Great opinion piece in NYT – The Pedestrian Strikes Back

[accordioneur]

Great article. Sadly, the friction among street & road users seems never-ending. Right now it’s a hot topic on my neighborhood’s NextDoor board.

BTW, is anyone doing a “Walk Your City” (as mentioned in the article) campaign in Arlington?

[dbehrend]

Thank you for sharing a fantastic Op-Ed, with so many great quotes and resources.

I’m also curious if any local communities have participated in Walk Your City. I couldn’t find a list on the website, and their social media pages look inactive. That said, the concept seems easy to replicate.

[VikingMariner]

Appreciate the posting. I have my own take on the issues presented. Only presenting it was another way to look at the issues. Take it with a grain of salt if you like; that’s cool.

The author presents ideas that I call tribalism–tribalism between pedestrians, cyclists, public transportation and vehicle owner/operators. The notion is that the other tribe(s) are responsible for the hardships that befall our tribe. I’m not buying it. I belong to all three tribes and have to say the notion that I must ally myself with just one tribe is ridiculous. We must also look beyond our own selfish needs and consider that not everyone cannot walk or ride a bike (or electric scooter) as the country’s population ages, albeit I did tie my 5-ft Christmas tree down nicely on my electric skateboard for a five mile ride to home. Awwww yeah. Hard as nails, son. :0)

Investment in infrastructure for all modes of transportation as been grossly inadequate for over 45 years and has not accounted for population shifts to and from certain metropolitan areas. Our infrastructure is rusting from the inside out. I know of several Third World countries with better infrastructure than DC. And as far as the internal combustion engine is concerned, not to worry. Its days are numbered. We are about to see electric vehicles from many new manufacturers very soon since the legacy auto makers refuse to adapt to the new environmental requirements in the world’s largest car market (China).

Just like the W&OD should be three or four times as wide so to should I-95 corridor from Boston to Richmond and I-66 (or perhaps have a Boring Company underground portion) to match the population growth in the DC metro area over the last few decades, for example. There’s no reason why there is not a bridge over Hunter Mill Rd or Cedar Ln on the W trail except a lack of willingness to spend cash 15 years ago. They cant even manage a flashing light to alert motorists, which shows a disregard for the safety of cyclist and motorist, with near collisions between cars threshold braking for cyclists on a trail hidden by embankments. The strategy of not building and expanding the infrastructure in the silly hope that it would result in other modes of transport being used while not investing in those other modes as well has been a complete failure that has negatively impacted the health and safety of millions of people. When it comes time to evacuate the area for natural or man-made causes, the tragedy of decades of inaction will be apparent.

The best advice is that everyone needs to think about how the entire transportation system should work (as a variable-sum game rather than the current zero-sum approach that several esteemed cycling advocates may have) and also recognizing how new technology may change how that system works. Tesla and the Boring Company are just two popular examples of how new technology could radically change the calculus of transportation for almost all modes of transportation–ped, bikes, trains, cars, and so on. It’s not enough to advocate for protected bike lanes that in some cases (like Wilson Blvd) actually do more harm that good by restricting the room to maneuver when a car door opens. I’ve been a cyclist for 50 years; I love it far more than the average person, but when I need an ambulance, I want it to be a fast electric truck (maybe autonomous and not prone to human error against a cyclist) on a system of well-maintained roads that flow, certainly not the current predicament of no-flow, lots of pollution, boiling tempers with zero quality of life, monster potholes, rusted out bridges, passing out drivers licenses for life with no future testing like it was Halloween candy, unreliable death-trap rail service every now & then, rich-people “hot” lanes at $40 for four miles run by for-profit companies, and so on. Freedom of movement is not a protected right but it certainly enables a lot of rights to associate, for example.

Frack tribalism and a continued emphasis on 20th century approaches to transportation (Metrorail as it stands was obsolete 25 years ago–it almost seems like someone deliberately wants it to fail as well) that is mostly cash starved and falling apart. Car drivers are not the problem; actually they are also frustrated with the system of roads, which sometimes causes them to act out and endanger others, including cyclists. People don’t speed for no reason; they are trying to get home to families. Well, okay; some people do, but that’s a rant I’ll save for another day. :0)

State and local government failed for decades and needs to be replaced.

