*Just make them Walkable!* The Dumbest Excuse for Bad Cities by Not Just Bikes

Suggest a video for us to watch in the comments.

#America #Americans #Learn

[Delibro]

For the first time after so many videos I hear someone spoke it out: maybe it was the car companies that established car dependency.

[rangersmith]

I'm an American who lived in Belgium from 2000 to 2003, before everyone had smart phones. It was very common to see people adjusting the time on their wristwatches when the train arrived because if that train is scheduled to stop at the platform at 7:12 am, and it's stopping at the platform now, it's 7:12 am. You can also bet there will be another train in short order, say 7:23 am, and that one will be right on schedule as well. In contrast, US transit is generally neither on time nor timely nor because our "leaders" don't see it as important. It is so bad that people only use it if they have no choice, keeping ridership low compared to population. Then "leaders" use low ridership as an excuse to make no improvements.

[MrMezmerized]

It should be said that the Netherlands was going car centric too, but in the 70's there were large "Stop the child murder" protests, because of the rise in car-cycling and car-walking accidents with kids. And the government listened. And infrastructure is still improving.

[_bats_]

The reason why condos in the US are crazy expensive is because of minimum parking requirements. In other countries, such requirements don't exist, so you can build a building in a city that's, say, 10 floors with affordable apartments on top and retail on the ground floor. In the US, you are legally required to have a certain number of parking spaces per residential dwelling. So when you build an apartment building, you're also required to build either a huge surface parking lot around it (buying expensive land), buy the building next door, knock it down, and build a parking garage, or spend a ton of money to have a parking garage built underground under your building. That drives up the cost of building the building in the first place, so the only way to recoup losses for developers is to charge astronomical rent to cover all of the zero-rent construction they built (the parking), and the only way they can charge astronomical rent and actually get tenants to pay it is to make those apartments into luxury apartments.

[RustyDust]

It was even worse than car companies convincing politicians of the "necessity of cars". Car companies bought up tram and bus line companies and shut them down, ripping out the infrastructure and replacing it with roads. Often at their own expenses in the short term but at a huge profit in the long term.

[mikeleone]

I live in Philadelphia, which - as US cities go - is well-planned (at least for the majority of the city, up until the expansions in the last century). Almost all of the streets are in a grid, alternating north and south. I don't own a car, but I use public transit a lot, and I can walk to at least 4 supermarkets within a mile or so (1.5 km).

[rkw]

I think there will come a time when the USA will heavily regret building for a dependence on cars.
Here in Geneva, Switzerland I can walk 5 minutes for groceries, pharmacy, or almost any other necessity.
If I need to go further there are regular bus or tram.

[anarkitty]

I grew up in a village with 600 people and I had and there still is a train-station with trains in both directions every 30min.

[dimrrider]

Well we Dutchies are very spoiled and we dont see it and take everything for granted ;p

[tomverheijden]

Decent public transport... A village here with 256 people living in it. But still there's a bus coming and going in different directions EVERY 12 MINUTES! 🤷🏼‍♂️ And there is a bike parking at the bus station, and all the bike paths are seperate from the main road. If we can do it in such small villages, than everybody could achieve this anywhere. They just have to want it and work together to achieve it

[Whitewingdevil]

The name "Chinaman's Knob" is just a holdover of Australia's racist history, as well as a remnant of the quite large influx of asian immigrants during our various gold rushes. The "Knob" part is referring to a section of land jutting into the ocean, which is why both places with that name are on the coast.

[hanserikkratholmrasmussen]

It's like the planners says: We did a lousy job, and let's just continue doing a lousy job.

[SchatzInaoriginal]

They didn't give up on railway. Car companies actually illegally bought up a lot of rail and trams and burned them. Climate Town has a really good video on that topic called How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream

[noabakker]

Making people car dependant means more tax income. Gas, car sales etc

[Squeesher]

14:52 Resident of PEI here. We do have bike lanes and walkable towns, and a province-wide trail that uses the old rail lines (we got rid of trains in the 80s). We can do more of course, but it's not exactly grid-hell here, lol. I walk or bus everywhere, and loads of others bike.

[ryttyr]

5:50 Interesting to hear about the directions of travel the Chicago public transport system offers.
Here in Sweden where I live near Stockholm the public transport system has similar problems. It is basically set up like a star where it's super easy to travel towards or away from the Stockholm city centre all the way out to the furthest suburbs of Stockholm, but if you want to travel between the spurs of that star you have very few options, especially the further out on that spur you are.

[Muck]

"Walkable" is more than "I can walk that distance" ... but also includes:
- is the walk SAFE
- are there MANY OPTIONS (stores, entertainment, education, nature, ...) within that distance

[chrisshelley]

Not Just Bikes is a great channel with lots of very good content, the one about the SUV I a good watch, its just about 31 minutes though, so maybe a tad too long, a big "con" in the US revolves around measurements, US Standard weights and measurements, not quite the same as imperial measurements v metric, miles v kilometers, 12hour time v 24hour time, cups for cooking v every sensible type of measurements, all of these are used by most people everyday, imagine travelling abroad for the first time and not understanding time, distance, weight when buying or ordering foods, US gallon is different and besides, everyone uses litres, is there any wonder why so many people from the US never travel abroad :/

[deetgeluid]

14:18 Yeah, imagine the ancient Romans using cars. That’s a bit of a stupid remark.

[ChairmanMo]

China has literally more mileage of high speed rail than the rest of the world combined and it was all built in less than 20 years. Lastly Shanghai even was willing to try out building a MAGLEV RAILROAD!