‘... urban life would be great if there were no cars and everyone rode bicycles.’ Says the urbanist where everything is a short walk or bike ride away and who has never lived outside a city where everything is miles away and when it rains and snows and is freezing cold, walking and biking is no fun. The Netherlands is flat with a small population. Amsterdam is dreary. Rats when made to live together in the equivalent of cities, start killing each other.
Based on having spent close to two years in Amsterdam, my assessment of the social utility of bicycles is that the reduction in auto traffic they occasion allows for a quieter, more intimate urban environment. More precisely, the effect is derivative of the automobile’s diminished claim on space. The Jane Jacobs intangible that comes from strolling along a busy street isn’t felt by bicyclists as they cycle down that same street. Even with that qualification, the Amsterdam model is way way better than the US norm
I live in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. It's a city of a little more than 200,000 people, about 40 miles West of Boston.
For several years the city has removed car lanes and parking spaces to add bike lanes. NO ONE uses the bike lanes. I can drive around for days and not see a single bicyclist other than children.
Why?
Because grownups have to go to work. Worcester is one of the hilliest cities in America. Major Taylor, an early bike racing champ, lived and trained in Worcester BECAUSE the everpresent hills made training so effective. They also make you disgustingly sweaty when you show up for work.
Worcester is also consistently the snowiest or 2nd snowiest city in America every year, making the streets completely impassible on a bike for several months out of the year
I think the accommodations made for bikes in cities like Amsterdam, Munich, Copenhagen, etc. are remarkable and should be copied. I live in a small town on the edge of Silicon Valley. Weather is great, and a bike would be appropriate for virtually every activity I engage in. Commuting to work is more of an ordeal (about 15 miles), but certainly possible. If we conceived of public transit in layers – local versus long-distance, where bikes, walking, small buses, etc. are prioritized for the former and cars for the latter, we would have much more pleasant cities.
(I suspect the “aggro” behavior of cyclists today results form some combination of selection bias – the certain type of person who’s attracted to road cycling – plus experience of being pushed around a bit by vehicles and surprised by unaware pedestrians. You certainly find a different type of personality in off-road mountain bikers – much more relaxed and friendly.)
Cars and bikes can mix better when each user is aware of the rules of movement.
Modern bicycling advocacy has taken a negative turn in many areas, becoming less for actual cyclists themselves are more for corporate and government controlled lobbying for flashy expensive projects and fulfilling certain ideology goals. Often they promote the idea that the roads are too dangerous for cyclists by catastrophizing the source of the hazards. And their solution is to completely rebuild cities at great expense. The kicker though is their “solutions” often cause more crashes than no facilities at all.
https://www.strongtowns.org/ has a lot of information on how to make cities and towns better. They take the approach of less goverment planning and more emergent order. Worth reading at least some of it
I love cycling, but unlike Amsterdam which has relatively mild temperatures year-round, much of the US has real winters. I live in Boston and cycle to work when I can, but it's just not feasible from November - March at least.
"I bike myself, and I have to work to avoid being rude. Maybe it’s because you are really vulnerable on a bike"
Neal Stephenson's very early career novel Zodiac features an asshole protagonist who rides his black bicycle at night wearing black clothes and with the reflectors removed under the assumption that the only way he can suvive is if he acts like everyone is out to kill him and doesn't ever give himself a reason to depend on their charity or competence.
[All this discussion of urbanism and biking] makes perfect sense as long as one ignores the question of crime. In the absence of that key item, [urban planners like those mentioned by Ed West are] left to think that all these car-centric features are either a mistake, or some weird conspiracy of car manufacturers or road builders. In reality there is massive demand for housing in this form, because it permits the buyers to immigrate into the virtual nation of car drivers.
[W]e now live in a society of pervasive violent crime [and public disorder, which is a kind of lesser degree of violent crime and also very important, as every parent will readily appreciate - C.] I think it is possibly the most important single fact about the modern world. There are vastly more people in our societies today whose behaviour is dangerously criminal than there were when our civilisation was at its peak, which I would put very vaguely as 1800-1939. To the extent that this isn’t overwhelmingly obvious through crime statistics, it is because of the phenomenon I describe here — people are protecting themselves from crime by physically separating themselves from the criminals.
