Who would have thought, next increased sidewalk widths and walkable neighborhoods increase the chance of someone choosing to go out for a walk
Cambridge is like 30 years ahead of this. They are a model for the rest of us
Are they though? Still way behind European cities.
In this case I doubt it
European city’s were designed when everyone was on foot or maybe a horse, everything had to be walkable, even penthouses weren’t a thing because there were only stairs.
A lot of european cities got destroyed during WW2 and were rebuild to be more car friendly.
This is a bit of a myth. Many (most?) American cities were designed before the car too. But urban planners in the 20th century went all in on cars and racism and demolished their central cities to to evict all the undesirables and replace them with car infrastructure.
Actually some European cities did this too, but many repaired them later. Still, it wasn’t as common because the racial stuff wasn’t in play and the central cities had way more historical significance.
Admittedly the sheer amount of suburban development we have today is going to be a challenge to roll back. In my view some of it may ultimately need to be abandoned but we’ll see how it plays out. See Detroit for an example.
Which European cities? Amsterdam? Then sure. Rome? I think Cambridge wins.
Boston (and by extension Cambridge) is already very European-like for layout and walkability.
I love when there are basic bike lanes directly adjacent to the road, and cars are just using them as extra parking space, making them completely useless and forcing the cyclist to use the road.
Fuck cars.
Induced demand is real. It is a very good idea to induce demand for traffic that is inexpensive and scales well, instead of the opposite.
Noshitsherlock.png
This is not just a matter of adding protected bike lanes. Cambridge is a geographically tiny but high population density city that has been consistently working in this direction for decades. What would be a huge accomplishment anywhere is just another step
It’s fantastic they’ve been able to accomplish so much toward car-free living and I wish I could afford to live there.
One of the things people should take from my response is that protected bike lanes are a great step but not sufficient by themselves. All the other steps Cambridge has taken to increase walkability, bus, and subway access, to curtail cars, to encourage walking, to adding protected bus lanes, to remapping their street grid to form an oasis helped make this possible
protected bus lanes
Not sure if this is a typo or a brilliant idea. CPD doesn’t enforce bus lanes at all. The whole bus lane thing has been a bit of a fail because they’ve become express lanes for asshole drivers that use them to skip the line.
That’s unfortunate. When bus lanes were new I saw them mostly honored despite huge backups from losing lanes. I used to goto Cambridge daily but admittedly haven’t been there in a few years
Ugh, traffic. Guess they need more lanes…
Induced demand babyyy
Are the target audience for this article really expected to be so stupid that this headline creates clicks? As a European, I think I understand that this is the case, but it is still mind bogglingl.
Fuck Bikes. Us Walkers need to stick together.
/s
