spare_wheel

Assen is a podunk college town and Hembrow is being disingenuous. Massive amounts of parking was removed from the center of Amsterdam and an entire ring road system was dismantled. One of the reasons parking is cheap in the Netherlands is because there is very little of it in central urban areas and too much of it in the burbs. (Lack of demand also helps make it cheap too.)

You have it ass-backwards. Anti-car policies (safety, tax, and road engineering) led to the resurgence of cycling in denmark, the netherlands, and germany in the 70s and 80s. And we are not going to see cycling mode share in the USA increase much if we try to fellate an angry motorist minority while building narrow crappy bidirectional cycle tracks with floppy traffic wands (an approach that was discarded in denmark and the netherlands decades ago).

spare_wheel

I think it's amusing that you linked to a study but did not bother understanding why the results differed.

Here is the real non-massaged world bank data:

Motor vehicles (per 1,000 people) | Data | Table

Denmark: 481
Netherlands: 531

USA: 786 (3rd after Monaco and Liechtenstein )

You can't tell us what your qualifications are but you want us to accept them? Ok...then.


Europe's anti-car urbanist policies are also reflected by large swathes of urban areas that are either car free or car light, by an intentional policy of parking scarcity in urban areas, massive subsidy of mass transit, and at least in a few nations massive subsidization of cycling.

This anti-car urbanist campaign is fairly mature in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany (which is why there is not much controversy about active transport being important). Nevertheless, in other european nations the war against cars is still being waged:

Central Madrid Rolls Out a Tough-Love Plan to Limit Cars - CityLab

Can't get more anti-car than banning them from most of downtown madrid.

VTBike

Did you not read the author's note which clarifies that:
Some confusion in the comments about what kinds of vehicles are counted in the rankings. I respond below, but the gist is that this data includes all "passenger vehicles," which means cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and minibuses. It does not include commercial freight trucks or buses with over nine seats, both of which the U.S. has a lot of, but which tend to be owned by businesses rather than individuals.

mikeybikes

I can agree to building good infrastructure. Copy/paste designs from the Netherlands and Denmark and that's what we should be advocating for. I just never like to see cyclists advocating for things like congestion rings, increased fuel taxes, increased cost of car parking, etc. While those things can definitely improve the situation, the motoring public starts ignoring cyclists when those things are pushed. Those policies should be advocated for from other standpoints, such as sustainability, road safety, etc and not because they will improve things for cycling. That's why I say leave those things for other groups to advocate.

VTBike

Correct. I don't make a habit of divulging personal details here. You can make of that what you will.

I agree that these policies are something that we should look at more closely in the US - even if they are not at all universally used in Europe. One problem, however, is that Europe generally has better public transportation options. It's somewhat of a chicken and egg dilemma.

spare_wheel

I believe safety and sustainability are cycling advocacy issues!

kickstart

There's a wee bit more to it than your rhetoric implies.......

mikeybikes

Cycling safety certainly is. If safe cycling infrastructure comes at a cost to the motorists, then so be it. That has less of a chance of being seen as anti-car and more of a change of being seen as pro-cycling.

Cycling advocates pushing for an increase in gas taxes or increase in costs of car parking is a direct affront to motorists and will be seen as anti-car. Cycling advocates get summarily dismissed when they bring up these things.

spare_wheel

Hmmmm...there is something really funny about that data.

https://wdi.worldbank.org/table/3.13

Puerto rico has a higher per capita passenger vehicle level than the USA? I think not.

I think this comment clarifies the issue:

Moreover, the author of the study referenced by the Atlantic specifically states that the US figure "does not include light trucks, vans, or sport utility vehicles."

kickstart

Except that safer more efficient cycling is the beneficial byproduct of improvements in the infrastructure, not the the catalyst of sustainability, as it will always be statistically insignificant outside of major urban centers.

spare_wheel

i strongly disagree. i think we are seeing stagnation here in portland precisely because the low hanging fruit has been picked and some cycling advocates refuse to shake the tree.

VTBike

On the flip side, the stats don't include two-wheeled vehicles. In Europe that's a major issue.

mikeybikes

Are the levels stagnating due to lack of infrastructure that is perceived as safe, or due to low gas prices and free parking?

RollCNY

Do gas prices really impact urban driving habits?

