Depends on the level of city service, but probably a good thing.
When I was in Ottawa, highschool students got city bus passes instead of yellow bus service. This allowed students to use passes at any time greatly increasing their freedom of movement. It let them go places without someone driving them, or a car of their own.
The OCTranspo also ran specials according to school hours and demand, these routes would be adjusted based on local demand each season to relieve pressure on normal routes.
This was at least 20 years ago, someone may have more recent information.
Tinier city have a really good tramway system too. Saint Etienne, Tours, Montpellier and many others have a great tramway system that is as good as a metro.
I’ve ridden the Rennes Metro. It’s basically the only kind of metro that should be built today: driverless with platform screen doors and high frequency.
Yeah, these strange ladies made me nervous because they were distributing swords, claiming possession of which was the basis for a system of government. If you ask me, supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Oh, and then one of these strange ladies took me in and made me breakfast.
Rennes' actual population is more like 220k, but that still is enough to be number 10 or 11 in France. It's the urban area that comes to around 360k, though there also is the metropolitan area with around 750k. But the city itself is 220k. By any of these means, it's not a megacity, but there are many, many much, much tinier places in the region, regardless of how you define "region".
That jogger is a fucking idiot, never ever run on a road with your back to traffic, run on other side and face cars coming at you so you can get the fuck out of the way in event of an accident, if it happens behind your dumb ass, you are fucking dead.
Edit: Also, why the fuck are you linking to reddit???
Motorcycles aren’t actually uniformly more fuel efficient than cars despite the size. Many full sized ones will actually use as much fuel as a car on commuter trips. The engines are massively more wasteful. Mopeds or scooters will fare better. Maintenance can also be costly. But really, the whole efficiency difference is probably obsoleted by using electricity instead of gasoline.
Two wheeled vehicles aren’t that useful in actual winter snow and ice. They are completely unsafe if you have to ride in traffic with cars and lorries etc. On light traffic routes, bicycles do work, at slightly above walking speed. Quad bikes, trikes or light vehicles, barely doable, but the cost and parking is as bad as with cars and weather resistance is much worse. Safety is worse, though not as bad as two wheels.
Somewhere, for someone, maybe they are an economical option, but these observations killed the idea for me. If I can’t walk or cycle, because of distance and time mostly, or use public transport, a car is the only viable option for year round commute where I live. Electric preferrably.
It’s a thermal engine for only one or two people, it’s incredibly loud, it needs big roads to go fast, it has poor cargo space… I like bikes for the aesthetics but I don’t think they are a step in the right direction.
I’ve been riding for 30 years and am an advocate for motorcycling in general. Unfortunately, there are several very good reasons I can think of why this would not work in the US and by extension, Canada and Australia.
Skill:
Motorcycling is not for everyone. It requires a higher level of skill to operate a motorcycle than a car. It requires both hands and both feet, excluding many people with disabilities that otherwise could drive a car with little to no modifications.
Even small mistakes on a motorcycle have a huge impact.
Many people are intimidated by motorcycle riding.
Convenience:
I don’t advocate multi tasking when driving but I’m always sipping on a coffee or water bottle when I’m driving. You can rig up something on a motorcycle but it’s awkward.
I have a communication set up in my helmet so I can take calls and listen to music, but it’s only so-so. The wind noise interferes with the voice commands and gloves make touch screen usage awkward.
Gear:
There’s no protection from the weather or an accident other than what you wear. The appropriate gear then becomes a burden to carry around when you reach your destination (I’m an “All The Gear, All The Time” kind of guy so I always wear full face helmet, gloves, kevlar pants with padding over my regular clothes, and either a cordura, kevlar, or racing leather jacket - all with padding, and boots. The leather jacket weighs about 15 lbs by itself). Lugging that around is a pain in the ass, and the boots aren’t comfortable for walking long distances. Two armfuls of gear is simply not conducive for things like running errands, going to school where you go from class to class across a large campus, or working in a job where you can’t securely store all that gear.
Not wearing gear is a terrible idea; a fender bender in a car doesn’t throw you on the asphalt. My uncle got in and accident on a moped in a parking lot in Japan. Broke his jaw. He was going 5 mph.
Proper gear is bulky, heavy, and expensive, and it only can do so much in the way of protection and comfort.
Weather:
Many places have short riding seasons; can’t ride in snow, it’s brutal to ride in dry conditions when it’s below about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s brutal to ride in super humid conditions, it’s brutal to ride in desert heat.
