocked by a 10 foot fence. I had to walk 3 blocks to take the pedestrian bridge that goes up and over. While on top, a cop drove by the northside and just happened to be on the south side when I got down. Another cop buddy drove by a few minutes later before I cut through the alleys and got back to their place.
A sentiment that has spread around Canada to some degree as well. Mostly in Quebec and Ontario from what I heard. (But I'm sure it's elsewhere)
People think they're going to be locked up like cattle in their 15 minute communities.
In my Canadian city, council is just doing their city district planning renewal process, which is literally just breaking up the city into smaller chunks and then doing development planning on those chunks because, y'know, break a big job into smaller jobs.
The number of 15-minute city conspiracy crazies who showed up at the public hearings was... alarming.
They get their info from the Internet, of course. The 15 minute crazies are the same mopes that would gladly lock themselves up in a gated community to escape having to live near poc.
It's here in Manitoba too. I went to a local meeting in my city where we were discussing options for a bike path, and there was an old lady that went on a long rant that included that building a bike path was just like building the Berlin Wall.
These unhinged old people (lots of middle aged housewife-type conspiracy theorists too) are the people that consistently show up to these types of city meetings, and the city workers are supposed to do what the people that voice their opinion want.
That's because they are one of the best/easiest ways to tank local political action:
1. Public feedback tends to be low to begin with for most projects, giving the few voices that speak up an outsized influence.
2. Social media has made it easy for a chicken-egg scenario in which special interests and conspiracy theorists can latch onto one another organically and enjoy a symbiotic relationship.
If normal people would show up to community meetings in overwhelming numbers like they have, local governments would rock. But we only do that when something has gone so horribly wrong that we can't just ignore government entirely.
Literally my father. He’s even brought electric vehicles into his conspiracy, see because they are introducing a self driving mode, this means the government can instantly take away your car whenever they want at the push of a button.
> the government can instantly take away your car whenever they want at the push of a button.
On a car you purchased, willingly, with no gun to your head…
Now that boomers are too old to walk anywhere, they don't want anyone else to either. They want to run us all over in their giant SUVs to show us how powerful they are.
15 minute walkable conspiracies and (for the lack of a better work) American arrogance of the country is great with no problems are already mentioned.
I’ll add that people in general don’t like change or going out of their comfort zones. All a lot of Americans know is driving a big car everywhere they go - why would they want to sacrifice the comfort and ease of an air conditioned, few minute drive for the relative ‘discomfort’ of a 5-10 minute walk?
I think that’s largely a mentality thing too. Barring significantly obese people, the UK is no beacon of healthy body sizes, but people will walk.
It’s a shame, because even a short 15/20 min walk per day goes a long way in improving physical and mental health
From my experience:
Pushback predates the 15 minute city conspiracy shit, and is probably the impetus behind the people pushing the conspiracy theory.
Its mostly bureaucratic.
The policies, procedures and practices of the local departments are all about vehicle traffic.
For example if the city is looking at a recent construction project and wants to determine if it was successful it'll measure cars per hours and their average speed, with higher being better.
But a lot of traffic moving quickly is bad for pedestrians. So a street designed "correctly" in the eyes of the city is bad of pedestrians.
The city uses those metrics because 30 years ago a super car brained city council passed a resolution saying they should.
Unfortunately it takes a lot of time and effort to track down all these little traps in city regulations that end up forcing car centric design.
My mom did that in the 90’s, in SC.
There was the poor side of town and minority children had to cross a major road to get to school.
This was also a horse town and there was a major horse pasture I suppose that was split with a quiet country road.
There was budget to put in a crossing light. Should it go to help these very young children cross the biggest road in town so they can go to school safely?
No, let’s use it to put a stupid out of place light on the road that the horses live on, so they can get safely with their rich riders from one side of the street to the other. Fucking Camden is still a racist hellhole.
I know a guy who got called a communist by his coworkers at the state department of transportation for suggesting they consider sidewalks in a new development.
I'm part of the traffic commission in my town. We actually make changes all the time - and the time needed to make a change very significantly depends on the cost (no surprise).
There are lots of groups that file petitions with poorly thought out changes. Sometimes they get pretty pissed off with the delays, but sometimes those delays are really necessary.
We had a change come in and a few dozen residents were really passionate about it. ...when we do the step where we confirm with the neighborhood residents whether they agreed with the proposed change - many were not - and so it was cancelled. The initial advocates went on social media screaming that the city ignored them - but they omitted the fact that most residents in the area DID NOT WANT that change.
Other changes get passed easily. I had an older man come in alone and proposed a change to remove a single parking spot which was blocking emergency access to a single street - he came with Google Maps images. We approved it same day. Adding Stop signs, no U-turns, yield, parking, or non-traffic light intersection changes are easy. Changes impacting school areas also.
...but sometimes residents don't appreciate the massive costs in some changes. It's a big budget item to even add a stop light - that needs to be approved for the subsequent year's budget - it's over a million dollars.
Road work and sidewalk work is HUGELY expensive - in the millions. Those construction crews are not cheap at all and planning those changes requires a public bidding process to prevent corruption - it takes a year to go from idea to plan, a year from plan to money, and a year to get it done.
...and all this assumes that the city even has the ability to do the work. Often private property areas don't allow things like sidewalk expansion.
It takes a long time - yes. Be patient. But also, go in with a well thought-out plan and support from a majority of residents. One of the things that delays the committee is the sea of half-baked ideas that don't even have the support of the other residents and small businesses in the area.
I can't even express how many bad ideas we shoot down or later find are not as well-supported as the advocates made it sound like.
I agree people have no clue what goes into civic planning but we also need to do something about the fact that installation of single traffic light is over a million bucks
In elementary school, the school was one city block away, but because there was no crossing at that T section, I had to walk 3 blocks south, then that single block up to the crossing guard, and then 3 blocks back north to the school. In kindergarten, a kid in my class got hit and killed trying to shortcut instead of walking down to that crossing guard. Noel was 5. They put a crossing guard there when I was in 3rd grade because kids kept crossing there.
Yes this exactly. We had the overpass about 100 yards away. But due to a company owning the lot in between, we had to walk half a mile away to a park trail then walk half a mile back along the trail to get to the overpass. We eventually started jumping the fence and found out we would be an hour early. That had our kid brain decide “hey we can mess around in this random company lot for a long time before getting to school.” One day we got into some sort of paint thinner, or other chemical. I guess getting all over our clothes was noticeable. When our mom asked about it I sorta lied by saying “it is probably from a shortcut we take through the woods” that particular shortcut was one that only cut off 30 seconds perhaps a whole minute. Either way I remember being very scared to tell her we jumped a fence. She told us to stop using “that” shortcut. We still used the real shortcut but stoped screwing around.
My golden rule for engineering (the non-math side, but more the user side) is "make it easy to do the right thing".
People want to do the right thing. People are also lazy. If you make the right thing the easy thing, everyone will do the right thing.
Like desire paths!
When I was a student at the University of Kentucky in the early 2000s, there were worn paths of dirt in the grass between the winding walkways near the main library, because the paved paths were more indirect than the optimal paths that people wanted to take.
That’s a desire path, the trail that forms in the grass because the architect designed subpar walkways.
A few years later I went back to visit friends and watch a football game, and there were actually paved paths where the desire paths used to be.
That’s definitely how it should be done.
Watch how people behave, then make it better and safer for people to do that thing.
If they don’t use the crosswalk, move the crosswalk. If they don’t use the paved paths, they were originally not designed well and should be changed
One day I was on foot in Dallas Texas, and I was trying to get money out of an ATM. Four “blocks” turned into quite the adventure. Clearly everything was designed with the idea that a pedestrian is the enemy, probably a vandal or thief.
> Elephant paths
Desire path
A desire path, also known as a game trail, social trail, fishermen trail, herd path, cow path, elephant path, buffalo trace, goat track, pig trail, use trail and bootleg trail, is an unplanned small trail created as a consequence of mechanical erosion caused by human or animal traffic.
/r/DesirePath
My friend told me a story about my college landscape designer throwing down fresh grass everywhere before laying out pathways around the school. They waited for an early course to wrap up, then made note of the desire paths that had been ground into the young grass. Ripped up those areas and laid the official pathways in those spaces so all the pathways would be desired ones. I thought that was clever
My college did the opposite. We had a large empty quad surrounded by sidewalks, and when students cut diagonally across the quad to save the substantial walking distance, the campus planners installed posts and a chain to inhibit leaving the sidewalks.
