zlacker

>>amathe+(OP)
I skimmed the article and I feel like nothing really answers the question to "How to quit cars", aside from pricing parking better. Personally, I'd love to be able to rely on cars less. They are kind of the epitome of tragedy of the commons. But as a lifelong suburbanite with 2 cars in a 2-person household, this is what I'd have to see to quit cars:

- Ability to get a vehicle on-demand (say within 5-10 minutes) 24/7/365, anywhere in Upstate NY, from cities to boonies.

- That vehicle would need to allow me to transport large goods, bulky goods (to an extent), lumber <6', flammable solvents

- also needs to accomodate 2 medium dogs

- I'd need dedicated bike lanes to the nearby shops and groceries before I could even attempt to use that as an option. There's stores only a few miles from me but the roads to get there are treacherous

There's more but those are the bare minimums, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

>>kortex+uf
> tragedy of the commons

This is a great way to put it. Quite often these arguments against cars feel completely blind to reality. We've built our cities and culture around having cars, we can't easily change that. Starting with some small regulations, like having bike lanes everywhere, would go a long ways. I would love to not pay for a second car, and gas, and insurance, but where I leave, it's just not reasonable.

>>vlunkr+0w1
Give every American an e-bike; would cost less than the covid payments and suddenly you'd have a huge demand for bike infra.

>>bombca+qm2
Where exactly would that bike infra go? There's literally nowhere to put a bike lane on 90% of the "strodes" in my town which would actually benefit from one.

It's not just a political or environmental problem, it's purely a "where does this infra even go" situation.

>>kortex+Q03
I would have to see the stroads but I can fit bike infra on perhaps the most famous stroad of all, Avenue des Champs-Élysées, so I'm sure I could figure it out.

One thing people don't realize is many US lanes are twelve feet wide, which is much wider than needed for slower traffic (in fact, one of the best ways to slow traffic down is to narrow the lane). An 18-wheeler is 8.5 feet wide, so even a 10 foot lane offers excess room.

If a stroad is three lanes each way, and they're 12 feet each, that's 12 feet that can be recovered simply by reducing lane width, and that doesn't even involve any sidewalk rearrangements.

But bike infra doesn't have to even follow the car infra, you can put a nice bike lane setup one block over from the stroad (more properly the arterial or collector). Nobody really wants to bike next to a bunch of cars anyway.