7 ms·

Maybe design cities to be walkable and bikeable so that you have the option get things done without driving a car which is inherently trackable?

by nayuki 3mo ago

MaxHoppersGhost 3mo ago
The vast majority of folks don't want to walk/bike in Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, etc where it's near or over 100 degrees in the summer.
- hombre_fatal 3mo ago
  But those people don't even have the option, so what do you mean they prefer to not walk/bike? How pleasant walking/biking will be is linked to density, reduced distance to amenities, and infrastructure, things almost no US cities have. I live blocks from Costco in one of those cities but the option is either get on my bike and share the four-lane road with aggressive drivers in massive trucks/SUVs or use a tiny sidewalk that randomly stops and picks up again a block or two later.
  - SoftTalker 3mo ago
    What are you going to buy at Costco that you can carry home on a bike? In other words, if you want to bike to get your groceries, Costco is the wrong choice.
    - hombre_fatal 3mo ago
      It's not relevant. If the word Costco is too distracting to interact with my point, then replace it with any place you might want to go in a day. The lack of infrastructure is what makes the routine unpleasant, not failing to carry a small bag of bagels home. Not even the weather since riding a bike casually creates a breeze.
      - SoftTalker 3mo ago
        My point was that if you want to bike to get things you need, you have to go to places that are on more local scale. A place like Costco can only exist with the support of a large amount of car infrastructure. So if you want to go there that's what you have to deal with.
        hombre_fatal 3mo ago
        Costco happens to have a couple products I want that I used to bring back by bike until I decided it wasn't worth it unless I was already walking back from the cafe near it. Swap Costco out with any place I might want to go, and my point doesn't change because whether I can carry a bag of six bagels or eat a pizza in their food court isn't up for debate. You got one-shot by a triviality. The argument is not whether Costco should be the one building built in more density acoss our cities but whether our cities are hospitable to walking/biking. Costco just happens to be an example of a business I used to like to bike to near me, but it's adjacent to many other businesses I could have mentioned instead like restaurants, a cafe, and my friend's apartment, not the sole reason the streets exist around it.
        iamnothere 3mo ago
        People go to Costco because they want to make fewer trips in general. They load up their giant SUVs with the kids and the dogs, then with all their groceries and clothing and pool floats and other merchandise, and they bring it back to their giant house that has room for storing all this extra crap. In my experience, people who live this way don’t have a problem with any of it. You can’t just “undo” one piece of this without undoing everything else about our society. And that’s just not likely to happen in a democracy, as annoying as that may be.
  - lenerdenator 3mo ago
    Wait until you try putting a Costco-sized bulk package of something on a bike.
    - hombre_fatal 3mo ago
      Interesting how both responses zoomed in on the one part of the comment that wasn't a problem for me and asserted that it was the problem. Replace Costco with "some place I like to go" if that is less distracting.
      - lenerdenator 3mo ago
        Well, it's very much a part of the problem. The entire nature of commerce in much of the US is based around the automobile. You are expected to buy things in quantities that are best transported by a car. You are going to a place that is stocked by the truckload because it is placed near a road or highway. The money is made because of the road network. That's why governments build highways and roads: to enable commerce that they then tax. It's more efficient for a lot of commercial purposes if you have commerce occur at the scale of a vehicle than it is if it occurs at the scale of a person. If you want to go to a park or some other place "I like to go", sure, it's great to have those within walking distance, but that's not going to be enough to motivate political and economic will to scrap trillions of dollars in investment in infrastructure based on the automobile. It just isn't.
        hombre_fatal 3mo ago
        > You are expected to buy things in quantities that are best transported by a car. This just isn't true. You got distracted by my mention of Costco and then ran with it. Do you know how people live in walkable cities without a car? Not unlike people who live a block from H-E-B, except passing by the shop is part of your day. You can pick up of quart of milk and some eggs and avocados for breakfast because it's no big deal to walk to the store and carry a bag. > It's more efficient for a lot of commercial purposes if you have commerce occur at the scale of a vehicle than it is if it occurs at the scale of a person. That's not what the data shows. We subsidize car infrastructure, and less density is worse for commerce, and land that could have been used for more business is eaten alive by surface parking.
embedding-shape 3mo ago
Wish granted, now cameras are put up on every walk path and bus stop instead, as people keep getting robbed to/from the stores, so while the school buses aren't fitted with cameras, the streets are instead.
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago
  I'll take it a step further. Condoning the surveillance state because it makes the things they want people to like less comparatively worse is exactly the sort of evil "use anything as leverage to advance my goals" behavior is exactly how we got here.
NoSalt 3mo ago
I, for one, do not wish to smell my malodorous coworkers - who have walked or cycled to work and are all sweaty - all day. I already have one of them and it makes me want to vomit.
- cf100clunk 3mo ago
  There are ways to gently inform the person(s) of your discomfort. If communicated well, it can be settled. In one case I dealt with, body odour of someone on my team was causing another person distress, but some gentle, kind advice (yes, it was embarrassing as hell so we did it in private) and a quick trip by him to the shops for some deodorant resolved the problem almost instantly. Here's hoping.
  - NoSalt 3mo ago
    Why should the onus be on me when they are the disgusting ones and the employers are at fault for not offering showers?
- nicbou 3mo ago
  There are many ways to avoid this. The problem is your co-worker, not cyclists.
  - NoSalt 3mo ago
