- cross-posted to:
- publichealth@mander.xyz
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- publichealth@mander.xyz
- hackernews@derp.foo
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It doesn’t help that our streets, stroads, and roads are frequently unwalkable.
I was waiting for my car to get its brakes fixed yesterday, and decided to go across the street to a starbucks. It took like 15 minutes to cross the street as I had to wait for two sets of lights to cross the intersection. At least there was an actual sidewalk. Later I walked over to a different strip mall to get some lunch. No sidewalk at all. Multilane road with lots of traffic, no sidewalks. The few pedestrians out were, like I was, using parking lots as pathways to avoid getting run over.My neighbors drive to the gas station for snacks and beer in my excessively walkable town. Said gas station is close enough to my apartment to throw a snowball to.
Sad diabetes noises
Ok, put simply, if you lived here at the ponds there would be many days where your car is parked farther than the gas station is to your apartment.
But beyond that, the group isn’t sure what’s keeping Americans off their feet.
certainly it cant be all the obvious things that keep them off their feet
I live in NYC and a big reason I like it is how walkable it is. Haven’t needed a car in a decade.
I’m lucky enough that I can just refuse to live somewhere else.
Grew up in the suburbs and I never want to go back. I can’t stand how isolated and barren they feel.
The suburb I live in is only walkable if you’re willing to cut through lawns. Otherwise it takes three times as long to walk.
It would be awesome if they could connect the cul de sacs with bike paths. Suddenly it would be faster and legal to bike or walk.
However, this would require buying many expensive homes and tearing them down, so it won’t ever happen and I’ll continue trespassing to get to the store.
The US has been car-centric for so long and walkability has been neglected in construction and local policy forever. It’s much harder to build it after the fact.
If you have visited or ever will visit Europe, notice that there really isn’t an urban or suburban road built without sidewalks and bike lanes. It’s standard practice.
I’ve been to Europe and while the walkability is nice, there’s still too many people and I don’t like being that close to others. American suburbs are too crowded for me, but I can’t move further out at the moment.
Plus I’m lucky that I’m in an older suburb, because the new ones don’t even have sidewalks.
The data for this tracks 2019 - 2022 and so I’d be real curious to know how this would have looked had the pandemic not happened. I think a lot of people’s walks often have an objective to them (get coffee, stop at a store, etc) and it just wasn’t a great idea there for a while.
I was in Seattle for the pandemic and the number of people outside doing anything at all dropped considerably during that time. I lived by a really popular neighborhood walking greenway thing and it was almost totally dead for a while.
Makes me appreciate my very walkable neighborhood.
Pedestrian fatalities from vehicles has skyrocketed.
Americans are fat and lazy. Its not all because of car centric infrastructure.
That’s a symptom, but not the disease.
