99% of the US by land area is that bad; somewhat less so by population since NYC is navigable without a car and that's 8M people alone. There are approximately zero cities outside of New York where public transit is viable competition to cars.
Weather permitting, cycling is doable in some places. Most places however have narrow (or no!) bike lanes with automotive surface traffic moving at least 48kph and drivers having zero clue how to drive around bicycles. In urban areas there are usually cars parked directly next to the bike lane, with drivers opening doors into the bike lane. Many commercial delivery vehicles park in bike lanes as well; in the places where that is forbidden (fewer than you would think) the laws against it are typically unenforced.
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To give you an idea, I drive my 13y.o. daughter to school. It takes about 10 minutes. This is ridiculous. However the other options are:
- Walk (no place to leave bike near bus stop) a bit over 2km to nearest bus stop, take 45 minute bus ride.
- Bicycle along a road with 72kph speed limit; bike lane is not separated and is as narrow as 20cm(!!) in places with cars that are alternating between going above the speed-limit and stopped (with cars turning across traffic in gaps while stopped; I have personally witnessed 2 car vs car collisions where the two cars couldn't see each other due to stopped lane of traffic between them. A bicyclist would have been killed. Most bicyclists (including me) avoid this road, though enough travel on it for one to get hit by a car roughly annually (only 1 fatality in the past 3 years that I can remember though).
- Bicycle an extra 3km (6 vs 9), crossing the above death-trap road, but not cycling along it. This still travels along a road with a 72kph speed limit, but traffic is much lighter and shoulders are much wider. There is one intersection that is a bit nuts, but can be traversed by hopping off the bicycle and using the cross-walks.
> There are approximately zero cities outside of New York where public transit is viable competition to cars.
Significant swaths of Boston.
But, except for that, completely agree.
:)
A lot of people outside the US don't realize how new all our city layouts are. The majority of American cities were built out after cars came onto the scene. Did the cities exist before cars? Sure, but except for a few east coast cities, only with population numbers that could best be described as laughable.
Does the busses in your area have bike racks? The public transit in my city is pretty bike friendly. The busses all have bike racks in the front and the trains have bike hooks in the flat entrance train cars.
My city's actually been cutting busses to replace them with their own uber-like service. It's cheap, at only $0.75/person/ride (and no tips, drivers are salaried!), but the hours are the same as busses (so about 7a-7p) and wait times are generally > 20min.
Cycling is normally very dangerous in North America (outside of certain urban cores and small towns), due to the road design and zoning laws. This channel is helpful in understanding the problem: https://youtu.be/M8F5hXqS-Ac
Most driving outside of hyper-local destinations (this includes going to my _preferred_ grocery store, versus Walmart) requires driving on the Interstate highway which is probably one of the most dangerous kinds of roads to cycle on with an average speed limit of 70mph (~112 km/h), inconsistent shoulders for cycling, and generally more aggressive drivers.
Weather permitting, cycling is doable in some places. Most places however have narrow (or no!) bike lanes with automotive surface traffic moving at least 48kph and drivers having zero clue how to drive around bicycles. In urban areas there are usually cars parked directly next to the bike lane, with drivers opening doors into the bike lane. Many commercial delivery vehicles park in bike lanes as well; in the places where that is forbidden (fewer than you would think) the laws against it are typically unenforced.
[edit]
To give you an idea, I drive my 13y.o. daughter to school. It takes about 10 minutes. This is ridiculous. However the other options are:
- Walk (no place to leave bike near bus stop) a bit over 2km to nearest bus stop, take 45 minute bus ride.
- Bicycle along a road with 72kph speed limit; bike lane is not separated and is as narrow as 20cm(!!) in places with cars that are alternating between going above the speed-limit and stopped (with cars turning across traffic in gaps while stopped; I have personally witnessed 2 car vs car collisions where the two cars couldn't see each other due to stopped lane of traffic between them. A bicyclist would have been killed. Most bicyclists (including me) avoid this road, though enough travel on it for one to get hit by a car roughly annually (only 1 fatality in the past 3 years that I can remember though).
- Bicycle an extra 3km (6 vs 9), crossing the above death-trap road, but not cycling along it. This still travels along a road with a 72kph speed limit, but traffic is much lighter and shoulders are much wider. There is one intersection that is a bit nuts, but can be traversed by hopping off the bicycle and using the cross-walks.