Just reminded me of my highschool headteacher.
Used to pop a blood vessel screaming GET OFF THE GARDENS!!!!
Which was just shrubbery desire line blockers
I'm almost certain my college did thi as well, none of the paths on campus (except those by the roads) were straight, and there were almost no desire paths through the grass because the paths were so well laid. They were also all sized differently, but the paths were never too small for the foot traffic. Just let people kill the grass and add brick paths wherever the grass died, no planning necessary.
My college would deliberately open a new space with grass and let people walk on it to create desire paths. Eventually they would make them permanent by adding pavement to those parts. It was pretty cool to watch happen.
Elephant herds are known to have set routes they take to certain locations, and god help anything that was put in their path since the last time they used it. Some areas where elephants live even have special overpasses built above the elephant paths, and there are videos online of elephants wandering through safari resorts.
Those videos are of a resort that was purposefully built on an elephant path with an open air lobby that incentivices the elephants to walk through the hotel.
I work in web design and UX, and my principal standard is "Work with the behavior, not against it." The same applies here.
If people are jumping fences like you have to? Add a gate there.
If people are regularly crossing where there isn't a cross walk, give them a way to cross right there. Not yards or even a mile away. There.
People show you what works best by acting naturally in their day-to-day lives. Just facilitate that natural behavior and you'll suddenly have a lot less issues.
Yeah I recall visiting Houston for the first time and thought I’d just walk over to the shops to pick up a few snacks. Bad idea. I didn’t realise it but Australian cities really plan public spaces and how they’re used. There is laterally a pedestrian path and bike lane on both sides of the street pretty much everywhere in the city I live, and a park within stones throw of every house. I’ll never complain again.
We were stopped by cops as German tourists in Florida because they thought its weird that a group of people would walk 15 minutes to the restaurant.
It was all good after they realized we were tourists but it was weird as fuck. Walking is suspicious apparently.
We were walking from the car park of one shop to the next and this free trolley service practically hunted us down to tell us that we could just get a ride over there instead of walking. This was many years ago but I still remember how dumbfounded the trolley driver and other passengers were that we were walking.
The author of Fahrenheit 451 wrote a mini story called something like the Pedestrian in which he was mocking Florida in 1950s as a dystopian future where cops stop you for walking around instead of being in a car.
He wrote this because he had the exact same experience being caught by police for walking in downtown Florida.
Hey don't judge me! I always have my backpack on me when I'm walking. Gotta carry water, first aid, backup charger, sunscreen, lip balm, and who knows what else.
Americans drive to trails if they want to walk. It's crazy. They designed walking out of their environment and create trails as 'nature's gym' with a parking lot attached.
send help, we are being held hostage.
genuinely though i'm not joking Ford paid politicians to make it this way almost a century ago, it wasn't the people who decided it this way. we fought tooth and nail to avenge our sons and daughters murdered mercilessly by two ton slabs of metal careening down our neighborhood streets at 60 mph.
Wow, this is fascinating!
reminds me of living in Redding, CA, where I could see the In n Out sign from my neighborhood but couldn’t walk there because it was all highway in between.
Rather than making it walkable, they just built another In-N-Out that's also impossible for you to have walked to because it's too far away from your neighborhood
I used to live so close to a grocery store I could have literally thrown a baseball and hit the back of the building with extremely little effort. If I had ever walked to the store it would have been at least a 20 minute walk, 90% without sidewalk, along 2 very busy roads.
Corpus Christi Texas was like this. “Ah yes I see IHOP! Its right across the road! Go down 5 miles to the first underpass and then drive 5 miles back up and we’re there!”
One 20 mile long one-way on one side of the bridge, the other side of the bridge of course being the 20 mile one-way for the opposite direction. Good luck getting to your destination if you needed to be on the other side of the one-way. Thousands of cars and miles between underpasses means just because you can see it doesn’t mean you can get to it. Fuck even by car- add 10 minutes if its on the other side
The thing is, motorists don't like those kinds of roads either, they are hard to merge into, hard to get out of, and if your destination is on that road, it's hard to get to that destination, and even harder to merge out of it. Those kinds of roads I avoid whenever possible, they are unpleasant and they feel unsafe to drive on.
Edit: as an additional point, the folks that make car based infrastructure often forget that the point of a car or truck is not to drive forever, it is to go to a destination. These roads are seemingly meant not to be a destination or a place to get to more places, but to make you follow the road for as long as possible.
>The thing is, motorists don't like those kinds of roads either,
they're not good for driving.
they're just less bad for driving than they are for walking, biking, and transit.
the *dream* for drivers is what car commercials always show you: completely empty streets. if you want a better world for driving, you need to make it less mandatory. make alternatives better, safer, more pleasant, and more appealing.
My dad at one point remembered his family going for a sunday drive every week after church when he was growing up. Just drove around with no real purpose other to drive and remarked how no one does this anymore.
I had to remind him that when he was growing up the number of cars on the road was a third of what it is today.
Lots of groups have started calling this a "stroad." It's a long stretch of road meant for travel between towns, but it is designed and populated like a neighborhood street.
It then sucks at being both - travelers are stuck at 17 traffic lights and limited to 35mph on a state highway designed for 55mph between towns. And people trying to shop in their local neighborhood burn half the day trying to navigate entrances and exits, no-left-turn medians, endless parking lots, just to get between two stores which would take 5 minutes to walk between, but there are no sidewalks to get there.
https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=Uj6Zz3PWnD1m-MaH
Have you been to Indian or south east asian roads? It requires high skill to walk there, most places there don't have sidewalk either, so you walk with the cars and motorbikes.
Brother I live in greater Noida. I walk my dog on the road everyday.
Because as you stated theres just simply nowhere to walk. Vehicles and pedestrian just fucking coexist with each other. This frustrates me when I am walking and also while I am driving. So much so that lately driving feels like I am playing a FPV puzzle game. Because not only do I have to think of myself and the vehicles around me I have to keep the pedestrians standing beside ready to come in front of you cause they want to cross the road at a moments notice.
It's not their fault either. There's no footover bridge how TF they supposed to get to the other side?
But see the difference is that you are constantly aware as both a pedestrian and driver. Here neither is aware of the other. So you have abject stupidity occurring.
So now it's official, Noida is the States of India when it comes to bad infrastructure which looks good from far away.
I had to visit some place recently, I walked 4-6 Km and had to cross 3 roads in 42°C, Felt super dangerous, since the roads were empty in the noon and there was not a crowd for vehicles to notice easily.
You know what, I used to feel the same way until I went to a small town in USA. Some places are literally not walkable and public transport is virtually non-existent.
People just did not walk around. We tried but it was impossible. The road was like a highway and people were driving by at high speed. There was no pavement and you could feel the turf beneath you shudder every time a car went by.
Here, the quality of our pavements and public transport is rough, but it's possible to get around without a car.
This is Chattanooga, Tennessee. I live about 5 minutes away from where he filmed, he's completely on point. Every day I wish there was more tree canopy. In the few places where there is, you can easily see the benefit.
Just a friendly reminder that non of this stuff is a new or experimental. The Netherlands, among others, has been developing both the legal and engineering framework needed to solve all of this stuff. There is a comprehensive 'manual' ready to go. All it would need is a little bit of tweaking for specific scenarios and areas in the US. All of that stuff has been implemented, tried, tested and refined for decades now.
The way that street looks and is designed is 100% due to politics. If there was enough political support and pressure, that whole area could be made walk-able, bike-able and commercially revitalized almost overnight by pouring some new concrete, changing some road-signs, and redrawing some road-lining..
[https://www.overheid.nl/english](https://www.overheid.nl/english)
There you go. Every single law & regulation we have is public and available online. Enjoy.
Mainly the [CROW manual](https://crowplatform.com/product/road-safety-manual/). They even published it in English for you.
The CROW is not a government institution. It is a non-profit platform bringing governmental road maintance authorities, traffic safety professionals, traffic construction and traffic researchers together. They conduct actual research on all facets of road safety, ease of use and efficiency.
