Nice article, although I wonder why walking is considered greener than cycling. Is it because producing bicycles and bicycle infrastruce has an environmental impact?
Regardless, once you own a bike and once bike lanes are built, there's no environmental reason not to bike instead of walk whenever you want to, right?
The pyramid also takes into account how “vulnerable” each mode of transportation is, in other words, who yields to whom. If you’ve ever been run over by a cyclist - it hurts. So it stands to reason that pedestrians should be prioritized and protected by users of modes towards the tip of the pyramid.
I ride a conventional bike, and felt the same way at first. However, I've come to grips with the fact that physical effort is the primary obstacle to adopting cycling as a form of transportation. With physical effort comes sweating, which is a taboo in US office culture. No amount of moral superiority on my part is going to change that.
I've noticed that as they gain experience, the e-cyclists tend to behave themselves pretty well.
No way! Yes e-bikes should be below bikes, but they surely belong in their own tier above taxis. They use up so much less space and energy than a car does, not to mention that they open up cycling as an option to a whole class of people who can't easily cycle due to disability, age, whatever.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want a moped weaving around me in the bike lane, but that actually has never happened to me, whereas as taxis and ride-share cars definiely HAVE taken up the ENTIRE bike lane.
Plenty of cyclists don't have helmets, either. Is that affecting you?
They also make hilly terrain trivial and some have more storage than a normal bike. I use mine as a commuting vehicle and my normal one as more of a sports vehicle now. I take my normal bike if I'm going only one place and don't need to carry more than a small bag. I can get nearly a week's worth of groceries on my ebike and the motor means I don't have to worry about the weight and the hill I have to go up to get home. I think class one and maybe class two e-bikes could be in the same tier as normal bikes but class three and maybe class two should be in their own space
The hierarchy isn't so much about how green each individual option is, but rather about how trips should be distributed to reach an overall optimum.
For short trips or connections, walking should be more convenient because you don't need any gear or space to store your bike. This also gives a multiplicative effect with other transport options, because (e.g.) people are much more likely to take a bus or train if they can walk directly to the station instead of needing a bike or car to get there in the first place.
As an aside, mature bicycle infrastructure goes beyond bike lanes, especially as the number of cyclists grows. For instance, here's a video showing off a huge bicycle parking facility in Amsterdam: https://youtu.be/EqwasBTzZS8?t=530. Obviously this is great compared to car parking, but it's still a lot compared to the infrastructure needed to support short walking trips.
There’s a corollary to this which is you need to prioritize design to not take you out of your way more the higher up you are.
A pedestrian path that goes a block out of your way is discouraging in a way that a half mile dogleg in a car is not.
Sidewalks need to connect directly to destinations; not wander blocks out of the way to circuit parking lots.
The best “pathing” should be for pedestrians, followed by that for bikes. Cars and busses can go far out of their way, and trains can stay on their tracks.
There is also the "enjoyment factor" that doesn't necessarily need to match up with pure efficiency. Separate bike paths that cut through parks or use their own cordoned off streets can make a trip so much more relaxing that it moves up the personal choice hierarchy, even if the time it takes to get somewhere increases.
Not having to dodge F150s or breathe in exhaust fumes can go a long way to upping the desire to ride your bike to work in the morning.
From my experience that only goes from "bad to neutral". I'll gladly waste extra 5 minutes if my work commute cycling path doesn't have to share road with cars or otherwise car-congested area but if it is "just a cycling road" vs "a cycling road near nice forest", most times I go the shorter one.
Very true, my comment was more directed towards what you're discussing. The difference between "sharing a lane with SUVs on a regular street" and "physically separated bike path" is massive, and the lack of bike infrastructure makes cycling a complete non-starter for many.
Almost by definition if you are not using a private vehicle you have already given up on the time factor (because while it is possible to find cases where bike/transit/walking beat a car they are rare or less than a block).
And on a bike it feels different than on foot - I like walking the nice trail but it is 10 minutes longer than the silly sidewalk, and it just kind of dumps you in nowhere three blocks from anywhere you would like to be.
> A pedestrian path that goes a block out of your way is discouraging in a way that a half mile dogleg in a car is not.
In Portland it's actually worse than this. The areas that have built or maintained sidewalks are generally rich areas. The city puts sidewalk construction and maintenance on home builders and has an exhorbitant permitting scheme.
You don't need to change the city, you can change yourself instead.
I was stuck in a traffic jam once and decided to change my behavior.
I bought an electric long board that can go off-road, that I could also carry on my back, so I can take the train and the bus.
I'm a big guy so I had to buy a bruiser of a board (50 pounds) and a pack that could carry it. The board has an 80km (50 mile) range and it can go as fast as you want, but it speed wobbles at 50 km/hour (31 mile/hour), which requires you to put your weight onto the front and accelerate through the resonance. It's illegal to ride in my city, so now I'm an outlaw, I get great exercise when I pack it, and an incredible sense of freedom when I rip past the traffic, or politely navigate the bike lanes. The board is dangerous, so I can get out of my head: if I don't pay attention, I die; so it forces a flow state and clears all of my life worries -- something my motorcycle friends talk about a lot. I have crashed, and though painful, I usually go at a speed that I can run-out-of if something bad happens. You don't get sweaty like you do from riding a bike, so you can wear a suit under the safety gear.
