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Price of Gas II

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crimsonaudio said:
Euro cities are generally far older and therefore built to be more accessible without autos.

And both spouses work in most modern families - since our cities have largely grown with the invention of the automobile, it's highly unlikely most families could choose to live in an area that met all their needs while also being easily accessible for both jobs.

I just like to point out that comparing relatively modern US metro areas to long-established European cities is often comparing apples to oranges. Whether we're talking railways or autos, our cities were fundamentally designed quite differently due to when they were laid out and how that influenced their societal growth.
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"It’s estimated that about 50 percent of car trips in urban areas are three miles or less in length, making them a possible candidate for replacement with other modes."
www.govtech.com

Study: More Bike Lanes Needed to Reduce Traffic Congestion

Research from Carnegie Mellon University shows how replacing short car trips with bike and scooter trips can lead to less congestion, but local areas need more micromobility infrastructure for this positive outcome.
www.govtech.com www.govtech.com



If you look at our population density vs. Europe, it's not really different. Most of our people live on the coasts and in a few cities in between. I know this is an Alabama site, but still most people live in the cities and near towns.

What is different is our political will to design our cities for people instead of cars, and our will to make trips on something besides cars. The Netherlands were overrun with cars in cities in the 1970s, and they decided as a country to redesign their cities for people walking and biking. Sure, their cities were old, but they had already redesigned their cities for cars.

I live in a two worker/multi generation household, and we moved into a house so my wife could walk to work. I commute to work, once a month (I know I'm lucky there, but it's a looong way away). I chose my job that could be mostly remote, again I'm lucky there.

In the past, used to ride between 10 and 21 miles each way to work on my bike, even when I had a spouse and kid. My spouse also rode a regional bus 40 minutes to another city, but she could work on the bus and it was productive time.

I hear over and over, "we are different" or "we have different cities" or "we don't have public transit", but these are all excuses for our lack of political will and personal effort to travel in something besides cars. I get it. Sometimes the weather is bad, or I'm tired, or I need to get somewhere quickly, or I don't want to get sweaty, or I'm going somewhere with the family, so we take the car.

Nobody is arguing for no cars, or everyone has to ride their bike everyday, all of the time. But having a safe and conflict free area to use some other kind of transportation would be transformative for the USA. Excusing "the greatest nation on Earth" from having more than one type of functioning transportation system seems backwards to me.
 
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inkspire.org

Amsterdam Shifted from Cars to Bikes, How Can Other Cities Follow? - INKspire

Known as the biking capital of the world, or even a “cyclist's paradise,” Amsterdam totals 767 km in bike lanes and paths across the city and sees an average
inkspire.org

amsterdam in the 70's

amsterdman1.jpg
 
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we are down to 1 car as a family and are going to try to keep it that way for as long as we can. we live a little over a mile from a marta station and my wife and i both work (hybrid) next to marta stations which makes it easier. our limiting factor is that our daughter's school is only accessible via car, but thankfully isn't too far out of the way so we are able to piece together a car/marta/run/walk hybrid to make it work while cutting the amount we drive in half. this fall i am going to start biking to work 1-2 days per week which will take a little bit of complexity out of our logistics puzzle while giving me some extra bike time.
 
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Bamabuzzard said:
Looks the sardine can went from the street to the sidewalks. I'm not sure I want to be walking that close in a crowd. At least in a vehicle I don't have to be that close to the person. LOL!


View attachment 43225
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When my wife and I went to Nanchang, China, she sent me to Wal Mart to pick up a few items. The sidewalks there are super wide and there are a lot of people on them, similar to the picture. It never felt crowded though.
 
Bamabuzzard said:
Looks the sardine can went from the street to the sidewalks. I'm not sure I want to be walking that close in a crowd. At least in a vehicle I don't have to be that close to the person. LOL!


View attachment 43225
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I can't speak for why that sidewalk looks crowded, except that I'm sure there are 3 to 5 times more people in the right picture than on the left and probably no one will get mowed down by a rogue car driver in the right picture, unlike the left.
 
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mdb-tpet said:
I can't speak for why that sidewalk looks crowded, except that I'm sure there are 3 to 5 times more people in the right picture than on the left and probably no one will get mowed down by a rogue car driver in the right picture, unlike the left.
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There's certainly no question which picture is more environmentally friendly. The "wow" for me was the traffic is so much less.
 
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Bamabuzzard said:
Is it common for people to get mowed down by rogue cars where you live?
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Relatively, yes for rogue drivers. There were 220+ reported car into pedestrian crashes (2 out of a thousand residents) in a recent year and almost 10 deaths that year. I live in a somewhat touristy area, so the car crashes are a bit over represented.

Last week, right after a local bike ride, a driver turned left in an intersection without looking to see if the road was clear, and drove right through a bike rider going straight and broke the riders leg.

Lots of rogue drivers everywhere it seems.
 
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TIDE-HSV said:
The sidewalk reminds me of Gatlinburg in high season, when you frequently have to step into the street to get around someone or something...
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If the sidewalks were truly considered part of the transportation system, the DOT would be expanding the sidewalk to allow for more free flowing foot traffic and shrinking/removing car lanes and/or parking spaces. But we all know what the DOT really thinks TRAFFIC is.
 
TIDE-HSV said:
The sidewalk reminds me of Gatlinburg in high season, when you frequently have to step into the street to get around someone or something...
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Ironic that you would say this. My dental assistant went to Gatlinburg this past weekend for the first time. She loved it but complained about the sidewalks being crowded and having to step into the street at times to keep moving forward.
 
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Go Bama said:
Ironic that you would say this. My dental assistant went to Gatlinburg this past weekend for the first time. She loved it but complained about the sidewalks being crowded and having to step into the street at times to keep moving forward.
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IIRC, the Amsterdam pic is of the main street feeding into the main square, Dam Platz. Although that looks crowded, when it empties out into the Dam Platz, it's so cavernous, that that many people are just lost in its emptiness. I got caught in Dam Platz once in its rare as hen's teeth thunderstorms. Very impressive. It was the time that my wife booked us into a hotel converted from a barge, so we were floating in the harbor in a tin can and it was 85F, late in May. We spent most of the time in the hotel on our little walkway/patio, where we were a tourist spectacle, waving at the passing boats, taking pix of us...
 
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.

Road trips are not going to break the bank this Fourth of July.

GasBuddy projects the national average price for regular gas will stand at $3.49 a gallon on Independence Day.

That’s a penny shy of the price a year ago and down sharply from $4.79 two years ago when oil prices spiked after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Adjusted for inflation, US gas prices are almost exactly where they were in July 2018, according to federal data.

Drivers in some parts of the country will spend much less on gas than last Fourth of July.
 
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