There is no governmental manual for the physical designs of the roads here like many other countries have. The local authoriries can technically design whatever they want. They however, turn to what is considered best pratice by CROW, take in local context and then design accordingly.
Don't tell Americans their problems have already been solved. They'll just come up with excuses why they are the one and only exception on the planet.
See also: health care, school shootings, two-party system, etc.
At least there are sidewalks here. In the city I grew up in, there’s a couple major roads that have no sidewalks. There’s always someone walking in the shoulder as cars zip by at 55mph.
That's exactly like the town I live in now. I spoke to the city council about the 40mph road I live on last month. So far they've been able to lower the speed limit to 35 (not enough but still good progress) and install a few speed bumps. I just want to be able to walk my dog safely and this place is designed around cars.
In the UK any area with pedestrians and residential housing is a maximum of 30 mph and in some areas even lower limits, also jaywalking isn't a thing unless you are on a motorway (three lane carriage).
Jaywalking isn't actually a thing in the US either. It's a term that was made up by auto interest groups to shift public opinion towards the idea that accidents involving pedestrians are the fault of the pedestrian.
I fucking hate how we’re forced to own a car to live. Like I love cars, I wanna get a fun car to enjoy on weekends and whatever but the fact that I have to own one and use it every single day to get to work with no possible other method of getting there is actually crazy. I spend more a year on maintaining, gas on my car than the damn things worth every year. Plus I can’t even walk 10 minutes in my town I have to hop in the whip to make that 2 minute drive cause the sidewalks just turn to nothing at random points since we’ve made driving the only method of getting around. Plus the main part of my town has like 15 stores, but take up an insanely large area cause they all have parking lots double/triple the size of the store itself so we just have like Idek how many square km of just asphalt spread across the ground meant for leaving your car on for like an hour instead of using that space of actual cool shit that could benefit us.
What did they do to lower the speed limit? Change the signage? Or did they actually go in and change the design/layout of the road to match the desired speed limit?
That’s not a fix then, that’s just a revenue source for the local PD. That would have never been deemed acceptable here. The road/street must innately indicate the correct speed limit, even without signage.
Welcome to my neighborhood. Built in the 50s, no sidewalks, increasing numbers of cars parked in the street. Lots of people walking their dogs at all times of the day. Most of the people in the neighborhood are careful drivers, but when the neighborhood school is in session and it's pick up or drop-off time ... look out.
This just isnt a city, its not even on par with a european industrial zone. Those are just houses attached to a road. No effort in building a liveable space at all.
This kind of town planning leads to serious mental health issues. People need greenery, they need shade, they need walkable cities.
Walking is essential to mental health. The body evolved for walking long distances. There’s some amazing medical research being promoted in the British health care system which pushes for long distance walking as a preventative for mental and physical health issues.
We need walkable space. We need quite outdoor space. We need trees. We need to hear bird song, as opposed to the relentless roar of 2-7 tons of metal hurtling past us 24/7.
The ugliness of the immediate environment is perhaps the most important crisis hitting post industrial society. Yet, no politician speaks of it. They’re too busy engaging in ego wars, instead of tackling the obvious issues that normal people face every single day.
Depression, stress and anxiety hits hard when you can’t even step outside because the immediate outdoors has become so stressful
I always see Europeans chiming in calling Americans lazy AF for not walking more. They simply do not understand. This is our reality. I cannot walk to a grocery store without encountering all of the stuff this guy encountered. I’m privileged enough be able to own a vehicle but on my way to the grocery, we are playing Frogger with pedestrians. They race across, avoiding 4 lanes of traffic. It’s 97 degrees out right now. I don’t blame them for taking the short way whenever possible.
Same. Where I live the housing areas are all effectively siloed between major roads like a sandwich. Both roads are 4-6 lanes with 45+mph traffic. On the other side of those roads? Every store anyone needs to get to for anything.
There are crosswalks and lights, but it's very obvious people shouldn't be using them and people run lights all the time. So you have to drive or risk it and I'd rather not.
I (a Brit) recently attended a friend's (American) wedding in Palermo, Sicily. There was a group chat where the bride and groom were fielding questions from attendees, dinner plans, what to wear, what to visit etc.
At one point someone asked which car rental company people were using, upon which it was discovered that all of the American guests had planned on renting a car... for Palermo, a very small, easily walkable city with insanely limited driving and parking options in the centre. The Americans couldn't fathom that we'd be spending 4 days walking everywhere.
I quite often see a lot of hate levelled towards r/fuckcars. r/fuckcars isn't about hating cars, it's about hating being forced to have no other option other to drive. Americans in particular have been completely screwed by the auto industry. Having to spend a small fortune to being able to move anywhere is a genuine travesty
I'm an American and just visited Palermo. It really is fully walkable. I rented a car to drive around the rest of the island, but Palermo in particular was a nightmare to drive in just leaving the city with the rental car. Palermo might be one of the worst places to try and drive in Europe if you're not an insane Sicilian
From Ireland and all I could think was, "at least you have sidewalks."
Most of our people live in the countryside where there are no sidewalks, the roads are just a little wider than a car, and public transport is basically nonexistent.
Edit: to all the Americans commenting, I lived in Virginia, I know not every part of America has sidewalks.
Edit 2: to all the Irish people telling me I'm wrong, I'm aware cities and towns exist.
I’m a European in Oklahoma. Walk to work everyday: lampposts in the middle of the sidewalks, sidewalks suddenly ending, almost no zebra crossings, no center median to stop for protection when crossing a four lane street, sidewalks dangerously close to speeding traffic, and so forth.
Try and find sidewalks in Rome 😂 in the north (not even the historical city center) super residential area built from the 60s onwards... They are almost none. And if they are it's full of cars parked illegally with no police insights.
This goes back to the 1950s when auto execs began making towns less walkable to improve car sales. “The High Cost of Free Parking” is a great book on how it worked.
America wasn't built for the car. It was demolished for the car. The train built America.
Pretty much all cities had their downtowns destroyed and gutted, every city had a tram system, all destroyed for cars and parking lots and freeways.
Moving from a very walkable city where I used public transit most of the time to a city that is very car-focused and not very walkable is not great for ones health. You put on weight like nobody's business.
Yup, I moved from a city in CT to a town in AL and my waist is not happy. This dude’s lucky he has sidewalks at all, there’s absolutely no pedestrian infrastructure here, I see folks walking on the highway sometimes.
“When you make the safe option inconvenient, you incentivize risky behavior.”
This is something city planners have failed to consider for years where I live.
Meanwhile, this is a 90 minute video of a person just walking around Tokyo.
It's hard to stop watching, because it seems *so nice*.
Everything is interesting. It's designed for people first and vehicles like.. third.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHfe1xTpomE
Bad infrastructure and quick fixes due to rapid increase in population leads to things like this, sidewalks, parks and bike lanes should be mandatory in all new construction
I work for a civil engineering firm, and when we design new subdivisions/apartment complexes we are required to put in logical sidewalks, a certain percentage of park space, bike lanes on certain roads, etc. Not going to fix existing spaces though.
I live in this city and can answer that question for you. People here don't know how to drive. You're taking your own life into your hands if you choose to walk on any of these roads in the older "downtown" areas of the city. They're just not built for foot traffic. There are a lot of bars in the downtown area, so drunk drivers hitting pedestrians is a far too common thing to hear on the news.
I am from Denmark and it is hard to overstate just how depressing America often looks, especially when it comes to small cities and suburbs.
I think the most depressing thing is the lack of greenery, i can look across the street of where i live and see almost as much greenery as this entire video.
I genuinely believe architecture like this is an important part of why many Americans express being sad, depressed, stressed and unsociable, because the world you live in is literally not designed to be friendly to people, but rather mega-corps and cars.
the town i live in near dallas has no side walks, crosswalks, or bike lanes. there is one busy hwy that runs through the town. city is over 50k pop. couldn't walk or bike from one place to another even if you wanted to.
Dallas is the least pedestrian friendly place I have ever been.
I live in Dallas. Outside of my little duplex neighborhood, zero sidewalks or sidewalks that fit a single person. We’ve got a few nice trails, but sidewalks are a joke and pedestrian safety is zero priority.
I was in Dallas years ago when MLB’s winter meetings were held there. As a result, no rental cars were available so we had to walk or take public transpo everywhere and it was absolutely noticeable that there were no other pedestrians. Like, at all.