No need to change the city, you can get the revolution you want by deploying your own technology. If you live in a dirt-bag city, like I do, you don't have to worry about your windows being smashed or whatever, because you are carrying your car on your back.
It turns out that most people are not willing to risk their lives in this manner to get where they're going, so building proper infrastructure is necessary.
I wonder what percentage of people prefer this kind of hierarchy.
Personally if driving were super deprioritized where I live, I'd have more incentive to move out of the city and live more rurally, which seems like a net negative overall (environmentally).
Probably, most people would stay in the city and balance it out though.
I enjoy cycling and walking, but I'd rather keep my usage of public transport to a minimum.
If we could completely exclude all arseholes, make public transport cover far more places, make every bus and train have good climate control, it might be different. 3 seems possible, 2 seems like it would then approach the energy requirements of driving, 1 is a non starter.
The point is that (in the US) no one outside of New York City and maybe Chicago has any ability to really experience this kind of hierarchy. Even in those cities, it's still not prioritizing pedestrians and bicyclists, it's just increased the relevance of public transport due to the inherent density making driving and parking a pain.
Mid sized cities (or larger cities built up after the 50's) just aren't designed to support this kind of lifestyle, and would require laws to change around zoning/parking/etc.
I'm not sure that you could go much further than NYC without making private car ownership impossible for most, though.
Maybe that's the point. Despite having a good transport network overall (I live in London), it's just such an integrated part of my life to be able to jump in the car and go and visit friends say 50 miles away that I can't imagine ever wanting to give that up. I'd rather have that than the fancy downtown bars. Am I old? :)
The point that always seems to get lost in these discussions is that it really shouldn't be an either/or thing. There's no reason you can't still have a car for journeys that make sense to drive while having great alternatives so you aren't forced to use a car for every single trip, which would be a huge transportation improvement over what exists now in the vast majority of American cities.
I don't think that's true at all, especially thinking about bicycling (or e-bikes or electric scooters or whatever). Biking can get you long enough distances easily enough that you don't need a city to be super dense or ultra mixed use for biking to be a practical mode of transportation. I live in a fairly suburban fairly mid-sized city and there are tons of destinations within a couple of miles of my house.
The reason my city isn't more bikable isn't zoning or parking or density or whatever, it's that there is literally no safe way to reach many of those destinations by bike because the only route there is on streets with high speed limits designed exclusively for cars. I think this is the case for a lot of mid-sized cities in the US if you really look at the distances involved. In fact my city is slowly improving things by turning sidewalks into mixed use paths that make it much easier to get places without using a car, so it's clearly doable. Sure, a lot of exurban bedroom community type places are never going to be anything but car dependent without totally rebuilding them, but alternatives like biking are definitely not only possible in the densest American cities.
Sounds like we're in complete agreement then. The hierarchy starts with walking (which it sounds like your city is too spread out to be a useful means of transport) then biking, then public transport.
Unless your city also has a public transit system that is sufficient enough in coverage and timing to replace the need for anyone in your city to own a car, in which case... Please send me a direct message with the city name, I don't want the secret to get out before I move there.
Also, don't discount the impact that zoning and parking requirements can have on the ability to have communities like this. Does your city have a collection of parking lots occupying valuable real estate in your downtown? Land that could be used to build a valuable business or multi-unit housing? Yep - that's mandatory parking requirements. Does your city have a lack of neighbourhood businesses and restaurants, leading to the necessity to travel by car to big box stores in a spread out car-centric shopping center away from any other part of the community? Yeah, that's because of zoning laws.
These laws can be changed, but cities have already been built entirely around the automobile in most of the US - there has to be a specific push to enable alternate lifestyles to be a possibility. Otherwise, the only viable lifestyle revolves around four wheels and two tons of steel.
The point I'm trying to make is that my city does indeed have many of those problems you mention...it's not all that different from many American cities. I think it's better than average in that zoning seems to have allowed a little more neighborhood type shopping options, some multi-use paths, a mixed-use downtown, and multi-family dwellings, but it's not Manhattan. Public transit is nearly non-existent, plenty of big box stores, shopping centers, downtown parking lots, etc. Living here without owning a car at all would be extremely limiting.
And yet, biking could be a perfectly viable transit option without changing most of those factors if there was just more bike infrastructure. You wouldn't get the full hierarchy, as you said, but you could very realistically have more options than just driving.
This is absolutely not true, most midsized cities in the US are decently bikeable and have usable bus systems.
If you live in a massive sprawling southwestern city like Phoenix or you live in a relatively rural area, then yes you have to use a very different hierarchy.