Wooooo! That brings my old man rant to an end. I wrote this thing to perhaps provoke thought in a new direction that the usual rubric that all car owners suck. Perhaps things are not so black and white. Perhaps there are many shades of gray that may have real and dramatic effect for change. Thank you and God bless America.

[dbehrend]

@VikingMariner 183970 wrote:

The author presents ideas that I call tribalism–tribalism between pedestrians, cyclists, public transportation and vehicle owner/operators. The notion is that the other tribe(s) are responsible for the hardships that befall our tribe. I’m not buying it. I belong to all three tribes and have to say the notion that I must ally myself with just one tribe is ridiculous.

Interesting. While the author advocated for greater consideration of pedestrians and cyclists in urban design and planning, I didn’t take that as particularly anti-car.

[mstone]

@VikingMariner 183970 wrote:

Just like the W&OD should be three or four times as wide so to should I-95 corridor from Boston to Richmond and I-66 (or perhaps have a Boring Company underground portion) to match the population growth in the DC metro area over the last few decades, for example.

This is a very traditional attitude, but one which has proved to be entirely counterproductive and infeasible in practice; you simply cannot fix traffic by making the roads bigger–all you do is make life worse for people living near the giant roads for no net benefit. No place in the world has figure out a way to enable people in cars to go wherever they want, whenever they want, without getting stuck behind other people in cars. Places that have tried to do so have made things much, much worse for people not in cars. All we have now is a bit of reversion to the mean, because the amount of resources devoted to cars has gotten completely out of whack.

It’s very common to trot out people who can’t walk (god help them if they can’t walk and they’re poor, right?) and other strawmen to fight the notion that cars will entirely disappear. But, that’s not really the point–maybe we’ll just bring down the amount of resources devoted to cars to something more reasonable. 75%? 50%? Something.

[VikingMariner]

Re: “No place in the world has figure out a way to enable people in cars to go wherever they want, whenever they want, without getting stuck behind other people in cars.” That is not a true statement if we consider our history. In the mid-20th century our road and interstate system did improve traffic flow. Later we invested less in adapting that system to changes in population distribution.

Re: “Places that have tried to do so have made things much, much worse for people not in cars.” A very normative statement, but I can certainly agree. Half measures and delayed decisions on infrastructure improvement, combined with weak environmental laws and enforcement are probably larger factors. There are multiple intervening variables that probably did made things much, much worse for people not in cars and people in cars. To defeat this tribalism it should be important to consider the effects of certain decisions on everyone.

Re: “All we have now is a bit of reversion to the mean, because the amount of resources devoted to cars has gotten completely out of whack.” Heck might as well go all the way. The amount of resources devoted to our way of life vis-a-vis mass consumption and resource extraction in the extreme is measurably destroying the planet. It has been said that 75 percent of the generated green house pollutants is done by 100 companies.

It has also been said that there is a class element to this bike vs car tribalism, that is, today’s income distribution among young adults forces those good people to not be able to afford a home mortgage, a car loan, and they other mass consumption trappings that baby boomers “enjoy.” That in turn creates quite a bit of resentment toward the concept of cars even when the technology associated with cars in five years will be a net safety boon with autonomous vehicles, tunnels, and perhaps fewer vehicles as the concept of ownership changes to vehicle sharing.

I’m convinced that this tribalism does nothing for bicycle safety advocacy except work against safety. Quite frankly an article entitled “The Pedestrian Strikes Back” smacks of this tribal conflict approach straight out of the gate. The attitude that I see on this website too by a few good people also smacks of this notion that we are at war with cars and that we need to stick it to drivers. Have to confess that attitude is immature. The bike is not going to replace cars and trucks given the transportation needs of a post-modern society. Heck, my bikes were delivered by cars and trucks. And in this age of every right (speech, association, privacy, et al.) must be regulated or taken away in a piecemeal way, taking someone’s mobility which is an enabler of these rights to suit the personal desires of a narrow segment of interests is at best shortsighted.