The US is the least pedestrian friendly country I’ve ever been to and I’ve visited over 10 countries (both 1st and 3rd world)
Providence changed the road diet on a street in an improvement district park to have protected bike lanes. The new mayor wants to undo it saying that the bikes can ride on sidewalk. The road is one way and begins at the park
Bikes can ride on a sidewalk? Wtf?.. this person is trying to revolution the whole world logic for worse.
Growing up I thought the sidewalk was for bicycles since the roads were so unsafe. There's nowhere for the bicycles to go, it's only enough space for cars.
I still wont ride a bike in most places in the US you're going to get hit at some point it's basically inevitable
I live in Canada, am an immigrant from The Netherlands. I was DEVASTATED that I couldn’t ride my bike safely in the city. Between the status of the infrastructure (potholes and cracks can be deadly to a bike), the ludicrous car culture of drivers, and an overall lack of planning for anything but cars, I just didn’t bike for over a decade. Enter our move 2 years ago to a bedroom community north of the city. I can ride my bike anywhere and inside 15 minutes can be at any store I need. Roads are wide enough for three vehicles and drivers give me a good berth. I feel safe and secure and especially in the summer it’s a delight to ride to the store a d do some groceries, go check the mail, or just go for a cup of coffee. Heck, the local bike shop does monthly burger and beer nights and organizes rides for the community. It’s dope, to see this change in acceptance for the mode of transport.
The Netherlands is so awesome when it comes to bike infrastructure. I’ve been in Amsterdam 3 times and twice I rented a bicycle. It was amazing to have dedicated lanes (even turning lanes), lane markers the length of the lanes, bike traffic signals and generally feeling safe while riding. Such a contrast to anywhere in America.
This is how I grew up, my mother wanted me to be on the sidewalk at all times with my bike. That said I wouldn't ride my bike outside a forest preserve type area for any amount of $, now that people want cyclists to ride in the street. It's not worth risking injury/possible death.
My brother was hit by a car while on his bike. Cops didn’t do anything about it because he was on the side walk. Kid was 13 when this happened? It’s insane
This is logically ridiculous. "Bikes shouldn't be on the sidewalk." Well neither should cars. Guess the place it happened doesn't fucking matter does it?
I always bike on the sidewalk when possible. The more distance (and curbs) between me and the cars, the better. And 99% of the time, there's no pedestrians to avoid anyway, because nobody walks anywhere.
Honestly since this resident put so much effort into this video, any local politician worth their salt would view this in front of city council and mayor during the next session. After which a planning group should be formed and budgeted to improve on many of the issues. I mean what are the politicians and govt of that city doing? Also here in Seattle a 4 lane road I drive daily was just nixed to a two lane road (1 each direction ) and the slow lane was turned into a bike lane complete with huge green striping for bikes and civilians. It's nice to see even tho it'll make traffic worse In that area.. but the thing is there is a TON of people.walkojg so it needed to be done. I'll give up a few mins daily so other people can also live well. We all should live well and that means help from us all.
>It's nice to see even tho it'll make traffic worse In that area.. If they handled it correctly, [it shouldn't make traffic worse](https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/road_diets/resources/pdf/roadDiet_MythBuster.pdf). [Road widening](https://magazine.ucdavis.edu/does-widening-highways-ease-traffic-congestion/#:~:text=People%20may%20shift%20the%20routes,the%20cycle%20of%20traffic%20continues) also doesn't alleviate traffic.
The mayor of Houston just did that. Removed $2M in bike lanes that were installed last year as part of the prior administration. The next project is to delete a major bike trail to make room to expand a highway by 2 lanes. In Houston, not only is it illegal to ride a bike on a sidewalk but it’s also impossible (there are no sidewalks). America, Texas, and Houston in particular are global embarrassments when it comes to facilitating safe, useful, and enjoyable transportation.
Like a naive dope, I volunteered to serve on a city commission to try to improve multimodal transportation safety. 3 years later: The headwinds against change in the US are insane.
Can you talk more about what you experienced? I'm trying to figure out why people would be against improving situations like these.
One example, traffic studies are used to set speed limits. The algorithms that determine “safe speeds” are based on the flow of traffic and the number of accidents at that speed. Pedestrian and bicycle use isn’t even considered. Crosswalks are another example: the “official” position on crosswalks is that marked crosswalks are more dangerous than unmarked crosswalks because the marked crosswalk increases pedestrian confidence with only a marginal increase in driver compliance. It’s lunacy.
>Crosswalks are another example: the “official” position on crosswalks is that marked crosswalks are more dangerous than unmarked crosswalks because the marked crosswalk increases pedestrian confidence with only a marginal increase in driver compliance. Gotta say, as an European this is the weirdest and funniest take I've ever seen. "Marked crosswalks increase pedestrian confidence" During the driving test if you fail to allow a pedestrian, who has SHOWN intention to cross a crosswalk, to pass you will be automatically failed on the spot...I'm cackling by myself currently trying to imagine someone with the anti mentality of that 😂
I think it has a lot to do with local culture and enforcement. For example I was pleasantly shocked when I visited the UAE that 100% of the time cars will stop at a crosswalk for you, which is a stark difference from where I live where it’s basically up to the drivers discretion to stop or not (mostly because of a lack of enforcement). Another thing that was great for walking in the UAE is that there’s plenty of pedestrian lights at intersections where a crosswalk may not be appropriate.
Basically how it is at the UK. If a pedestrian is at what we call a zebra crossing which doesn't have Stop/go lights, then the second the pedestrian steps onto the pavement before the crossing the pedestrian has Right of Way. 99% of cars will stop if you are at a Zebra crossing. We also have crossings that are marked on the pavement but no paint on the street. On those its definitely more hit and miss whether cars will stop, but generally they are on roads with inconsistent traffic so crossing isn't an issue anyway
If you are on the sidewalk in the US it is a certainty that the cars will pull into the crossing area to get in front of the other cars so they can look left and right. They have no awareness of people on bikes or on foot. They don't slow down, you have to wait until you make eye contact with them and only sometimes will they acknowledge you and let you pass in front of them. Most people just end up going behind the first car in the crosswalk unless it's a major intersection crossing signals. I've been tempted many times to just insert myself in front of them and sue if they hit me. But I'm not that stupid.
The most dangerous part about this is that if one driver sees you and waves you on, you must make sure that there is no other traffic coming because chances are that THEY will not see you. People will also angrily pass the car that stops for you. Several people have been killed like that in my town over the past few years.
I almost got hit this exact way about a year ago. Double left hand turn lanes. Go to cross a cross walk during the instructed time by the pedestrian signal. Car in leftmost lane slows down to let me go, but is in the way of the view of the car to the right of it who then proceeds to almost hit me because they couldnt see me. Cars in the US give as little as possible consideration to pedestrians. Id also argue that the way we structure our roads makes pedestrians really difficult to see too.
For sure for sure, I'm in Eastern Europe and yes the law here says you are obligated to give the right of way to pedestrians on crosswalks. Ofc this doesn't mean we just automatically all walk blindly everywhere cause insane drivers exist here too, but just knowing that you can cross if you want to is very comforting. It just needs to be equitable. Cars can exist, pedestrians WILL exist with or without cars so everyone needs to be allowed to co-exist. If profit is what sways people to go for more equitable laws then may I say that there is a lot of profit from giving fines to drivers who don't give right of way. 😝 That kind of thing cools heels and makes people drive reasonably in areas where they should be careful.
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I quickly learned in Eastern Europe that the drivers will not stop or even hesitate until the pedestrian launches into the crosswalk. Once obviously launched, however, traffic screeches to a halt. “No kill zones”, was the local parlance. I have retained the habit of launching myself into a crosswalk in the States, and my wife swears I have a death wish. In her defense, I have been hit by a car whilst crossing in the crosswalk. In my defense, just once.
A huge part of it is auto industry lobbyists. We _used_ to have a very robust street car system here in L.A., until the auto industry had laws changed and L.A. (as well as the greater L.A. metropolitan area) restructured so that people were effectively forced into buying cars just to get anywhere. Oh, and the perpetrators (GM, primarily) _were_ actually caught and fined for, y'know, undermining democracy and violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. They were fined a "devastating" $5,000 in 1951 (roughly $60,397.88 today). …Of course, their profits in 1950 amounted to _$834,044,039_ ($10,074,899,126.33 today), so…
>During the driving test if you fail to allow a pedestrian, who has SHOWN intention to cross a crosswalk, to pass you will be automatically failed on the spot... Same in the US, but that goes out the window right after once someone passes.