    If you mean showers, then you can forget it. I have NEVER worked at a place that offered showers. Plus, along with the extra commute time of walking or cycling, a shower adds another ≈ 20 minutes that I am not doing what I prefer ... which is not working.
    - nicbou 3mo ago
      I don't know what to tell you. Everyone bikes to work here, and we're doing just fine.
- fuzzy2 3mo ago
  Man if only there was a solution to this. It's almost as if we could design our environment to minimize this (bike- and pedestrian-friendly routes) and then deal with the aftermath if it happens anyway (showers). I do not consider employers that do not offer showers.
jerf 3mo ago
That's not the problem. Wave a magic wand and have all cities walkable and bikeable and you'd still have school busses. I suppose we could wave more magic wands and say "ok, everybody with kids has to live in a city whether they like it or not" and wave some more magic wands and eliminate all concerns about crime or other dangers, but if we're going to wave this many magic wands maybe we should just wave one that makes it so children don't need to go to school at all because they are all magically educated already.
- alistairSH 3mo ago
  Much of the world operates without dedicated school buses. Kids use public transit or walk or whatever, just like other residents.
Bender 3mo ago
I don't know if that works in the EU but in the US most places are not a city and most places whilst technically walkable the kids will have to start walking at 4am and maybe they will get to school on time after walking along rural highways and on dirt roads. That would be incredibly dangerous, reckless and irresponsible. As for tracking, I want more of it by individuals just not centralized corporations. The porch pirate bosses often park in front of my place to watch their minions of whom snatch packages around the time that kids are getting home. Some of the porch pirate minions drive vans and could easily snatch kids. I have been encouraging many of the people in my area to install cameras that log license plates and catch faces and vehicles in multiple directions of their roads and highways. We've removed some of the organized crime and pushed some of it out of this area and we will continue to push harder.
- vel0city 3mo ago
  > in the US most places are not a city Most people in the US live in urban areas. Most US citizens live in cities. The urban population of the US is about 80% of the population. I do agree most students in the US arrive by bus or car, but that's not because most US citizens live on farms off country highways.
  - Bender 3mo ago
    That does not make what I said not relevant. People are spread out across the country and kids in rural areas are just as valuable as kids in cities. I would never trust anyone that says otherwise. Also most of the land is not walkable in any realistic sense. Busses and cars are not likely going away for the duration of this short civilization. We will hit the great filter long before better options may have arrived.
    - vel0city 3mo ago
      It makes the phrase "most places are not a city" extremely misleading in terms of talking about school busses. The extreme majority of school busses and kids going to school do so in urban areas, i.e. in cities. Like, sure, over 40% of the US has zero inhabitants, so yeah "most of the US isn't cities". But its not like there are a lot of school busses and elementary schools in places where zero people live. > kids in rural areas are just as valuable as kids in cities I never said otherwise. I'm just pointing out its misleading to act like most of the US population live in rural areas. > Busses and cars are not likely going away for the duration of this short civilization The majority of this short civilization existed without busses and cars being a requirement. Seems strange it can't possibly exist without them now, or at least a significantly reduced societal need on them to have a basic functional existence for a decent chunk of the society.
allturtles 3mo ago
So someone introduces a new, problematic feature to a long-existing technical system, and your answer is to "just" reorganize all of society to eliminate that system?
lenerdenator 3mo ago
> Maybe design cities to be walkable and bikeable Why does everyone suggest this like it's easily done and the only reason that we haven't is due to lack of intelligence and/or will? It's not. It's an effort that will take decades, cost trillions of dollars, and will face both legislative and legal hurdles. Besides, with individual trait recognition technology and smartphones, you'll just be tracked regardless. You have to hold leaders to account for this sort of abuse of power.
JohnMakin 3mo ago
This isn't any more private. There are cameras with recognition tech just about everywhere now. If anything, this is less private.
Aurornis 3mo ago
I have the luxury of being relatively close to my kids’ schools and a grocery store and I’m also fit enough to bike and walk long distances. The only reason I can do this is because I work remote and we have the means to purchase a house almost wherever we want. However even I still drive a car frequently because it can turn a 30 minute walking trip into a 6 minute drive. Multiply that by the trips I take every day and it’s hours saved that I get to relax with my kids instead. Then there’s winter weather where biking becomes infeasible. It’s not really possible to build a large city where everyone gets to live close enough to their job and their kids’ schools and the stores they need to go to, unless everyone is moving their house every time they want to change jobs. The best we could do is robust public transportation. Whenever I hear calls to make everything walkable I can only assume the person hasn’t thought about all the people with kids, or who do work that can’t be done remotely, or who don’t want to move for every job, or who can’t afford to live in the nicest parts of town, or who live in places where winter weather would turn a 20 minute walk into a 1 hour hike, or who are too old or injured to be walking long distances, or all of the other reasons people drive cars. Maybe if you’re young, have no kids, and work a high paying job that lets you live wherever you want these ideas seem obvious, but some form of transportation, public or private, is a basic necessity for the rest of the world.
jimt1234 3mo ago
I've lived next to the bicycle lock-up area of an elementary school for over 20 years. In all those years I've never seen a single bicycle, not once. Of course, every morning and afternoon my neighborhood is grid-locked with minivans, but yeah, no bicycles.

