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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

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I live car-free, formerly in a very hilly city, now in a flat city. I can tell you 100%, the problems I have day to day are not because of the hills or lack thereof. how did I solve this seemingly omnipotent, insurmountable problem of HILLS? I bought an ebike.

what you're calling "wildly detached from reality" .. crazy insane, unworkable things like, building safe bike lanes, and designing streets to lower the speed of cars, and having houses close to local businesses so you can do normal stuff without a car .. uniformly where those things are implemented, my life is better, and where they aren't implemented, my life is worse. I can literally feel my mood rising and falling as I go to and from the different areas of the city with people-centric infra vs car-centric infra.

my quality of life varies in direct inverse proportion to how much I have to deal with fast-moving car traffic. which one of us is "detached from reality" again?

The detachment from reality is believing that everyone wants to, or would be better off living the style of life you do.

Local Shops, people centric, walking and biking none of those things appeal to me.

I want large shops where I can buy 2 weeks of provisions, and possibly even lumber for my next home improvement project all in one stop, and not have to go to a store again for weeks.

I do not have the desire to walk, or bike, or ebike... and even if I did the vast many months of the year when it is below freezing and ice covered surfaces would make that dangerous.

When I do have to venture into the more "people centric" i.e walkable areas of my city I can literally feel my mood falling as I know I will have to hunt for parking and then walk many blocks to my destination.

It's great that you have plentiful choices that suit your lifestyle. The anti-car crowd does not. The urban/biking lifestyle is illegal in most of the US. Where it is legal, cars are still over-accommodated with large urban boulevards, generous on-street parking, multiple highways cutting through downtown, and a general belief that innocent people being killed or injured by drivers "just happens sometimes, it's so sad".

In what city is it illegal to ride a bike?

That's not what I said.

>The urban/biking lifestyle is illegal in most of the US.

Your quote, emphasis mine.

illegal as in, it is substantially illegal for anyone to alter the built environment to make it more walkable/bikeable -- be it landowners or the local government. because of strict zoning/planning regulations, outdated road design manuals, parking requirements, etc. car-dependency is encoded into law, in the sense that the system is set up so that the default outcome always results in car-friendly development, while any attempt at pedestrian- or cycle-friendly development is subject to arbitrary delays, legal challenges, and needs discretionary exemptions. example: it has been known for decades that Dutch-style intersections[1] are safer than status quo designs, but until very recently it was an odyssey to get one built in the UK or the US, because the transportation authorities have not-invented-here syndrome and won't listen to empirical evidence from abroad (which undermines the claim of traffic engineering to be a scientific discipline). hell, sometimes they'll insist on a "pilot study" even when a design has been a success elsewhere in the same country! but building a junction with inadequate pedestrian and cyclist amenities is easy, so long as it meets safety standards for motorists.

another example: the law says you need to build X amount of car parking spaces in a development, but demands no amenities for cycle storage. or, this[2] disgusting litany of regulatory excuses for why a pedestrian crossing outside a school wasn't allowed be made safer, because nothing can be allowed to reduce traffic speed.

furthermore, in some places the law as written really does de facto criminalize safe cycling. for instance, requiring that cyclists never stray out of the bike lane, even when it contains dangerous obstructions[3]. or, traffic lights that don't detect cyclists, so the lights stay red forever, so it's impossible to proceed without either breaking the law or waiting for a car to come up behind you and trigger the sensor. there are many cases like this -- the law doesn't literally say "you can't cycle", but following the law rules out cycling in any safe and practical sense.

and then there's the absurd fake crime of "jaywalking" ...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA

[2] https://twitter.com/LoganTMillsap/status/1583247772509032448

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ

If someone's using phrases like "wildly detached from reality" and transparent strawman arguments, they're not looking for honest discussion or to become more informed on the topic. They've calcified their opinion and engaging them is a waste of your time.

What are your winters like?

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