We need to advocate for a transportation system that minimizes negative environmental and quality of life concerns for a wider group of people that just us cyclists. That would be a mature approach that is easy to sell. The first step may be to familiarize ourselves with the emerging technologies and approaches to transportation that just going for the default 20th century notion that bicycle safety is enhanced by a new bike lane protected by some vinyl reflective barriers that have magical powers to stop a drunk driver or a driver engaged in a jolly good game of Candy Crush. Honestly some of the cyclist issues being put forward right now are completely retarded–like taking away a parking space in Vienna for a bike rack. It’s as if people just want attention and just want to antagonize people who know nothing about cycling. The smarter approach would have been to stick to major issues of bike infrastructure like bridges on the W trail over streets like Cedar Lane, showing drivers how it also improves there safety. “Striking back” at drivers is just a shortsighted emotional approach.

Really tried of these articles trying to bait conflict between motorists and cyclists. Seems like the news media are desperate to get web clicks. Please don’t fall for it.

Anyway–I’m just stirring the pot a little (not trolling…not yet). Not singling anyone out. Please take no offense. All of you seem like good people. This is just my opinion, which when combined with $4 will get you a cup of Starbucks (nasty coffee btw). My rant is best read if you play God Bless America in the background. Hahaha.

[mstone]

@VikingMariner 184000 wrote:

Re: “No place in the world has figure out a way to enable people in cars to go wherever they want, whenever they want, without getting stuck behind other people in cars.” That is not a true statement if we consider our history. In the mid-20th century our road and interstate system did improve traffic flow. Later we invested less in adapting that system to changes in population distribution.[/quote]
It was true when the percentage of people who owned cars was lower and more people used mass transit. It was never true that all of the people could drive cars at the same time and not experience problems. (But, since fewer of the “wrong people” could afford cars it was a pretty good time for the wealthier folks and the people who remember it only as kids who went out for Sunday drives and don’t have any idea how things worked day-to-day.)

Quote:

Re: “Places that have tried to do so have made things much, much worse for people not in cars.” A very normative statement, but I can certainly agree. Half measures and delayed decisions on infrastructure improvement, combined with weak environmental laws and enforcement are probably larger factors. There are multiple intervening variables that probably did made things much, much worse for people not in cars and people in cars. To defeat this tribalism it should be important to consider the effects of certain decisions on everyone.

More important than fearing “tribalism” is being realistic about what can be achieved through promoting single occupancy vehicles and understanding that we’re well past the point that we need to provide other options. But go and keep wringing your hands that “tribalism” is the problem, rather than common sense evaluation of the options.

Quote:

Anyway–I’m just stirring the pot a little (not trolling…not yet).

You’re not stirring anything, just repeating tired old ideas that have long since been shown to be wrong. They’re not novel to anyone, because we hear them every time we have to have a public meeting to argue about straightforward solutions that work every time they’re implemented but still cause a knee-jerk reaction that there’s a “war on cars” even though the cars get most of the resources and still will for the forseeable future. Nothing to see here.

[VikingMariner]

Now you’re just making up facts (that are false) about our history and car ownership. Here are some facts: https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/.

Electric autonomous cars operating in tunnels and away from cyclists is an old and tired idea? Personalized mass transit using that new infrastructure is a old idea? Actually the old idea is to stop investing in the infrastructure that brings all of our consumables and increasing everyone’s level of pain until metro dwellers are like rats in a cage, ready to feed on each other in a fit of rage–road rage to be precise. But I did like the way you turned my argument on me.

Reminded me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5P5eQiKNQs

It was cute. What an awesome movie. Ah social media–you gotta love it.

On tunnels: https://electrek.co/2018/12/18/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-tesla-tracking-wheels/

Okay–I’ll stop. Never mind. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.

[Hancockbs]

They lost me with a parked car taking up 350 square feet. Something that simple to validate and yet being incorrect leads little credence to the rest of their arguments. I fit all three tribes and this article is trying to make the pedestrian side of the triangle a hypotenuse that exceeds the other two sides. I wish people (journalist, researchers, etc.) would stick to stating validated facts vice so much opinion, spin, and fake facts to prove their point.

