It’s important for a movement to have both practical, achievable goals and aspirational ones. There’s plenty of room for content from people showing us how good it can be, without really caring about how we get there.
That’s Not Just Bikes niche, and he does a good job at it.
America is too big to “fix” as a whole, you have to fix it city by city. For example, I spent about 10 years biking around Chicago mostly w/o a car, but to think that same infrastructure can expand all the way to NY is either too unrealistic or just too lofty of a goal to take on. We need to start by focusing on the largest of American cities and work our way down.
Comparing America to the Netherlands isn’t fair as the US is 237 times the size of the Netherlands, but we can start making sure that our most populous cities are bikeable/have good public transport.
It’s not about the size of the country as a whole. 99% of people aren’t making that commute from Chicago to New York, so walkability is a non-issue. Not Just Bikes actually has a recent video on this.
What you say about cities is correct though: they need to be made people-sized, not car-sized. That is, stores need to be closer together, sidewalks more spacious, much less car traffic, areas with storefronts that are easy to access without a car, and outdoor spaces for hanging out. The cities and suburbs are what need to be corrected, not the empty land between them.
Between cities are where high-speed rail would be necessary and extremely helpful in order to take cars off the road and ease traffic congestion.