Maybe design cities to be walkable and bikeable so that you have the option get things done without driving a car which is inherently trackable?

by nayuki 3mo ago

Maybe design cities to be walkable and bikeable so that you have the option get things done without driving a car which is inherently trackable?

MaxHoppersGhost 3mo ago

The vast majority of folks don't want to walk/bike in Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, etc where it's near or over 100 degrees in the summer.

hombre_fatal 3mo ago
But those people don't even have the option, so what do you mean they prefer to not walk/bike? How pleasant walking/biking will be is linked to density, reduced distance to amenities, and infrastructure, things almost no US cities have. I live blocks from Costco in one of those cities but the option is either get on my bike and share the four-lane road with aggressive drivers in massive trucks/SUVs or use a tiny sidewalk that randomly stops and picks up again a block or two later.
- SoftTalker 3mo ago
  What are you going to buy at Costco that you can carry home on a bike? In other words, if you want to bike to get your groceries, Costco is the wrong choice.
  - hombre_fatal 3mo ago
    It's not relevant. If the word Costco is too distracting to interact with my point, then replace it with any place you might want to go in a day. The lack of infrastructure is what makes the routine unpleasant, not failing to carry a small bag of bagels home. Not even the weather since riding a bike casually creates a breeze.
    - SoftTalker 3mo ago
      My point was that if you want to bike to get things you need, you have to go to places that are on more local scale. A place like Costco can only exist with the support of a large amount of car infrastructure. So if you want to go there that's what you have to deal with.
      - hombre_fatal 3mo ago
        Costco happens to have a couple products I want that I used to bring back by bike until I decided it wasn't worth it unless I was already walking back from the cafe near it. Swap Costco out with any place I might want to go, and my point doesn't change because whether I can carry a bag of six bagels or eat a pizza in their food court isn't up for debate. You got one-shot by a triviality. The argument is not whether Costco should be the one building built in more density acoss our cities but whether our cities are hospitable to walking/biking. Costco just happens to be an example of a business I used to like to bike to near me, but it's adjacent to many other businesses I could have mentioned instead like restaurants, a cafe, and my friend's apartment, not the sole reason the streets exist around it.
        iamnothere 3mo ago
        People go to Costco because they want to make fewer trips in general. They load up their giant SUVs with the kids and the dogs, then with all their groceries and clothing and pool floats and other merchandise, and they bring it back to their giant house that has room for storing all this extra crap. In my experience, people who live this way don’t have a problem with any of it. You can’t just “undo” one piece of this without undoing everything else about our society. And that’s just not likely to happen in a democracy, as annoying as that may be.
- lenerdenator 3mo ago
  Wait until you try putting a Costco-sized bulk package of something on a bike.
  - hombre_fatal 3mo ago
    Interesting how both responses zoomed in on the one part of the comment that wasn't a problem for me and asserted that it was the problem. Replace Costco with "some place I like to go" if that is less distracting.
    - lenerdenator 3mo ago
