When the notion of adding walkable spaces and separated cycling lanes to NA cities comes up there's a reflexive brushing aside of the idea, that NA is "not europe" and that cycling simply can't work here.
It's really important to see that the cycling capitals in Europe didn't appear as such fully formed, but it was tough activism that created them from a rejection of the already established status quo of automobile oriented infrastructure.
Accordingly it's clear that it is of course quite possible for NA cities to follow the path of these European cities and create safe cycling and walking infrastructure too.
samrmay 1208 days ago [-]
NA’s geography does make it slightly less prone to cycling/walking based transportation, but it seems people use a predilection towards cars as an excuse not to evolve. Super interesting that the shift to biking in Amsterdam was a concerted effort rather than a natural shift.
I think there is also some outcome bias towards cars because they’re a comfortable/ known quantity for most people.
Gravityloss 1208 days ago [-]
People just helplessly sit on so many things, telling incorrect excuse after another.
In the spring I remember watching countless corona experts on TV claiming it can't be stopped. Meanwhile it was very well stopped in places like Taiwan or South Korea. It's as if those countries didn't even exist.
SturgeonsLaw 1208 days ago [-]
This is a perpetual source of bemusement for myself, a non-American, seeing arguments why x will never work because y, when it has been working quite well in other places for a while.
The worst offenders are threads on universal healthcare, particularly when claims like "America is too diverse for universal healthcare" are made, and upvoted, with few people stopping to consider both the implication and even the basic truth of the statement.
Gravityloss 1207 days ago [-]
Yeah, it's common in all countries.
During the second world war, when the Americans handed over aircraft carriers to the Brits, all the washing machines and ice cream machines had to be removed.
I'm sure there are some reasons to that. But it just makes one think what are the real reasons "why we can't have nice things"
caturopath 1208 days ago [-]
> NA’s geography does make it slightly less prone to cycling/walking based transportation
How so? You mean the snowy towns or the hilly towns or...?
> I think there is also some outcome bias towards cars because they’re a comfortable/ known quantity for most people.
There's a bias toward cars since it's incentivized to drive cars. Our laws mean everything is far apart so trips are far and our transportation infrastructure is almost all fast or long roads. These are choices that prop up cars: if you could go to the grocery store with a short trip without a high risk of being hit by a car, more people would walk or ride a bike there. If transit was convenient, people would take it. People just want to get where they're going: cars are the best way to do that in the US because we have decided to incentivize car use over other options.
AnimalMuppet 1208 days ago [-]
Less density, maybe?
caturopath 1208 days ago [-]
Ah, I took the person to mean our physical geography. Our urban geography is of course the reason for our car use: we've put policy into place so that cars are incentivized and other forms of transportation are disincentivized, with density being a cornerstone of that.
imtringued 1208 days ago [-]
Density is one factor but the complete separation of commercial and residential zoning is also a huge factor.
In a lot of walkable cities the first floor of most buildings is often reserved for low impact commercial uses like shops or restaurants.
I am in a car dependent city (I need the car to go to work) but the fact that there are 3 stores in walking distance helps cut down on the voluntary car trips significantly. Even the weekly trip to a far away store takes 10 minutes at most by car.
samrmay 1208 days ago [-]
Correct. Was talking about the sheer size of many countries in NA makes it a much different situation than many countries in Europe. Could've been much clearer so I apologize.
caturopath 1208 days ago [-]
I don't see what the size of the country has much to do with how we get around in town.
No pedestrians or bicyclists die on I-95, and few motorists do to boot. The issue is with cars inside cities, not the space between them. Of course you get between cities with cars, long-distance busses/trains, and flying.
AnimalMuppet 1208 days ago [-]
The size of the country (relative to the population) means that land is relatively cheap. That leads to relatively less dense cities (at least most of them).
imtringued 1208 days ago [-]
Land isn't cheap if you have to maintain infrastructure around it. Exclusive single family zoning is a pure loss. Single family housing should exist but it should be reserved for those who really want/need it. It's not something everyone should have because it doesn't match people's real needs.
caturopath 1208 days ago [-]
Sprawl isn't a natural result of a large country, nor is US land unbelievably cheap (it's all over the place, with some expensive peaks in some high-sprawl areas).
