In civilized places, buses take about as long as a car, as they’re prioritized in infrastructure. The added benefit is that you don’t even need to own a 2 ton death machine.
Fair, but it is the reality a lot of people live with. I would love for us to have a Netherlands approach to biking, but we don’t. And we have brutally cold winters, where waiting for a bus is made even more undesirable, and biking less of an option because of how treacherous the snow makes everything (including driving).
To me it seems more like a pleasant fantasy than a realistic expectation. For other places I’m sure it is an attainable reality.
I don’t think you’ll meet a transit/urbanism advocate who will tell you to ride transit that doesn’t exist where you are or that is wildly impractical for you. I certainly won’t. For me, it’s more about doing what makes the most sense for you, while also pushing to change the infrastructure where you are to make transit and urbanism better and more feasible for more people.
I have written my council pushing for changes to existing biking laws to make it safer in my city. So you’re rightz we have to push for what we need. Nothing changes if we don’t voice our concerns.
Local climate really isn’t a reason to avoid public transportation infrastructure, as you have VERY hot and humid places (São Paulo, Brazil during summer) and very cold places (Netherlands during winter) with perfectly functional services. It’s all about HOW said infrastructure is deployed and cared for.
Netherlands is quite warm from my perspective and a poor comparison to the extremely harsh winters we experience.
Thier average winter temperature is our late fall and early spring temp (November and March). The months of December, January and March are more comparable to Siberia.
Imagine how bad it would be without the tube and busses! All these people trying to drive in London? Just thinking about it I shudder and I’ve never even seen London.
According to a study conducted in 1000 cities in 50 countries based on data from connected vehicles and phones. Not disagreeing with the premise but I expect there are plenty of other more “congested” cities, visit Manila or Jakarta for example. The UK should however definitely do more to fund its public infrastructure.
if you don’t think 68 people trying to drive 68 cars on the same route is going to cause congestion on the roads, and thus “halting”, where do you think traffic jams come from?
Nice. I have to travel like 17 miles to the nearest bus station. This fixes everything! /s
Better off with my own vehicle when it’s only like 8 miles to work. I’d be literally wasting 9 miles to the bus station and 9 miles back in my own vehicle to even get back and forth to the bus station.
Edit: Seriously, have any of you tried traveling 17 miles to the west, only to catch a bus going 25 miles to the east, passing your own town to get to work? Then going 25 miles back, only to have to drive your own vehicle back home, because the bus don’t stop there?
The area I live in actually used to have its own bus station within walking distance from my place. Until 2009 when they totally shut it down, for basically no good reason.
They nickname our town Ghost Town ever since then. We’re even a bicycle friendly community, but not a single bicycle shop in town anymore either. Ever since 2011 we bicyclists gotta travel at least 8 miles to get tires and tubes.
Please make sure to read my other comment, our town was once developed with mass transit in mind. We even have our own railroad tracks, also within walking distance.
But God forbid the citizens get to use such things, too much industrial transportation on the tracks.
Sounds a lot like my town. This place used to have a train station and regular trains to major cities, and now it’s used only for freight and they turned the old station into a railway museum. It’s absurd.
After reading up on this I’m actually going to have to side with the NIMBY’s on this one. Public space is maybe the only thing in California that’s in shorter supply than housing. And reportedly there are plenty of surface parking lots that could be built on since the university needs more housing.
The problem here is NIMBYs aren’t acting in good faith, if UC did take up on that suggestion, you know they will force UC to start from scratch and still fight UC every step of the way
I’m a Berkeley alum and the counterpoint is that, while People’s Park is some (relatively) rare green space near downtown Berkeley, it has been, for the past 20 years, solely the domain of the homeless, drug-addicted, and mentally unwell. It’s not usable public space for most residents. You cannot have a peaceful picnic in People’s Park. The housing proposal included a facility to house and offer services for homeless people, to its credit.
I have mixed feelings about it being turned into housing, but it was unusable as a park and Berkeley has a severe housing shortage. Only freshmen* are guaranteed on-campus housing, a large fraction of the housing in town is owned and operated by a convicted human trafficker, and there was a highly-publicized story about a student who recently completed his degree by living in SoCal and flying to Berkeley a few times a week. The situation is quite dire and Berkeley is really doing quite well when it comes to not having surface parking. There are a couple of lots near the football stadium that are surface lots, but most everything else is a parking structure, usually with an activated roof of some sort.
I dont know how are bus in your country but here they are really bigs and not rarely they drive 2/3 together what makes the traffic slowly and by read traffic light everything stops not only in the direction from the read traffic lights but in all directions because the bus blocks everything. If the all people in the bus drives a car the traffic would be more fluid. I accept the bus makes less pollution but not better traffic. When im a little late for work and i see a bus its done … at least 15m stoped in the trafic is guaranteed
You make a good point but only if your country has people.
If you live somewhere with no people and only animals, then you can’t get anywhere and must traverse the jungle with a machete and a canteen full of either rainwater or your own piss.
If you live somewhere, you’re a part of the body that decides things like that. If you want public transit in your community, and you certainly should, take the steps to get the action started.
Nobody is going to change the world on our behalf; it all falls on us.
Starts by being an active member of the community. Attend counsel meetings, town hearings, etc. Bring up the topic at these, gauge the response. Talk to the people who seem enthusiastic in response. Work together and build a petition, then seek signatures first amongst the people who attend, then talk to your neighbors.
I never said it was going to be easy, I only said nobody else is going to do it on your behalf.
So, are you upset that bicycles are being held to the traffic code sections that explicitly apply to them? Because it sounds like you’re one of those people who gives bike riders who know how to operate in pedestrian areas a bad name.
I drive on the sidewalk and behave like a pedestrian. I probably should have known about the traffic codes you are talking about, but this has nothing to do with bikes, he shows it to everybody including other people who are trying to cross. What concerns me them most, is that those traffic guards, break the habit of actually seeing if there are cars around, meaning I am actually less safe when they aren’t there.
I often ride my bicycle on the sidewalk around here, but I do so carefully and always give priority to pedestrians (of which there are few where I am to begin with, but I’ll get off the sidewalk for them). Legality be damned; this is the only way to not be flatted by some asshat in an SUV in some places. For instance, overpasses here have no shoulder at all but sometimes there is a sidewalk, and if you’re lucky there may even be a guard rail separating it from the car lanes where everyone is doing 60+ in a 35 zone with impunity.
That’s backwards from how it is here. Our crossing guards stop vehicular traffic, and give incredibly high priority to pedestrians. There’s one at the school by my house who patrols an intersection that includes a traffic light. He will routinely make lines of cars miss an entire green light to allow pedestrians to cross. If you fail to stop, they can ticket you. You’ll probably also get the shit whacked out of your car with an aluminum stop sign.
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