American Reacts to Why America Is Terribly Designed

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[@grischad20]

"too far gone" European countries have citys that have been built over 1000s of years and they still managed to make space for bikes in the last 50 years.

[@malita07]

This!! I've seen the same sentiment from several Americans in different videos here on KZbin: The relaxed, "oh, well"-attitude and the: "It is what it is"... Irritating! European cities were built way, way earlier, and therefore should be more, not less, difficult to change and adapt. USA being "car-based" is an excuse, in my opinion, not a reason to not do anything.

[@walterF205]

Here in Italy we generally have the problem of having reached automotive saturation and not knowing where to leave the car once we have reached our destination within the larger cities. In the central areas, between road sides reserved for local residents, road sides with high hourly payment and paid collective parking, it's a real hell. But it seems that we are climbing over the problem, on the one hand it has resumed modernizing and increasing public lines in large cities, with a focus on automated subways, and on the other hand with the development of cycle paths, removed from the lanes for cars. . The process for cycle paths is slow, we have cities with widespread and complex traffic, often the streets are not wide, obtaining extra space in the city where any building in the center has a historical value is a headache. With the pandemic there has been a large increase in bicycle sales, including electric ones, and the boom in electric scooters. Change is underway.

[@everx7]

@@malita07 exactly

[@stonefox2546]

@@suprtroopr1028 A city is city-sized. The size of the country doesn't come into it when we're talking about public transport within one city. Or shouldn't.

[@stefansmiljanic1697]

Yeah i know we are geniuses, its just that your presidents didn't understand that they will have more monney by makeing buses, trains, bikes etc.. for you for example 300 people can be in a train and drive for 1km but a car can fo the same but at a much smaller capacity and if you sell tickets you can pay for the electricity used for the drive (where i live "france" the metro tickets are around 2 euros so you can do the math for 300 people)

[@AATproducer]

It is never too late to change. A bigger city here in germany, in the 70., was heavyly designed for cars. Now it is very pedestrian and also a little bike friendly. Yes it takes time for a change but you can never achive that if you don't start.

[@hds66nl29]

Yup, hear it all the time. But the Netherlands is bike friendly. Well, it is now, we have been working on it for 50 years. Before it was, like most places, tear everything down, make way for the car. The benefit for the rest of the world is we made all the mistakes being the first so you don't have too.

[@kimmbioplotter6841]

@@hds66nl29 The big advantage of the netherlands is that's just a big flat area of land. My cities basically consists out of small mountains. I drive a lot with my bike but going to work on it is just not possible in summer times unless they install a shower at my workplace :D

[@hds66nl29]

@@kimmbioplotter6841 Most cities are not in the mountains, yes there are exceptions, but still the argument the Netherlands is flat so ... Yes it helps, but also realise we have more rain than England. Thing is all place that started to embrace cycling have the same results, built it and they come. Also in places like Switserland, Finland (Oulu). And over time things change, here it is very common for a company to offer a bike plan wich means you buy a bike and the company pays part of it. Offices that not only have toilets, but showers as well, so you can take a shower when you arrive and no-one cares or look funny, because it is just normal. And I will point out again, our bicycle infra isn't because of a flat country, it was a decision forced onto the government by the people. This video gives a short explanation kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqallZlvn76dbdE There is also a bit of a snowball effect happening. I remember a few years back a city here wanted to expand its car free zone in the centre. Shop keepers protested, Why? They were located just outside the car free area and were afraid of losing business, so in the end the car free zone was expanded. 40 Years ago, shops in city centres were afraid that getting rid of cars was bad for business, now not being in a car free area is bad for business.

[@matteocapuzzo1944]

@@kimmbioplotter6841 Or trees along the ride

[@Muck006]

@@kimmbioplotter6841 The US - which is the "patient to be saved" here - has LOADS of cities built on flat land ... and that is the TRAP, because they have LOTS OF LAND, so it is far cheaper to just build a parking lot outside instead of digging up the basement and have a parking lot under (or above, the other easy solution) the big box store. The key factor is PLANNING.

[@ZosiaDabrowski]

I was perplexed to see all those car parks in the US cities that were shown.... but like.... they were all ground level and open, even in the middle of the city? Even in our comparatively tiny CBD here in Perth, most of the inner city's carparks are underground or multi-storey. It just makes sense when you're trying to fit lots of buildings in minimal space.

[@dutchman7623]

So in Perth you are able to walk from one building to another?

[@ZosiaDabrowski]

@@dutchman7623 in the CBD, basically. But the CBD consists of really only a few blocks

[@whyjnot420]

@@ZosiaDabrowski By CBD you mean what? I'm guessing ____ Business District, central? commercial? city? btw, I am in a city of 35k up in New England. We only have one big municipal lot designed for people shopping downtown, and then we have a handful of smaller park & ride lots, mainly because we have a controlled access highway running through town, the only such road in the county. (designed to promote carpooling and in theory bus use.... not that we have proper bus routes here, people meet up at the lot, everyone save one leaves their car there, basically said). And only a handful (I can think of maybe a dozen) of streets have metered parking on the sides, though many have regular unmetered parking space, but those are mainly used by people parking near the house they are going to or live in. There is at least one very small municipal lot as well, but it is specifically meant for people who have business at city hall and a similar small municipal lot across the street from out police station. It makes sense for there to be easy access to city hall and the police dept. (the big lot I mentioned is right next to our library and a decent amount of the people who park in it, are going there and I approve of easy access to libraries personally :)) There are a fair number of parking lots for specific businesses or business locations. On one side of town these are actually needed due to the city planners being morons developing one road without developing the infrastructure needed by a new commercial area. And I am not going to pretend that my city is the only one guilty of this crap but.... Cities like my little one make a lot of sense designed the way they are (excepting the moronic development I mentioned over the last 2-3 decades.... out of the 282 years since it was first incorporated as a town that is). It is the bigger cities that I see as truly flawed. Cities that are too big, become a huge mess unless the planning is precise and people keep to it. Smaller cities, so long as the leaders keep to the overall plan, only need to shepherd the development rather than keeping watch over the development like a mother hen does her chicks. That said, my own city benefited from a pair of floods in 1955 that screwed over a huge chunk of downtown, leading to lots of what is there, being developed after 1955. (though my house, was actually effected by at least one of the two floods, and it survived, its around 115 years old now) Simply put, when people look at the US, there is a lot of attention paid to the big cities, a fair amount paid to rural areas, but not a lot of people pay much attention to cities with populations under 50k even though the US has a term for something like a metropolitan area but with a core city that has a population between 10k and 50k. It is called a micropolitan statistical area. The fact that we use this designation should show just how prevalent these smaller cities are (543 micropolitan statistical areas atm, just checked).

[@daveg2104]

@@whyjnot420 CBD = Central Business District = Downtown in US speak. I'm in Sydney, so not an expert on other Australian cities. There is parking in the Sydney CBD, but it's quite limited when compared to the numbers of people traveling there, and expensive. Fortunately there is a decent suburban train system, an expanding metro system and lots of buses (plus ferries and light rail serving a more limited area). Sydney is spreading its CBD around a bit, with areas of higher density commercial and residential in the suburbs.

[@jonathanodude6660]

@@whyjnot420 when you think of an australian CBD vs the "city", its basically NYC vs NY, as someone whos only been to NYC. the "city" includes all of the suburbs, meaning that its >100 km long. not really traversible on foot. whereas the CBD is mainly government and commercial buildings, touristy stuff, high fashion, luxury goods, nightlife etc. parking is pretty expensive so people avoid driving if they can, preferring trains or uber (all train lines end in the middle of the CBD atm so literally any train will do) and there are a bunch of free CAT (central area transit) buses that take circle routes around the entire CBD that you just hop on or off (this is also true for smaller regional CBDs like joondalup, which is part of perth "city" but located 30km away), as well as the paid transperth buses which operate throughout the "city." where i live now, i can actually take a bus that goes right to the CBD, even though im 2 train stations away. driving in the CBD is a nightmare. you have to deal with both hilly geography and very short sections of sometimes very wide 1 way and sometimes very narrow 2 way roads that end in traffic lights before splitting into 5+ intersections or stop signs turning onto major 2 way roads at an angle so you cant even see much. most people who drive into the CBD drive to a multistorey car park and then walk/bus around from there. you just arent likely to able to park where youre actually going.

[@helgaioannidis9365]

Cities need to have the concept of "village within the city". This means everywhere in the city you have to be able to satisfy your basic needs within walking distance. So you need pharmacies, supermarkets, shops, schools, kindergarten, banks, doctors,... everywhere around the city and possibly also some place where people will spend spare time together outside without needing to pay for it like parks or nice squares without any traffic. If you combine that with good public transport, people won't need a car all the time.

[@thebabbler8867]

The best thing to do is get rid of cars all together. A well planned city has no need of cars. Cars just enables unnecessary danger and conflict. And that's just the beginning; the end goal should be no economy at all: 100% self-sufficient sustainability.

