Starting later this month, it will be legal to set speed limits below 20mph in Washington state, so maybe in a few years we’ll start to see autoluw streets. https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/19/governor-signs-washingtons-first-in-the-nation-shared-streets-law/
= ( Everytime I see a fuck cars or pro bicycle post I get sad, sitting in my U.S. urban city. I want to ride a bike to work, I want to use public transport but 70 minutes one way by bike is a bit too long and its still half as long as taking the bus woukd take. and no I will never shut up my gripping that a 14 mile drive should not take 2.5 hours by bus. (For context my commute is 20-30 minutes by car)
In the Netherlands there is a special class of ebikes we call “Speed pedelec”. They are made to go 45kph, but you still pedal. Might be very nice for your commute?
Most important thing though is to try to unite with neighbours and ask for local politics for save infrastructure. In the Netherlands we have the concept of “polderen” for this: you don’t make it an all-or-nothing thing, just try to make it good enough for both worlds. If people want to drive, we give them good roads to drive on, which might be a little bit less wide and straight than you’re used to, but we also have great cycling infrastructure for the people that don’t. Having options is real, actual freedom. Everybody needs to give a little to gain a lot though. That’s polderen. Every person using a bike is another one not driving a car, so more space on the road for people that do want to drive.
“poldren” thats nice, yeah. People around here seem to be just done, rampant corruption, almost all the city money goes into the pcoket of the councilmembers or thier business partners. New mayor at least has got some infrastructure projects done, even if it seems half the money was embezzlemed. Compromise is good but also hard…sheriffs have been trying to crack down on atvs because quite alot of people here go around in atvs harassing pedestrians and homeless in the area. And no one feels safe being outside, some shootings every week or so
I’ll look it those speed pedelec, maybe something like that in the states. Need to also really organize some group thats not just trying to lobby for more weed gardens, maybe get some change.
Yeah US cities wont easily be able to convert to biking. The biggest issue isnt even the transport infrastructure, its the land use. He talks about that in this video as well. If the US allowed building more compact, multi story housing mixed together with businesses, then you wouldnt be forced to travel so far to your work destination. The US needs to go from separating housing and business into zones that are 10 miles apart back to mixing them together into a beautiful heterogeneous mess where you can get to work by cycling 10-15 minutes. There needs to be sooo much mental restructuring to turn more people into YIMBY’s for that to become a reality tho.
yeah, he outlines the problems really clearly and how it can be solved. I was just talking about it with some people yesterday, with the current Californa contentions about removing minimum parking requirements for affordable housing.
Alot of people are protesting turning ugly lots into affordable housing…ugh. Literally the reasons we can’t have nice things. “Parking in multistory garages instead of a giant 500 car lot so there affordable housing is unacceptable, its inconvenient and it will bring in undesirable” - basically Menlo
Friend of mine lives outside LA, they used a motel 6 into temporary housing for unhoused, no problem. They went to make it housing units for said homeless, locals got pissed, fought toooth and nail, said itd bring in undeasaribles, increase crime etc etc.
Officials were confused bcs the people they where complaining about had been living there for 3 years already jus they where converting it from “motel 6” to basically an apartment building. smh.
Mixed use buildings and affordable housing without needing cars is such a dream 15-20 minutes cycle would be nice, shame its so uncommon and so disliked by some people no one gets it. To my closest store its a 10 minute drive / ~hour walk (before they canceled the bus route it was also a bit over an hour but 2 hours back) city has a quarter mile / 0.4km of bike lane and alot of streets dont have sidewalks
40k people, smh (ofc its partly because of the extensive blatant corruption here but ah)
A class 1 ebike should help you cover that nicely I think. Your commute might be a little longer, maybe about 40ish minutes if you’re going at 32kmph top speed that most of them are limited to, but still!
a 14 mile drive should not take 2.5 hours by bus.
That really does sound like something to be raised with the city government. That’s terrible, I can cover that in under an hour on my bike at normal commuting speed
I think I have to seriously consider an ebike.
as for the busses theyve have been in a downward spiral the last 20 years. Shitty routes mean less riders, less riders mean less busses which means longer routes which means less riders. Regularly most of these big 40 something passenger busses they run have 1 passengers. Only people that take them are old, disabled, people that have no other choice.
For shits and gigles after they changed the route I used to take (was 40 min for that 14 miles 2 busses) I took the bus from where id need to commute. 3 busses, 14 miles. It took over 3 hours and the most egregious part was the longest leg which was the 3.5 miles on the local bus that went from my local grocery to my hosue that took a mind numbing 87 minutes. It makes me laugh how SLOW that bus ride was, now they canceled that one so you have to walk the 3~ miles but really you actually save time.
I totally understand. Maybe an electric bike could get that 14 miles done in 55 minutes? 50? Still not a small bike commute, but that maybe JUST ticks it over too ‘possible’ ? I had a bike commute that took me 90 minutes, electric bike brought that all the way down to 60, driving 25km/h very consistently did the trick. Again, no judgement, 70 minutes biking is no joke.
Hmm, I haven’t fully looked into e-bikes. Maybe 60 minutes isn’t unachavaible. another problem is alot of the route doesn’t have sidewalks, let alone bike lanes…at least its paved.
As a dutchie i’d like to add that autoluwe zones (if done properly) are very much worth copying to other cities!
Houten is pretty small but Groningen, one of the the larger cities in the Netherlands, is now going in this direction. I applaud it. Now it’s just students on bikes that are dangerous. And delivery people on fatbikes or e-scooters.
Also, the size of the city is irrelevant. Even in the video, NJB describes how this concept could be implemented in any city. You don’t encircle the whole city with a ring road, but you create these rings with a diameter of ~2 km around train/metro stations. Even Houten consists of two such rings nowadays. Larger cities would be dozens, if not hundreds, of rings.
You don’t even need rings, Barcalona converted regular blocks into what they call superblocks. Imagine the lines of tic-tac-toe (the inside lines of a 3x3 table) being converted to wide footpaths and bike lanes basically creating miniature ‘autoluwe zones’. Not necessarily by prohibiting cars entirely but making the those streets impractical for through traffic.
Yup, that’s even easier to implement and could be done in any city within a few years. I just can’t fathom why almost every single street in almost every single city MUST support through traffic. Even in cities with great public transport and great infra for walking/cycling, with only a fraction of the citizens driving cars, somehow cars are still allowed to drive through basically everywhere. Looking at you Helsinki…
Great channel! They also have a lot of other interesting videos on car centeic city development. I just watched through a lot of it.