What's your definition of mid-sized city? I ask because the hierarchy in the article starts with walking, and very few midsized cities are livable if your only form of transportation is your own two feet.
I'm also curious about what your concept of "usable" is with regards to bus transportation, since in my experience bus service tends to be highly focused around commuting to a downtown work area - with very degraded service outside these times and areas.
Also not sure what counts as mid-sized, but I'm thinking of places like Richmond, Asheville, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Tulsa, Santa Fe, Flagstaff.
> very few midsized cities are livable if your only form of transportation is your own two feet.
I mostly agree, but nobody is saying you shouldn't own any kind of vehicle, just that you should consider walking first for closer destinations. If you can't walk then you start moving down the hierarchy.
"Usable" bus system is also hard to define, if I'm being honest what I mean is when I was there and moving around for non-work reasons, I was often able to use a bus. I don't have a better source than my own limited experience so you can ignore that part of the comment.
I feel the same way. I don't enjoy cycling and walking at all and I certainly don't want to share vehicles with other people. I don't really enjoy driving either but it's the least bad and most comfortable form of transportation. What you said about climate control is extremely important to me. It's very hot where I live, just standing outside makes me anxious to the point my blood pressure spikes. Not having a car is just unfathomable to me and if my city starts screwing things up to favor bicycles I will move out of here.
At least in terms of individual choices, it might be better to see it as some kind of a weighing scheme than as a rigid hierarchy. All kinds of individual and environmental factors can make you weigh some of the modes more or less.
Arseholes aren't the norm in public transportation where I live. Not non-existent but also not the norm. If your local system tends to have more of them, that probably makes it less attractive to you. Large and thinly spread out communities generally make public transport less attractive from a resources point of view because it's harder and less economical to have it efficiently cover the area.
But generally preferring community structures that do allow for efficient public transportation makes sense from a resource use point of view, even if that doesn't always mean it's preferable to you in a particular location. Giving a greater weight to walking or cycling makes sense both from resources and health points of view.
It's probably <5% where I am, but that is enough. And there seems to be no mechanism for removing them.
I wish that we had conductors or something. I would gladly pay to have someone like that who could at least tell antisocial people to calm down. Passengers don't want to deal with it.
5% of passengers sounds rather high to me. That would mean at least one per full bus or rail carriage on average.
5% of trips being disturbed also sounds high albeit not outlandish. (It's still significantly higher than what I'd expect in commuter traffic here. On weekend night buses quite possibly yes but I use those so rarely that I wouldn't be able to say.)
Either way, the point was that such things obviously carry weight for individual preferences, but that they may apply on top of some kind of a baseline weighing hierarchy from a broader point of view.
I mentioned less than 5, that wasn't intended to be an accurate figure.
For me I just don't want to interact with weirdos. It doesn't have to be that extreme, the marker is something like - if I went to a restaurant, bar, workplace, party etc and it had the same number of degens as public transport I wouldn't go back there, I have options.
I place great importance on spending time in places where the people around me feel like equals that I can converse with rather than potential threats.
edit: No, I don't mean "different strata of society". I mean dickheads. A different strata of society is, say, Matt Hancock MP vs. an immigrant single mum, both of which travel on the Tube. I enjoy living in a diverse neighbourhood. My neighbours are from all walks of life.
A dickhead is someone smoking weed on a bus, shouting homophobic slurs at people who look a bit different, playing loud music on speakerphone. I am indeed intolerant of in-your-face antisocial behaviour and I'm proud of that fact.
Public transport is one of those places where you do have to tolerate the fact that weird people (whatever that means) exist in the society. Ideally, I'd consider that a feature rather than a bug, but it obviously depends a lot.
I have a lot of trouble interacting with people I feel are weird, too, but to a large extent I consider that a personal issue and limitation. In principle I consider some amount of such tolerance to be part of a civil and human society. It's natural to not like uncomfortable things but IMO gentrification and intolerance of different strata of people are also problems.
Of course how much should be tolerated also depends on what kind of weird we're talking. "Weirdo" and potential threat aren't necessarily the same thing. But of course how easily a weirdo feels like a potential threat depends on the place and the culture. In some places the threat of actual violence might be common enough that it's understandable to be wary. I might underestimate that since situations that might actually be threatening are a lot less common than just uncomfortable ones here.
If a "weirdo" or a "degen" means just someone who's not part of your understanding of normal or equal, and that means you don't want to tolerate having to deal with them, then I have to say that sounds quite intolerant to me.
So, depending on the point of view and what kind of weird (and how much) we're talking, I might agree or vehemently disagree.
No, I don't mean "different strata of society". I mean dickheads. A different strata of society is, say, Matt Hancock MP vs. an immigrant single mum, both of which travel on the Tube. I enjoy living in a diverse neighbourhood. My neighbours are from all walks of life.
A dickhead is someone smoking weed on a bus, shouting homophobic slurs at people who look a bit different, playing loud music on speakerphone. I am indeed intolerant of in-your-face antisocial behaviour and I'm proud of that fact.