[@MrBegmar]

This concept works very well. I live in Poland. When I was kid I had school just around corner. I would leave home like 2 minutes before lesson and I wasn't late. Even within that 2 minute walk I was passing by pharmacy and grocery shop. If I would walk another 3 minutes then I would be outside a supermarket. And if I would leave home and go in other direction within 5 minutes I would be in park with benches, flowers and sometimes even wild animals (I saw a deer there once). As much as I hate communists I must give them that they knew how to plan a city. They would build a big apartment building capable of housing dozens of families. Then they would build another and another. In between they builded schools, shops, pharmacy and other places of first need connected to apartment buildings by pathways for easy access. Leftover space was often left as green area with benches or playground for kids. I much prefer that design than some modern cities centers composed of concrete, glass and metal because in summer it feels like in oven.

[@ponfed]

This is just truth right here.

[@bucklberryreturns]

In the UK, most people still use their cars to go to their local shops when it's literally a 20 minute return walk for their milk. It's a real shame.

[@helgaioannidis9365]

@@bucklberryreturns I'm from Munich and there nobody would do that because it's so difficult to find a space to park your car close to the local shop. If you don't want to walk it's easier and quicker to take the bus or tram for 1 or 2 stops than taking the car.

[@katechiconi]

Australia IS really big, but in urban there are still bike lanes, where bikes have priority over cars, and cars have to cede to them at junctions. Because t's a big country, cars have a really important place in the transportation network between places, but within towns and cities, bikes get a fair shot. Not like Amsterdam, I'll grant you, but our kids go to school on bikes and scooters if they live close enough, as well as buses or Mum's Taxi if they don't.

[@hds66nl29]

True, country size has not much to do with it. Infrastructure design has. Even in the US, 60% of average car trips are less than 6 miles, that is cycle distance easy.

[@abramrexjoaquin7513]

@@hds66nl29 and that... Is why you dont allow LOBBYISTS and PRIVATE COMPANIES dictate SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE.

[@nicolas4601]

@@hds66nl29 Never understood the _"country size"_ argument either. It's also often used to explain why Europe has universal Healthcare, while the US can't. 🤔🤷‍♂️

[@xenotypos]

Country size has NOTHING to do with how bike-friendly a city is. In Europe, outside of cities people don't travel by bike, they use cars, or the train, sometimes even the plane.

[@JaniceHope]

@@nicolas4601 The country size argument in case of Healthcare is actually pretty stupid if you think about it. Because a larger country benefit a lot more from having specialist centers, because these specialists will be able to see more patients than a specialist for a rare disease/health issue in a very small country. Same goes for laboratories or post surgery/physical therapy/medical rehabilitation centers (yes, in Germany you can get to those for next to free for 4-12 weeks so afterwards you become a contributing member of the workforce after a health issue). For some towns it's a major business too. Imagine instead of a few multimillionaire and billionaire pocketing profits health insurance money gets invested into the health of people and creates thousands of jobs and quality of life.

[@lapincealinge2]

The US is a huge country that is mostly empty land, so the size argument doesn't really work. As you said it's mostly a city issue. For example Paris is a over 2000yo city, it was mostly remodeled around cars, and now we're remodeling it on a more bike/pedestrian friendly model. It's never too far gone, Paris was already around before the saxons and the angles had even discovered great Britain, and construction there is heavily regulated. If the city is able to make way for bikes, if all those thousand year old cities can, I'm pretty sure any US city can. Just getting better sidewalks in the first place would be good! I'm OK with walking 5kms if I have to, but everytime I tried while in the US I ended up having to cross 8 lane roads with no pedestrian crossing. That'd be a place to start.

[@alexwtf80]

totally agree. the problem is only the attitude. For social development US is so backward

[@Rusty_Gold85]

Problem is the US is capitalists ,they dont like social programmes of subsidising taxes . Its all user pays private industry .

[@lesfreresdelaquote1176]

Also, Americans do not seem to understand the sheer size of Europe. They think of Europe as a collection of small countries, but when people from Norway take their car to go to Spain for vacations, and I can tell you this is far from being an isolated case, they travel for more than 3000 km. The distance between Paris to Berlin is over 1000 km. So this idea of the US being a huge country that Europeans would have some trouble to comprehend is getting a bit old. The Schengen space, which covers 22 countries and has a size of more than 4.000.000 km2 is a space in which you can travel without border control.

[@utkarshparate3333]

So what? ... New cities need to learn from the mistakes of other cities nd apply it into theirs

[@lapincealinge2]

@@utkarshparate3333 that's the thing, they don't learn, they don't change, they keep going towards more car space and less pedestrian space while simply saying "it is what it is, we can't do nothing about that"

[@mrshadow4007]

There was an experiment done where fungus was grown on a Petri dish in the shape of the continental US with food placed at every capital and major city in the US. The fungus grew in lines between the food sources as efficiently as possible and created a map of the most effective way to connect all of the major cities of the US by road or rail.

[@BD-yl5mh]

They did that for the Tokyo metro area and the fungus grew in a configuration that was almost identical to the already existing subway because Tokyo has competent planners apparently haha

[@dawnrazornephilim]

Have either of you got a link about it, sounds interesting.

[@leandabee]

@@dawnrazornephilim it does sound interesting eh 🤗

[@Erizedd]

I'd really love to see that too, if you have a link to a video?

[@barnowl5774]

Fascinating!

[@KJ-md2wj]

When talking about Swiss railroads you have to realize that they are much, much more expensive to build because of the many tunnels and bridges needed in that mountainous terrain.

[@MegaLokopo]

Yes, but with the record breaking bureaucracy in the us building the public transit would be much more expensive there.

[@wolf310ii]

@@MegaLokopo Try to build something in Germany or Swiss, then you might see how far away from record breaking the US bureaucracy is. There was a guy who build a mobile stable for chicken or rabbit on a trailer, he was allowed to drive around and park where ever he wanted on his own land, bit as soon as he wanted to unfold the stable, the trailer changed from vehicle to building and he needed a construction permit, the full programm with blueprints, static calculations, ect.

[@akuno7294]

@@MegaLokopo Don't kid yourself, we have a lot of bureaucracy in Switzerland too.

[@MegaLokopo]

@@wolf310ii The california rail project is decades behind schedule, very little progress has been made, and every year it gets delayed and the budget increases. about 80 percent of your tuition in the us goes to payroll of people you will never meet in college. There are bathrooms in some parks that get torn down after a few years because they weren't big enough or in the right spot, and they cost both a few hundred million dollars to build and a few hundred million dollars to tear down, because they must be built to such a stupid ridiculous degree of durability.

[@wolf310ii]

@@MegaLokopo That sound more like stupidity or corruption than record breaking bureaucracy

[@marco_grt4460]

Do you know what's the worst thing about having paved areas? The heat, in my country in Italy are about to change the square from asphalt to cobblestone to prevent rainwater from overloading the sewer network and having the ground self-regulates the temperature and lowering it, it will be more an experimental phase to see if it will work in reality and maybe other municipalities could do it the same way if it gives positive results

[@bentels5340]

It's not impossible, even in the US. It just takes time, effort and dedication. The Netherlands is often hailed as a mecca for bikes, but it took 50 years of work to get it to that level. BTW, even in The Netherlands the bike is not a cross-country commuting vehicle, for that we have cars and trains. Don't fall for the old trope "the US is too big for bikes" -- sure you wouldn't commute from New York to Washington DC on a bike, but you can bike *within* the cities just like we do.

[@xenotypos]

And in Europe, almost nobody commutes from one city to another in a bike. Unless they are tourists or doing a sport event. It's indeed the inside of a city that matters.

[@cjohnson3836]

I'd really like to see the type of car share services available in Europe. The average American makes 4 trips/day, under 4 miles from home. Most people do not travel long distances. 4 miles is nothing on a bike. But people resist going car-less for those other times. Car shares would eliminate that need and the more people that go car less, the more visible bikes become, the more political power can be leveraged to actually remodeling our cities.

[@nightstriker5885]

@@cjohnson3836 4 american miles is 6.44 km that is bike/walking distant for avrage european

[@splittedspark1675]

@@cjohnson3836 well as a European who lived in a smaller city and moved to a bigger one I cansay: Carsharing is really not used much. In the city you can get by walking or biking and if you are more away from such things you may be able to get by with public transportation. But if you go out a bit more people just use a car instead. But I know of many people who drive to a near train station and then going into the big city with train. Because we don't really like driving a car in the big cities, as it's annoying and you can get by much easier by walking or using public transportation. All this results in only few users of Carsharing. Only my experience though

[@daniele8484]

@@splittedspark1675 I live near Milan in Italy and I can say that what you wrote can be applicable here too. Almost every person I know hates to drive in Milan and prefers to drive (or go with bike, tram, bus, electric scooter) to the outer metro station or a train station and then get into Milan with the public transport system.

[@Cleve_Crudgington]

Dude, as an Aussie when I went to northern and western Europe a few years ago I was blown away at how good their infrastructure is for cyclists. We've got bike lanes in Australia but they often pull double duty as parking lanes and cyclists are still sharing space with cars. We're definitely not on the same level as the US in terms of unfriendliness to pedestrians and cyclists but there's plenty of room for improvement. Same with public transport. Decent in capital cities, not so good in smaller cities.

