On the other side of the Atlantic, any human, horse, bike, motorised mobility aid etc. is justified to use the roads here (except highways unless it’s an emergency) even if there’s a perfectly good sidewalk. Just double-checked and the only suggestion is to wear something reflective or hivis if you choose to walk in the road.
Reminder that jaywalking was invented by car companies because they kept killing people who were trying to use the shared public spaces that were roads back then
Yah, a lot of people on this site are always posting links to reddit, I would not be surprised if we find out the developer of the site works for reddit. No other reason why linking to POS reddit is allowed and not blocked in site code from that URL from being posted.
This is a great counter to the video that NJB put out, and his comments on bluesky. You don’t have to move to an urbanist paradise to be happy. Even if you feel like you do, you don’t have to leave North America to get that.
In Georgia, a very car centric place with a shit ton of suburbs, there’s a town called Peachtree City. Nearly every place is connected by paths that you can drive golf carts and ride bikes on. That’s just one example of many, but if all you listen to is NJB and some people on here, you’ll get the impression the US is a black hole and cannot be fixed.
For those of you who mention “yeah but those places are really expensive to live”, okay, and? Most countries are going through a housing crisis right now, so if you wanted to move to a country like Amsterdam you’re not exactly going to have much of an easier time. Moving to a different city in the US or Canada is way easier than uprooting your life, learning a new language and begging whatever country to let you stay there as a resident.
But in general, the argument of “just move” is dumb. A lot of people can’t. There are people who deal with more than just bad city design and even if they wanted to move, they can’t. In the case of NJB, he has explicitly dedicated his channel to this. In essence he has told us that he doesn’t care about our advocacy in our cities and thinks we are a lost cause, and we should give up and move. His channel is, by his own admissions, for people rich enough to escape the plight of the common man and get the fuck out of where they live. How is this productive?
You don’t give a fuck about advocacy and wanna move? Fine. Do that. But don’t seed fear and despair into those who can’t and fight to make their communities better. Change only comes when it is fought for.
“yeah but those places are really expensive to live”
They’re expensive because they’re rare. Supply and demand. If more places became better at walkability, then everywhere already walkable would get cheaper.
The lead-up to the commission's vote prompted the Safe Street Rebel group to start "coning," as they call it. Members have long used street theater shenanigans to gain attention in their fight against cars and to promote public transportation.
So they want to decrease cars and increase public transport. Makes sense.
Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay.
Uh, one of their other protests is to block mass transport (not technically public, but better than cars) and destroy items that promote not using cars? I mean I hate that those fucking scooters are littered everywhere, but a simple ordinance that only allows them in certain locations (stations) could fix that.
"Then there was the burning of Lime scooters in front of a Google bus," says Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied these protests.
Burning battery-powered devices in front of a bus. I've lost all empathy with this group.
And that doesn't even address how driverless cars will eventually be far, far safer than drivers, and will cut down on total cars. I understand not wanting your streets to be testing grounds, but that has to happen eventually. Test courses can only do so much to simulate reality. All things eventually are tested on volunteers or the public, like medicine. Perhaps they should be pushing for a referendum as to where to test driverless cars? Because being opposed to all cars is unrealistic. With how America is designed, a small fleet of driverless cars to get places public transportation can't cover is an ideal future. Redesigning entire cities isn't a near-term solution.
Its not very common. Its just in very specific jurisdictions with very specific fleet count allowed.
Within the past 8 or so years, self driving has rapidly improved (not any of the shit tesla calls self driving).
A lot of the testing happens in california, only because thats where a lot of the startups are as well as existing big corporate are located as they go their due to the existing talent pool required to start it up.
Waymo has started to use my neighborhood to park their cars and it’s causing traffic in a freakin residential street. I’ve been thinking of using tape and white paper to cover their cameras
What I’m saying is even if that car was part of a network of attachable cars, the maintenance of the infrastructure needed to accomodate those cars is still way more expensive. This is not even getting into the discussion that if you have enough cars to need a highway (let alone enough to start attaching self-driving cars to each other), a train is more feasible. Period.