      Well, it's very much a part of the problem. The entire nature of commerce in much of the US is based around the automobile. You are expected to buy things in quantities that are best transported by a car. You are going to a place that is stocked by the truckload because it is placed near a road or highway. The money is made because of the road network. That's why governments build highways and roads: to enable commerce that they then tax. It's more efficient for a lot of commercial purposes if you have commerce occur at the scale of a vehicle than it is if it occurs at the scale of a person. If you want to go to a park or some other place "I like to go", sure, it's great to have those within walking distance, but that's not going to be enough to motivate political and economic will to scrap trillions of dollars in investment in infrastructure based on the automobile. It just isn't.
      - hombre_fatal 3mo ago
        > You are expected to buy things in quantities that are best transported by a car. This just isn't true. You got distracted by my mention of Costco and then ran with it. Do you know how people live in walkable cities without a car? Not unlike people who live a block from H-E-B, except passing by the shop is part of your day. You can pick up of quart of milk and some eggs and avocados for breakfast because it's no big deal to walk to the store and carry a bag. > It's more efficient for a lot of commercial purposes if you have commerce occur at the scale of a vehicle than it is if it occurs at the scale of a person. That's not what the data shows. We subsidize car infrastructure, and less density is worse for commerce, and land that could have been used for more business is eaten alive by surface parking.

embedding-shape 3mo ago

Wish granted, now cameras are put up on every walk path and bus stop instead, as people keep getting robbed to/from the stores, so while the school buses aren't fitted with cameras, the streets are instead.

cucumber3732842 3mo ago
I'll take it a step further. Condoning the surveillance state because it makes the things they want people to like less comparatively worse is exactly the sort of evil "use anything as leverage to advance my goals" behavior is exactly how we got here.

NoSalt 3mo ago

I, for one, do not wish to smell my malodorous coworkers - who have walked or cycled to work and are all sweaty - all day. I already have one of them and it makes me want to vomit.

cf100clunk 3mo ago
There are ways to gently inform the person(s) of your discomfort. If communicated well, it can be settled. In one case I dealt with, body odour of someone on my team was causing another person distress, but some gentle, kind advice (yes, it was embarrassing as hell so we did it in private) and a quick trip by him to the shops for some deodorant resolved the problem almost instantly. Here's hoping.
- NoSalt 3mo ago
  Why should the onus be on me when they are the disgusting ones and the employers are at fault for not offering showers?
nicbou 3mo ago
There are many ways to avoid this. The problem is your co-worker, not cyclists.
- NoSalt 3mo ago
  If you mean showers, then you can forget it. I have NEVER worked at a place that offered showers. Plus, along with the extra commute time of walking or cycling, a shower adds another ≈ 20 minutes that I am not doing what I prefer ... which is not working.
  - nicbou 3mo ago
    I don't know what to tell you. Everyone bikes to work here, and we're doing just fine.
fuzzy2 3mo ago
Man if only there was a solution to this. It's almost as if we could design our environment to minimize this (bike- and pedestrian-friendly routes) and then deal with the aftermath if it happens anyway (showers). I do not consider employers that do not offer showers.

jerf 3mo ago

That's not the problem. Wave a magic wand and have all cities walkable and bikeable and you'd still have school busses. I suppose we could wave more magic wands and say "ok, everybody with kids has to live in a city whether they like it or not" and wave some more magic wands and eliminate all concerns about crime or other dangers, but if we're going to wave this many magic wands maybe we should just wave one that makes it so children don't need to go to school at all because they are all magically educated already.

alistairSH 3mo ago
Much of the world operates without dedicated school buses. Kids use public transit or walk or whatever, just like other residents.