[@whyjnot420]

Speaking as someone from a city of 35k up in New England, the reason we don't have the same level of public transportation that is enjoyed by many other places (both in the US and elsewhere), is twofold. 1) There simply is not enough need to cover enough of the costs running a bus network would entail & 2) My little city and many like it have a small core downtown area and then the rest is very spread out. That more spread out area was designed with personal transportation in mind rather than public transportation (or a combo of personal and public transport for that matter). Maybe if the major built up area was more concentrated (not just the main commercial portions of town, which in practice looks kinda like a wishbone, with 3 main arteries) or maybe if there was simply more need and thus more riders thus enough money coming in to justify it. But not as it stands. We only have a commercial cab service around 2/3 the time even (I have no clue how many companies I have seen over the years). I am speaking specifically about my city of 35k, but there are micropolitan statistical areas in the US (same idea as metropolitan, but a core city of between 10k and 50k) and my city is the core of one of the either 543 or 547 (I got conflicting results looking this up just now) such areas in the US. As such I would not say it emblematic of smaller American cities, but it certainly is representative of at least a few of those 550-ish areas. Granted it is likely far older than the majority of them, its 40 years older than the USA even. As for cyclists, we give them little places to f*** off to. Might sound bad (and maybe it is, but given the way cyclists act around here, It doesn't make me feel bad for them), but essentially that is what we do. We give them a scenic place to ride for recreation, tell them "look, we gave you that nice place, now f*** right off". and thats that. Granted if its too far to walk here, its probably too far to bike in a reasonable amount of time unless you are coming in from the valley sides.... but then you have a nice walk back because you are NOT riding up those hills unless you are a pro. Just some food for thought...

[@k.v.7681]

@@whyjnot420 It's sort of a lame excuse. The entire point of a transport system in most european countries (and I'm talking about national level initiatives, rather than local. Guessing the US political structure would place this stuff on the state-level) is to link smaller cities and villages to the big hubs/cities. Take the Belgian Ardennes for instance. There are trains and buses that allow people to have a commute from villages in the middle of the woods with less than 2k people to the nearest city every hour, cities like Verviers that are barely bigger than the one you describe, from 6 am to 8 or 9 pm. Been working in France for a while, and the 45 minutes commute from my small city of 12k inhabitants starts it's cycle at 5 am to the nearest 240k people city, while busses around the villages surrounding the small city start around 6 or 7 for kids to go to school and people to go to work. Linking people, adding them to the system, is lucrative for public powers. Because it means an increase in professional, and thus social, mobility. Which in turn generates taxes. How? Easier access to jobs. Fairer housing market where you don't have to choose exile for a roof. Which in turn creates more spending power for households. By no means are public transportation services, by themselves, lucrative, even in Europe. But long term, it does bring in the cash.

[@whyjnot420]

@@k.v.7681 Something to think about: I think the structure here would actually put it on all three levels depending on origin-destination. If it is within a given town it will be local, within the surrounding towns and it will be either county or state, over state lines and you are talking state and/or national. Given that the state of New York is almost as large as the country of England. And given that there are many areas such as south of me the "tri-state area" of Connecticut, New York & New Jersey. You have people who might live in Ct, but commute to NJ each day, going through NY (you can begin to see how much of a headache this stuff can cause). Doing things like what you are talking about, becomes really hard to implement as it basically requires the herding of cats. Speaking about my own city, and only my city. Every time the city has in the last several decades, tried to get some bus routes in town, they have always failed due to a lack of money. Even when the town is trying to subsidize them, they fail. The only busses that haven't totally failed are the YMCA busses (which actually transport people between a handful of places), but tbh I haven't seen any of those lately. To the best of my knowledge there literally is not enough demand for busses in town. Which I might add, is a local matter, not a state or national one (talking about in town use that is). I think the biggest problem is that places are just too spread out. You need so many busses to service enough people, meaning you need a lot of people to justify and support the number of busses you use and you can only increase the number of people after that by increasing the number of routes and thus the number of busses. And so on. I have no doubt that enough people are here. The problem is in getting people to think about using public transportation in the first place. I think this is where the lack of riders comes from. At least in my experience. And you are no doubt correct that proper transport to business, commercial and industrial areas can bring in good money in the long term. The problem here is simply getting people to stop thinking "who can I ask for a ride?" and start asking "what time does the bus I want get here?" Even if money stops being an issue (e.g. the bus is 100% subsidized by the state/town), if there are not enough people riding the bus, everyone and their mother is going to yell "so why are we spending money on this thing nobody is using?" Huge chunks of the US has an aversion to public transportation. Getting people here to accept public transportation as a viable means of travel is an uphill battle where you are not just pushing a boulder, you have 3 more tied to your waist. addendum: "reasons" & "excuses" while similar, are not to be conflated and what I stated before (and in this) are reasons, not excuses. So I do have to correct you there. (It is the people opposed to public transport who have excuses. I am not opposed to it, hence I talk about the actual reasons for it failing around here and why it cannot succeed without people starting to think about it in a different manner. I can see the issues we have had, can predict these to still be issues in the future since nothing much has changed.) addendum 2: I do feel mildly insulted that you felt the need to call what I said "excuses". Good day to you >.

[@k.v.7681]

@@whyjnot420 Oh by no means did I mean it in an offensive way, and I apologise for the discomfort. The word excuse pointed to the notion of lack of dense population, the eternal "america is so big and my city is so small" thing. Talking about transportation is more of a hub situation, you're obviously not really concerned about the Nevada desert in those instances. Now talking about the general position of the public in regards to these matters is indeed a reason that motivates the current situation, that is certain. I stick to my choice of words for the first example while acknowledging the usage of "reasons" for your further arguments. Another thing I need to clarify is that the political make-up and it's complexities can be problematic here as well, for the simple reason that with the Shengen area, A LOT of people commute daily on the borders. People leave their home, drop their kids at school, and take the bus to the other country for work, then come back. Easy as that. But the negotiations and regulations behind were a serious hurdle, from taxes on tickets to even drivers licences for passenger transport and norms (think OSHA with bureaucrats from 2 countries). What I mean in short is that yes, these matters are a headache but... it's kind of their job in those administrations to deal with those headaches for a better society? Why are we paying them with tax money otherwise?

[@ShenLong991]

In Europe we also have Parking lots... but we tend to build them into parking houses or the supermarket buildings, usually between 2 to 5 stories tall, and some marketplaces like "Kaufland" or the city-markets build them above or under their market-area into the same building.

[@zimzimph]

In the drone shot there is a parking lot on top of a building btw, but I do like what we have here in Europe.

[@Jacobus666]

I'm from the netherlands and lived in Amsterdam for quite some time, your reaction to the city was fun to watch! As for your question about whether USA is to far gone. It will definitely be hard, we've been designing infrastructure with bikes and pedestrians in mind since the 60s i believe. You just have to change your mindset when it comes designing public space and then apply that for a long long time. But it's never to late.

[@776281]

First step is to change the design standards so that when new infrastructure is built it stars out that way. The Dutch have been pretty smart on how they have done it.

[@antoinemozart243]

The Netherlands are even smaller than Connecticut and are flat. Irelevant comparison.

[@welovecheshirecats4557]

I worked in Amsterdam 15 years ago and I would see the old Queen Beatrix cycling around with no security, waving at folks who said "good morning". Super cool.

[@xanderbastiaansen5579]

Lol, good story. Does not matter whether it actually happened...

[@welovecheshirecats4557]

@@xanderbastiaansen5579 I mean she was famous for it, but whatever. You might want to google the origin of the British phrase "Bicycle monarchy".

[@SpiritmanProductions]

A refreshingly honest, intelligent, and open-minded video. Good work. For what it's worth, the "too far gone" argument might not apply in terms of space and rebuilding, but I think it _does_ apply in terms of culture, attitudes, and lobbying pressure. Too many people are set in their ways, and too many politically powerful companies benefit directly or indirectly from heavy car usage, or, at least, from the absence of its alternatives. Citizens who walk and cycle are, on average, much healthier than those who drive everywhere. That's not something the US's cruel "healthcare" system wants to see. Just my view from across the pond, by the way.

[@bena8121]

People who walk and cycle are not generally more healthy. I haven't known too many cyclists in my life, but the few I've known of - one had a heart attack in the middle of the road while cycling. Another had malanoma cut out from behind his ear as well as his left temple, and another suffered heat exhaustion, fainted and came off his bike and broke his back and required pins to be put into his spine. Most cyclists look like stop-go road workers. Walking is not as dangerous, but sun exposure is still a danger for walking.

[@BMoser-bv6kn]

@@bena8121 People who walk and cycle a little are generally more healthy. As opposed to people who do nothing and fuse to their couches.

[@allergictorain0-028]

@@bena8121 Every study ever done on the effects of biking and walking for transportation disagree. We're not talking about turning people into "cyclists" who spend hours a day in spandex training to be the next Lance Armstrong, we're talking about people wearing suits and dresses taking a relaxed 15min bike instead of a car trip. If you want to start talking about danger, the most common cause of death worldwide is heart disease. The best way to prevent it? 30 minutes of light exercise a day. If you're worried that spending 30 minutes outdoors a day is going to give you cancer, firstly I'm sorry, but also sunscreen is remarkably effective and cheap as hell.