Belize and Norway are extremely low density overall in their countries: they have very different house prices, but neither has much sprawl.
Sprawl is a result of policy decisions.
cycomanic 1207 days ago [-]
I would say the bay area is a pretty good counter argument.
MeinBlutIstBlau 1208 days ago [-]
As a former bike commuter, I fear driver negligence more than any amount of taxation.
xellisx 1208 days ago [-]
It's amazing that they allow for streets to be built so narrow in new neighborhoods, that only one car can get through if there is on parked on the side. Lot's of complaints about people parking on the street in a neighborhood that still being built out. They also have one way streets that are hard to get through of anyone is parked on the street.
paledot 1208 days ago [-]
What amazes me is that some neighbourhoods in the US are constructed without sidewalks. I don't care about the street.
xellisx 1207 days ago [-]
There are a lot of places around me (Texas) with no sidewalks or bike lanes. The road planing has been, is, and will probably be horrid forever.
codetrotter 1208 days ago [-]
Who is they in this context? NA? Amsterdam? Europe?
xellisx 1207 days ago [-]
I'm in the US, Texas more specifically.
quietbritishjim 1208 days ago [-]
After some Googling of 2 letter country codes and USA state codes I eventually realised you probably meant NA = North America. Another case where abbreviating saved the writer some typing but added work for the reader.
samcheng 1207 days ago [-]
In the Bay Area at least, there has been a movement toward walkable spaces and car-free boulevards as a reaction to COVID. A number of 'main streets' on the peninsula have been closed to cars, to provide space for struggling restaurants to have outdoor dining.
People are already talking about saving some of these arrangements post-COVID, but we'll see if it actually happens. I imagine the businesses will worry about parking.
As a frequent cyclist to my nearby (now car-free) mini-downtown-and-farmers-market, I'm all for it!
raarts 1208 days ago [-]
I participated in this strike, in a different city (Rotterdam), don't remember any violence though. I also remember accidents with kids getting run over by cars (or a particularly nasty one - a girl killed on her bike by a large truck in front of my school).
I'm glad biking has become so safe here, mostly due to (1) children being required to take a traffic exam at age 11, (2) extensive road adjustments.
Another awesome urban design channel focused on the Netherlands is https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/ -- it covers the safe bike/pedestrian infrastructure but lots of other cool things
Seems like, despite the strike, bicycle usage is half of what it was in 1920s? (despite growth in population)
caturopath 1208 days ago [-]
Yes, bike mode share is way down from then. Back then, people basically biked: transit didn't exist and cars were very rare.
In modern times, rich societies are structured different than 100 years ago: people travel long distances for work and for non day-to-day shopping (to buy a lamp or a wedding dress, for instance) and for social/personal things (sports, church, etc.). These changes are of course affected by policy, but for the most part they aren't unwanted.
Today, almost a third of trips in Amsterdam are by transit, more than by car. Transit trips are mostly a success from the strikers' goals, and just didn't exist back in the 20s.
adamjb 1208 days ago [-]
The strike (was part of a trend that) stopped it getting any worse. The Dutch Ministry of Transport admitted in 1983 that:
> Until the early 1970s, attention to bicycle traffic was minimal. The prosperity expectations were such that within the foreseeable future bicycle traffic would decrease, certainly for commuting, to a negligible share compared to car traffic. [0]
[0] The Dutch Bicycle Master Plan: Description and evaluation in an historical context, 1999, p31, which incidentally also features the graph on the next page.
emj 1208 days ago [-]
It's still going up though, bicycle modal share is over 50% at least since 2017, going up abit quicker than Copenhagen which is still barely at 40%. My personal feeling is that the cities still feel very much car oriented, I guess that in it self is a great testament to the space efficiency of bicycles that they are so invisible in those cities...