That is understandably going to make public transport a lot less desirable to you.
What goes on in your local public transport is probably not quite universal about public transport, though. So, as I said, it makes sense as a weighing factor -- and in this case it sounds like a significant one for your individual preferences -- but it doesn't mean the suggested hierarchy doesn't make sense in other ways if you don't have that factor.
And if looking at it from a general community structure or transport infrastructure planning point of view, those probably shouldn't be based on the assumption that public transport means having to deal with dicks.
Not every city needs to be the same. Cities have different climates, demand, geography, and population. Cities should be able to offer different things for different people.
In SF, the city leaders are trying to make it impossible to use a SOV.
Yet public transit is unusable except for small swaths of the city. And building new transit is virtually impossible due to corruption (a new 1.9 mile subway spur recently opened after 20 years of construction and $2 billion). Even worse in recent years crime has gotten out of control on transit and drug users are using train cars to smoke fent. So nobody wants to use transit.
The city built a lot of bike lanes but owning a bike is impossible because it will get stolen just about instantly.
Sounds like you read this in your local newspaper in Nashville or something. The entire city is well-covered by transit services. 450k people ride Muni every day. 65k people use BART stations in SF every day. Only Washington and NY enjoy significantly more transit ridership than SF does.
Several comments on this thread tend to slip into the trap of comparing countries. It's important to remember that population density plays a crucial role in financing public infrastructure.
Consider Argentina's case, for instance. Its size is comparable to India, yet it has a population smaller than Spain, making it a daunting task to fund extensive rail networks.
The same rationale can be applied to the US in comparison to smaller European nations.
Ultimately, promoting driving by making cars more affordable and investing in the highway system may indeed be the most adaptable and practical strategy for larger countries. Just something to ponder over.
It's a valid point to consider, although I'm not sure that looking at average density across the entire country makes a lot of sense since you don't have to apply the same solution nation-wide. When considering transportation options for a denser part of a country, like the US east coast Boston-Washington DC corridor, it's irrelevant how much empty space there is in Wyoming. The same is true on a smaller scale as well. Sure, the fact that Denver is so far away from any other large population centers means building a bunch of high-speed rail lines there might not make sense, but there's no reason Denver itself can't have better non-car transit options to get around the city and metro area.
Edit: The US east coast is always a particularly interesting use-case since it's more comparable to the density found in a lot of countries with far better transit while also being significantly richer. The Bos-Wash corridor has about the same population as Spain but it is significantly more dense and with 3x the GDP. Yet Spain has far better inter-city high-speed rail and other transit options.
I’d argue those cities in the east coast you mention are closer together and more densely populated. If you were to look at the northeast region by itself (Boston, New York, Washington), I bet its rail is comparable to similar European countries.
Each city has a decent metro rail system but definitely not up to western European standards. Boston's in particular is woefully in need of maintenance despite its importance in the city.
The rail connecting tbe cities is not very good. It costs upwards of $100 for a BOS->DC ticket and takes a day of travel.
I believe you're right that the US northeast is denser than many European countries, but the rail definitely isn't as good. The only "high-speed" rail line is the Acela, which is slow and expensive. Other rail options are even slower, not all that cheap either, and not very reliable. Compared to the rest of the US, northeast transit is better, but that's a pretty low bar.
You don't really need to fund extensive rail networks, just rail networks that get to a large enough share of the population to make it worthwhile
The vast majority of people don't need to go from anywhere to anywhere else in their countries every day, if you live in or around Philadelphia (first name that came to mind, no clue how good their transit system is) it doesn't really matter that there's people in Montana (again, I think they're fairly sparsely populated but not the point) who need to drive two hours to meet their neighbors
Looking at a population density map of argentina I don't see why it'd make more sense for them to invest in highways to nowhere rather than railways between the population centers. (Within reason of course, I'm not advocating for not maintaining infrastructure to less dense areas at all)
When you look at where people actually live the US is not that different from France or Poland and might even be in a better place for rail interconnections than Spain or Sweden
Taxis don't need the same parking as a bunch of people driving to a destination. Less parking means denser land use which can mean less travel time and more green space.
One thing is that taxis don't need to be parked in urban centers, or if they are, their parking facilities don't have to be pleasant or convenient to peoples jobs. The search for a parking space increases car traffic and congestion. Also, parked cars occupy space that could be used to make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
Taxis (including uber, lyft, etc) greatly reduce costs for someone who only needs to travel by car sporadically, possibly making cities marginally more affordable.
Taxis are complementary to the higher-priority parts of the hierarchy. It's easier to commit to walking/cycling/public transport knowing that you can always take a taxi in a pinch. SOVs have the inverse effect - it's hard to combine them with other modes of transportation, and if you're already paying to own/maintain/insure a vehicle, you're incentivized away from considering alternatives.
I would assume because taxis offer the last mile service.