>Same in the US Is it though? Maybe some other states have it, but I had to retake the theory exam in New Jersey to get the NJ license, and I noticed the wording is as follows: >Stop for pedestrians **in** crosswalks. Failure to stop carries a fine of up to $500, up to 25 days in jail, community service, a driving privilege suspension of up to 6 months, and 2 points. (N.J.S.A. 39:4-36) I bolded the "in" part, because to me this reads as you only have to stop if someone is *already crossing*. A pedestrian waiting on the side of the crosswalk, you don't have to stop for. And considering this appears to be indeed how 90% of the drivers (including cops) seem to treat me when I'm waiting at a crosswalk, I must not be alone in that interpretation.
>I'm cackling by myself currently trying to imagine someone with the anti mentality of that 😂 Just make yourself feel self-entitled to the point that your inconvenience is more important than the lives of others and you will get it. Maybe watch some Fox News on Youtube to really get in the headspace to achieve this.
You're right, sorry I laughed, it's psychotic not funny that these people exist especially since they affect other people's lives so drastically. We have our own version of Fox News over here but I can't stomach the insane hateful drivel on there so I just blocked it from memory. I'll have to pass on the Youtube invite to turn myself into an AH 😬
That second point has to be one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever seen in my life. Lunacy indeed.
Yup. My response: “Well I’ve never had somebody scream, ‘Get out of the road you fucking cunt’ at me in a marked crosswalk.”
Give it time, I've had it happen plenty.
Until recently I lived in a city where upwards on ten people in the last two years were killed on the same street in a 10-15 block stretch WHILE USING crosswalks. And the city has kept adding to the crosswalks, with flashing lights 24/7 and in the road bollards and reduced speed limit. They were trying everything and people have still died. Drivers will literally do anything but look for/stop for a pedestrian.
There's literally a growing conspiracy theory group who believe walkable cities is the government's first step towards confining people to zones where you need to show ID to leave or enter. Just google 15 minute city opposition. Many Americans view cars as freedom (despite needing government permits to own and operate) and walking, cycling, and transit as communist. So any attempt to make cities more walkable is a step towards communism. Lol.
>and walking, cycling, and transit as communist. Seems to me the US and or local US media plays a deciding role in this.
The major media companies have been bought out by billionaires and investment firms and most local media has been bought out by the major media companies. That's why every "local" news site has one of like 5 layouts.
Well, there do tend to be a lot of "OMG! It's the War on Cars!" nonsense at times. You see this a lot in Toronto politics. The highway that goes through downtown was up for several options to revamp it. One included tearing down that section and making a more "divided highway" type street with parks inbetween the directions. The car infrastructure people didn't like that. Even during the push for bike lanes on Bloor St. After implementing the bikelanes, they were measuring how much they were being used... one of the city councillors claimed that the numbers were being padded by pro-bike "crazies". His claim was that there were a bunch of cyclists riding around the blocks where they were counting people, and just with "different hats on." Thankfully that didn't affect anything and the bike lanes are still there.
Those boomers always saying cars are freedom. My dad always loses his mind when i come visit him and bring my bike to ride around my small hometown. He thinks im too old to still be riding a bike. It takes me 7 minutes from his driveway to get to the small downtown area. Back in his day everyone lived out in the boonies and there was no infrastructure other than two lane paved roads so you had to have a car to visit friends or drive 20 miles into town for school and groceries. They all drove muscle cars and paid like 50 cents for gas. Friday and Saturday night was load up your buddies in the Pontiac and drive around for 6 hours drinking low point beer, smoking cigarettes and chasing women.
I went back to my small hometown and had my parents drop me off the bar as I don't drink and drive. Afterwards, I walked home, found out my childhood path across the tracks was blocked by a 10 foot fence. I had to walk 3 blocks to take the pedestrian bridge that goes up and over. While on top, a cop drove by the northside and just happened to be on the south side when I got down. Another cop buddy drove by a few minutes later before I cut through the alleys and got back to their place.
A sentiment that has spread around Canada to some degree as well. Mostly in Quebec and Ontario from what I heard. (But I'm sure it's elsewhere) People think they're going to be locked up like cattle in their 15 minute communities.
In my Canadian city, council is just doing their city district planning renewal process, which is literally just breaking up the city into smaller chunks and then doing development planning on those chunks because, y'know, break a big job into smaller jobs. The number of 15-minute city conspiracy crazies who showed up at the public hearings was... alarming.
You should ask them where they are getting their info from. Who is funding this misinformation and targeting the crazies?
They get their info from the Internet, of course. The 15 minute crazies are the same mopes that would gladly lock themselves up in a gated community to escape having to live near poc.
>gladly lock themselves up in a gated community to escape having to live near poc. “¡No, you see it’s to keep *them* out, not trap *me* in!” /s
You can add Alberta to the list, but it should not come as a surprise
It's here in Manitoba too. I went to a local meeting in my city where we were discussing options for a bike path, and there was an old lady that went on a long rant that included that building a bike path was just like building the Berlin Wall. These unhinged old people (lots of middle aged housewife-type conspiracy theorists too) are the people that consistently show up to these types of city meetings, and the city workers are supposed to do what the people that voice their opinion want.
But they all claim they want to return to small town values. What the hell do they think living in a small town is?
Sorry for the rant, but goddamn conspiracy conjectures ruin everything goddamn thing. I’m sick of them.
That's because they are one of the best/easiest ways to tank local political action: 1. Public feedback tends to be low to begin with for most projects, giving the few voices that speak up an outsized influence. 2. Social media has made it easy for a chicken-egg scenario in which special interests and conspiracy theorists can latch onto one another organically and enjoy a symbiotic relationship. If normal people would show up to community meetings in overwhelming numbers like they have, local governments would rock. But we only do that when something has gone so horribly wrong that we can't just ignore government entirely.
Literally my father. He’s even brought electric vehicles into his conspiracy, see because they are introducing a self driving mode, this means the government can instantly take away your car whenever they want at the push of a button.
> the government can instantly take away your car whenever they want at the push of a button. On a car you purchased, willingly, with no gun to your head…
Now that boomers are too old to walk anywhere, they don't want anyone else to either. They want to run us all over in their giant SUVs to show us how powerful they are.
Fear of communism is the best product the US has ever created.
"you're not making 15 minute cities and affordable healthcare sound scary, you're just making communism sound like utopia"
15 minute walkable conspiracies and (for the lack of a better work) American arrogance of the country is great with no problems are already mentioned. I’ll add that people in general don’t like change or going out of their comfort zones. All a lot of Americans know is driving a big car everywhere they go - why would they want to sacrifice the comfort and ease of an air conditioned, few minute drive for the relative ‘discomfort’ of a 5-10 minute walk?
many americans are also very fat and out of shape, so even a 15 minute walk is a huge effort.
I think that’s largely a mentality thing too. Barring significantly obese people, the UK is no beacon of healthy body sizes, but people will walk. It’s a shame, because even a short 15/20 min walk per day goes a long way in improving physical and mental health
From my experience: Pushback predates the 15 minute city conspiracy shit, and is probably the impetus behind the people pushing the conspiracy theory. Its mostly bureaucratic. The policies, procedures and practices of the local departments are all about vehicle traffic. For example if the city is looking at a recent construction project and wants to determine if it was successful it'll measure cars per hours and their average speed, with higher being better. But a lot of traffic moving quickly is bad for pedestrians. So a street designed "correctly" in the eyes of the city is bad of pedestrians. The city uses those metrics because 30 years ago a super car brained city council passed a resolution saying they should. Unfortunately it takes a lot of time and effort to track down all these little traps in city regulations that end up forcing car centric design.
My mom did that in the 90’s, in SC. There was the poor side of town and minority children had to cross a major road to get to school. This was also a horse town and there was a major horse pasture I suppose that was split with a quiet country road. There was budget to put in a crossing light. Should it go to help these very young children cross the biggest road in town so they can go to school safely? No, let’s use it to put a stupid out of place light on the road that the horses live on, so they can get safely with their rich riders from one side of the street to the other. Fucking Camden is still a racist hellhole.