[Crickey7]

@Hancockbs 184014 wrote:

They lost me with a parked car taking up 350 square feet. Something that simple to validate and yet being incorrect leads little credence to the rest of their arguments.

Google says the average is 320 square feet. That’s only off by approximately 10%. I’m not sure I’d trash their argument on that basis. http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/dimensions-of-a-parking-space/

[Hancockbs]

@Crickey7 184015 wrote:

Google says the average is 320 square feet. That’s only off by approximately 10%. I’m not sure I’d trash their argument on that basis. http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/dimensions-of-a-parking-space/

Google says that in one spot, but there are plenty of others that say considerably less. The average seems to be closer to “Typically they fall between 7.5 to 9 feet wide and 10 to 20 feet long. The most common size is 8.5 feet wide by 19 feet long.” At the most, that is 9×20=180 or 51% of the stated area. Also if this is about parking in the city and taking up pedestrian space, I would ask you to look at how closely spaced parked cars are on a typical city street. The average sedan is roughly 7 x 17 or 119 square feet. Bottom line, 350, be it 10% over or 100% over is still over and is therefore spun to help the author’s point of view.

[lordofthemark]

@VikingMariner 184012 wrote:

Now you’re just making up facts (that are false) about our history and car ownership. Here are some facts: https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/.

You can’t go by car sales, because cars then had shorter service lives. You need to go by car ownership.

https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/3_ORNL-Transportation-Energy-Data-Book-edition-34_2015.pdf

Look at table 8.2
vehicles per capita roughly tripled between 1950 and the early 2000s and vehicles per household doubled. (yes, way back when not only were there more car free households, but middle class households typically had only one car – associated with fewer two income families, less reliance on the auto for neighborhood trips, fewer teens and young adults with cars, etc). Note vehicle miles per capita also tripled.

[Crickey7]

180 s.f. is the actual parking space itself. The 320 s.f. estimate includes the circulation aisles, separators and infrastructure that serves the parking. If you use the 180 s.f. figure, you wind up massively undercounting the space requirements for parking that the 320 s.f. figure aggregates, then averages.

[lordofthemark]

“That brings my old man rant to an end. I wrote this thing to perhaps provoke thought in a new direction that the usual rubric that all car owners suck” I am a car owner. We have no intention of giving up our car anytime soon. However I believe that in making local decisions on street space, on development, on parking requirements, we lean over too far to the assumption that cars must dominate. Rebalancing does not mean eliminating cars or ambulances or trucks. I also think that counting on electric vehicles to solve the problem of GHGs related to auto usage is unwise.

I also think any major investment in expanding capacity in the northeast corridor is almost certainly better spent on rail. Highway expenditures (beyond restoration to state of good repair) may well be needed in many parts of the country, but the northeast corridor is probably the one where the relative benefits of passenger rail are the highest.

[mstone]

@VikingMariner 184012 wrote:

Now you’re just making up facts (that are false) about our history and car ownership. Here are some facts: https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/.

I’ll stop quoting here because it makes even less sense the further you go. So you linked to something that wants me to pay $50 to even begin to guess at your point. No thanks. I’m not sure what you think is false, either. Here’s a legit source: https://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedbfiles/Spreadsheets/Table8_02.xls

Note that in 1950 there were .29 cars per capita, in 2015 there were .82 cars per capita. In 1950 there were .74 cars per employed person, in 2015 there were 1.78 cars per employed person. That is a huge difference. When my family lived in what’s now a car-choked inner suburb back in the 50’s their fairly typical middle class family of 4 (later 5 then 6) had 1 car which spent most of its time in the driveway while the breadwinner took the bus into the city. Population density at the time was higher than it is today, but vehicle density was much lower. Widening the arterials has made it much harder to walk (or bike) and has hammered property values along the biggest roads, but hasn’t “fixed” the traffic. Roads that used to have kids playing on them now have speed bumps due to the people trying to avoid the arterials. The only way to “fix” the traffic in your outdated paradigm is to tear down houses and put in more freeways. Or you can subscribe to wishful thinking like putting cars in tunnels, which is a fiscal fantasy.

Or, in the new paradigm, you shift people away from single occupancy vehicles and let them have an option to walk or bike the way they could 65 years ago.

[Author]

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