I looked for some of the data I saw a few years back, that showed fuel costs as a % of income, and in urban areas, the West Coast, and the Northeast, fuel as a % of income was tiny. In the South, it was a huge % of income. I am going from memory, but it was something like 3% vs 12%. I know no data is verified without a link, but I did not find it handily.

That being said, wouldn't significant fuel surcharges hurt the rural poor significantly long before it phases an urban commuter? And does making car travel for the rural poor really improve cycling safety?

Chris516

This thread reminds me of this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v4hP6AwQ40
London wasn't like that almost forty years ago, when I lived there around the time of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee.

spare_wheel

i think the biggest road block is government subsidized vehicle storage (parking). quite a few proposed bike routes on arterials and commercial streets have been put on hold because of business/nimby resistance to parking reduction. i think it's fair to say that bike advocacy in portland is becoming militantly anti-parking.

CrankyOne

I spend a good part of each year in Europe and there is almost no anti-car sentiment. There is though sensible-car sentiment—that cars are not necessarily appropriate for hauling one single person 3 miles to get a haircut. A bicycle, e-bike, or scooter might be a better alternative that requires massively less space to drive and park and that is less negatively impacting to others from a safety threat, noise, or pollution standpoint. Cars are appropriate for a family holiday or picking up something really big at Ikea.

There is not a sense that car drivers should be penalized but that car drivers should pay for what they use and should not continue to be subsidized by taxpayers at a far greater rate than people who walk or ride a bicycle. If they want to drive and park in a place of high land value then they should pay accordingly (thus higher parking rates and congestion zone charging).

spare_wheel

when gas spiked to over $4 a gallon in 2007 cycling use spiked in many US cities.

spare_wheel

What is sensible in the Netherlands is anti-car in the USA. Just sayin'

CrankyOne

Are you saying that Americans aren't sensible? :-)

VTBike

Can you give a specific example?

mikeybikes

Removing parking for infrastructure isn't anti-car, in my opinion. It's pragmatic and necessary if we want safe infrastructure. I will grant you that a lot of the public probably won't see it that way. At some point you do have to either remove parking or traffic lanes. We need to be careful not to demonize or villainize cars. We need to especially be careful about advocating for policies that are direct affronts to motorists. We still need their help in a lot of places to get things done.

B. Carfree

It's not that those of us who hate the severe impacts of cars hate cars so much as we hate what excessive overuse of those tools has done to our landscape. Hating cars is like hating nail guns. Sure, I use a hammer often enough, but there are jobs where a nail *** is really the appropriate tool. However, too many people in America can no longer even conceive of going anyplace without grabbing their car keys and it has become increasingly difficult to oppose overuse of cars without appearing to be opposed to all uses of cars.

kickstart

What facts are these opinions based on? What standard determines the difference between legitimate and excessive use?
Its one thing to remove parking in certain areas to discourage driving when there's reasonable options, but its an entirely different thing to pass judgment on others needs in all places regardless of availability of reasonable options.

CrankyOne

I think B. Carfree said it well.

To answer your question we first need to determine if cars are indeed a problem, what kind of problem, and then consider solutions. I believe cars are a problem because U.S. drivers do not control them well and thus kill and seriously injure a huge number of innocent people every year. Cars eat up valuable space and take space away from others such as pedestrians and bicycle riders, sidewalk cafes, and other endeavors (before and after photos of lane increases / sidewalk narrowing in many of our cities is kind of depressing).

Cars cause considerable pollution including air, water, light, and noise. The fuel necessary for current cars causes foreign policy problems for us as a nation. Our considerable use of cars in place of walking or riding a bicycle is likely a very significant cause of our obesity, poor health and low life expectancy. Due to our love affair with cars for everything we've created communities where driving is relatively required and this adds a considerable financial burden on to individuals. Our cities and particularly our suburbs are facing a looming financial crisis due to the deterioration of our roads and the need begin undergoing some significant maintenance beginning in about 2020 (for which we'll all likely be seeing some really depressing tax increases).

On the other hand cars are quite useful for many things like carrying large items home from stores, longer journeys (above perhaps 7 miles round-trip), and transportation in extremely inclement weather.

The question then is how accurate are the above concerns and then what can be done about them?