It’s less safe to ride in wet conditions, period. Traction is an issue, emergency breaking is an issue, visibility is an issue, and of course, getting wet. If it’s cold and you get wet, hypothermia is an issue.
Moderate winds are a safety issue. I’ve been blown across a full lane of traffic. I’ve been blown into incoming traffic (luckily no one was coming the other way, but that was super lucky), you can be blown off of an elevated freeway section since the guard rails only go up about 3 feet in most places.
Cargo:
Limited cargo space. Ever try grocery shopping on a motorcycle? Forget that value pack of toilet paper. Costco? Um, nope.
Family:
Totally unusable for a family. Can’t transport young kids at all (infants and toddlers), can’t go anywhere with a spouse AND children (yes I’ve seen the photos of a whole family on a scooter in SE Asia and wherever else. It’s not a good idea there and it’s not a good idea here because it’s not a good idea at all. Full stop.), can’t transport kids with musical instruments or sports equipment.
Other drivers:
There would still be other drivers on the road and they’re the single most detrimental element to motorcycle safety.
Travel:
I have a touring bike and particularly enjoy motorcycle travel, but it’s way easier and more comfortable in a car, and you can bring more stuff and travel with more people.
Bottom line:
Could you replace some single and couples trips, some times of the year, in some parts of the US, Canada, and Australia? Yes. Will it make a difference? I believe it would not even move the needle.
I love the idea of a world more calibrated for motorcycles and scooters and have had the thoughts you propose here myself. The particular countries you cite have populations that prohibit mass adoption on a scale where it would have a measurable impact. I’m my opinion.
Do you have a source for that? And in particular, do you have a source which reports how many of those people were bikers killed by cars, as opposed to the actual bikes/bikers killing other people?
The report did parse out some more specific info related to causes of accidents. It’s quite detailed. I didn’t see the comparison of bikers killed by cars vs killing other people though.
In 2021, there were the most motorcycle fatalities since records were collected in the mid 1970s at 6,084. Compared to 26,585 passenger car fatalities the same year. So at the statistical peak, there were still ~4.37 car fatalities for every 1 motorcycle fatality.
You’re likely thinking about the rate of deaths per 100,000 vehicles which is much higher for motorcycles than cars.
Look at any road, anywhere, any time of day, any time of year and you will see way more cars than motorcycles. There simply aren’t enough motorcycle on the road to account for more fatalities than cars.
What do you believe is the critical difference between Americans, and people from countries where they saw the climbing death rate and decided that it was important enough to reorganize their transportation? You’ve said that it has something to do with the nature of Americans themselves. What is wrong with Americans, then?
Oh boy, this is a complicated answer. Stay with me, there no TL;DR
First, I think the death part has nothing to do with how transportation is organized outside the US. Nor will it influence transit inside the US.
Transportation has been organized by urban development. I don’t know of any example where cars were banned or taxed or otherwise discouraged due to death rates. In America, regulation was the response to automobile deaths; seat belts, removal of steel dashboards and steering wheels, inclusion of airbags, crumple zones, and as of 2018, backup cameras are mandatory due to too many deaths of children behind cars. If you have an example of other countries organizing transportation based on automobile deaths, I’d be interested to hear that.
I don’t believe that’s a thing though, so for the purpose of my response I will be disregarding death as a factor of how countries organize transportation.
I know more about European urban development than anywhere else so I’ll stick to what I know and use Europe to compare. It may be different for Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South and Central America, etc.
Here we go.
European countries had been populated with developed civilizations hundreds of years before the US. There were well developed cities and roads prior to the invention of automobiles, and they were not developed with cars in mind. The result is that there wasn’t enough room to make big wide roads to accommodate cars.
Trains came first, so some infrastructure that could have been auto centric was already dedicated to rail infrastructure.
European populations were used to living within a confined territory that has already been built out for generations before the car came along. Europeans tend to have a greater sense of shared space, community, and commonwealth; private ownership is less of a priority, and strong/strict government regulation is more common, compared to the US.
Next…
In the US, there were huge swaths of undeveloped land when the car was invented. Henry Ford was an early adopter (some say inventor, I don’t know and don’t want to look it up so we’ll say early adopter) of the assembly line, bringing car ownership within reach of average folks. I can’t remember the exact figures, but Harley-Davidsons were more expensive than a Model T. (Fun fact, both companies started in 1903.)
So you have cars being mass produced immediately upon their inception, they’re useful and flexible and extend people’s sphere of experience, and can even be cheaper than motorcycles, certainly more practical (remeber, roads are more a suggestion for ~50 years after the car was born in most places in the US). They are widely adopted, several other manufacturers join the party, and almost immediately after the invention of the mass produced automobile, the auto industry is a significant part of the economy.