I will agree with you that the train is not the be all and end all. Good bike infrastructure (separated bike lanes that are connected through a planned network), light rail/trams and buses all have their place. What I disagree is the use of cars in urban and suburban centers/ corridors. There is no need. The only people that should use private vehicles are delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles, and those that live in impossibly remote areas that are very much disconnected from urban centers - areas that are hardly surrounded by a self-sustaining community.
first few minutes, talking about all the amenities that I do not have, because I live in the U.S. Then they go on about how some cities in the U.S are getting better. but oh wait, those are also the most expensive cities to live in. Also, the average life expectancy for adult males in the U.S. is 73. so if you’re in your mid 30’s, congrats, you’re middle aged. Pointing that out just to say that I don’t want to live in a walkable, bikeable, mass transit-able city in 20 years (if republicans don’t tear everything down first), I want to live there now, during my lifetime.
But I would imagine it is much easier to live a happy life if we simply move to Amsterdam? instead of dealing with unreasonable, old, and stubborn populations in the city hall?
At least I can learn dutch in 5 years, but I dont imagine I can convince our semi-suburbian city hall to remove even the minimal parking requirement during that time.
You can just move to a good US city. It would be way easier than somehow getting the chance to immigrate to Amsterdam and deal with the serious lack of housing and also high cost of living.
I am not quite aware of the living cost in amsterdam, but given a studio (single room apartment, bedroom, livingroom, study, and kitchen all in one) in a somewhat walkable major city in the U.S. cost around 400k, and a 2 bedroom apartment can easily cost 700k. And none of above includes luxury apartment, which can add another 50% to the cost.
I would be really keen to see how netherlands can top that.
Just from a quick google search the first things I find are more expensive than my nearest major city. Anything in the “affordable” range was co-living with strangers.
Man, I have lived in Europe for the past 11 years and have yet to meet anyone who has used them or commented on them. I know someone who went on vacation to the US and took an overnight Amtrak for fun.
I’m sure they exist but really, people fly on longer voyages. Bullet trains may be changing that. A Madrid->Paris line will open soon that’ll do it in 5 hours. Which gets close to the speed of a plane when airport security and the like is taken into account and should give much more comfort.
I’ve used them multiple times, when I was traveling with my class or alone. I wouldn’t say I love them, but they are OK. In the last 10-15 years flights have become appallingly cheap, so that’s usually easier.
Sleeper trains have lost their popularity when airlines got deregulated and companies like Ryanair took off with super cheap flights. This might be changing soon as EU has deregulated railways a few years ago and there’s a fierce competition to make trains cheaper than flights again.
I live in germany. Every single time I take a longer trip, I look for overnight train options. I have never in my life used a sleeper train because they either don’t exist on that route or are so much more expensive I’d rather do the less comfortable option. I would love to love sleeper trains.
Same here, every time I was driving train at night in germany. I rarely was in a sleeper train and if I was. Only in the normal seating compartments. They are just way to expensive. I sometimes look for fun what a flight would cost. And mostly its more than the half…
And don’t get me started with train driving to other European countries
It’s always nice to get a positive take on how things are improving in North America. I’m excited to see where things will go in the next 10 years. I just had a conversation with someone the other day about not just “running away” from the problems we have, and actually working to solve them.
Some days the battle feels unwinable when you have rich people and governments brainwashing the masses into acting against their own self interest in the name of looking successful. Some days it seems easier to just let them have it and go to where the life you desire is already established and let the people who are too blinded to know better get what they asked for.
Those are the days I have to remind myself I was one of them. I was willfully ignorant to the problem because I was doing well enough to not care. I ignored the consequences and still I was given the opportunity to change. If I deserved the ability and opportunity to change then so do the rest of the herd. And then the die hards who refuse to change can be the ones who can leave if they don’t like it.
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