I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dense here, comparable to a lot of non-capital European cities. However getting around by bike or public transportation is still impossible. I'd love to bike to work. 95% of my commute route is a single expressway, and even though it has tons of room on both sides, there is no bike lane. Instead I would have to make a multi-hour detour, or risk my life biking right next to cars and trucks driving 60mph. So I drive like everyone else...
In my town I ride my ebike downtown for some errands. It's about 30 minutes each way. Not bad, so I thought what does it look like in winter when it's going to be snowy and rainy and yuck outside? Transit would have taken me 40 minutes. Which isn't bad at all, I would have taken it except that the 40 minute trip was 10 minutes on the bus and 30 minutes walking.
I just rode my bike.
Meanwhile in the Netherlands (I don’t live there but was just there on a trip)
I got an ebike recently to try and enjoy riding and not be stuck in a car as much. To be honest with you guys riding around with cars on the road in my US town is terrifying even still.
Eagerly awaiting when we get more interconnected bike paths that have less interactions with cars.
I wish I could ride to work. Unfortunately, there is no route other than taking a left turn on a 4-lane highway. That is not safe on a bike.
Supposedly my city is adding a pedestrian underpass that would connect my work to home, but that's been planned for 4 years now, so I don't think they're making any work on it.
I understand wanting a walk-able city/town; it is what I want. That said, I've always got the feeling that some don't fully understand just how rural some areas of the world are. Places like Wyoming, Manitoba, or Alaska are going to be biased towards relying on your own transportation for the foreseeable future.
Though I wonder if there would be a future for some passenger rail between larger communities?
And that's fine. The problem is that in North America, if you want real urban, you have NYC and that's about it. And it's stupid expensive because it's all there is. If we can just build up some more cities and create some more supply of walkable stock, things could be so much better. Wyoming can stay Wyoming. Hell, Houston can stay Houston. But we can at least push a few more cities to the ideals we want.