jacquesm 1207 days ago [-]
It's mostly waiting for the first city to declare cars absolutely un-welcome. After that it will rapidly accelerate because the advantages will make that city one of the most popular ones to live in very quickly.
jacquesm 1207 days ago [-]
In the 1920's personal cars were a rarity, and public transport infrastructure in general was still developing. The dutch road side assistance started out initially to help bicycles and only later branched out into cars.
ed25519FUUU 1208 days ago [-]
This is cool and I’m really happy about the outcome, but I’m always extremely put off by “children” marches and protests. Its parents and adults putting these things on and the children just come off as tools. Yuck.
jacquesm 1207 days ago [-]
As one of the kids that participated in the strike (I lived in 'de Pijp' at the time, a pretty densely populated part of Amsterdam South) my mom had nothing to do with this and did not want me to participate. My sister was too young but I was out there at the ripe old age of seven. Every kid knew at least one kid that had been killed in a vehicle accident, traffic and parking were insane, to the point where you had to detour 500 meters in order to just cross the street safely. (And even then, there were routinely people running red lights and not paying attention when turning right on green that people might be crossing, much like it still happens today in modern day Bucharest.)
So, though I'm sure that some adults were involved the kids were very much driving this. What gave the initial idea (and which is not very well explained here) is that the strike was the beginning, but what really cemented the idea in place was the car-less sundays a year later because of the oil crisis. This showed everybody what life really could be like, and soon after there was a lot more support for making neighborhoods safer.
The great thing about Amsterdam at the time was that the smaller areas were relatively autonomous and could make some pretty big changes, such as making streets one-way (already a lot safer) or to block traffic from going somewhere entirely. The Pijp was particularly bad because population density was so high that the only place where kids could play safely were the parks (mostly: Sarphatipark) but that was quite far away for many of us and you had to cross either one or two very busy streets to get there. And so we played mostly on the streets, which was about as unsafe as you can imagine.
If you've ever played the game of 'frogger' you get a good idea of what life in that part of Amsterdam was like at that time. It is much better now, but there still is a lot of room for improvement. The bigger problem now is that Amsterdam has become addicted to parking meter fees, and so they can't let go of the cars that are still there.
cycomanic 1207 days ago [-]
I actually just had an argument with my SO about this. She was arguing that it was mostly the parents protesting and I strongly disagreed. If you talk with a even 6 year old, they can realise things being wrong and argue about it very well (and get better at it when they get older to 11-12). In particular they question things that adults often take for granted. Now that requires parents listening and taking the kids serious instead of just telling them to obey.
So I believe it's wrong to suggest that it was adults "misusing" their children. The way it was portrayed in the film was that it was the children discussing their situation in class and then being encouraged to try to do something about it (the bit where they talk to the politician). This is how you raise children who think critically and create participation in democratic processes. I would not be surprised that this is the actual way it developed.
jacquesm 1207 days ago [-]
I've left a long comment above to illustrate this further.
Rendered at 22:48:37 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It's really important to see that the cycling capitals in Europe didn't appear as such fully formed, but it was tough activism that created them from a rejection of the already established status quo of automobile oriented infrastructure.
Accordingly it's clear that it is of course quite possible for NA cities to follow the path of these European cities and create safe cycling and walking infrastructure too.
I think there is also some outcome bias towards cars because they’re a comfortable/ known quantity for most people.
In the spring I remember watching countless corona experts on TV claiming it can't be stopped. Meanwhile it was very well stopped in places like Taiwan or South Korea. It's as if those countries didn't even exist.
The worst offenders are threads on universal healthcare, particularly when claims like "America is too diverse for universal healthcare" are made, and upvoted, with few people stopping to consider both the implication and even the basic truth of the statement.
During the second world war, when the Americans handed over aircraft carriers to the Brits, all the washing machines and ice cream machines had to be removed.
I'm sure there are some reasons to that. But it just makes one think what are the real reasons "why we can't have nice things"
How so? You mean the snowy towns or the hilly towns or...?