[@bena8121]

@@BMoser-bv6kn I agree to that, however not everywhere is as cold as Europe. Walking and cycling to work and back may not be a good idea during periods of the day and season due to risks of melanoma.

[@bena8121]

@@allergictorain0-028 I agree that exercise is good, obviously heart disease is a big killer, but people can exercise at a gym or go walking or running in the early morning or late afternoon when the sun isn’t as intense. But if everybody relied on walking and cycling to work, Melanoma rates are going to skyrocket, more that what already is.

[@Gomisan]

There's a bunch of urban design videos that are really interesting on this subject. A channel called Not Just Bikes has a few good ones. They often talk about the types of streets and roads or "stroads', and the lack of roundabouts etc. Also the type of buildings ALLOWED in cities. Mixed use is often not allowed at all.

[@Dave1507]

Ah yes, the weird "zoning laws"

[@axellyann5085]

@@Dave1507 sim city flashbacks

[@romainviry3185]

Not just bikes is a very good Chanel indeed

[@Kodiak1234]

Sydney opened its first underground automated metro line a few years ago, they plan to put in a few more, particularly to the new 2nd airport in Western Sydney. We have an overground train network but it’s slow, outdated technology and capacity can’t be increased. some of these KZbin transport channels are quite addictive ……. I wouldn’t drive into Sydney city, the parking is too expensive, I would walk or drive to a bus lane then catch a bus and a train. Because of traffic, it’s quicker to catch an express train than to drive….

[@dutchman7623]

Yep! America is BIG. But few people commute from living in Miami and working in Chicago. Or living in San Francisco and do their shopping in New York. Most people in the US do not even leave their state daily, for anything.

[@MelerionTheFirst]

In France i was in an high school, the parking was like 10-15 places for 1000 Student. I never saw a problems to that. Behind the school they still was another parking, with like 30-40 places, but i never saw him full, he was principaly for sport events.

[@gwenwalravens8030]

Lol, in Gent, Belgium or Leuven, Belgium, I'am not scared to hit a bicycle with my car, I'm afraid of tons of bicycles hitting my car. Then again, I was once a student riding a bike myself. It is better to walk or use a bike in those cities. You won't get anywhere with a car.

[@dropshot1967]

If you think this was interesting, you should follow the Channel "Not just bikes". That guy has a background in city planning, he has lived in several cities in Canada and USA and other cities around the world. Many of his video's address the ways in which American city planning could improve and shows how several problems could be resolved by resetting the traditional priorities in standard city planning.

[@SKy_the_Thunder]

The best shot the US has is to improve on its public transport. A single well used bus trip can take some 50 cars off the road. Even if you only reach a fraction of that overall efficiency with a bus line, you can still drastically reduce your traffic volume and with that the waste of space in parking lots. I've worked with Geographic Information Systems for a couple years and if city planners wanted, it would be decently easy for them to write an algorithm that automatically outputs the most efficient bus routes for any given city. You'd just need to compile all of the data you already have about your city (distribution of housing areas by standard of living, businesses by jobs and visitors, other points of interest, road system, traffic volume by time ect.) and info that's easy to collect by poll or from other sources (who drives from where to where how often, where would they like to go from where, are they transporting goods on those trips, etc.) into one model and could then run simulations on that to find a system that best satisfies those criteria. The big issue is that the car industry lobbies heavily against public transport to maintain sales. Including propaganda along the lines of "car is freedom, public transport takes away that freedom!!!" - although in reality a solid public transport system only adds the freedom of choice and with the reduction in individual traffic would even benefit those that choose to stick with cars...

[@mastertrams]

Something I will add to this is related to an issue named the Downs-Thomson Paradox. This is why dedicated rights of way (such as bus-only zones, or bus lanes, or rail lines, or off-street tram lines) are such a good idea, because they ensure that trips by public transport are quicker than equivalent trips by car. The minute this is true, that trips by public transport are quicker and/or more convenient than trips by car, you will see huge modal shift. Once this modal shift happens, suddenly the pressure felt by lawmakers and city planners won't be to increase space for cars, but to increase capacity on public transport. America just has to reach the tipping point, and then it can coast the rest of the way to European levels of public transport.

[@SKy_the_Thunder]

@@mastertrams Sadly the issue there is that the car industry actively lobbies to tip the scales in the opposite direction. Funds are pulled from the currently inefficient public transport, spaces planned around car use make the hurdle for switching over higher, sunken cost fallacy prevents those in power from correcting their course... You'd likely need to actively point out the tipping point for them to not miss it. And it's not the easiest thing to be heard on that stage...

[@56music64]

I try to use public transport as much as I can.which is about 98% of the time, as I don't agree with all the cars on the roads, most with only one person in each vehicle. I do however, feel for a lot of reasons, that we desperately need a high speed train service, at least between the 3 major cities on the eastern seaboard, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. We have such a huge country, it will bring more tourists to Australia (which will contribute to covering the initial cost) and the flow between the 3 states would be much improved. They have talked about it since millennia but nothing has eventuated

[@splittedspark1675]

Yea high speed trains are great. As a German I can say this, even though our train company often has delays. But still you can have both a scenic route for tourists while having a fast route (or rather fast trains, made for mass transportation) for business or what else you can count on.

[@joemaloney1019]

Well what if we offer single and duo seat cars for daily commuter needs at discounts with lower insurance rates that would reduce fuel, material and infrastructure costs. Sort of backing into a bicycle culture while still providing a carlike experience and safety. Such vehicles would be able to use car roads and highways but park in half the space. Narrower vehicles mean less daily traffic jams and quicker commute times.

[@splittedspark1675]

@@joemaloney1019 well there are already 2 seater cars :) And they certainly don't add to less fuel consumption.

[@splittedspark1675]

@@joemaloney1019 plus if you do it for commuters anyway, get a bus system. Even less traffic jams and better efficiency. No need to park them in the city either, so more space for pedestrians

[@joemaloney1019]

@@splittedspark1675 40 years I commuted in New York City highways bumper to bumper almost all of it single drivers in family cars. These people are not going to take buses. There are privacy and security issues. However if the state and or city provided privileged parking spots and travel lanes and insurance discounts. Four drivers can occupy the space of one driving a family sedan on the road. Such vehicles would be similar to tadpole trikes or quads the power requirement would be equivalent to a gas or electric scooter. The savings would be the reduction in wear of infrastructure such as highways and bridges. And the environment would benefit in the reduction of co2, fuel and manufacturing costs.

[@Luredreier]

12:50 Remember that with less parking lots, roads and gardens, and with smaller houses *everything* ends up being closer together allowing for *significantly* shorter traveling distances to and from work and services.

[@rushi7312]

The thing is... The closest big city to where I live, I learnt that in the 60s a huge amount of houses have been demolished to make 1 or 2 line roads 4 line roads instead. But all that car madness has been reverted slowly over the years. About Copenhagen I'd add that 30 years ago it was also a city of cars. But it completely shifted its policy thanks to politicians who actually listened to the people. The closed half of the lines for cars and made them biking lines. They closed others all together making them for bikes and pedestrians only. In short, they made the life of car owners harder. It'd be harder to use a car than a bike in the city. And if not harder, at least slower. Then mentalities changed. People actually quit using their cars and used bikes instead. And now the city is green, its air is cleaner, people are healthier and fitter. I'm sure there were many people against it to start with. But at the end of the day, the things balanced themselves out. Cars being less often used left space in the narrower streets for people in cars that really need them such as people with handicap or elderly who cannot walk easily.

[@goaway9977]

I'm in my mid twenties and have never owned a car or had a licence. I live in Sydney and it's pretty easy for me to get to shops and work and friends by walking or taking public transport. However this lifestyle is predicated on one major thing, and that is the density of the population. The older I get, the more I hate high density living. I would much rather live in a free standing house, however in order to afford that in Sydney I would need to move about an hours drive away from work. I love the idea of a car friendly city where middle income people can afford to live in a house and still have their job opportunities within a 20-30 minute drive away. Perhaps it's a case of the grass being greener on the other side, but I do feel that these videos on KZbin espousing the virtues of European city design fail to account for the fact that many people simply value space and privacy more than they do themselves.

[@jujoonline8248]

I hate it when people say "But it's too big" or "but it's gonna take so long to finish it" Well yeah but if you don't even start you're never gonna move forward and improve! Sometimes you just have to start small🤷‍♀️

[@pkgod99]

I used to live in Taiwan and now in the US in the Chicago area. I have to say, I was shocked that there is barely any underground parking and even the bus route is kind of bad. The trains too only take you to a few locations and don't have enough stations in each and different part of the city. I was like, how do people get around the? Until I learn the stupid low driving age and how reliant driving a car is.

[@MrStratofish]

Surprised that this doesn't cover zoning laws either as it goes hand-in-hand with transport and makes no sense in the US. If you can have shops in residential areas then people can walk/bike to the shop and not have to travel miles. Having cheap apartments above shops in light/medium commercial areas decreases commutes to work for commercial workers and of course adds to housing stock.

[@fortuna7469]

Thanks IWrocker, you have a great attitude to learning new things! Wish there were more open minded people like you.

