1. Vehicular drivers have no incentive to care. The laws around liability have to be changed.
2. Cities have to deprioritize car traffic to below pedestrians, bicycles, buses/trams. Free parking mandated or provided by the city needs to be eliminated. Zoning for building dense hS to be loosened up. Thankfully, this trend is picking up.
Car lifestyle is heavily subsidized by the state now.
I am someone that worries about hitting a bicyclist.
To do a proper right turn in the US in 2023 there are three directions a driver needs to look.
1. To the left for oncoming car and bike traffic.
2. To the right for bicyclists riding up the wrong way of the street or on the sidewalk riding towards you.
3. Behind and to the right for any bicyclists that choose to pass your car on the right while you're making a right turn (even if you're signaling your turn).
For context 2 & 3 happen to me more than once per year.
As a cyclist (on a designated bike path), I was hit by a small SUV in case #2.
The driver looked to the right and I thought our eyes connected, but he proceeded from the stop sign to make a right turn right into me. Fortunately, he stopped as soon as he knew he hit something and I only ended up under his bumper, with a slightly bent up bike and major bruise on my left thigh.
In this case, I would have actually been safer (and in better view of this driver) if I had been riding on the road.
Up to that time, I rode over 1,000 miles outside in the summer, mostly on roads. Now, I no longer trust traffic at all and ride mostly on the extensive bike trail system in Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, except when I consider the road to be a better option.
The thought of sharing the road with distracted drivers and other drivers who choose to be assholes to cyclists makes the road riding just too risky.
> 2. To the right for bicyclists riding up the wrong way of the street or on the sidewalk riding towards you.
Is biking the wrong direction on a bike path on a one-way street legal in the state or country that you were in? Are you surprised that you got hit when you were biking going the wrong way down a one-way street?
He was on a designated bike path. Without seeing the signage around the accident, it's hard to say who was really at fault here. But I would easily assume it was the driver.
Correct. The bike path was designated and two-way.
I was certain the driver saw me when he looked to the right and we made eye contact, but apparently he was looking in my direction beyond me toward the street.
To me there's a impedance mismatch between cars and bicyclists. I have known about 2 or 3 people in my life who have died in a biking accident -- one of those people I really liked as a kid.
On the other hand I have seen bicyclists (also electric scooters) riding at high speed on a sidewalk shoot out quickly into a low visibility intersection. If you were the driver at the wrong time wrong place you would hit that bicyclist, and probably feel bad about it.
Leisurely biking on the sidewalks I think is fine, but above a certain speed the bikes should be on the road obeying normal traffic laws.
I agree with both of you actually. I also don't bike because of all the close calls and real injuries I've seen with careless drivers, but ALSO because when I'm driving myself I feel like it's easy to hit someone by accident especially when they are in the right lane. I wish there was more dedicated bike infrastructure, which seems like it would solve both problems
Hmm, if we do that (as a formerly avid cycling commuter) can we also make it so blasting thru the red light (on non empty streets), riding wrong way on the road, talking on your phone while riding, etc - something I saw pretty much daily when I used to ride - is treated as seriously as the same for cars?
* Bicycles are now granted the same "always have right of way" status as pedestrians. The ensuing panic following the damages payout for the first cyclist to be maimed by a vehicle causes local governments to enact laws restricting cyclists to designated bike lanes and sidewalks. The bill is sold as a measure to protect cyclists but it's really so insurance premiums for drivers don't go up. Since breaking local laws doesn't eliminate the liability the city police aggressively ticket cyclists who "jayride."
* Minimum parking spaces mandated by the city go away. And nothing changes because parking spaces in tight areas are worth their weight in gold to the businesses that own them.
* Zoning for multi-family homes and apartment complexes open up. Developers see $$$ and buy up land in trendy well-to-do areas and build "luxury" apartment complexes. It's great for a while until those apartment dwellers want more space and to stop paying rent forever and move to where you can still find affordable single family homes -- low income areas! Ooops, you wanted to avoid gentrification, right?
