Just to compare, this is the utopian dream for Toronto:
There are approx. 18 cars and trucks in that image.
They are taking up SIGNIFICANTLY more space, and are causing traffic.
Still, we keep saying, “give us more of this, please!”.
Insanity or stupidity?
Amsterdam is 59,324 times smaller than the US and it’s average temperature is always above freezing. Someone there will never need to drive 100 miles in a snow storm.
Amsterdam is 59,324 times smaller than the US
I would hope so. It’s a city, after all! It’s nearly twice the size of Miami, and Miami is desperately car dependant.
and it’s average temperature is always above freezing.
Miami’s is, too. Much warmer. Almost like you can comfortably walk or bike everywhere if cars didn’t dominate the landscape.
Someone there will never need to drive 100 miles in a snow storm.
Out of curiosity, is it normal for 300 million people to be driving 100 miles in a snow storm all the time? If not, what’s the point of bringing that up? The most populated states have beautiful weather nearly all year, so why choose to be stuck in a metal box?
Most Canadian and US cities who refuse to let go of car dependency look like the photo of Toronto, or worse. Those drivers aren’t driving 100 miles in snow, they are statistically driving < 5 miles at a time.
FWIW, I was able to run errands by bike in this kind of weather just the other day:
The only true counter to all of that is Amsterdam was basically go-engineered to be pretty much flat. Most cities in the US have a lot more elevation change than that, making bikes a bit less practical.
To counter that, we’re also talking about the difference of people riding single speed bikes vs bikes with gears and ebikes. The latter of which pretty much deals with hills. 😄
I have some pretty wild elevation changes around me, but even hauling groceries, this is rarely an issue. Of course, as I got used to cycling, it got much easier, so just getting out of the car is where most people will find the greatest difficulty.
FWIW, I was able to run errands by bike in this kind of weather just the other day:
Congrats on not being disabled. Not everyone is.
I’m missing an internal organ due to illness. My health improved tremendously after I took up cycling.
I recently watched a interview where this dude with one leg biked a fixie up a mountain… while doing the interview!
Cycling, including on an e-bike, fat tire bike, trike, or recumbent, can be highly accessible when divers arent trying to kill you.
And if a disability prevents someone from cycling, they are safer out in public when fewer people are driving.
Maybe I am interpreting too much here, but I read the sentence’s original meaning more like “in a comparable street scenery in North America” not like “in North America as a whole”. One more hint to this interpretation is the comparison with a photo from Toronto and not some rural area.
Even here in Europe everyone would acknowledge that there are a lot of situations where a car makes living at least a lot easier if you are not in a city.
Someone in florida will never need to drive in a snowstorm either, so all their cities are walkable right???
Driving 100 miles for most is not a daily occurance, most people stay within their city or metro area for the vast majority of their daily life. The size of a country is largely irrelevant when we are talking about getting around local city streets.
Wish we had enough trains for that but we don’t ( let alone high speed ones). And let’s not pretend that the Netherlands doesn’t have 50% car ownership, so it’s not like people are always biking or taking trains.