And this is why discussing car usage solely in terms of transport is so pointless. Virtual Nations are in general stupid, but “people with cars” actually do effectively make a virtual nation. To be a citizen of Great Britain you don’t need much paperwork, but to be a citizen of the nation of car drivers you have to register yourself with the bureaucracy and keep your information with them up to date. Because you own an expensive piece of equipment that the state knows all about, you have something that they can easily take from you as a punishment. In fact, they can take it even without going through the endless palaver of a court case. In the last few years, you are even required to constantly display your identification which can be recognized and logged by cameras and computers, so the state for much of the time knows exactly where you are.
I used to find this outrageous, and it is still not my preferred way for a government to govern a country effectively. But it is a way to govern a country, and, unlike Great Britain, the country of British car-drivers is actually governed.
But what about the objection to virtual nations? The virtual nation of car-drivers is not a true province, like Wales or Texas, but it is physically separated from the rest of the nation. That is the point of suburbia, of the windy housing estates full of dead ends, with no amenities and no through roads. If you drive a car, you can quite easily have a home that is not accessible to anyone without a car. When you do have to venture among the savages, you do so in a metal box with a lockable door.
There are reasonable alternatives to cars for transport (in a lot of cases, anyway), but we need an alternative to cars as a safe virtual nation to live in. If you want a society that is not centered on the car, for everyone who can afford one, then put the criminals in prison. That’s it, end of tweet.
---
Both Noah Smith and Ed West score some points because they at least _mention_ crime. Noah Smith mentions it only to characteristically dismiss the 'right-wing theory' that diversity causes social atomization - I guess Professor Robert D. Putnam is a rabid right-winger by today's standards - whereas Ed West seems to go on to discuss it some in the paid-subscriber-only portion of his post. Unfortunately I could not read it, not being one.
American cities are bigger and more economically complex than European cities, which probably makes much greater use of vehicles inevitable. There are 3 cities in Europe (including the UK) with >5million people in the urban area. There are 9 in the US, despite Europe being 50% bigger in population and several times as dense. It would be impossible to turn American cities into a bunch of Amsterdams, Munchens, and Dusseldorfs, much as I like those cities.
Drivers are a privileged class in the USA. Vast subsidies exist for their infrastructure, mandatory accommodations for their drivers' needs are enshrined in law (parking minimums, etc.), and we have deformed our cities so that drivers can get through them as fast as possible, consequences and so many deaths be damned.
Cars have a lot of utility in rural areas. I grew up on a farm in North Dakota. A 4WD truck makes sense there. But in any kind of town or city, they don't make sense.
Or rather, they "make sense" because of the distortions of urban land use and development patterns, with subsidized highways and freeways, single-family only zoning with minimum setbacks, sprawling non-grid layouts, and other modern zoning rules that make transit nearly impossible and enshrine car dependency. Perfect for an obese society with 90%+ afflicted with metabolic disorders.
When distracted, drunk, or speeding drivers kill or maim somebody, it's often a slap on the wrist, or summer camp, as a consequence.
I live in NYC (Harlem) and even in this city, a mecca of urban efficiency, transit and density (built before post-WW2 automobile-suburban-ponzi-scheme-socialism took over) I am regularly threatened by dangerous driving. Far more than by pedestrians, cyclists, or the mentally ill / drug abusers that the city allows to occupy the subway and other public spaces.
I am an ex-cyclist (quit at 81 when I noted that a crash clipped in could do a lot of damage and my reflexes were not as fast).
I visited china in '84 when it was all bicycles and almost no cars on 6 lane highways. However, the passengers per lane per hour were not that high and not much different than the moped scooter dominated cities in other countries.
Bicycles, mopeds, and cars are all limited by human reflexes that are very slow when something is going wrong. What humanity needs is the fast reflexes offered by automation and elimination of steel on steel wheels (they can't stop when things go wrong at high people densities and speeds).
If we rename Tesla as a transportation pod and get the autopilot up to class 5 level, we could drastically increase the lane capacity and speed. The pod could know what is happening 10 pods up the line and follow at 2 cm.
‘... urban life would be great if there were no cars and everyone rode bicycles.’ Says the urbanist where everything is a short walk or bike ride away and who has never lived outside a city where everything is miles away and when it rains and snows and is freezing cold, walking and biking is no fun. The Netherlands is flat with a small population. Amsterdam is dreary. Rats when made to live together in the equivalent of cities, start killing each other.
Technocracy is a mental defect
"The most unique thing about Amsterdam’s urban design — and the thing that dazzles American urbanists — is the way the city is built for bicycles."