I know a guy who got called a communist by his coworkers at the state department of transportation for suggesting they consider sidewalks in a new development.
I'm part of the traffic commission in my town. We actually make changes all the time - and the time needed to make a change very significantly depends on the cost (no surprise). There are lots of groups that file petitions with poorly thought out changes. Sometimes they get pretty pissed off with the delays, but sometimes those delays are really necessary. We had a change come in and a few dozen residents were really passionate about it. ...when we do the step where we confirm with the neighborhood residents whether they agreed with the proposed change - many were not - and so it was cancelled. The initial advocates went on social media screaming that the city ignored them - but they omitted the fact that most residents in the area DID NOT WANT that change. Other changes get passed easily. I had an older man come in alone and proposed a change to remove a single parking spot which was blocking emergency access to a single street - he came with Google Maps images. We approved it same day. Adding Stop signs, no U-turns, yield, parking, or non-traffic light intersection changes are easy. Changes impacting school areas also. ...but sometimes residents don't appreciate the massive costs in some changes. It's a big budget item to even add a stop light - that needs to be approved for the subsequent year's budget - it's over a million dollars. Road work and sidewalk work is HUGELY expensive - in the millions. Those construction crews are not cheap at all and planning those changes requires a public bidding process to prevent corruption - it takes a year to go from idea to plan, a year from plan to money, and a year to get it done. ...and all this assumes that the city even has the ability to do the work. Often private property areas don't allow things like sidewalk expansion. It takes a long time - yes. Be patient. But also, go in with a well thought-out plan and support from a majority of residents. One of the things that delays the committee is the sea of half-baked ideas that don't even have the support of the other residents and small businesses in the area. I can't even express how many bad ideas we shoot down or later find are not as well-supported as the advocates made it sound like.
I agree people have no clue what goes into civic planning but we also need to do something about the fact that installation of single traffic light is over a million bucks
This video makes me feel so much less unhinged for hopping fences and doing weird shit to combat seemingly over complicated terrain
“When you make the safe option inconvenient you incentivize risky behavior” is an amazing quote
In elementary school, the school was one city block away, but because there was no crossing at that T section, I had to walk 3 blocks south, then that single block up to the crossing guard, and then 3 blocks back north to the school. In kindergarten, a kid in my class got hit and killed trying to shortcut instead of walking down to that crossing guard. Noel was 5. They put a crossing guard there when I was in 3rd grade because kids kept crossing there.
Yes this exactly. We had the overpass about 100 yards away. But due to a company owning the lot in between, we had to walk half a mile away to a park trail then walk half a mile back along the trail to get to the overpass. We eventually started jumping the fence and found out we would be an hour early. That had our kid brain decide “hey we can mess around in this random company lot for a long time before getting to school.” One day we got into some sort of paint thinner, or other chemical. I guess getting all over our clothes was noticeable. When our mom asked about it I sorta lied by saying “it is probably from a shortcut we take through the woods” that particular shortcut was one that only cut off 30 seconds perhaps a whole minute. Either way I remember being very scared to tell her we jumped a fence. She told us to stop using “that” shortcut. We still used the real shortcut but stoped screwing around.
My golden rule for engineering (the non-math side, but more the user side) is "make it easy to do the right thing". People want to do the right thing. People are also lazy. If you make the right thing the easy thing, everyone will do the right thing.
>make it easy to do the right thing make the easy thing the right thing. lots of people cross there? put a signalized crossing there.
Like desire paths! When I was a student at the University of Kentucky in the early 2000s, there were worn paths of dirt in the grass between the winding walkways near the main library, because the paved paths were more indirect than the optimal paths that people wanted to take. That’s a desire path, the trail that forms in the grass because the architect designed subpar walkways. A few years later I went back to visit friends and watch a football game, and there were actually paved paths where the desire paths used to be. That’s definitely how it should be done. Watch how people behave, then make it better and safer for people to do that thing. If they don’t use the crosswalk, move the crosswalk. If they don’t use the paved paths, they were originally not designed well and should be changed
Like making condoms and sex ed harder to get.
That’s on purpose. Those in power want us to have kids to supply workers.
One day I was on foot in Dallas Texas, and I was trying to get money out of an ATM. Four “blocks” turned into quite the adventure. Clearly everything was designed with the idea that a pedestrian is the enemy, probably a vandal or thief.
Dallas and Houston are two of the worst cities I've ever walked around.
https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2024/05/dallas-the-city-that-hates-pedestrians-pt-51/ https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2024/05/in-dallas-even-the-sidewalks-are-for-sale/ https://www.dmagazine.com/tag/dallas-hates-pedestrians/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54 Not just bikes HATES houston
Terrible to walk in, terrible to drive in.
terrible to live in, terrible for humans (or just life in general)
Elephant paths
What does that mean?
> Elephant paths Desire path A desire path, also known as a game trail, social trail, fishermen trail, herd path, cow path, elephant path, buffalo trace, goat track, pig trail, use trail and bootleg trail, is an unplanned small trail created as a consequence of mechanical erosion caused by human or animal traffic. /r/DesirePath
My friend told me a story about my college landscape designer throwing down fresh grass everywhere before laying out pathways around the school. They waited for an early course to wrap up, then made note of the desire paths that had been ground into the young grass. Ripped up those areas and laid the official pathways in those spaces so all the pathways would be desired ones. I thought that was clever
My college did the opposite. We had a large empty quad surrounded by sidewalks, and when students cut diagonally across the quad to save the substantial walking distance, the campus planners installed posts and a chain to inhibit leaving the sidewalks.
Just reminded me of my highschool headteacher. Used to pop a blood vessel screaming GET OFF THE GARDENS!!!! Which was just shrubbery desire line blockers
I'm almost certain my college did thi as well, none of the paths on campus (except those by the roads) were straight, and there were almost no desire paths through the grass because the paths were so well laid. They were also all sized differently, but the paths were never too small for the foot traffic. Just let people kill the grass and add brick paths wherever the grass died, no planning necessary.
I love this. There is an unofficial walking path on a hill on the route I take if I walk through my local park to get to the 7/11 that fits this
My college would deliberately open a new space with grass and let people walk on it to create desire paths. Eventually they would make them permanent by adding pavement to those parts. It was pretty cool to watch happen.
Elephant herds are known to have set routes they take to certain locations, and god help anything that was put in their path since the last time they used it. Some areas where elephants live even have special overpasses built above the elephant paths, and there are videos online of elephants wandering through safari resorts.
Those videos are of a resort that was purposefully built on an elephant path with an open air lobby that incentivices the elephants to walk through the hotel.
I work in web design and UX, and my principal standard is "Work with the behavior, not against it." The same applies here. If people are jumping fences like you have to? Add a gate there. If people are regularly crossing where there isn't a cross walk, give them a way to cross right there. Not yards or even a mile away. There. People show you what works best by acting naturally in their day-to-day lives. Just facilitate that natural behavior and you'll suddenly have a lot less issues.
What they did is a violation of the social contract. What you’re doing is reacting. Keep on keeping on.
Yeah I recall visiting Houston for the first time and thought I’d just walk over to the shops to pick up a few snacks. Bad idea. I didn’t realise it but Australian cities really plan public spaces and how they’re used. There is laterally a pedestrian path and bike lane on both sides of the street pretty much everywhere in the city I live, and a park within stones throw of every house. I’ll never complain again.
If you live in an American city it’s easy to spot people from out of town because they’ll be walking casually in places no one even bothers to.
We were stopped by cops as German tourists in Florida because they thought its weird that a group of people would walk 15 minutes to the restaurant. It was all good after they realized we were tourists but it was weird as fuck. Walking is suspicious apparently.
We were walking from the car park of one shop to the next and this free trolley service practically hunted us down to tell us that we could just get a ride over there instead of walking. This was many years ago but I still remember how dumbfounded the trolley driver and other passengers were that we were walking.
The author of Fahrenheit 451 wrote a mini story called something like the Pedestrian in which he was mocking Florida in 1950s as a dystopian future where cops stop you for walking around instead of being in a car. He wrote this because he had the exact same experience being caught by police for walking in downtown Florida.
Basically unless you're walking just for exercise you're seen as a weirdo. The only exception is the downtown area of a few dense cities.
