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People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities—Until They Live in One
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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I imagine bikes will be very useful in making US cities walkable. The streets have been built very wide to make space for cars, which would make walking more tedious, but bikes are the perfect solution to this bc they let you cover more (flat) distance with just the power of your legs.
Every two lane road has enough space for four lanes of bicycles (one passing lane for ebikes and one lane for normal bikes going in each direction)
I love this. It's a simple way to train an open-minded carbrain that there are easy ways to convert existing infrastructure on the cheap!
Due to the pandemic, people needed more outdoor space in cities (since its unsafe to eg eat indoors), so NYC closed roads to cars and turned them into basically public parks.
When the shops started opening again, they city got a lot of pressure and they made a campaign to close I think 25% of the city's roads to cars in some years
Unfortunately, still not car free
Pressure from businesses and the auto industry lobbyists, I presume.
Imagine if NYC didn't give in! Imagine if we didn't give in to corporate interests on the regular. Imagine if we came together to fight for good community-building things...
No I'm saying they already made the comittment. Its what the people wanted.
People absolutely be going the e bike route.
The only thing keeping me from regularly using bikes or ebikes for short distance travel are the cars and trucks sharing the same space that ignore bike lanes and try to get as close as they can to you when they pass you, and if I try to use the largely unused sidewalks and dip into the street to avoid the occasional pedestrians I get a ticket.
That's why protected bike lanes are the ideal, preferably grade separated from the road. Remove the problem via infrastructure, and more people will bike.
A return to trolleys would also be lovely. A lot of American cities are already laid out with trolleycars in mind.
Oh, I didn't know this
Yeah, cities in America from around 1870 to 1920 had extensive trolleycar networks. They were so widespread you could hop between them and even travel across state lines. Every major city had them and they were the primary mode of urban transportation. Now cities only have trolleycars as a novelty, like San Francisco still has theirs. New Orleans has beautiful streetcar lines. They're mostly used for tourists, but if they were made more extensive and modernized then New Orleans could have very functional mass transit.
Most of the trolley networks were ripped up to make room for extra lanes or parking lots. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be possible to repurpose existing roads for trams/trolleys. I really believe this.
So do I. Yeah a ton of cities used to have them too over here in the UK but very few are still around.
Ebikes.