[@Mechanic.Pete41]

Being an aussie living in Queensland I'm quiet spoilt for public transport, I can get from the top of the state to the bottom with very minimal fuss or expense, then I started to do my planning for the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail and holy hell was I blind as to how bad the public transport is in the states 😳 and how expensive it is lol certainly open my eyes

[@thechrisman5564]

16:22 did anyone notice that city was Brisbane Australia

[@dasy2k1]

The one thing I was expecting to see but diddnt was that the American Zoning policies are oftentimes the key to the problem... It results in vast tracts where only single family houses are permitted.... In Europe we have much more mixed usage. A predominantly residential area would still allow, schools, small shops, Doctors offices and so on

[@conallmclaughlin4545]

My city just closed off most of the city center to cars. They put in picnic tables and plants. Now people use it as a meeting place or to sit and enjoy a coffee. It's brilliant. Never to late to redsign

[@yoldman7713]

Hey Ian, love ya Vids. I read many years ago that the reason why the American road system is the way it is, is simply because of the times. In the 1950s and 1960s America wasn't worried about where to park cars, their main worry was how to move alot of vehicles and people out of the city area as quickly and safely as possible incase the USSR attacked. It also made it possible to move the military around quicker and easier if need be. Back then, the Bomb was the most scariest thing on the planet, evan here in Australia, and we have Drop Bears :):):). Anyway, love ya Vids, look forward to watching them each day, take care, Cheers :):):)

[@kreaturen]

When I was an exchange student at Texas Tech couple of years back, it was not uncommon for cars to honk at me as I carried my bags of groceries back from the Walmart. The further away from the store I was, the more honking I got. I felt they were taunting me, like I was some kind of freak weirdo 🤣

[@exan6970]

Atleast you got more excerise than them lmao

[@gerdforster883]

I was an exchange student in the pacific north-west when I was 16. In my first months, I was repeatedly stopped by the police because walking was somehow a suspect activity. Luckily, it was a small city, so after three months or so, all the cops knew about that strange german guy and stopped bothering me.

[@kreaturen]

@@gerdforster883 That's so messed up 🤣🤣🤣

[@ale.6195]

​@@gerdforster883 I came to America when I was 12 and insisted on either walking, biking, or taking my golf cart. We can operate golf carts in public when we're 12 as long as we have an adult where I live. At 15 we can drive one alone as long as we have a permit. My mom allowed me to go with my older sister to our friends' houses and to the city when I was 13. The number of looks and honks I got was priceless. Sometimes I'd get the cops called on me for driving the golf cart maybe twice a month 😂😂 People thought I had stolen the golf cart and it cracked me up every time. After I stopped getting scared out of my mind that is 😂😂

[@Voltorb1993]

This one fact blew my mind: Los Angeles, the second largest city in the USA with the population of about 4 million people, has a metro system, which carries about 100 million people a year. Prague, the capital of my country, has a population of around 1.5 million. Its metro system carries somewhere between 400 and 500 million people a year. (All of those are pre-covid numbers) So.... yeah. The thing is, Americans simply can't get rid of the cars even if they wanted to. Not only are the cities badly designed, they have next to no public transport systems. (Except New York City, the only city in the USA that has a decent public transport system)

[@wallywombat164]

G'day mate. I have always thought that allowing 16yr old babies to hold a drivers licence is a absolute dangerous irresponsible joke.

[@Rusty_Gold85]

In Adelaide we have a good mix of bike lanes and Publc Transport , but I can recall half a dozen riders having accidents. Grab a look at the CBD plan Colonel Light surveyed in 1840. We even made new Tram Tracks 10 years ago and electricated to the Northern Suburbs. Within 5 min walk of me are 2 train stations and a Bus stop in town and cross town

[@dorkydude9622]

Tomorrow is Australia Day, you’ll HAVE to react to some of the Australia Day lamb ads! (Like if u agree so he sees it)

[@NamuBang]

I absolutely could not go into the Chicago subways and the subway platforms just scared me like it’s not built up. I had already been unnerved by the gun signs everywhere lol

[@AndyViant]

Australia (and America) will never get remotely close to the Amsterdam model for a bunch of reasons. 1) Population density. Old cities like Amsterdam were designed around short distances and high density and foot (or even horse) traffic. Substituting bicycle (or e-bike) for horse was basically a like for like swap, just without the manure. You could probably do this with say a Manhattan Island, but you couldn't do so with even New Jersey. Add geographically huge cities like Sydney, Melbourne or Los Angeles and the travel times are going to be too high for the great majority. 2) Comfort. Riding a bicycle can be hot sweaty work. Once again, a moderate temperatured seaside, high latitude, relatively cool, dense and geographically flat city like New York might be viable for this kind of transit (although maybe not in summer). But how about Orlando? Fort Worth? San Francisco? Brisbane? Perth? You take away one or two of the comfort factors and substitute in a high humidity, hilly environment and cycling quickly becomes a hot, sweaty chore. Put you deep inland and these issues get far worse. 3) Medical costs. A big discouragement for cycling comes from our health system. Australia sees a cyclist without a helmet as some huge economic threat to our health system costs and demands they wear a helmet from childhood, but at least if there is an accident the healthcare won't bankrupt you, unlike America. Of course we completely ignore the benefits of active mobility in weight loss, reduced obesity and diabetes, better respiratory health, less car crashes, out of pure blind ideology. 4) Restrictive, risk averse laws. Not just the mandatory helmet use. E-scooters are effectively illegal in NSW and VIC, basically barring the residents of Australia's two largest (and densest) cities from transitioning to modern (or should I say future) mobility options that suit the higher population density economists keep telling us we need. E bikes faster than 25 kph (15 mph) are also banned. We also have no Neighbourhood Electric Vehicle schemes and little support for any form of Zero Emission Vehicles at all. 5) Ideological opposition to public transport. Both from lawmakers not wanting to subsidise public transport, but also users of public transport being seen as a poor underclass. This of course ignores the huge subsidies on fossil fuels and the costs of building and maintaining roads. All in all, such pollution free transport options that don't chew up enormous space in roads and garages are exactly what we need. Especially if we want to encourage high density development and reduce the barriers to not just mobility but also housing for young, old and the poor. Let alone the whole climate change thing. Don't get me wrong, I love my cars and motorbikes, but if it wasn't just dead money not to use them and have them sitting there it would be great to have more options. We need some sensible laws and a regulation point as to where an e-bike needs to be registered and insured. We need changes to our registration, fuel taxation and road use cost base. Our current rules are madness.

[@allangoodger969]

Out of the cities of Australia, Canberra was designed to be the most bike/pedestrian friendly. It was designed around the idea of small suburbs with a small shopping centres with trams for public transport. Walter Burley Griffin an architect from Chicago designed Canberra in the 1910s however trams were scraped and replaced with busses. Griffin also designed Griffith, Leeton, lemmon tree passage and a town near me Culburra Beach. One of the options for the capital was Jervis Bay. Walter also designed a plan for this and there are maps for this. The scary thing was Jervis Bay was going to have a steel works and a nuclear power station. Thank god it didnt go ahead as Hyams beach retains one of the whitest sand in the world.

[@neilshepherd1904]

What he says about planning does make some sense. I still like my car though. Something about Switzerland - apart from the lakes and mountains and valleys being beautiful, it sits between auto powerhouses. New autos are freighted between Germany and Italy, back and forth under the Alps. Cheers.

[@AliSot2000]

There is are simple solutions, for example: Park and Ride You build a huge parkingspace outside the city. You reduce the extra parking spaces by condensing them to one spot. Then you have to invest heavily into public transport, connecting those parking spots to the city center. From there you can start to build out the public transport in the center. And then over the following decades, you can then restructure the suburbs to a more pedestrian friendly design and of course interconnect everything with public transport. Aside from that, there needs to be easement for the railcompanies to acquire land such that you can build the high-speed rail tracks in a straight line with less difficulty. Since the US is such a vast country and has so many empty spaces, high-speed rail could easily be implemented between large cities. With conventional rail, speeds of up to 300km/h I.e. 190 mph would be possible across large distances. A trip across the US would take 4 days if you were to ride on a train at 190 mph compared to a 10 day trip with a car at 60mph. Europe also offers sleeptrains. Assuming you travel in such a train, it would reduce your travel time to around 36 hours.

[@cycoholic]

What about replacing a large carpark with an appartment building, with below ground parking and/or above ground parking, and a rooftop garden. Have the building be 2/3rds the footprint of the original parking lot, with the rest of area being turned into parkland. Or, planning forward, have the top couple of floors become parking for future e-vtol vehicles, ot at least a landing pad for the future flying taxi and busses.

[@michawolinski314]

18:25 The problems are: a) wasted space b) not letting your kids go to school by themselves (I've heard some "worst mom" was run over for letting her son go home by himself). This way you are forced to use car (can't get whole family on bike) even if you don't want to.

[@norsehall309]

Hi, Ian, living in the outback area l never have to worry about where to park my ute and a pushbike is about as useful as a chocolate tea pot on our roads, l feel sorry for those ant mounds they call "City's" and the overcrowding.

