this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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[–] AquaTofana 43 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Bruh I live 26 miles from where I work by car, and 21 miles by biking per Google Maps. And most of it is highway travel. It would make my commute over 1.5 hrs.

It is the dream if/when we can move closer though.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (2 children)

if entire cities were designed around these the way they are with cars, everyone would be fine with it and you would live less than 6 miles from where you work.

[–] uis 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Public Transport

EDIT: looking back it seems I replied to wrong comment

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (3 children)

You may live in a place that is the result of building car dependent infrastructure. To achieve a "bike city" op is describing, it would take decades, if not a century in your area for it to make sense to just bike everywhere. It takes time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's why you start small, and work up incrementally. Bike lanes are the first step: just make it possible. Next is paths that cut across town to allow bikes (and pedestrians) to avoid roads altogether. Just put them in wherever you can. Eventually you can start connecting them, and gradually it starts to make sense to say "let's just walk there" or "I'll meet you there on my bike."

It's literally just paint and gravel, and micro zoning. But it helps every step of the way, and it adds up quickly.

[–] AquaTofana 2 points 5 months ago

Oh it is. It's exploded like CRAZY in the past 10 years and it just keeps expanding outward instead of upward. City planners definitely designed this place to be the epitome of "urban sprawl".

For real though, if I had it my way, we'd live within 5-8 miles of where I work and I'd bike every day it wasn't raining.

Next duty station though! We're gonna buy/rent closer to the base, wherever that is!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

An excellent bike city is a long process but there's a lot of simple stuff that could help folks cut down on car trips. Imminent domain a few side yards and put in walking and bike paths to make neighborhoods more walkable. Knock down some houses to put in corner stores with apartments on top. If you build dedicated bus lanes, light rail, and bicycle paths you're on a road to a safer and more connected city.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Already fairly interesting how you can still manage to save five miles by bike in a system designed for cars.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Biking would add two miles onto my commute.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's more like it.

Mine would be identical because its just the same roads.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Since we're just sharing anecdotes: I save some time when commuting to my gym, because there's a path through a bunch of greenery in some public back lot community...greenery area type...thing. Anyway, it's nice, and the city just put it up a few years ago! I didn't care at first, but now I take it several times a week.

Also driving a car to the gym only to get on a stationary bike or treadmill there just feels hilariously braindead to me.

[–] Ragdoll_X 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bikes + Metro would be the ideal

But that would require politicians who aren't in the pockets of oil billionaires

[–] uis 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] uis 1 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Yeah but the hypothetical is if there was better biking infrastructure and I suppose that would include not expecting people to travel so far to work.

Again if it was better public transport infrastructure you could take public transit and wouldn't need the car the problem is that these improvements have never been made.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Well yeah that's for a big ol artery - that's never going away, but within-region is different.

Like I'm not going to take a bike to go visit my brother in the town over. That's just not appropriate use of the tech