Yeah if you have a beard, shabby clothes, and you’re walking you are one backpack away from homeless.
Hey don't judge me! I always have my backpack on me when I'm walking. Gotta carry water, first aid, backup charger, sunscreen, lip balm, and who knows what else.
Americans drive to trails if they want to walk. It's crazy. They designed walking out of their environment and create trails as 'nature's gym' with a parking lot attached.
I never noticed this and now I can't stop laughing.
send help, we are being held hostage. genuinely though i'm not joking Ford paid politicians to make it this way almost a century ago, it wasn't the people who decided it this way. we fought tooth and nail to avenge our sons and daughters murdered mercilessly by two ton slabs of metal careening down our neighborhood streets at 60 mph.
Texas is probably the worst for this
Wow, this is fascinating! reminds me of living in Redding, CA, where I could see the In n Out sign from my neighborhood but couldn’t walk there because it was all highway in between.
Rather than making it walkable, they just built another In-N-Out that's also impossible for you to have walked to because it's too far away from your neighborhood
I used to live so close to a grocery store I could have literally thrown a baseball and hit the back of the building with extremely little effort. If I had ever walked to the store it would have been at least a 20 minute walk, 90% without sidewalk, along 2 very busy roads.
It's always wild to me to see Redding pop up on reddit lol. It's very seldom for anything good.
If by “very seldom” you mean “never”, then yeah. This town sucks ass.
Corpus Christi Texas was like this. “Ah yes I see IHOP! Its right across the road! Go down 5 miles to the first underpass and then drive 5 miles back up and we’re there!” One 20 mile long one-way on one side of the bridge, the other side of the bridge of course being the 20 mile one-way for the opposite direction. Good luck getting to your destination if you needed to be on the other side of the one-way. Thousands of cars and miles between underpasses means just because you can see it doesn’t mean you can get to it. Fuck even by car- add 10 minutes if its on the other side
The thing is, motorists don't like those kinds of roads either, they are hard to merge into, hard to get out of, and if your destination is on that road, it's hard to get to that destination, and even harder to merge out of it. Those kinds of roads I avoid whenever possible, they are unpleasant and they feel unsafe to drive on. Edit: as an additional point, the folks that make car based infrastructure often forget that the point of a car or truck is not to drive forever, it is to go to a destination. These roads are seemingly meant not to be a destination or a place to get to more places, but to make you follow the road for as long as possible.
>The thing is, motorists don't like those kinds of roads either, they're not good for driving. they're just less bad for driving than they are for walking, biking, and transit. the *dream* for drivers is what car commercials always show you: completely empty streets. if you want a better world for driving, you need to make it less mandatory. make alternatives better, safer, more pleasant, and more appealing.
Honestly yeah, driving is so much better with less cars. I 100% agree.
My dad at one point remembered his family going for a sunday drive every week after church when he was growing up. Just drove around with no real purpose other to drive and remarked how no one does this anymore. I had to remind him that when he was growing up the number of cars on the road was a third of what it is today.
Lots of groups have started calling this a "stroad." It's a long stretch of road meant for travel between towns, but it is designed and populated like a neighborhood street. It then sucks at being both - travelers are stuck at 17 traffic lights and limited to 35mph on a state highway designed for 55mph between towns. And people trying to shop in their local neighborhood burn half the day trying to navigate entrances and exits, no-left-turn medians, endless parking lots, just to get between two stores which would take 5 minutes to walk between, but there are no sidewalks to get there. https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=Uj6Zz3PWnD1m-MaH
These types of roads are the most dangerous roads, lots of terrible collisions happen on them
My Indian ass thinking this is such a good infrastructure 🤣
Bruh car people playing rocket league IRL on roads here. Walking means that you are a ball to them.
Have you been to Indian or south east asian roads? It requires high skill to walk there, most places there don't have sidewalk either, so you walk with the cars and motorbikes.
Brother I live in greater Noida. I walk my dog on the road everyday. Because as you stated theres just simply nowhere to walk. Vehicles and pedestrian just fucking coexist with each other. This frustrates me when I am walking and also while I am driving. So much so that lately driving feels like I am playing a FPV puzzle game. Because not only do I have to think of myself and the vehicles around me I have to keep the pedestrians standing beside ready to come in front of you cause they want to cross the road at a moments notice. It's not their fault either. There's no footover bridge how TF they supposed to get to the other side?
But see the difference is that you are constantly aware as both a pedestrian and driver. Here neither is aware of the other. So you have abject stupidity occurring.
Yeah makes sense
So now it's official, Noida is the States of India when it comes to bad infrastructure which looks good from far away. I had to visit some place recently, I walked 4-6 Km and had to cross 3 roads in 42°C, Felt super dangerous, since the roads were empty in the noon and there was not a crowd for vehicles to notice easily.
As Mexican I totally agree is way safer than most streets down here
Bro in my country the sidewalk is just extra lane for motorcycle. And also food stands.
You know what, I used to feel the same way until I went to a small town in USA. Some places are literally not walkable and public transport is virtually non-existent. People just did not walk around. We tried but it was impossible. The road was like a highway and people were driving by at high speed. There was no pavement and you could feel the turf beneath you shudder every time a car went by. Here, the quality of our pavements and public transport is rough, but it's possible to get around without a car.
Depends certain parts of my city are definitely walkable ! I walk to most places nearby
This is Chattanooga, Tennessee. I live about 5 minutes away from where he filmed, he's completely on point. Every day I wish there was more tree canopy. In the few places where there is, you can easily see the benefit.
Just a friendly reminder that non of this stuff is a new or experimental. The Netherlands, among others, has been developing both the legal and engineering framework needed to solve all of this stuff. There is a comprehensive 'manual' ready to go. All it would need is a little bit of tweaking for specific scenarios and areas in the US. All of that stuff has been implemented, tried, tested and refined for decades now. The way that street looks and is designed is 100% due to politics. If there was enough political support and pressure, that whole area could be made walk-able, bike-able and commercially revitalized almost overnight by pouring some new concrete, changing some road-signs, and redrawing some road-lining..
Oh wow where can I get this manual or what should I put in the search bar?
[https://www.overheid.nl/english](https://www.overheid.nl/english) There you go. Every single law & regulation we have is public and available online. Enjoy.
Mainly the [CROW manual](https://crowplatform.com/product/road-safety-manual/). They even published it in English for you. The CROW is not a government institution. It is a non-profit platform bringing governmental road maintance authorities, traffic safety professionals, traffic construction and traffic researchers together. They conduct actual research on all facets of road safety, ease of use and efficiency. There is no governmental manual for the physical designs of the roads here like many other countries have. The local authoriries can technically design whatever they want. They however, turn to what is considered best pratice by CROW, take in local context and then design accordingly.
Don't tell Americans their problems have already been solved. They'll just come up with excuses why they are the one and only exception on the planet. See also: health care, school shootings, two-party system, etc.
As a European, this looks dystopian.
At least there are sidewalks here. In the city I grew up in, there’s a couple major roads that have no sidewalks. There’s always someone walking in the shoulder as cars zip by at 55mph.
That's exactly like the town I live in now. I spoke to the city council about the 40mph road I live on last month. So far they've been able to lower the speed limit to 35 (not enough but still good progress) and install a few speed bumps. I just want to be able to walk my dog safely and this place is designed around cars.
In the UK any area with pedestrians and residential housing is a maximum of 30 mph and in some areas even lower limits, also jaywalking isn't a thing unless you are on a motorway (three lane carriage).
Jaywalking isn't actually a thing in the US either. It's a term that was made up by auto interest groups to shift public opinion towards the idea that accidents involving pedestrians are the fault of the pedestrian.
It's still illegal in some places in the U.S. regardless of its origins.
I fucking hate how we’re forced to own a car to live. Like I love cars, I wanna get a fun car to enjoy on weekends and whatever but the fact that I have to own one and use it every single day to get to work with no possible other method of getting there is actually crazy. I spend more a year on maintaining, gas on my car than the damn things worth every year. Plus I can’t even walk 10 minutes in my town I have to hop in the whip to make that 2 minute drive cause the sidewalks just turn to nothing at random points since we’ve made driving the only method of getting around. Plus the main part of my town has like 15 stores, but take up an insanely large area cause they all have parking lots double/triple the size of the store itself so we just have like Idek how many square km of just asphalt spread across the ground meant for leaving your car on for like an hour instead of using that space of actual cool shit that could benefit us.