One defining characteristic of America and Americans is individualism. We have all this “freedom” so we make a wide spectrum of choices about everything.
Part of that is private ownership. I am an individual, and as such I have my stuff and it’s not for anyone but me.
Now, after WWII, European economies are recovering, European cities are rebuilding within the same constrained infrastructure that was there before, while the American post war economy is flourishing, manufacturing is strong, and soldiers coming home have access to advantageous home buying programs.
In response to this confluence of events, and due to the vast swaths of undeveloped land, communities sprung up outside of, but adjacent to, urban centers. Suburbs have entered the chat.
To connect them, roads are built, and all these new cars are being manufactured now that raw materials are available again after the war. Suburbs have single family homes, not apartments or the kind of housing blocks of flats common in Europe. There’s a period of suburban sprawl, enabled by and coexisting with, roads and cars.
Now you have people experiencing an apex of private ownership: their own land, home, car. When they’re in their home the Commonwealth is not visible. When they’re in their car they’re using the Commonwealth, but individually, physically separated by steel and glass. These cars are powerful and relative to what came before, comfortable, and technical marvels.
Ok, still with me?
Branding is a thing. Advertising is a thing. Cars advertise a certain identity. Teenagers start taking old cars from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, customizing and modifying them into Hot Rods. A car is more than a car, it’s an extension of self. An exercise of personal agency. AND it’s still a vehicle (pun very much intended) for individual freedom - both freedom of movement and freedom from the Commonwealth.
Now you have this recipe where cars are baked into the DNA of America and Americans. Even though the internal combustion engine wasn’t invented here, America’s coming of age after WWII is inextricably linked to cars.
At this point, its hard to conceive of being American without at least access to a car, if not direct ownership of one. Our urban planning lost out in many ways to the suburban dream, and suburbs are too far flung and disconnected to link via rail. Suburbs then grew into their own population centers, but not in an urban manner with density. The population is all spread out. Public transit isn’t effective without density.
In order to find cheap enough housing and good enough jobs, one has to live many miles away from work, necessitating a car. Suburbs were built for cars, not walking and biking. Many don’t have sidewalks at all. Suburbs have big driveways and big garages, for big cars.
It’s also shockingly easy to get a driver’s license. Because it’s understood that you need a car.
In Europe, there’s less room to accommodate wide streets, driveways, garages. Gas is more expensive. It’s costly and more regulated to get a driver’s license.
SO!
It’s not that there’s something wrong with Americans that makes them addicted to their cars, it’s that there’s something very American about car ownership. So much so that our built environment logistically makes public transit difficult to be efficient, and people have strong relationships with their cars.
That’s my oversimplified but long winded OPINION based on my subjective experience as a former certified Harley-Davidson mechanic, former Tesla mechanic, and son of a 50+ year mass-transit city planner. I love cars and motorcycles. And I also love buses trains and trolleys.
Dude… Dude. Come on. This is like a cliche about American’s warped self-perceptions. You denied the premise without explanation (“I think the death part has nothing to do with how transportation is organized outside the US,” a truly absurd thing to say) and then went … away. Far, far away.
It isn’t about whether or not Americans are “more addicted” to automobiles. Simple political choices could be made regarding road infrastructure that would save lives without requiring that people drive any less! You don’t even mention that in your multi-story wall of text that frankly no human being is ever going to do more than scan briefly. Americans are choosing to have dangerous infrastructure, when safe infrastructure exists. Driving deaths are going UP in the USA, dramatically up, while every other major jurisdiction is continuing to bring them down, some from levels a fraction of what the USA had before the recent spike. You need to have a more sophisticated model to explain it than, “Driving is American.”
Yes, I used too many words. In doing so I buried the point.
First - you asked what I thought made Americans different which I answered. Now you’re making a different point that better policy options would result in better outcomes. Sure, that’s fine, and it’s true - but it’s not what you asked. My answer is that Americans have a relationship with cars that is not based on rational policy or optimal mobility, or mortality rates - but instead, we have an emotional and cliche warped self-perception that informs our choices, including transit in general and automobiles specifically. We can keep on that thread if you want but that was my answer. I tried to give background by explaining where I think this comes from, and disclosed that I’m basing this on my own experience; it’s my opinion.