You can't law your way out of a culture that likes cars and single family homes. You have to make a desirable end-state for people with kids and hobbies. This might work in SF where there is a huge amount of latent demand but in your average med sized city it'll backfire.
> Minimum parking spaces mandated by the city go away. And nothing changes because parking spaces in tight areas are worth their weight in gold to the businesses that own them.
We have lists of businesses that are not getting built right now because they can't afford enough space to build both the store and the mandated parking. Business owners tend to overestimate how far their customers are coming from and hence their parking needs, but they'll be outcompeted by those who get it right.
> It's great for a while until those apartment dwellers want more space and to stop paying rent forever and move to where you can still find affordable single family homes -- low income areas! Ooops, you wanted to avoid gentrification, right?
Gentrification is the problem of prices going way up when a place gets made nicer. Stopping making places nicer is cutting our nose off to spite our face; rather we should make more places nicer so that the price of nice places isn't so high.
For some version of "nicer" which is often not that of the residents. I've lived in neighborhoods that were gentrified. What happened was that luxury condos were built, rents went up, all the interesting independent stores and restaurants moved out or folded because they couldn't afford the new rents, and generic chain restaurants and stores that you can find at any mall moved in. Not an improvement in my opinion.
So we change focus on the outcomes of change. That’s how it goes. Science. shrug
Stop posting hyper generalized subjective perspectives as expert opinion? It just gets sad and you come off like an entitled know it all. Jfc the internet is full of idiots and empty back and forth.
You need to open your mind a bit. There is something in between the 50 storey apartment block and detached suburban sprawl. Liveable cities have 4-5 stories, wide footpaths, car-free squares where kids can be supervised at a distance but mostly left to their own devices. Amenities within walking/biking distance.
As a parent, I trade off having less space in exchange for a walkable environment for my children to play and live in. I am lucky to live in a city where my children can safely walk to their friends house and take a city bus to school. They have some autonomy and won't be arrested for going to buy a doughnut unsupervised, like in the USA.
Also, no, I don't have my own metalworking shop, but I do have a Hackerspace nearby, which not only has more tools and equipment than I could ever need, but people to enjoy them with.
The US suburban life is all fear and isolation based. Your home is your castle, your lawn is a moat. Your SUV/Pickup is your steed, used to go into battle every day with a hostile world. You can have a gun before you can have a beer... You only think you need all that space because your are not willing to share it with others as part of a communal society.
> You only think you need all that space because your are not willing to share it with others as part of a communal society
Yeah pretty much. Hell is other people. The few years I spent living in "walkable" neighborhoods exactly like what you describe were the most depressing times of my life, where I wound up contemplating suicide frequently.
The truth is that what you are describing is the ideal and reality is often far from that.
In my case you couldn't go play football in the park, because it was a homeless camp. You could walk to a lot of things but it was basically just endless arrays of coffee shops and such. There were grocery stores in walking distance but they were all priced at a premium. Housing prices and rent prices were sky high, and rental rates were so low that landlords were able to get away with illegal shit like raising yearly rent by more than the legal allowed percentage. Majority of rentals wouldn't let you own a pet, which sucked too. There wasn't any kind of accessible maker space, for that you had to drive. It wasn't even very close to transit! I knew a lot of young families lived in my area but I never saw kids outside playing.
So no, my wanting to be away from that existence is nothing to do with fear of people. Just a desire to have my own space where I don't have to hear my neighbors through the walls all the time. A desire to be able to own the place where I live, and change it however I like. The desire to have enough space that I can set up my own gym/shop/whatever I like, without having to pay a subscription to access it and then compete with other people to actually use it when I want to.
I'm sorry about your experience. Sounds bad, and to be honest I see echos of that in my city. But in my experience, briefly living in suburban/exurban MA and CT USA, I was hugely depressed by the experience and felt lonely, uninspired and trapped.
