Though, I admit, actually fixing American and Canadian cities after they were destroyed by car infrastructure and rebuilt to be car-dependent is a very daunting task, and I’m personally not even convinced it can be done in the foreseeable future, which is a big part of the reason why we left North America for a better city in the Netherlands in the first place.
In case it’s not clear, I’m not against trains, buses, trolleys, trams, and bikeable, walkable cities. Far from it. But regardless of whether cities used to be connected by rail and were bikeable, as stated in the video, they aren’t anymore, and haven’t been for generations in many cases. So what’s the solution in the meantime, while we wait for the slow churning bureaucracy to get its head out of its butt?
A start could be a similar method to the Netherlands. It took them a few decades to get their cities car free again. Whenever a city road was due for resurfacing/redevelopment, instead of just slapping down the same road and calling it a day, other options are considered like adding bus lanes, trams, or bike lanes while reducing the total number of car lanes.
The best part here is it can be done locally. The municipality can decide they want change and commit to a redesign.
That actually sounds reasonable. Are these options and methods being considered in America already? I want to see something like this happening in places like the LA metropolitan area and the Bay Area, the most notoriously gridlocked areas in California, which seems like the most car-centric state in the US.
I live in the Boston area, and while it doesn’t seem like it would compare to a place like the Netherlands, it’s slowly going in that direction by acknowledging a shift in focus. Places like here and New York are slowly respecting bicycles as a more viable city transport, and expanding the rail/bus systems. If that mindset can continue to occur each time the city planning office receives a complaint about lane congestion, or a city block that’s fallen into disuse, it can make some slow changes that make walking/biking/training a little bit better. They won’t replace the backbone of the city, but often they don’t need to.
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}
From the end of the video:
In case it’s not clear, I’m not against trains, buses, trolleys, trams, and bikeable, walkable cities. Far from it. But regardless of whether cities used to be connected by rail and were bikeable, as stated in the video, they aren’t anymore, and haven’t been for generations in many cases. So what’s the solution in the meantime, while we wait for the slow churning bureaucracy to get its head out of its butt?
A start could be a similar method to the Netherlands. It took them a few decades to get their cities car free again. Whenever a city road was due for resurfacing/redevelopment, instead of just slapping down the same road and calling it a day, other options are considered like adding bus lanes, trams, or bike lanes while reducing the total number of car lanes.
The best part here is it can be done locally. The municipality can decide they want change and commit to a redesign.
That actually sounds reasonable. Are these options and methods being considered in America already? I want to see something like this happening in places like the LA metropolitan area and the Bay Area, the most notoriously gridlocked areas in California, which seems like the most car-centric state in the US.
To find more info about the push for this kind of redevelopment in America I would look to the movement Strong Towns.
https://www.strongtowns.org/
Thanks! Unfortunately there isn’t a chapter near my location, the nearest one is 40 minutes away. Still, glad to see a movement already exists!
I live in the Boston area, and while it doesn’t seem like it would compare to a place like the Netherlands, it’s slowly going in that direction by acknowledging a shift in focus. Places like here and New York are slowly respecting bicycles as a more viable city transport, and expanding the rail/bus systems. If that mindset can continue to occur each time the city planning office receives a complaint about lane congestion, or a city block that’s fallen into disuse, it can make some slow changes that make walking/biking/training a little bit better. They won’t replace the backbone of the city, but often they don’t need to.