Clyde1820

Indeed, in tight urban centers, that's probably a better description. But the point was that roadways that got put into such places were placed there specifically with cars in mind, NOT with cyclists or horses or pedestrians in mind. Call it "grafting onto" or "built for/around" or whatever, the end result is the same: a network of major throughways that simply aren't conducive (let alone safe) for anything other than motor vehicles. The label applied isn't the issue. The resulting effective requirement for a car is.

(That said, I'm all for taking a bike and becoming just another vehicle in a lane. However, in practice, it ends up just ticking-off the many of the nearby car drivers who falsely imagine a cyclist has "no business" being out there ... to the point of some taking steps to shove the cyclist in the hole. (Have seen it; have had it attempted.) This, on roadways through a dense urban center where the speed's not going above 25mph anyway, hence no particularly inappropriateness exists.

A good example is actual highways going through certain spots, where that highway is quite simply the sole way to get from A to B. Yet, such highways almost always are designed for the car, and most expressly disallow (and criminalize) presence of anything other than cars. When the only way from A to B other than such a highway is via 10+ miles on dirt trails and paths over yonder, and when that primary throughway criminalizes access to anything but cars, it's hard to not see it for what it is.

Am simply saying that, at least in the U.S., it's the extremely rare city that has a good percentage of its major throughways being designed for safe transit of occupants other than cars. Some do. And that's great. Lucky folks who live there. The rest of folks across the nation have to suffer with less, far fewer options, a vastly increased number of dangerous choices (due to not being designed to consider bikes and other small vehicles as valid).

It's the rare town (let alone city) that has a great portion (let alone all) of its key throughways crafted to be at least accommodating for all modes of travel. I hope we get there, at least in newer towns and cities. Though, somehow I doubt it'll happen. At least so long as the culture is vehicle-centric in its design, layout, distances between spots where the only viable means of transport in any reasonable amount of time is a car.

Would love to see a set of rings and spokes with a light-rail system, something along the lines of, say, Disneyland's monorail system. With cars large enough, designed that way, to accommodate wheelchairs, bicycles. Imagine a large town five miles in diameter that had three or four rings (or loops) of a rail circumnavigating the town. Round and round. And one could easily exit at the next stop to get onto a rail car at a "spoke" stop, to head into or away from the town's center. Make it so a person wouldn't have to walk more than a half mile or so from a stop to the destination. Then it'd be simple for someone who's not in a car to quickly make a transit from A to B, even if that destination were on the opposite side of the town or city. Point being, it's so rare that today's layouts are hard to show as being for anything other than cars.

MUPs and unpaved trail networks are fabulous. But they don't exist in a majority of cities. Not in sufficient numbers or directions to obviate the need for a car or bus. Lucky, if a person does happen to live in such a spot and there are sufficient number of such pathways to support a great portion of the town or city being rapidly accessible without cars or bus.

Anyway. More-accommodating future roadway design and implementation would be nice. Everywhere a "major" throughway gets placed. Designed from the outset without just cars/buses in mind, designed with explicit, well-considered elements that make non-car presence safe and practicable. If only.

Myself, I live in a spot near a major urban area where most spots in the city cannot be easily reached via bicycle. No matter that a number of throughways are somewhat accommodating, and a paltry few roadways have actual separated, painted lane lines for cyclists and non-cars. There simply aren't good networks of MUPs, trails, and other paths, nor is it easy to hop from street to street as a cyclist, since within three or four miles there's a highway or dense zone blocking easy transit. A vehicle trip that takes me ~20mins currently is one that'd take me many hours on a bike. Few bike lanes, no purpose-designed bike-accommodating main streets, and no network or MUPs/paths/trails between many of the spots I'm thinking of. I suspect many people across the U.S. are faced with much the same thing, with the town or city not having been designed with non-car transit at least considered. We're left with non-car access being grafted onto landscapes, and very little of that done.

Would love to have been a fly on the wall of city "planning" meetings in the past 75 years for each of the U.S.'s major twenty cities, listening to exactly what was said about how a road or network or roads should be designed. I suspect that non-car transit modes got the short end of the stick after fairly little discussion, in most cases, whether due to claims of being "too costly" or "not enough usage to justify" or whatever.