If you take a train to the burbs
But you can't get from the station to your destination you may choose to drive the whole way instead of a short taxi trip, leading to more driven miles and more congestion.
The author and I have lived in the same places, almost on the same timeline, except SF actual.
> Since then, I’ve come back to Portland, and the options to get around without a car are better again. Portland has a pretty good bike share program, an above average light rail system, and an okay bus network. Plus, my neighborhood is pretty walkable, with a 73 walk score.
There's two main theories that I think reflect the whole truth:
- PBOT built a lot of bus and train infrastructure. Turns out they designed it in a way that can be hostile to biking.
- We eliminated our traffic division and around that time pedestrian and motorcycle fatalities greatly increased.
I'd also like to point out that walkability in Portland mostly correlates to how rich/new (almost the same thing in Portland) the area is. Portland has a lot of old neighborhoods and they don't really have a density strategy, meaning they'll just build in density anywhere including demolishing most of a street and compounding a whole two lane street with dense housing. The thing I've learned from this is that density needs to be integrative; it should be smartly built among SFHs and should not the the majority or only housing on an existing street. That's to say, if you take a street designed for 10 homes and then you turn it into quadplexes bad things happen to traffic, much less the vibe of the area. My street is a good example of how to do it right, they capped the dense housing so it could only occupy half of the street. We have condos for a quarter of the street, quadplexes for a quarter, and SFHs for half.
Why does this matter? Portland ties paving of roads and building of sidewalks to new construction. It's a perverse incentive that resulted in there being sidewalks and a minimally paved road up to my house. Everything thereafter is a gravel road in the middle of Portland. It's dangerous during Portland's rainy season, but the city doesn't really care. This is their carrot. When we asked the city to come in and pave the road and finish the sidewalk so that folks can get to our deli/grocery store easier, Portland responded that we could raise money and build our own on their land and we still needed to pay the exhorbitant city permitting fees.
On the other hand, Portland does an excellent job with mass transportation. Just outside my neighborhood you can catch a bus to anywhere around Portland, including the train, which in three hours can take you to Seattle. It's really nice.
This mental model is great if you assume that you're always going from home to Point A then back home. I've lived in decently walkable cities and whenever on a particular day I need to get to 3-4 or more destinations before coming back home non-car ends up being the most difficult option. Partly because at different destinations I dress differently(change of clothes for the gym), partly because I might want to buy more than a backpack full of groceries or other items, and partly because metro/bus only take you near your destination and all those last-mile journeys in one day add up to a lot of time.
In a walkable city, gyms and grocery stores are walkable from where you live, so there is no need to string together a bunch of stops. When you can walk to the gym or the grocery store in less than 10 minutes, no pre-planning is needed to optimize a route. And one usually doesn’t need more than a backpack full of groceries if within walking distance of a grocery store, because stocking up isn’t necessary. It’s amazing how much a truly walkable area simplifies life.
How people go to work, get health care, buy groceries, go to school, get entertainment, etc all require transportation. The denser the city, the better it is suited to do transportation right. London is notorious for its traffic, but given its size and population, I think it is doing very decently. I wonder how many transport improvements is coming from an US centric hammer, i.e. a better, environmental friendlier car
This is a good strategy for the pre-EV era but in the EV era 'vehicles' can and will be much smaller than what most people think of as a car today. This is because EV technology scales much better than ICE vehicles for cities. A small ICE car is still heavy and cumbersome and polluting primarily because of require pollution controls. Small EV's have none of that so they can be much lighter and smaller than similar ICE implementations.
In particular, EV's that are less than half a standard lane width wide would allow the grid capacity to double overnight at almost no extra cost. This will happen first in the busy city cores where the usual single occupancy gas vehicle will be dissallowed (already happening in a few cities in China and Europe). So basically this is a cross between and bicycle and a the current regular ICE cars.
But wait, there's more. Because EV's are non-polluting city core roads can be covered in poor weather and parking can be almost anywhere. This won't be your father's city core.
Parking is still a huge issue, even for small EV cars. Micromobility modes like bikes (EV / non-EV), scooters, EUCs, etc. are more space efficient. Also charging these vehicles is easier than a micro car.
However, I could definitely see a city core where all personal car traffic is banned and commercial truck traffic is only allowed if it's EV and under a certain tonnage.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadRegardless, once you own a bike and once bike lanes are built, there's no environmental reason not to bike instead of walk whenever you want to, right?
I suspect getting hit by a bus will hurt a lot more than getting hit by a car.
I agree that this is pretty trivial in terms of environmental impact, it's probably just about the friction involved, we already have legs.
It is more efficient than walking in terms of calories per mile yes.
I've noticed that as they gain experience, the e-cyclists tend to behave themselves pretty well.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want a moped weaving around me in the bike lane, but that actually has never happened to me, whereas as taxis and ride-share cars definiely HAVE taken up the ENTIRE bike lane.
Plenty of cyclists don't have helmets, either. Is that affecting you?
