I live in a city of 60,000 people in Colorado. The closest train station is 15 minutes away, by car. There is a bus that will take me to the train station, but it’s an hour to walk to the closest one and the bus comes once an hour, 6 am to 7 pm, M-F. I can’t afford to spend 4 hours on a quick trip to the grocery store and never leave my house on the weekends.
There are bike lanes on the main roads (4-6 lanes 50+ mph traffic). More than half the vehicles around here are massive jacked up trucks and SUVs. I have a bike, but do not have a death wish. It regularly snows, making bike riding a no-go for most of 4 months of the year.
I am very much in favor of reducing car traffic. But it’s not feasible for so many people with the way cities are designed and the lack of public transport.
I mean, that isnt really an argument against public transit and bike infrastructure, its just an argument that the way to do it isnt to just tell people to stop driving and expect it to happen, one has to redesign cities to make these options feel like the safe and natural choice.
This was my thought as well, goes to show we need better long-range public transportation!
And bikes should be used for more granular destination points, once the bulk is covered via whatever works best as public transport in a given area.
Edit: bikes could also serve as a good first step toward a more rational approach toward public goods, as we could just stack public bikes at each node to be grabbed for free. It’s self-limiting, it presents minimal waste as once you have one you don’t really need a second, and it’d remove any entry barrier there may be to biking. Other than learning how to ride, of course. And this would be in addition to dedicated carry spaces for bikes on public transport - s’why I love the subway.
15m by car but to catch the bus you need to walk one hour and that bus will then bring you to the station? You essentially have no public transportation whatsoever it seems.
I live in a city of 60,000 people in Colorado. The closest train station is 15 minutes away, by car. There is a bus that will take me to the train station, but it’s an hour to walk to the closest one and the bus comes once an hour, 6 am to 7 pm, M-F. I can’t afford to spend 4 hours on a quick trip to the grocery store and never leave my house on the weekends.
There are bike lanes on the main roads (4-6 lanes 50+ mph traffic). More than half the vehicles around here are massive jacked up trucks and SUVs. I have a bike, but do not have a death wish. It regularly snows, making bike riding a no-go for most of 4 months of the year.
I am very much in favor of reducing car traffic. But it’s not feasible for so many people with the way cities are designed and the lack of public transport.
I mean, that isnt really an argument against public transit and bike infrastructure, its just an argument that the way to do it isnt to just tell people to stop driving and expect it to happen, one has to redesign cities to make these options feel like the safe and natural choice.
This was my thought as well, goes to show we need better long-range public transportation!
And bikes should be used for more granular destination points, once the bulk is covered via whatever works best as public transport in a given area.
Edit: bikes could also serve as a good first step toward a more rational approach toward public goods, as we could just stack public bikes at each node to be grabbed for free. It’s self-limiting, it presents minimal waste as once you have one you don’t really need a second, and it’d remove any entry barrier there may be to biking. Other than learning how to ride, of course. And this would be in addition to dedicated carry spaces for bikes on public transport - s’why I love the subway.
And I’m done hallucinating, I apologise.
15m by car but to catch the bus you need to walk one hour and that bus will then bring you to the station? You essentially have no public transportation whatsoever it seems.