[@hydroac9387]

Would anyone want to ride a bike in Chicago in January? Ah, no. It is far too cold for at least 3 months a year. As an avid biker, I live in a very bike-friendly Chicagoland collar county of DuPage County (almost 1 million people) located west of Chicago proper. The suburban village were I live is surrounded by regional trails and city bikeways. I'm the former mayor of a DuPage County village of 10,000 and during my 8 year term of service I added two trails and established bikeways to make it easier to get from your home to trails or destinations. We added these 2 trails to 3 existing regional trails.

[@WaddleQwacker]

I grew up in the far end of Paris' suburbs. My parents used to live inside Paris before I was born. And they always told us how the car was king in Paris, and pedestrians had to either stay underground with the metro that always has a station within 1km or walk on the street but be really careful because of how wild the car traffic was. But that was 20 years ago. As time went by, many changes were done in Paris and even its suburbs. Metro got extended, more trains, more buses, and many roads were redesigned. 20 years ago, you couldn't see a single bike in Paris, but today it feels like there are more bikes than cars rolling around. I can almost cross the street without looking. I can walk in the street and smell the trees around instead of car gas rejects. It's definitely far from perfect, and still a lot to do to improve the situation, and there is quite an amount of unfair treatment to car drivers overall in France, but it's definitely going in the right direction overall. Again, Paris used to be hell for bikes and pedestrians, but it's becoming closer.

[@castortoutnu]

The fantastic bicycle parking at 6:28 is actually in Utrecht (20min by train from Amsterdam). It's the biggest bicycle parking in the world.

[@RolandjHearn]

When living in Dallas I was blown away by the down town car parks. Where both ground space and parking space is needed why they didn't have multi story or under ground car parks just blew me away. You drive off these massive freeways totally designed for efficiency and then onto car parks where with a little planning you could get 10 times the amount of cars in the same space, quite easily. Then sell all the other parks and make a fortune. I still shake my head. Australia has been trying to balance it out for a long time. We are a car culture too, but we have been investing in changing that dynamic when it comes to the big cities. Even though there is plenty of down town parking in most cities who wants to pay $50 to park for 2 hours. It is an easy thing to drive to a train station and walk around the city area. As a result I think all Australia cities have been investing in making public transport more available and better quality. When I was young you only went on a bus if you had to, now I prefer to find a way to ride a bus or train. I spend way more time in my car than public transport but if I can I will definitely use the transport provided.

[@levelnine123]

I thought the same thing! Why no parking garages or underground garages. Totally pointless space waste.

[@caltravels9454]

Perth is building a new train line to connect people in the southern suburbs to south of the river without having to go through the city hub, so they can access the Perth stadium and other networks without entering the city. should be finished soon. Also, a long time in construction is our Airport link, a subway train line to link the city direct to the the airport, had some big delays and cost blowouts, hitting water etc. but that is coming along now too.

[@gerardbryant4840]

I used public transport for several years. From home to work used to be 1hr by bus and foot, but only 20 minutes by car. Also, l now start at 7am, so l can finish in time to do the afterschool run for my kids' sports. They can't get from their schools to their sports venues in time to start training on time. If l still could use the buses, l would. When l first started at my job, all the parking was on site, with a 3 storey carpark near the middle of the parking area. Now, there's an 8 storey carpark, and 2 massive carparks across the road, one of which is now only accessible by a staff pass. Because lots of people from the town centre were parking there for free, and walking 1500 metres or more to their offices. Australia and America both built out into vacant land, rather than up. So the population densities are lower, and our commute times are longer. I didn't mind the bus rides, but they ate up a lot of each workday. Public transport helps to cut pollution and reduce the need for inner city parking. If you keep on building more carparks and better roads, more people will use them. Town planners have to realise that money spent on public transport saves them from spending money on roads and associated infrastructure.

[@johanwittens7712]

7:05 That argument is consistently repeated by Americans, even though it has consistently been debunked many, many times. Yes the USA is big, but that does not matter. Just look at the statistics of the USA department of transport. Up to 60-65% of all trips taken on a daily basis is 5 miles or less. People tend to live, work, shop, etc locally. And even people with long commutes will shop, go out, do activities near where they live or work. And the vast majority of those trips could be done by bike, and a large part even by walking. It's just a myth that america or Canada being huge has anything to do with car dependancy. For 200y there were no cars and still the USA functioned with dense, mixed use core cities that were walkeable and bikeable. Look at pictures of USA cities of 150y ago and besides the straight roads and somewhat different style architecture, they look EXACTLY like people centered European, Asian, African,... Cities. The difference is that the USA was completely bulldozed to make room for the car, and policies were implemented to make building middle ground, medium density, walkeable neighbourhoods impossible to build. This led to incredibly dense skyscraper urban downtowns surrounded by vast single home, single use suburbs, with nothing inbetween. In some USA cities there are some "missing middle" neighbourhoods left, with rowhousing, small apartment buildings, and mixed use. They're the streetcar neighbourhoods built before WW2, and they're now so desirable because they are so pleasant, they're pretty much unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans. The USA being big has nothing to do with it. The USA is car dependant because the USA was bulldozed and rebuilt to be car dependant. I advise to watch "not just bikes". It's a channel made by a Canadian who grew up in a typical N-american car town, lived all over the world, and then settled in the Netherlands. And he explains incredibly well how urban planning created the current N-American car dependancy, how urban planning created the stark difference between the USA and the Netherlands and other parts of Europe, and how it could be changed through policy change and good urban planning strategies we've known about for over 50 years. Here's one to get you started, but beware of the rabbit hole that is excellent urban planning... kzbin.info/www/bejne/q6ncnHxpZcuGa5Y 8:00 also, don't be defeatist. The one thing the USA has going for it is that you don't value the built environment for its historical value much. Vast parts of the USA are pretty much rebuilt every 30-40y. Even roads and highways need rebuilding every 20-30y, with busy roads lasting even less. So with good policy changes, and good consistent implementation of those policies, the USA could completely transform itself in half a century or even less. Even the Netherlands took 50y to change from a car infested mess to the biking and public transit heaven it is today. And they're not done yet as they constantly try to improve what can be improved in roads and infrastructure every time it's rebuilt or renovated...

[@RobinCernyMitSuffix]

And if you would reduce the size of roads and parking lots, it would get even denser and because if that even easier to go on foot or by bike to places ;)

[@whyjnot420]

Nice way to argue, make lots of statements that are true when averaged out, but are not representative of many places. If you want to talk about problems with infrastructure and urban design in the US. Talk about specific places, not national averages. The US is too varied for any one size fits all description like you have. The ages, the past developments, the actual environmental factors make it so you have to treat different parts of the country as if they are separate nations in this context and nobody except morons are arguing that one size fits every nation. strawmanstrawmanstrawmanstrawmanstrawmanstrawmanstrawmanstrawman is what your block of text said to me.

[@whyjnot420]

@@RobinCernyMitSuffix You can make a better argument here I think. While you are not wrong, that is not what persuades people. I think there is a very good argument to be made over the safety of wide roads. The safer someone feels, the more risk they take, wide roads promote a feeling of safety, leading conversely to an increase in risk taking thus leading to them being less safe. Thus more narrow roads tend to be safer due to people taking fewer risks. The part about a more condensed urban area (or commercial area or whatnot) makes for a nice bonus to add to that though. People around me are never going to respond to "lets condense the built up area so that it makes walking, biking and bussing more feasible". No matter how much sense it makes. They will respond to "hey, it makes you safer". I think your argument would be a decent one for initial planning though. Just not for rebuilding. It makes sense for rebuilding, so don't get me wrong, it just wouldn't be persuasive unless maybe you were talking about a place that got trashed by a flood or fire and a large swath was slated to be rebuilt already. And honestly when thinking in practical terms, you need arguments that are persuasive in order for them to be effective. Also can tell you that the 'bulldozed every 30-40 year' line of the op, has zero to do with a huge portion of the northeast (not to mention it is hyperbolic to a fault). In fact, having a downtown that was rebuilt after floods in the 50s, means there is a pretty young downtown area here. Maybe it holds up elsewhere, but not around here. Just like with that statement about bulldozing (at least in my area), saying roads "need rebuilding" every "20-30" years is hyperbolic to the point of being garbage. Repaving is not rebuilding. Repaving is what happens every 20-50 years (depending on traffic levels, and the number of times a snowplow went down the road... they are murderous to the roads). Maybe a dirt road might need to be properly rebuilt once a generation and resurfaced every 5 years or so, but I don't think that was what the op was talking about. One last thing, "don't value the built environment for its historical value much" is patently false, we have wide ranging historical districts. Where you literally need permission to change exterior features of a building you actually own (e.g. the color of the paint). Not to mention the national register of historic places, which has tons and tons and tons of urban buildings in it. Man I hate this one size fits all crap. It is simplified to the point of being wrong. (I have lived in a building on the register of historic places which was built around 1910 , as well as in 3 different historic districts, one of those 3 was a house from the 1700s, another was from the mid 1800s and the third is actually a house made of 3 historic buildings put together to form a single residence.... and I haven't moved all that much in the 4 decades I have been around, not to mention the house I now own is over 115 years old itself.)

