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Just found out about this thread. I went to the US for the first time as an adult last summer, and I landed in Kansas City. I'm vaguely into urban planning so I knew what I was getting into, but seeing it in person rocked my world. The morning I arrived I took a 40 minute walk from my hotel to a museum since I'm used to walking around being a big part of any city trip. I honestly thought there was a holiday or something because it was so desolate. No storefronts, not everywhere had sidewalls (on massive bridges!) and you had to wait ages at every crossroads because every unimportant road inexplicably has four lanes. I couldn't find any shops to get loving water at, and it was like 40c and no shade. I finally got to what I thought was a park just to see it was a loving massive lawn. I took an Uber back. Of course, even in Europe not everywhere is great. I lived in Tel-Aviv which is walkable/cyclable but has poo poo public transport. I went to Edinburgh last month and it's considered walkable but car lanes are huge and almost every street is two-way with a beg button which takes ages and makes every walk very annoying. It seems very zoned so part of the time you're walking solely next to residential areas. Cycling infrastructure is non-existent and while locals told me the buses are good, they were awful. They had priority lanes but they weren't well thought out and had constant interaction with private traffic which made them next to useless. I live in Paris now. It has its problems, of course. In winter when it's harder to use bikes or walk, medium (like, 30+ minute walk) distances can be annoying sometime cuz the buses aren't amazing and switching metro lines can take a while depending on the station. But otherwise, it's absolutely fantastic. Very happy not to have used a car in almost a year.
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Aug 22, 2023 08:27
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I don't live there anymore (thankfully) but up to last year at least, in Israeli cities there was a major issue with cars parking on sidewalks. If you have a disabled pass in Israel you are allowed to park pretty much where ever, and if there isn't handicap parking nearby so you are technically allowed to just park on the sidewalk. Some people figured out that if you just send a letter from a lawyer to whatever department they don't have the energy to contest it and you get a pass. The result is that 12% of drivers have (two) disabled passes, and that efforts by the Tel Aviv city council to expand sidewalks etc have just created more parking spaces. The fact that so many cars have the pass makes it so many people just park on the sidewalk without it as well since the city don't have the manpower to actually go and check all the cars.
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Sep 25, 2023 10:38
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They are doing that, and you can even request a bollard in your street, but you can't bollardify every drat street in the city. Also, people will get on the sidewalk in places that can't be bollarded (e.g. zebra crossing, loading areas..) and then just drive a bit while on the sidewalk and park just before the bollard.
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Sep 28, 2023 00:14
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Again, this is legal for most of these cars cuz they have a disabled pass. The cars must leave like a meter of space which is ironically usually not enough for a wheelchair (and usually they don't leave that). The city says their hands are tied until the law is changed. When my dad had heart surgery he applied for one, and he got rejected. He was promptly approached by two different lawyers offering to 'sort it out' for like $300. A similar cultural issue is the fact that people ride down the wrong way on a bike path, or ride on sidewalks as soon as there is the slightest inconvenience on the bike path. These three things together along with eBikes going 40kmh makes the city really unpleasant to walk in. The city doesn't give fines for that poo poo but they do if you ride without a helmet. Glad I left that dumpster fire.
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Sep 28, 2023 09:16
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Cugel the Clever posted:I mean, the reason for the former is almost always "the bike network is not built to make basic navigation by bike possible." Around me, there's a lot of disconnected lanes and a weird lack of east-west lanes, leading to people just trying to make things work. Sure, I agree. But a common case is one where you have to wait at a light to make a left turn to get into the "correct" bike lane, or you could just make an immediate left into an opposite direction bike lane without waiting for the light (see illustration, blue being one of the normal ways and red being a bad way). I think this is a case where there isn't a simple solution and the blame can be placed on the rider. 
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Sep 28, 2023 21:48
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