[maxerickson]

The country of Netherlands has a higher population density than the actual town (with grid streets and medium size lots) I live in.

Throw in the mostly empty county the town is in and Netherlands is ~35 times denser.

The same things aren't going to apply to such a different situation.

Of course cities in the US can do better, but lots of things just aren't going to be very practical in most of the country by area.

[kqr]

Have you considered that the causation might be going the other way around?

It seems like you're saying that "My town has to be built for cars because we live so far away from everything. Obviously the Netherlands can afford to build for people because they live so close together."

It could also be the case that people in your town live so far away from everything because it is built for cars, whereas since the Netherlands is built for people they can live close together.

[maxerickson]

We don't live far away from everything, we just have less actual benefit from public infrastructure because there are less of us using anything we build. And I mean anything, because there are ~1/35 as many of us using it.

[kqr]

It still seems you're taking the density as a given, as the independent variable, and deriving some image of appropriate infrastructure based on that.

It might be the case that density is not independent at all, and indeed is changed when you change the type of infrastructure.

(Not to mention that bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure is far, far cheaper than that for heavier vehicles.)

[maxerickson]

Do you think if we built bike paths that 3 billion people would move to the US?

[malermeister]

You could have dense cities and high speed rail in between, it doesn't need to be all populated.

[maxerickson]

Right, the overall density is a coarse measure of the resources available for infrastructure (presuming that they will at least correlate with population and distance). If you have higher density, it is very likely there will be relatively more resources to deploy in a given area.

[kqr]

Density works also locally.

[ragebol]

That is the same argument. The Netherlands is denser, so it makes more sense to put in public infrastructure, which makes the place with that infra being more attractive. And I guess there's a switch-over point for population density where being less dense also reinforces itself and vice versa.

The point is: sub-urban US could be designed to be more dense to be on the other side of that switch over point.

[zachkatz]

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/all-those-myths...

See excuse #3, "our population is too spread out"

[von_lohengramm]

That hardly defeats the argument. Saying that 40% of "urban journeys" are <=2 miles does not convince me that I want to make the other 60% of "urban journeys" that much more inconvenient as well as the 100% of non-"urban journeys". In America, "practical everyday journeys (to school, shops, work)" are quite often farther than 2 miles, and it really shows that the author has never lived out here. Within 2 miles, I've got a pizza place, a sports bar, a Chevron, and a dentist's office. My old high school, grocery stores, heck even Walmart, just about everything is farther than 2 miles away. "The shops" are about 10-15 miles out. Ikea? That's about 35 miles away. Even when I lived in the city center, it was still 10 miles away! Now mind you, I actually don't mind how far things are, but only because we have great roads and a culture of driving fast. I just keep seeing these bike propagandists dismiss valid concerns by saying nothing more than "stroad bad, America bad", and it's honestly just annoying to see so many out of touch with my day-to-day reality

[maxerickson]

You miss my point. The Netherlands has really nice inter-city bicycle infrastructure, the thing my region lacks (it's easy enough to get around on quiet grid streets). They aren't in any way affordable, so we designate the US highway shoulder as a national bicycle route.

There's a not-yet-connected separated path growing between here and the smaller town ~10 miles away, but the local casino paid for a bunch of that!

[zachkatz]

Cycling infrastructure is cheaper to build than not to build: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/06/cycling-infrast...

[maxerickson]

That's an ironic reply in this context. 600 km of cycling infrastructure in my region would have a fraction of the users (and thus a fraction of the benefit) as the same 600 km built in the Netherlands. We have ~300,000 people occupying a slightly larger land area than the 17 million people living in the Netherlands.

Head west and the population really thins out.

[zachkatz]

If the casino found building a cycle path to be a worthwhile investment, why wouldn't other local businesses and the local government?