NO you blithering idiot
Amsterdam wasn't designed or built for bicycles
bicycles are the solution the residents of Amsterdam found to deal with the way the city EVOLVED
Based on having spent close to two years in Amsterdam, my assessment of the social utility of bicycles is that the reduction in auto traffic they occasion allows for a quieter, more intimate urban environment. More precisely, the effect is derivative of the automobile’s diminished claim on space. The Jane Jacobs intangible that comes from strolling along a busy street isn’t felt by bicyclists as they cycle down that same street. Even with that qualification, the Amsterdam model is way way better than the US norm
I live in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. It's a city of a little more than 200,000 people, about 40 miles West of Boston.
For several years the city has removed car lanes and parking spaces to add bike lanes. NO ONE uses the bike lanes. I can drive around for days and not see a single bicyclist other than children.
Why?
Because grownups have to go to work. Worcester is one of the hilliest cities in America. Major Taylor, an early bike racing champ, lived and trained in Worcester BECAUSE the everpresent hills made training so effective. They also make you disgustingly sweaty when you show up for work.
Worcester is also consistently the snowiest or 2nd snowiest city in America every year, making the streets completely impassible on a bike for several months out of the year
I think the accommodations made for bikes in cities like Amsterdam, Munich, Copenhagen, etc. are remarkable and should be copied. I live in a small town on the edge of Silicon Valley. Weather is great, and a bike would be appropriate for virtually every activity I engage in. Commuting to work is more of an ordeal (about 15 miles), but certainly possible. If we conceived of public transit in layers – local versus long-distance, where bikes, walking, small buses, etc. are prioritized for the former and cars for the latter, we would have much more pleasant cities.
(I suspect the “aggro” behavior of cyclists today results form some combination of selection bias – the certain type of person who’s attracted to road cycling – plus experience of being pushed around a bit by vehicles and surprised by unaware pedestrians. You certainly find a different type of personality in off-road mountain bikers – much more relaxed and friendly.)
Highly recommended read is this history of cycling in context of traffic laws and culture:
https://iamtraffic.org/equality/the-marginalization-of-bicyclists/
And this video (transcript available too)https://thinkbicyclingblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/my-bike-or-my-2-ton-land-missile/
Cars and bikes can mix better when each user is aware of the rules of movement.
Modern bicycling advocacy has taken a negative turn in many areas, becoming less for actual cyclists themselves are more for corporate and government controlled lobbying for flashy expensive projects and fulfilling certain ideology goals. Often they promote the idea that the roads are too dangerous for cyclists by catastrophizing the source of the hazards. And their solution is to completely rebuild cities at great expense. The kicker though is their “solutions” often cause more crashes than no facilities at all.
https://www.strongtowns.org/ has a lot of information on how to make cities and towns better. They take the approach of less goverment planning and more emergent order. Worth reading at least some of it
I love cycling, but unlike Amsterdam which has relatively mild temperatures year-round, much of the US has real winters. I live in Boston and cycle to work when I can, but it's just not feasible from November - March at least.
You mentioned the color of the shirts the fighters were wearing but not their skin color. Blacks are more likely to engage in fist fights than whites.
"I bike myself, and I have to work to avoid being rude. Maybe it’s because you are really vulnerable on a bike"
Neal Stephenson's very early career novel Zodiac features an asshole protagonist who rides his black bicycle at night wearing black clothes and with the reflectors removed under the assumption that the only way he can suvive is if he acts like everyone is out to kill him and doesn't ever give himself a reason to depend on their charity or competence.
Slightly rewording from AnomalyUK's post [https://blog.anomalyuk.party/2022/07/cars-or-police/]:
---
[All this discussion of urbanism and biking] makes perfect sense as long as one ignores the question of crime. In the absence of that key item, [urban planners like those mentioned by Ed West are] left to think that all these car-centric features are either a mistake, or some weird conspiracy of car manufacturers or road builders. In reality there is massive demand for housing in this form, because it permits the buyers to immigrate into the virtual nation of car drivers.
[W]e now live in a society of pervasive violent crime [and public disorder, which is a kind of lesser degree of violent crime and also very important, as every parent will readily appreciate - C.] I think it is possibly the most important single fact about the modern world. There are vastly more people in our societies today whose behaviour is dangerously criminal than there were when our civilisation was at its peak, which I would put very vaguely as 1800-1939. To the extent that this isn’t overwhelmingly obvious through crime statistics, it is because of the phenomenon I describe here — people are protecting themselves from crime by physically separating themselves from the criminals.