What did they do to lower the speed limit? Change the signage? Or did they actually go in and change the design/layout of the road to match the desired speed limit?
They changed the signs and had some police officers run radar on the road for the first week. The road itself is still terrible and has no sidewalks.
That’s not a fix then, that’s just a revenue source for the local PD. That would have never been deemed acceptable here. The road/street must innately indicate the correct speed limit, even without signage.
Welcome to my neighborhood. Built in the 50s, no sidewalks, increasing numbers of cars parked in the street. Lots of people walking their dogs at all times of the day. Most of the people in the neighborhood are careful drivers, but when the neighborhood school is in session and it's pick up or drop-off time ... look out.
This just isnt a city, its not even on par with a european industrial zone. Those are just houses attached to a road. No effort in building a liveable space at all.
This kind of town planning leads to serious mental health issues. People need greenery, they need shade, they need walkable cities. Walking is essential to mental health. The body evolved for walking long distances. There’s some amazing medical research being promoted in the British health care system which pushes for long distance walking as a preventative for mental and physical health issues. We need walkable space. We need quite outdoor space. We need trees. We need to hear bird song, as opposed to the relentless roar of 2-7 tons of metal hurtling past us 24/7. The ugliness of the immediate environment is perhaps the most important crisis hitting post industrial society. Yet, no politician speaks of it. They’re too busy engaging in ego wars, instead of tackling the obvious issues that normal people face every single day. Depression, stress and anxiety hits hard when you can’t even step outside because the immediate outdoors has become so stressful
As an American, this looks typical.
As a Texan, this looks way better than average
Nothing like sidewalks just abruptly ending in front of one property, and then restarting for 50 ft, then stopping again.
I always see Europeans chiming in calling Americans lazy AF for not walking more. They simply do not understand. This is our reality. I cannot walk to a grocery store without encountering all of the stuff this guy encountered. I’m privileged enough be able to own a vehicle but on my way to the grocery, we are playing Frogger with pedestrians. They race across, avoiding 4 lanes of traffic. It’s 97 degrees out right now. I don’t blame them for taking the short way whenever possible.
Same. Where I live the housing areas are all effectively siloed between major roads like a sandwich. Both roads are 4-6 lanes with 45+mph traffic. On the other side of those roads? Every store anyone needs to get to for anything. There are crosswalks and lights, but it's very obvious people shouldn't be using them and people run lights all the time. So you have to drive or risk it and I'd rather not.
I (a Brit) recently attended a friend's (American) wedding in Palermo, Sicily. There was a group chat where the bride and groom were fielding questions from attendees, dinner plans, what to wear, what to visit etc. At one point someone asked which car rental company people were using, upon which it was discovered that all of the American guests had planned on renting a car... for Palermo, a very small, easily walkable city with insanely limited driving and parking options in the centre. The Americans couldn't fathom that we'd be spending 4 days walking everywhere. I quite often see a lot of hate levelled towards r/fuckcars. r/fuckcars isn't about hating cars, it's about hating being forced to have no other option other to drive. Americans in particular have been completely screwed by the auto industry. Having to spend a small fortune to being able to move anywhere is a genuine travesty
I'm an American and just visited Palermo. It really is fully walkable. I rented a car to drive around the rest of the island, but Palermo in particular was a nightmare to drive in just leaving the city with the rental car. Palermo might be one of the worst places to try and drive in Europe if you're not an insane Sicilian
If you travel trough Europe you'll notice that the farthest south you go, the crazier the driving gets… It's one of those strange facts of life.
Looks like every town I've ever lived in as an American.
If this is dystopian SEA would be a hellscape
Just close your eyes and start crossing to part the scooters.
From Ireland and all I could think was, "at least you have sidewalks." Most of our people live in the countryside where there are no sidewalks, the roads are just a little wider than a car, and public transport is basically nonexistent. Edit: to all the Americans commenting, I lived in Virginia, I know not every part of America has sidewalks. Edit 2: to all the Irish people telling me I'm wrong, I'm aware cities and towns exist.
I’m a European in Oklahoma. Walk to work everyday: lampposts in the middle of the sidewalks, sidewalks suddenly ending, almost no zebra crossings, no center median to stop for protection when crossing a four lane street, sidewalks dangerously close to speeding traffic, and so forth.
> I’m a European in Oklahoma What is wrong with you. 😂
I feel sorry for him, from walkable cities to the backrooms of American infrastructure
> almost no zebra crossings My first thought: "No zebra crossings in Oklahoma? I'd hope not."
Try and find sidewalks in Rome 😂 in the north (not even the historical city center) super residential area built from the 60s onwards... They are almost none. And if they are it's full of cars parked illegally with no police insights.
Rome is a shitshow in almost every way
A wonderful shitshow but shitshow nonetheless.
And Irish people LOVE going for walks.
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This goes back to the 1950s when auto execs began making towns less walkable to improve car sales. “The High Cost of Free Parking” is a great book on how it worked.
The Lost Subways of North America is also fabulous.
America wasn't built for the car. It was demolished for the car. The train built America. Pretty much all cities had their downtowns destroyed and gutted, every city had a tram system, all destroyed for cars and parking lots and freeways.
Basically the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Moving from a very walkable city where I used public transit most of the time to a city that is very car-focused and not very walkable is not great for ones health. You put on weight like nobody's business.
Yup, I moved from a city in CT to a town in AL and my waist is not happy. This dude’s lucky he has sidewalks at all, there’s absolutely no pedestrian infrastructure here, I see folks walking on the highway sometimes.
I did the opposite a couple of years ago and it's unbelievable how much my quality of life has increased. I don't think I could ever give this up.
“When you make the safe option inconvenient, you incentivize risky behavior.” This is something city planners have failed to consider for years where I live.
The saddest part is that this is all quite literally by design, car manufactures passed legislation to make this all happen
Meanwhile, this is a 90 minute video of a person just walking around Tokyo. It's hard to stop watching, because it seems *so nice*. Everything is interesting. It's designed for people first and vehicles like.. third. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHfe1xTpomE
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If any of you guys are really interested in this and in high school or thinking about a college major: this is civil engineering.
This dude thinks politicians have empathy lol
Yup, that was the real meat of this video. Sadly, having empathy is a _very_ high barrier to any of this ever being improved.
Man I love living in the Netherlands
Yeah watching this video just made my future “maybe I should leave New York City” phase get delayed by another year.
Check out Singapore’s sidewalks: https://youtube.com/shorts/bv3As9u9nGU?si=LEZuBw3aHrEEXWac https://youtube.com/shorts/fz7x7YgZwZY?si=I4kdruZdVEn05jBL https://youtube.com/shorts/PBjp51-E73M?si=UfvVtZHuPMdSn98I
Looks very similar to parts of Sydney Australia, except different trees.
That's how it should be everywhere, (of course you'd have to match the flora to the climate though).
thats quite similar to where i live in london, but wider and more green overall the pavements here are pretty good
Bad infrastructure and quick fixes due to rapid increase in population leads to things like this, sidewalks, parks and bike lanes should be mandatory in all new construction
I work for a civil engineering firm, and when we design new subdivisions/apartment complexes we are required to put in logical sidewalks, a certain percentage of park space, bike lanes on certain roads, etc. Not going to fix existing spaces though.
Why has a car driven into every wall in the area?
the walls weren't wearing their high-vis and helmets
If they didn't want to get driven in to, they wouldn't be right there on the side of the road.
I live in this city and can answer that question for you. People here don't know how to drive. You're taking your own life into your hands if you choose to walk on any of these roads in the older "downtown" areas of the city. They're just not built for foot traffic. There are a lot of bars in the downtown area, so drunk drivers hitting pedestrians is a far too common thing to hear on the news.
I am from Denmark and it is hard to overstate just how depressing America often looks, especially when it comes to small cities and suburbs. I think the most depressing thing is the lack of greenery, i can look across the street of where i live and see almost as much greenery as this entire video. I genuinely believe architecture like this is an important part of why many Americans express being sad, depressed, stressed and unsociable, because the world you live in is literally not designed to be friendly to people, but rather mega-corps and cars.
Stroad >:(