It’s not about not wanting to share it, it’s about owning it in the first place. I can’t share what I don’t own. All my leisure time rented to me by the hour isn’t community. Listing a friend who is between leases crash in your spare room and use your garage to store their stuff is community. Handing out all the fresh vegetables you grew this season to your neighbors is community. Loaning your friend tools for a renovation they’re doing is community. Having band practice in your garage is community.
Look, I agree with you, it would be amazing if we had actual community spaces, but I didn’t make the system I just live in it. Short of starting a commune (I’ve tried, there was a 4k square ft repurposed church with like 12 bedrooms and lots of land in the city for less than the average home I wanted to go in on with my friends) having a home is the best you can do to have a space that’s yours and you can share with others.
Jeez you make that sound awful. If my kids want to play outside they can play in my enclosed, private, backyard. If I want to sit and read on my iPad in the hot tub or watch a movie in the pool I can do that. If I want to tinker, I can do that and grab a beer from my garage fridge while cooking. I'll take that over what you're offering.
> It's pretty hostile to having children or any hobbies that take any kind of space.
Children and most hobbies need friends more than they need empty space. A city where you live in a flat and can play football with your neighbours in the park is much more child-friendly than a suburb where they live in a house with a lawn that they use maybe twice a year.
> You can't have a metalworking shop in a condo.
You can have one on the block, with other people to learn from, and you'll probably get more out of it. Rooms in your house are a means not an end.
> A city where you live in a flat and can play football with your neighbours in the park is much more child-friendly than a suburb where they live in a house with a lawn that they use maybe twice a year.
Most suburbs have parks?
Hell my girlfriend grew up in a suburb that had a manmade lake that was close enough for her and her friends to walk to. Find that in the middle of a city. Your local pool doesn't even compete.
Plenty don't, or the kids can't get to them, or there just aren't enough families within walking/biking distance for the kids to socialise.
> Hell my girlfriend grew up in a suburb that had a manmade lake that was close enough for her and her friends to walk to. Find that in the middle of a city.
I live "in the middle of a city" and I'm next to one river which has sports fields alongside it, and in the other direction there's another river within walking distance (15 minutes) with a nice landscaped park. Admittedly no lakes, but the first river is about 400m wide and people do jetski etc. on it if that's what you want.
Like the Serpentine in London's Hyde park... Or the bathing pond in Hampstead Heath, or the boating lake in Regents Park or Beckenham Place Park swimming lake for a less iconic one near me...)
I'm pretty lucky, but I have a wood-shop in SF. I live in a duplex townhome, with a garage. The garage has enough room for a car and some shelves and workbenches. I drive the car into the street and park it there (and block my driveway, and nothing else), and suddenly I have plenty of room if I need to get a table-saw out. Yea you need to be intentional and tidy... I share a lot of the tools with my neighbor, and we added weights rack and treadmill too with our space.
I know several people with very comparable living situations in the city. I also have a small backyard. Would kids want to play a 10 person football game back there? No. But you can have some private space to grow a garden, and BBQ in summer, and sit outside with a book on a nice day - its a 10 minute walk to a few parks if you wanted space for something more active. I see kids playing in the street all the time too.
I also live within a 15 minute walk to 50+ restaurants and stores, I can commute via light rail to the office downtown if needed, I can take transit to the airport, etc. I almost never drive, which is a very common way to die for younger Americans and I walk a lot, which is healthier too. It saves me a lot of money on car maintenance and insurance - if you tell the insurance agency that you don't commute with your car, you can often get the premium to $<50/month, which helps defer the cost of living in the city.
Oh and there are hackerspaces, co-working spaces, etc should you need them less or be on a stricter budget. They have much better tools and equipment than I have, even better than in most big suburban homes.
You can't have everything, but you can have a lot, and you just have to change your balance of compromises.
Car lifestyle is heavily subsidized by the state now.