And this is why discussing car usage solely in terms of transport is so pointless. Virtual Nations are in general stupid, but “people with cars” actually do effectively make a virtual nation. To be a citizen of Great Britain you don’t need much paperwork, but to be a citizen of the nation of car drivers you have to register yourself with the bureaucracy and keep your information with them up to date. Because you own an expensive piece of equipment that the state knows all about, you have something that they can easily take from you as a punishment. In fact, they can take it even without going through the endless palaver of a court case. In the last few years, you are even required to constantly display your identification which can be recognized and logged by cameras and computers, so the state for much of the time knows exactly where you are.
I used to find this outrageous, and it is still not my preferred way for a government to govern a country effectively. But it is a way to govern a country, and, unlike Great Britain, the country of British car-drivers is actually governed.
But what about the objection to virtual nations? The virtual nation of car-drivers is not a true province, like Wales or Texas, but it is physically separated from the rest of the nation. That is the point of suburbia, of the windy housing estates full of dead ends, with no amenities and no through roads. If you drive a car, you can quite easily have a home that is not accessible to anyone without a car. When you do have to venture among the savages, you do so in a metal box with a lockable door.
There are reasonable alternatives to cars for transport (in a lot of cases, anyway), but we need an alternative to cars as a safe virtual nation to live in. If you want a society that is not centered on the car, for everyone who can afford one, then put the criminals in prison. That’s it, end of tweet.
---
Both Noah Smith and Ed West score some points because they at least _mention_ crime. Noah Smith mentions it only to characteristically dismiss the 'right-wing theory' that diversity causes social atomization - I guess Professor Robert D. Putnam is a rabid right-winger by today's standards - whereas Ed West seems to go on to discuss it some in the paid-subscriber-only portion of his post. Unfortunately I could not read it, not being one.
American cities are bigger and more economically complex than European cities, which probably makes much greater use of vehicles inevitable. There are 3 cities in Europe (including the UK) with >5million people in the urban area. There are 9 in the US, despite Europe being 50% bigger in population and several times as dense. It would be impossible to turn American cities into a bunch of Amsterdams, Munchens, and Dusseldorfs, much as I like those cities.
"My generalization is that drivers are courteous to pedestrians and bicyclists"
What?
https://nypost.com/2022/08/11/video-shows-hit-and-run-driver-plow-into-mom-baby-in-nyc/
https://nypost.com/2021/07/24/cops-rescue-baby-and-mom-pinned-under-car-in-yonkers-video/
https://nypost.com/2022/06/03/la-mom-mowed-down-by-teen-driver-blasts-da-over-probation-sentence/
Drivers are a privileged class in the USA. Vast subsidies exist for their infrastructure, mandatory accommodations for their drivers' needs are enshrined in law (parking minimums, etc.), and we have deformed our cities so that drivers can get through them as fast as possible, consequences and so many deaths be damned.
Cars have a lot of utility in rural areas. I grew up on a farm in North Dakota. A 4WD truck makes sense there. But in any kind of town or city, they don't make sense.
Or rather, they "make sense" because of the distortions of urban land use and development patterns, with subsidized highways and freeways, single-family only zoning with minimum setbacks, sprawling non-grid layouts, and other modern zoning rules that make transit nearly impossible and enshrine car dependency. Perfect for an obese society with 90%+ afflicted with metabolic disorders.
When distracted, drunk, or speeding drivers kill or maim somebody, it's often a slap on the wrist, or summer camp, as a consequence.
I live in NYC (Harlem) and even in this city, a mecca of urban efficiency, transit and density (built before post-WW2 automobile-suburban-ponzi-scheme-socialism took over) I am regularly threatened by dangerous driving. Far more than by pedestrians, cyclists, or the mentally ill / drug abusers that the city allows to occupy the subway and other public spaces.
I am an ex-cyclist (quit at 81 when I noted that a crash clipped in could do a lot of damage and my reflexes were not as fast).
I visited china in '84 when it was all bicycles and almost no cars on 6 lane highways. However, the passengers per lane per hour were not that high and not much different than the moped scooter dominated cities in other countries.
Bicycles, mopeds, and cars are all limited by human reflexes that are very slow when something is going wrong. What humanity needs is the fast reflexes offered by automation and elimination of steel on steel wheels (they can't stop when things go wrong at high people densities and speeds).
If we rename Tesla as a transportation pod and get the autopilot up to class 5 level, we could drastically increase the lane capacity and speed. The pod could know what is happening 10 pods up the line and follow at 2 cm.