> I think there is also some outcome bias towards cars because they’re a comfortable/ known quantity for most people.
There's a bias toward cars since it's incentivized to drive cars. Our laws mean everything is far apart so trips are far and our transportation infrastructure is almost all fast or long roads. These are choices that prop up cars: if you could go to the grocery store with a short trip without a high risk of being hit by a car, more people would walk or ride a bike there. If transit was convenient, people would take it. People just want to get where they're going: cars are the best way to do that in the US because we have decided to incentivize car use over other options.
In a lot of walkable cities the first floor of most buildings is often reserved for low impact commercial uses like shops or restaurants.
I am in a car dependent city (I need the car to go to work) but the fact that there are 3 stores in walking distance helps cut down on the voluntary car trips significantly. Even the weekly trip to a far away store takes 10 minutes at most by car.
No pedestrians or bicyclists die on I-95, and few motorists do to boot. The issue is with cars inside cities, not the space between them. Of course you get between cities with cars, long-distance busses/trains, and flying.
Belize and Norway are extremely low density overall in their countries: they have very different house prices, but neither has much sprawl.
Sprawl is a result of policy decisions.
People are already talking about saving some of these arrangements post-COVID, but we'll see if it actually happens. I imagine the businesses will worry about parking.
As a frequent cyclist to my nearby (now car-free) mini-downtown-and-farmers-market, I'm all for it!
I'm glad biking has become so safe here, mostly due to (1) children being required to take a traffic exam at age 11, (2) extensive road adjustments.
Another awesome urban design channel focused on the Netherlands is https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/ -- it covers the safe bike/pedestrian infrastructure but lots of other cool things
https://www.amsterdamclassictours.com/uploads/3/0/2/2/302228...
Seems like, despite the strike, bicycle usage is half of what it was in 1920s? (despite growth in population)
In modern times, rich societies are structured different than 100 years ago: people travel long distances for work and for non day-to-day shopping (to buy a lamp or a wedding dress, for instance) and for social/personal things (sports, church, etc.). These changes are of course affected by policy, but for the most part they aren't unwanted.
Today, almost a third of trips in Amsterdam are by transit, more than by car. Transit trips are mostly a success from the strikers' goals, and just didn't exist back in the 20s.
> Until the early 1970s, attention to bicycle traffic was minimal. The prosperity expectations were such that within the foreseeable future bicycle traffic would decrease, certainly for commuting, to a negligible share compared to car traffic. [0]
[0] The Dutch Bicycle Master Plan: Description and evaluation in an historical context, 1999, p31, which incidentally also features the graph on the next page.
So, though I'm sure that some adults were involved the kids were very much driving this. What gave the initial idea (and which is not very well explained here) is that the strike was the beginning, but what really cemented the idea in place was the car-less sundays a year later because of the oil crisis. This showed everybody what life really could be like, and soon after there was a lot more support for making neighborhoods safer.
The great thing about Amsterdam at the time was that the smaller areas were relatively autonomous and could make some pretty big changes, such as making streets one-way (already a lot safer) or to block traffic from going somewhere entirely. The Pijp was particularly bad because population density was so high that the only place where kids could play safely were the parks (mostly: Sarphatipark) but that was quite far away for many of us and you had to cross either one or two very busy streets to get there. And so we played mostly on the streets, which was about as unsafe as you can imagine.
If you've ever played the game of 'frogger' you get a good idea of what life in that part of Amsterdam was like at that time. It is much better now, but there still is a lot of room for improvement. The bigger problem now is that Amsterdam has become addicted to parking meter fees, and so they can't let go of the cars that are still there.
So I believe it's wrong to suggest that it was adults "misusing" their children. The way it was portrayed in the film was that it was the children discussing their situation in class and then being encouraged to try to do something about it (the bit where they talk to the politician). This is how you raise children who think critically and create participation in democratic processes. I would not be surprised that this is the actual way it developed.