This kind of snark, or perhaps just unrealistic statements, gets us nowhere...dedicated infrastructure for cyclists alongside the same infrastructure for cars is actually viable. Making a comment about how everybody should be using bikes isn't helpful.
I'm a cyclist and I drive a car. Dedicated infrastructure is usually for slow bicycles. I welcome it but I stay clear of it. I don't feel in danger in the road and I can go faster.
Problems with bicycle roads:
90% of traffic is much slower than me, which I do 20 km/h in cities (nothing special with some training)
They go up and down sidewalks and turn before intersections. This slows down everybody willing to go faster than 10 km/h
They are bumpier than roads
They are on the side of the road and more dangerous at any intersection, where they are close or before the stop line for cars coming from the side. Furthermore there is less space to look for incoming traffic. Being on the car's road is safer. I like bicycle roads when they are far away from car's roads, for example along rivers. Small low traffic roads are good enough.
On the other side, roundabouts and every other modern road layout that force cars and bikes to get close is dangerous for bikes. I feel safe to say that roads became less dangerous for cars in the last 20 years and more dangerous for bicycles.
I'd like to have the roads of the 70s: long straights, no speed bumps, no roundabouts (cyclists also don't like stop and go),
The United States is not Spain. Nitpick all you want - the vast majority of populated places in the US will never ban cars, at least for the foreseeable future.
Not because they can't though. Because they think they can't. Most cities in the US could do this with some adjustments to public transit, and by managing regional transit much better - for example it's insane that the default for suburban rail line stations is the "park and ride" - huge parking lot surrounding the train station, rather than using that area for residential development close to transit.
I wonder how much space could be allocated to residential development though. Here (Portland Oregon) The park and ride infrastructure isn't that built out (Or maybe it is and I just haven't noticed it???). I dont believe you could move all the people that need to drive into the city to work, into the new residential development provided by that conversion.
Shops can move with the times, schools can continue to have buses to get kids there and offices can stay where they are as long as they'd like.
Banning vehicles has been shown to greatly increase shopping revenue and improve the healthiness of the area, so if a few businesses suffer, poor them... I'll not shed a tear for the strip malls.
corndoge, it sounds like you assume that (an unnamed) we has to be in the United States.
I’m going to sorely disappoint you there…
However, if you want to talk about the United States, I would agree with you that it’s going to be expensive to shift the suburban sprawl away from personal vehicles. As much as that particular urbanisation failure is seen as typically American, it’s far from the exclusive option there. You will be surprised to learn that there are dozens of millions of Americans living in cities dense enough to justify not using cars as the default transport mode (“banning” isn’t a very accurate description of what that city did).
Electric scooters or bikes, typically the dockless kind, combined with existing (but re-inforced) public transport sounds doable, especially if you invest the same order of magnitude as local authorities spend on highways. That would require little investment (most of it would be private and from people keen on giving away billions).
it sounds like you assume that (an unnamed) we *has* to be in the United States.
I wouldn't say this to anyone on hn who uses "we" without a qualifier because I assume as a matter of course that everyone on this website is aware that there are non American users. The pedantry here isn't appreciated.
I’m going to sorely disappoint you there…
You will be surprised