Next - you seem to start with an assumption that I don’t agree with or frankly, even understand; this notion that transportation is somehow organized around mortality or fatality rates. Why? You have not cited anything that credibly makes this connection, and I don’t see one, so I dismissed it. It’s not a thing. Show me, prove it, explain what you mean at least; I can change my position. Currently, my position is that your premise is false or flawed. Or that “organized” is maybe a bad word choice and you mean something else perhaps.
Also - I absolutely DID provide an explanation: transit is organized around population mobility, and is related to urban development, not death rates. (Again this word organized. I have a problem with this word. Maybe “regulated” is what you’re looking for? I feel that I did address the fact that inside the US, individual freedom is sacrosanct. It’s politically very hard to get voter support for taking away personal freedom, and the status quo is a high level of personal freedom when it comes to cars.)
I sense a gulf of disconnect here: Americans are choosing to have dangerous infrastructure, when safe infrastructure exists. And I full on guffawed at Simple political choices could be made…. What American political system are you looking at? I would like two orders of that, please!! Don’t conflate “simple” with “easy”. Playing the flute is “simple” with only two elements, your breath and your finger movement. It’s not “easy” though.
A large part of my tome was dedicated to showing how Americans don’t make choices based on optimal outcomes, common sense, or what’s best for society. I don’t want to go down another rabbit hole here, but in the last presidential election nearly 75 million Americans voted for Trump, not because he’s the best choice for a leader, not because he was effective in his prior administration for the country as a whole, but - massive oversimplification warning: because he appealed to a narrow sense of self interest and proved extremely effective at delivering self interested results.
Simply put, Americans could choose a less dangerous infrastructure but don’t, in the same way they could choose less gun deaths but don’t. I don’t need a more sophisticated model to explain it because it’s not a sophisticated thing; it’s the opposite of sophisticated. It’s basic. Confounding? Frustrating? Stupid? OK, yes. But sophisticated, it is not. Sorry?
I don’t care if no human being is going to do more than scroll my wall of text, by the way, I was talking to you.
At this point, its hard to conceive of being American without at least access to a car, if not direct ownership of one.
Well, that’s privilege speaking. Poor people do not own cars. When you lose your income and calculate your runway before you starve to death on the street, the first thing you sacrifice is your car. The car’s primary function for the working class is to serve your employer. There are an entire class of Americans who do not drive.
My biggest problem with them is the noise, but that can be solved with electric bikes.
The thing is, in what I imagine as an ideal city with everything nearby, a motorbike wouldn’t really be that useful as you’d never need to go faster than an electric bike could take you.
Stock, they’re not supposed to be that loud per regulation. Even Harley’s,a brand I particularly dislike. Modern bikes have a computer-controlled valve before the muffler to attenuate noise for bikes over a certain power. This way big engines can be quiet when rolling around neighborhoods, but give you full power when you’re on the track.
That people go wot on the highway, I also am not the biggest fan, but humans who like bikes, like going fast
I agree, joggers aren’t really a problem at all. They move faster than walkers and overtaking them is a non issue.
I do have a problem with large families using our new wide dedicated bike lanes as their own personal sidewalk though. They really tempt me to fit a car horn onto my bike again… That’s even considering I’m someone who prefers to slow down and wait behind pedestrians, instead of ding-dinging my bell to ask for passing space on shared paths
It’s more acceptable if the lane is wide enough to overtake and/or they’re running at a decent clip, i.e. 10-15 mph. But jogging is usually more like 5-10 mph.
It’s not just the softness of the material… Sidewalks have lots of undulations and uneven angles every time you cross a driveway or a junction. Also gaps and cracks
Jogging 2km on a sidwalk is fine
Running at a serious speed over 10k on an uneven, hard surface like sidewalk is a high chance of injury
We all have the right to be annoyed at anything. Even ridiculously small things that don’t affect us at all. Isn’t that swell. So what? What’s the BFD? If a grown adult would rather run on the shoulder than on the sidewalk, they probably have reasons for doing that.
You don’t see the slant in the sidewalk? The fucking pavers are uneven af as well. Have you ever ran on an uneven surface? Shit is prone to rolling your ankle. If you are older, probably fucks up your knees
I agree he is running on the wrong side and for safety should definitely run against traffic. Whether it’s illegal to do this really depends on the local and state laws, I think.
In some states, pedestrian sidewalks do not exist so the rules/laws are a bit unclear. Not sure where you live but in my area the sidewalks just abruptly end and leave you to enter the roadway or cross the road to get to another sidewalk which may or may not be protected by signal or paint (ie, unsafe af)
Lol you got guts for commenting that here and I respect that. Better to risk an ankle roll then to be hit by a crazy person on their phone while driving.
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