For short trips or connections, walking should be more convenient because you don't need any gear or space to store your bike. This also gives a multiplicative effect with other transport options, because (e.g.) people are much more likely to take a bus or train if they can walk directly to the station instead of needing a bike or car to get there in the first place.
As an aside, mature bicycle infrastructure goes beyond bike lanes, especially as the number of cyclists grows. For instance, here's a video showing off a huge bicycle parking facility in Amsterdam: https://youtu.be/EqwasBTzZS8?t=530. Obviously this is great compared to car parking, but it's still a lot compared to the infrastructure needed to support short walking trips.
A pedestrian path that goes a block out of your way is discouraging in a way that a half mile dogleg in a car is not.
Sidewalks need to connect directly to destinations; not wander blocks out of the way to circuit parking lots.
The best “pathing” should be for pedestrians, followed by that for bikes. Cars and busses can go far out of their way, and trains can stay on their tracks.
Not having to dodge F150s or breathe in exhaust fumes can go a long way to upping the desire to ride your bike to work in the morning.
And on a bike it feels different than on foot - I like walking the nice trail but it is 10 minutes longer than the silly sidewalk, and it just kind of dumps you in nowhere three blocks from anywhere you would like to be.
In Portland it's actually worse than this. The areas that have built or maintained sidewalks are generally rich areas. The city puts sidewalk construction and maintenance on home builders and has an exhorbitant permitting scheme.
I was stuck in a traffic jam once and decided to change my behavior.
I bought an electric long board that can go off-road, that I could also carry on my back, so I can take the train and the bus. I'm a big guy so I had to buy a bruiser of a board (50 pounds) and a pack that could carry it. The board has an 80km (50 mile) range and it can go as fast as you want, but it speed wobbles at 50 km/hour (31 mile/hour), which requires you to put your weight onto the front and accelerate through the resonance. It's illegal to ride in my city, so now I'm an outlaw, I get great exercise when I pack it, and an incredible sense of freedom when I rip past the traffic, or politely navigate the bike lanes. The board is dangerous, so I can get out of my head: if I don't pay attention, I die; so it forces a flow state and clears all of my life worries -- something my motorcycle friends talk about a lot. I have crashed, and though painful, I usually go at a speed that I can run-out-of if something bad happens. You don't get sweaty like you do from riding a bike, so you can wear a suit under the safety gear.
No need to change the city, you can get the revolution you want by deploying your own technology. If you live in a dirt-bag city, like I do, you don't have to worry about your windows being smashed or whatever, because you are carrying your car on your back.
Personally if driving were super deprioritized where I live, I'd have more incentive to move out of the city and live more rurally, which seems like a net negative overall (environmentally).
Probably, most people would stay in the city and balance it out though.
I enjoy cycling and walking, but I'd rather keep my usage of public transport to a minimum.
If we could completely exclude all arseholes, make public transport cover far more places, make every bus and train have good climate control, it might be different. 3 seems possible, 2 seems like it would then approach the energy requirements of driving, 1 is a non starter.
Mid sized cities (or larger cities built up after the 50's) just aren't designed to support this kind of lifestyle, and would require laws to change around zoning/parking/etc.
I'm not sure that you could go much further than NYC without making private car ownership impossible for most, though.
Maybe that's the point. Despite having a good transport network overall (I live in London), it's just such an integrated part of my life to be able to jump in the car and go and visit friends say 50 miles away that I can't imagine ever wanting to give that up. I'd rather have that than the fancy downtown bars. Am I old? :)
The reason my city isn't more bikable isn't zoning or parking or density or whatever, it's that there is literally no safe way to reach many of those destinations by bike because the only route there is on streets with high speed limits designed exclusively for cars. I think this is the case for a lot of mid-sized cities in the US if you really look at the distances involved. In fact my city is slowly improving things by turning sidewalks into mixed use paths that make it much easier to get places without using a car, so it's clearly doable. Sure, a lot of exurban bedroom community type places are never going to be anything but car dependent without totally rebuilding them, but alternatives like biking are definitely not only possible in the densest American cities.
Unless your city also has a public transit system that is sufficient enough in coverage and timing to replace the need for anyone in your city to own a car, in which case... Please send me a direct message with the city name, I don't want the secret to get out before I move there.
Also, don't discount the impact that zoning and parking requirements can have on the ability to have communities like this. Does your city have a collection of parking lots occupying valuable real estate in your downtown? Land that could be used to build a valuable business or multi-unit housing? Yep - that's mandatory parking requirements. Does your city have a lack of neighbourhood businesses and restaurants, leading to the necessity to travel by car to big box stores in a spread out car-centric shopping center away from any other part of the community? Yeah, that's because of zoning laws.
These laws can be changed, but cities have already been built entirely around the automobile in most of the US - there has to be a specific push to enable alternate lifestyles to be a possibility. Otherwise, the only viable lifestyle revolves around four wheels and two tons of steel.