[@johanwittens7712]

@@whyjnot420 Except that cities are always designed in similar ways, especially in the USA. So yes, most urban environments in the USA can be treated pretty much the same. And of course no 2 places or cities are alike and need solutions tailored to their specific situations. This is obvious and assumed in any kind of urban design situation. But the general principles ALWAYS apply. That I have to explain this shows you don't really understand the basics of urban design. Of course there's no point in building bike infrastructure out in the desert of Nevada connecting two towns 100 miles apart for example. But inside those two towns, building a walkeable city center and walkeable neighbourhoods, and connecting all these neighbourhoods with safe walkeable and bikeable infrastructure could reduce traffic even in those small towns, and make them much more pleasant places to be in. It's no accident "small town USA" at Disney is designed like a historical walkeable and bikeable small USA town, it's what town all over the USA looked like before they were bulldozed for cars. You can call it a straw man argument, but that just shows how indoctrinated you are in the car centric mindset, where everything has to make way for the car. If you actually read my arguments and thought about them, you'd notice I'm just arguing the principles of urban design on which cities, yes even American ones, were built for centuries, before you bulldozed them for the car and the "suburban experiment". Of course "one size fits all" doesn't apply. That's the most basic principle of good urban planning and shouldn't even need to be explained. That doesn't mean the general principles still don't apply.

[@jadenw2520]

You had me until “good policy changes” good luck lmao

[@BillMaxVoxPax]

you should check out a couple of channels here on KZbin. one is called Not Just Bikes, and the other is called Strong Towns. they talk about effective and forward thinking urban design.

[@akuno7294]

In Switzerland, we have a petrol tax which pays for streets AND public transportation. This way the car gets more expensive and the trains get better and more useful aka attractive for the commuter.

[@patricktrakzel9657]

You also have to take in consideration that owning a car in Europe is much, much more expensive. Not only the gasoline, gas and diesel is much more expensive, getting your license in the Netherlands will cost you more than 2.000 euros. You have road taxes, parking in the city center will cost you more than 4 euros an hour. The securance is insanely costly. Finding a parking space in the center is almost impossible. And if you find one after driving around for hours, you will not be close to where you need to be. There are many roads where you cannot even use your car. So public transport and your bike are the way to go somewhere.

[@Muck006]

2:20 The point is also that you DONT SPREAD THE CITY OUT AS MUCH ... and thus "big stores" are far closer together, so you can park in one underground lot and reach several of them with the same walking distance as you can from one US parking lot. This "tightness" obviously makes PUBLIC TRANSPORT more appealing, because you have one stop for several shops instead of one stop for every store.

[@greyman3515]

Sydney, depending on your destination, can be terrible to get around. Toll ways have improved things but you pay for the convenience. Like Chicago, trains are not bad if you are going where they go, like into the city centre. Not great if you want to go between suburbs on different lines. Sydney was never planned though, it just grew with little consideration for the future. That said, there are not many sights equal to going into Sydney and seeing the bridge, Opera House and harbour from your train seat and getting off at Circular Quay to get a harbour ferry.

[@HannahHäggAutisticTransWoman]

Stockholm, Sweden has 5 tram/light rail/street car lines, 7 commuter train lines, 7 metro/subway lines, 3 narrow tracked rail lines(roslagsbanan), one local rail line (Saltsjöbanan) least 8 ferries lines and houndres of bus lines from which SL ("Stockholms lokaltrafik" which means "Stockholm's public transportation") owns. Region of Stockholm has a population of about 2,415,139

[@matthewjamison]

The Great Fire of London was used as a opportunity to redesign the City.

[@JohnWhite-mr3ec]

London UK was built to accommodate horse drawn vehicles so roads are not wide, it now has a population of just under 9 million, which is served by 700 bus routes with 19,000 bus stops. The underground train System (Subway) carries 2 million passenger a day and has 272 train stations, with the deepest tune running at 58.5 metres blow ground.

[@Tomblom]

I live in the suburbs of a big city in Europe. I have 3 bus stops 5 min walking distance and they go every 5-10 minutes. I also have train stop 15 min away walking. Parking in the city is hell. There are so few spots so if I'm going into the city I always bike or take public transport.

[@stevenbalekic5683]

No parking is allocated for students in schools in Australia...maybe some Universities (multi-storey or the campus is in the outer suburbs) have parking but generally they are usually linked to public transport.

[@SiqueScarface]

One solution would be to take a lane out of every road and turn it into a bike/pedestrian space. A second one would be reworking zoning laws. In most European towns, you have mixed neighborhoods, where the ground floor is used for commercial, and the floors above are residential. This makes for short walks between your home and grocery stores or even your office. The strict zoning in the U.S. forces longer distances onto people.

[@gamingtonight1526]

I lived and worked in Texas for a few years. My bank was about a mile away, so every Saturday I would walk on the grass verges go to the bank and walk back. Practically every time a Texan would stop in a car offering a ride. It was sometimes quite hard to tell them I was fine, and was just a few years from home!

[@Kghammond852]

Wisconsin's capital has slowly started to get some things like Amsterdam on State St. but only on State st. edit: In my opinion Madison really should just take a European approach. Roads are already garbage. We do have a bunch of old railroads that really only need some updating and maintenance to be used. Literally it would be simple for Madison, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis to set up one rail line between those three cities and a 10 miles stretch of highway in Wisconsin would leave the top 50th most used.

[@LynMa80]

When I see all those parking spots without a spot of shadow anywhere to see, knowing how hot US can be, it must be a real nightmare when you got back to the car in summer. I live in France where most parkings are under our feet, the car is never hot, and since you have to take a ticket to enter the parking, the security for the car is higher. (it's often 1 hour free, then around 2€ for an hour, depending on the time of the week or the city population).

[@kilsestoffel3690]

As a teen I rode about 15 miles per day on my bike. To school and back home, to friends, to sports, to a lake in summer, where ever I wanted to go. For longer distances I still take a train. It's not about how big a country is, it's about how the infrastructure is build. I had classmates from the next town at school, they had bikes at both trainstations in surveiled parking lots. If a community wants to support the use of bikes and public transportation, it is possible.

[@danellis-jones1591]

Amsterdam was a car dependant city in the 70s. They made a political decision to reverse that. It's what it is today because of 30+ years of investment and political consistency on the issue. American cities can absolutely change. If autonomous vehicles ever take off, they will have a huge impact on urban design, depending on how they're used. But they could take you to work and then go home. So no need for car parking!

[@jadedbelle4788]

I live in brisbane, australia and our public transport has the same issues. Its easy to get from the suburbs that has the trainlines/bus routes to the city but to go across suburbs is hard and time consuming. One job i work took me an hour and a half each way on public transport because i had to go in to the city then catch a connection back out. To drive it would take 20 minutes. I didn't have a car when i was working there so i had to take public transport.

[@panners125]

Melbourne has on street parking with meters. But most of its parking is high rise buildings of about 5 to 8 floors or so where people who go to the city park in them. You will not as a rule find open parking, unless it’s a vacant block where a building once stood a an other has not begun construction.

[@Jeni10]

Ive never heard of a parking lot in a school! Our teens have to be 18 to get their full driving licence, so no kids drive to school. They either get the bus, train or walk.

[@terrymac6]

Him saying it's "scary" to walk on the sidewalk in the US, and that kids are basically on house arrest until they're 16 is a serious over exaggeration. Walking on the sidewalks here don't phase us at all even the kids. So many kids walk home from school everyday without even thinking about it, or they'll walk to a friend's house etc. Not saying it can't be better but let's not act like it's the scariest thing ever lol

[@youpants1]

Brisbane, Australia representing at 16:19. That was one of the first things that amazed me and I noticed when in America, just all the parking lot scattered within the cities. Couldn’t believe how much wasted space there was.

[@nick7076]

I read that a US city/town tried to pedestrianise its main street. Within months all the shops had shut because people wouldn't walk either from the parking lot or even between stores. It's an attitude. Also France Germany and the like are large countries with space between cities and town. Just because the US is large doesn't mean you can walk or cycle in cities, but if the city is laid out with residences in one area, businesses in another and shops in another, you have to drive. I live in a small town in UK. At the end of my residential street there is a supermarket. Within a 2 min walk there are 3 corner shops what US would call grocery store or 7/11 I can walk into he town centre in 20mins and have all the large stores, local businesses and small manufacturers. There are 3 bus routes just on my street connecting to the next towns. A metro from town to the city in 30mins. There are 2 small parks within 2 min walk and large country park a half hour walk or 10 min drive. All the major roads have cycle lanes or segregation. This in a town of about 10,000 people.

[@Diveyl]

Multilevel parking lots with green roofs on top. Solves huge space occupied by a flat parking lot, and it puts a park on top of it. There are buildings with rooftops with plants, so design is not a problem.

[@Blessings.429]

In Perth we do have special bike lanes, bikes in the City and down the side of freeways. Also we do have one way streets in the City and a fair amount of foot traffic as it’s designed this way. According to this we are doing quite well. We have buses (free) to help you getting around CBD..