Bender 3mo ago

I don't know if that works in the EU but in the US most places are not a city and most places whilst technically walkable the kids will have to start walking at 4am and maybe they will get to school on time after walking along rural highways and on dirt roads. That would be incredibly dangerous, reckless and irresponsible. As for tracking, I want more of it by individuals just not centralized corporations. The porch pirate bosses often park in front of my place to watch their minions of whom snatch packages around the time that kids are getting home. Some of the porch pirate minions drive vans and could easily snatch kids. I have been encouraging many of the people in my area to install cameras that log license plates and catch faces and vehicles in multiple directions of their roads and highways. We've removed some of the organized crime and pushed some of it out of this area and we will continue to push harder.

vel0city 3mo ago
> in the US most places are not a city Most people in the US live in urban areas. Most US citizens live in cities. The urban population of the US is about 80% of the population. I do agree most students in the US arrive by bus or car, but that's not because most US citizens live on farms off country highways.
- Bender 3mo ago
  That does not make what I said not relevant. People are spread out across the country and kids in rural areas are just as valuable as kids in cities. I would never trust anyone that says otherwise. Also most of the land is not walkable in any realistic sense. Busses and cars are not likely going away for the duration of this short civilization. We will hit the great filter long before better options may have arrived.
  - vel0city 3mo ago
    It makes the phrase "most places are not a city" extremely misleading in terms of talking about school busses. The extreme majority of school busses and kids going to school do so in urban areas, i.e. in cities. Like, sure, over 40% of the US has zero inhabitants, so yeah "most of the US isn't cities". But its not like there are a lot of school busses and elementary schools in places where zero people live. > kids in rural areas are just as valuable as kids in cities I never said otherwise. I'm just pointing out its misleading to act like most of the US population live in rural areas. > Busses and cars are not likely going away for the duration of this short civilization The majority of this short civilization existed without busses and cars being a requirement. Seems strange it can't possibly exist without them now, or at least a significantly reduced societal need on them to have a basic functional existence for a decent chunk of the society.

allturtles 3mo ago

So someone introduces a new, problematic feature to a long-existing technical system, and your answer is to "just" reorganize all of society to eliminate that system?

lenerdenator 3mo ago

> Maybe design cities to be walkable and bikeable Why does everyone suggest this like it's easily done and the only reason that we haven't is due to lack of intelligence and/or will? It's not. It's an effort that will take decades, cost trillions of dollars, and will face both legislative and legal hurdles. Besides, with individual trait recognition technology and smartphones, you'll just be tracked regardless. You have to hold leaders to account for this sort of abuse of power.

JohnMakin 3mo ago

This isn't any more private. There are cameras with recognition tech just about everywhere now. If anything, this is less private.

Aurornis 3mo ago

I have the luxury of being relatively close to my kids’ schools and a grocery store and I’m also fit enough to bike and walk long distances. The only reason I can do this is because I work remote and we have the means to purchase a house almost wherever we want. However even I still drive a car frequently because it can turn a 30 minute walking trip into a 6 minute drive. Multiply that by the trips I take every day and it’s hours saved that I get to relax with my kids instead. Then there’s winter weather where biking becomes infeasible. It’s not really possible to build a large city where everyone gets to live close enough to their job and their kids’ schools and the stores they need to go to, unless everyone is moving their house every time they want to change jobs. The best we could do is robust public transportation. Whenever I hear calls to make everything walkable I can only assume the person hasn’t thought about all the people with kids, or who do work that can’t be done remotely, or who don’t want to move for every job, or who can’t afford to live in the nicest parts of town, or who live in places where winter weather would turn a 20 minute walk into a 1 hour hike, or who are too old or injured to be walking long distances, or all of the other reasons people drive cars. Maybe if you’re young, have no kids, and work a high paying job that lets you live wherever you want these ideas seem obvious, but some form of transportation, public or private, is a basic necessity for the rest of the world.

jimt1234 3mo ago

I've lived next to the bicycle lock-up area of an elementary school for over 20 years. In all those years I've never seen a single bicycle, not once. Of course, every morning and afternoon my neighborhood is grid-locked with minivans, but yeah, no bicycles.