And yet, biking could be a perfectly viable transit option without changing most of those factors if there was just more bike infrastructure. You wouldn't get the full hierarchy, as you said, but you could very realistically have more options than just driving.
If you live in a massive sprawling southwestern city like Phoenix or you live in a relatively rural area, then yes you have to use a very different hierarchy.
I'm also curious about what your concept of "usable" is with regards to bus transportation, since in my experience bus service tends to be highly focused around commuting to a downtown work area - with very degraded service outside these times and areas.
> very few midsized cities are livable if your only form of transportation is your own two feet.
I mostly agree, but nobody is saying you shouldn't own any kind of vehicle, just that you should consider walking first for closer destinations. If you can't walk then you start moving down the hierarchy.
"Usable" bus system is also hard to define, if I'm being honest what I mean is when I was there and moving around for non-work reasons, I was often able to use a bus. I don't have a better source than my own limited experience so you can ignore that part of the comment.
Arseholes aren't the norm in public transportation where I live. Not non-existent but also not the norm. If your local system tends to have more of them, that probably makes it less attractive to you. Large and thinly spread out communities generally make public transport less attractive from a resources point of view because it's harder and less economical to have it efficiently cover the area.
But generally preferring community structures that do allow for efficient public transportation makes sense from a resource use point of view, even if that doesn't always mean it's preferable to you in a particular location. Giving a greater weight to walking or cycling makes sense both from resources and health points of view.
I wish that we had conductors or something. I would gladly pay to have someone like that who could at least tell antisocial people to calm down. Passengers don't want to deal with it.
5% of trips being disturbed also sounds high albeit not outlandish. (It's still significantly higher than what I'd expect in commuter traffic here. On weekend night buses quite possibly yes but I use those so rarely that I wouldn't be able to say.)
Either way, the point was that such things obviously carry weight for individual preferences, but that they may apply on top of some kind of a baseline weighing hierarchy from a broader point of view.
For me I just don't want to interact with weirdos. It doesn't have to be that extreme, the marker is something like - if I went to a restaurant, bar, workplace, party etc and it had the same number of degens as public transport I wouldn't go back there, I have options.
I place great importance on spending time in places where the people around me feel like equals that I can converse with rather than potential threats.
edit: No, I don't mean "different strata of society". I mean dickheads. A different strata of society is, say, Matt Hancock MP vs. an immigrant single mum, both of which travel on the Tube. I enjoy living in a diverse neighbourhood. My neighbours are from all walks of life.
A dickhead is someone smoking weed on a bus, shouting homophobic slurs at people who look a bit different, playing loud music on speakerphone. I am indeed intolerant of in-your-face antisocial behaviour and I'm proud of that fact.
I have a lot of trouble interacting with people I feel are weird, too, but to a large extent I consider that a personal issue and limitation. In principle I consider some amount of such tolerance to be part of a civil and human society. It's natural to not like uncomfortable things but IMO gentrification and intolerance of different strata of people are also problems.
Of course how much should be tolerated also depends on what kind of weird we're talking. "Weirdo" and potential threat aren't necessarily the same thing. But of course how easily a weirdo feels like a potential threat depends on the place and the culture. In some places the threat of actual violence might be common enough that it's understandable to be wary. I might underestimate that since situations that might actually be threatening are a lot less common than just uncomfortable ones here.
If a "weirdo" or a "degen" means just someone who's not part of your understanding of normal or equal, and that means you don't want to tolerate having to deal with them, then I have to say that sounds quite intolerant to me.
So, depending on the point of view and what kind of weird (and how much) we're talking, I might agree or vehemently disagree.
No, I don't mean "different strata of society". I mean dickheads. A different strata of society is, say, Matt Hancock MP vs. an immigrant single mum, both of which travel on the Tube. I enjoy living in a diverse neighbourhood. My neighbours are from all walks of life.
A dickhead is someone smoking weed on a bus, shouting homophobic slurs at people who look a bit different, playing loud music on speakerphone. I am indeed intolerant of in-your-face antisocial behaviour and I'm proud of that fact.
What goes on in your local public transport is probably not quite universal about public transport, though. So, as I said, it makes sense as a weighing factor -- and in this case it sounds like a significant one for your individual preferences -- but it doesn't mean the suggested hierarchy doesn't make sense in other ways if you don't have that factor.
And if looking at it from a general community structure or transport infrastructure planning point of view, those probably shouldn't be based on the assumption that public transport means having to deal with dicks.
Yet public transit is unusable except for small swaths of the city. And building new transit is virtually impossible due to corruption (a new 1.9 mile subway spur recently opened after 20 years of construction and $2 billion). Even worse in recent years crime has gotten out of control on transit and drug users are using train cars to smoke fent. So nobody wants to use transit.
The city built a lot of bike lanes but owning a bike is impossible because it will get stolen just about instantly.
so yeah we have the worst of all worlds
public transit sucks
Consider Argentina's case, for instance. Its size is comparable to India, yet it has a population smaller than Spain, making it a daunting task to fund extensive rail networks.
