• grue@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Or walkable zoning, lack of which is the fundamental cause of the car dependency.

      • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The lack of continuous sidewalks drives me nuts. A developer might put in a sidewalk but the one next to them doesn’t. Sometimes you are walking alongside a ditch or have to cross a busy road to continue on.

        • grue@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          As much as I’m inclined to agree with @MaggiWuerze@feddit.de, the real reason is typically that all new developments are required to include sidewalks, but existing ones aren’t required to retrofit. So you get a patchwork of sidewalks installed over time as things get torn down and rebuilt.

          The “annoying and pedestrian hostile” part is municipalities’ unwillingness to infill sidewalks in front of old developments at taxpayer expense.

      • zephyreks@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Bullshit. Adequate mass transportation is competitive with a car. You don’t even have to leave North America to see an “adequate” mass transportation system: just go to Montreal, Vancouver, or New York.

        Most US cities have mass transportation that’s designed to move around poor people so rich people in cars can’t see them.

      • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I never drove into Boston, I always took the train. I still needed a car though if I wanted to go anywhere away from the city. Boston also has an awful spoke and no rim train system. If you want to go from the end of one line to another you can’t go in a ring around the city, you’d have to go all the way in then all the way up the other spoke.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Buses aren’t horrible.

        • they feel safer in terms of crime, which might not be an issue you deal with but for over half the population it matters
        • they can often go around problems. One bus on the same line up ahead has an issue that has no real impact on the bus you are on
        • lot easier for the disabled to go on and off compared to down into a subway
        • you have a small degree of privacy
        • Mechanical problems? Get off the bus. No biggy.

        I do understand, I was a subway guy for the longest time, my wife would take the bus every day and she converted me.