[@kathleenmayhorne3183]

Americans may be more resistant to bikes, because of the gun culture and less than safe areas to be riding around, instead of driving in your own car with walls for personal protection. Australia has a lot of multi-story parking lots in larger cities, that go up rather than spread out, giving shade to many cars which is brilliant. These can be ridiculously exy to park in though. Switzerland is a small country, with huge mountains all over it. The size of their mountains is twice to 3 × as high as Scottish hills, so to put roads in... they need extremely clever engineers. Around Lake Lucerne the road is built halfway up the side of the mountain. Rather than go down and up for valleys, they build huge bridges, straight across gaps, then in some areas they need "snow tunnels "- to keep the roads open, and to straighten some roads, tunnels through the side of mountains. In Zermatt at the base of the Matterhorn, you need to take your passport to go skiing, you can ski down into Italy or Germany if you get lost. There is snow on the mountains there, all year long. In the morning, the creeks through town are dry, once the sun starts melting snow, it runs down.

[@hart-of-gold]

As a few people have said Australia is starting from a car based city and town planning system. And the starting point for most change is a small central area becoming an outdoor mall and solid reasonably widespread bus systems. From there it's more case by case. In Sydney, in the the past 20 years, the buses have improved vastly; in the past 5 years, the bike routes have improved to the point that people, who I work with, that wouldn't ride a bike 5 years ago, cycle to work most days.

[@ViPa1111]

That's not quite true. All Australia cities started as public tranport oriented. Right up until 1950 public transport, walking and riding were still very predominant forms of transport. Freeway and highway building from the 50's onwards and the removal of tram systems from every capital (except Melbourne) changed Australian cities and resulted in sprawl. It's the sprawl areas that now constitute the largest areas of many cities and why so many people dont find public tranport convenient - they arent designed for public tranpsort they are desiged for driving.

[@hydroac9387]

He is right that there are standards of practice parking minimums associated with development. In my Chicagoland collar county village we did scale down parking requirements for a new apartment complex and had some of that parking be under the building, which reduced the parking lot footprint. The new apartment is located immediately adjacent to our Metra mass transit station and one of the biggest employer - a major hospital. We also designed the new apartment to incorporate our new regional trail through its grounds so folks can use the trail for recreation or transport. The idea is that most people in the apartment would walk or bike to the hospital or the Metra station. So far it is working just fine.

[@Liggliluff]

(10:10) Talks about metres first, but now square feet. It's a bit inconsistent.

[@helenhoward5346]

The part of town I live in is very walkable compared to a lot of places but you still have damaged sidewalks. I like to take walks with baby in the stroller. I can walk to 2 different grocery stores, pharmacies, a few restaurants within a mile from home. It's urban but suburban urban historic residential. But yeah it's so damn awkward to walk in a lot of places. I could've never walked to a store from my old house. It was too perilous and effort laden even though I'd see quite a few ppl walk on the side of the road. You'll still see ppl walk on the side of busy roads, sometimes in the road. I've visited Europe three times and it's incredibly easy, practically expected, that you'll walk everywhere in an urban or village setting. You don't need to have a car. When I returned home from Europe, I actually looked into public transport and it's impossible in my town unless you want to spend A LOT of time walking in pedestrian unfriendly areas and waiting. There's no way I could run my life with them. Unfortunately you need a car in the states and those happen to be quite expensive with maintenance. I like the freedom a car gives you. I think the US urban centers need to offer better bus services if they're gonna be more car centric.

[@cyberneticbutterfly8506]

The high schools could use some of those Amsterdam *underground* parking spaces instead of using above ground space.

[@wooperlovesbts2987]

I thought that underground parking was normal like everywhere. But then again I never left Europe so far.

[@clivewilliams3661]

Town Planning as a concept is a relatively new one when applied to our urban environments and it is true to say that the majority of European cities have grown organically from a time when the major mode of transport was your two legs, not four wheels. As I see it, the US cities grew with some degree of pre-planning, which is exemplified by their simplistic grid-iron layout, however, the older cities on the eastern sea-board show the signs of the original organic growth. The way that modern European cities react to the constraints of their historic growth compared to the planned city growth in the US is a fatuous one because they both have different roots and constraints and to imply that one is better than the other does not recognise the basics and must be overly biased.

[@taylor....]

The images of parking in those U.S. City's also seem to only be ground level parking, Melbourne Australia the only street level parking is on street, and even then I think that is too much. They could free up on street parking for more foot bike and public transport the speed limit is 40 in the CBD and it could go lower again soon

[@dan_lu]

Feel like the main difference is that here in the US, a lot of people want to live in larger, quieter places in the suburbs, but still be able to conveniently work and play in the city, and many of these people do not want to live in more densely populated areas. This is just a difference of opinion/preference of many people here (who like their cars) vs the people who prefer the more typical European city model. Also, public transportation -- even in cities with really good public transportation -- almost always takes longer than driving (often even if you include time spent parking). Comparing a couple of routes (that I'm very familiar with) on Google Maps (and ignoring the walking time from the bus and metro stops): 28mins by car vs 1hr 28mins by public transportation (1 bus + 1 train) for one trip; another is 25-50 mins by car (depending on traffic) vs 1hr 20mins starting from and ending at the closest train stations (so not including time spent getting to the starting station or from the ending station to final destination). Both of those trips are actually quite direct on public transportation (no back-tracking or anything) but they are just very slow (because of stops and speed of the bus/train) compared to driving.

[@taylor....]

Aussie here, it's interesting how you say Australia. Especially with your particular accent.

[@MorgorDre]

The Problem with the suburb and citycenter is your zoning policy. Get rid of some car lanes and parking lots. Build new buildings with garage under ground or built in. First floor for shops, higher floors for offices and rental. Build some parks on where parking lots are. Like really green and really big parks. Have events in that parks. That new parks work as POI and have there public transport concentrated.

[@jameswitt605]

Holland is made for bikes and they fully cater for them, I spent 13 weeks there in 87 for MRI training and loved the place. Public transport is also very good, both for around your city or from city to city. Actually that applies all through Europe. Perth, where I live, was very bad for public transport in the 70's and while it has improved a lot in the last 20 years it is still very much like that Chicago system, all set to go in and out of the city. The USA has one really good thing going for it though. Most the surface streets run parallel and either north-south or east-west, and the numbering system is set according to the blocks from the center. This makes it easy to find an address, while things can be more hectic in other nations with numbering systems changing in suburbs and not following a logical pattern.

[@lizcollinson2692]

Toronto has good bike facilities, a couple of connections missing but the office buildings have the bike parking and they share the gyms locker rooms. I used to cycle in for an hour and shower once I got to work. A couple of routes had problem areas but they are working on it. And a good city bike rental, great for tourists too.

[@kiljaeden7663]

Visited America many years ago. Drive to a shop. Park. Realised I needed something from another shop across the street. There was no way to walk there. Had to get back in the car to drive 20 metres.

[@shellshell942]

There's bike lanes all over Melbourne, it's just the norm. Multiple story car parks are normal too unless your in a tiny town.

[@Emma.Lily69]

Amsterdam was super car-centric in the 70s but they made policies that allowed for growth in this direction over 50 years. No change will happen overnight, but getting rid of mandatory parking minimums, single family zoning laws, and getting rid of subsidies that prop up the oil and auto market could all push the US towards more walkable neighborhoods in a few decades. If you want more videos like about this I would definitely suggest "Not Just Bikes", "City Beautiful", and "Eco Gecko" as channels that do a really good job showing the shortcomings of our urban design

[@LMB222]

Keep in mind that the bicycle-enabling climate ends around Hannover. Anything east gets pretty cold in autumn/fall and winter.

[@helmuthschultes9243]

Trouble is US, Australia too, rail/bus are largely star oriented. Transport is ftom outer to inner areas, more than across city transport, so less oriented to general travel around town, as to get from one part to another part means travel via central point, leading to slow, time consuming travel for anything other than getting to/from central work/shopping activities. Public transport is thus mainly oriented to peak commuter travel times, less to all day general needs. Poor service guaranteed.

[@margaretaldridge635]

Watching this a day after it was posted as I was busy yesterday, happy Australia day Iwrocker family , extended family and friends 🥰🥰🥰 great day for a BBQ, a swim (here in aus) and time with friends and family 🥰🥰🥰 edited for spelling

[@davecheffie5706]

The biggest problem that wasn't addressed by this video, is the US, like Australia have very large property sizes compared to Europe. He compared Philly to Amsterdam as they were roughly the same population, but due to property size, Philadelphia covers an area of approx 350km², where as Amsterdam fits them into 165km². And Australia even more so than US. Chicago has 2.7 million residents, Brisbane has 2.5 million, yet Brisbane covers over 1,300km² compared to Chicago's 650km² (I will add, the vast majority of parking in heart of Brisbane city is not only ridiculously expensive, but a vast majority of it is underground). While you could definitely make the cities more public transport & bike friendly for those who live in the inner city, making the city accessible for those who live in the outer suburbs is a lot harder. Cars are much more of a necessity in Australia & US than in Europe just for this reason alone. However, in Brisbane, you'll often find large amounts of free parking space surrounding train stations. And the bus routes close together. You should never be more than a few blocks walk from a bus station in Brisbane. Perhaps that's something US could implement? However, unless you live close to a Coles or woollies, it's still impossible to go shopping here without a car.