The same rationale can be applied to the US in comparison to smaller European nations.
Ultimately, promoting driving by making cars more affordable and investing in the highway system may indeed be the most adaptable and practical strategy for larger countries. Just something to ponder over.
Edit: The US east coast is always a particularly interesting use-case since it's more comparable to the density found in a lot of countries with far better transit while also being significantly richer. The Bos-Wash corridor has about the same population as Spain but it is significantly more dense and with 3x the GDP. Yet Spain has far better inter-city high-speed rail and other transit options.
The rail connecting tbe cities is not very good. It costs upwards of $100 for a BOS->DC ticket and takes a day of travel.
You don't really need to fund extensive rail networks, just rail networks that get to a large enough share of the population to make it worthwhile
The vast majority of people don't need to go from anywhere to anywhere else in their countries every day, if you live in or around Philadelphia (first name that came to mind, no clue how good their transit system is) it doesn't really matter that there's people in Montana (again, I think they're fairly sparsely populated but not the point) who need to drive two hours to meet their neighbors
Looking at a population density map of argentina I don't see why it'd make more sense for them to invest in highways to nowhere rather than railways between the population centers. (Within reason of course, I'm not advocating for not maintaining infrastructure to less dense areas at all)
https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#5/-37.736/-70.972
When you look at where people actually live the US is not that different from France or Poland and might even be in a better place for rail interconnections than Spain or Sweden
Taxis (including uber, lyft, etc) greatly reduce costs for someone who only needs to travel by car sporadically, possibly making cities marginally more affordable.
Also taxis net more traffic as the time taxi driver is driving to the next customer is essentially useless.
If you take a train to the burbs But you can't get from the station to your destination you may choose to drive the whole way instead of a short taxi trip, leading to more driven miles and more congestion.
> Since then, I’ve come back to Portland, and the options to get around without a car are better again. Portland has a pretty good bike share program, an above average light rail system, and an okay bus network. Plus, my neighborhood is pretty walkable, with a 73 walk score.
Portland's friendliness to biking has dropped in recent years. Pedestrian deaths have risen quite a bit, which makes people not want to use our many bike lanes. Some background: https://bikeportland.org/2023/03/15/city-counts-reveal-data-...
There's two main theories that I think reflect the whole truth:
- PBOT built a lot of bus and train infrastructure. Turns out they designed it in a way that can be hostile to biking.
- We eliminated our traffic division and around that time pedestrian and motorcycle fatalities greatly increased.
I'd also like to point out that walkability in Portland mostly correlates to how rich/new (almost the same thing in Portland) the area is. Portland has a lot of old neighborhoods and they don't really have a density strategy, meaning they'll just build in density anywhere including demolishing most of a street and compounding a whole two lane street with dense housing. The thing I've learned from this is that density needs to be integrative; it should be smartly built among SFHs and should not the the majority or only housing on an existing street. That's to say, if you take a street designed for 10 homes and then you turn it into quadplexes bad things happen to traffic, much less the vibe of the area. My street is a good example of how to do it right, they capped the dense housing so it could only occupy half of the street. We have condos for a quarter of the street, quadplexes for a quarter, and SFHs for half.
Why does this matter? Portland ties paving of roads and building of sidewalks to new construction. It's a perverse incentive that resulted in there being sidewalks and a minimally paved road up to my house. Everything thereafter is a gravel road in the middle of Portland. It's dangerous during Portland's rainy season, but the city doesn't really care. This is their carrot. When we asked the city to come in and pave the road and finish the sidewalk so that folks can get to our deli/grocery store easier, Portland responded that we could raise money and build our own on their land and we still needed to pay the exhorbitant city permitting fees.
On the other hand, Portland does an excellent job with mass transportation. Just outside my neighborhood you can catch a bus to anywhere around Portland, including the train, which in three hours can take you to Seattle. It's really nice.
How people go to work, get health care, buy groceries, go to school, get entertainment, etc all require transportation. The denser the city, the better it is suited to do transportation right. London is notorious for its traffic, but given its size and population, I think it is doing very decently. I wonder how many transport improvements is coming from an US centric hammer, i.e. a better, environmental friendlier car
In particular, EV's that are less than half a standard lane width wide would allow the grid capacity to double overnight at almost no extra cost. This will happen first in the busy city cores where the usual single occupancy gas vehicle will be dissallowed (already happening in a few cities in China and Europe). So basically this is a cross between and bicycle and a the current regular ICE cars.
But wait, there's more. Because EV's are non-polluting city core roads can be covered in poor weather and parking can be almost anywhere. This won't be your father's city core.
However, I could definitely see a city core where all personal car traffic is banned and commercial truck traffic is only allowed if it's EV and under a certain tonnage.
(apparently there are tiny electric cars for handicapped people, in use in the Netherlands, with rights to access bike lanes and such with a permit)