How can we make DC streets bicycle and pedestrian-only?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Throwing Muriel Bowser out of office would be a huge start

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:America is baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, Chevrolet and Smith & Wesson. If you want to live a European, New Zealand or Australian lifestyle then move to one of those places and enjoy your life.

America is the nation where 40,000 people die and hundreds of thousands of people have their lives destroyed so drivers can blow red lights a full five seconds late and drive with as little responsibility for operating their two ton murder machine as possible. We're also the nation of the highest prison rate per capita and the world's most wasteful health care "system."

How do you like that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

You do realize you're literally driving at bike speed? Probably slower depending on where in NE.

The reason it takes you so long is because of traffic and lights (aka too many cars).

Now imagine your trips if DC had half as many cars.

DP. This is the real answer. It’s not banning all cars, it’s banning any non-DC plates. Or making them pay huge tolls to drive in the city. Anything that reduces MD and VA plates would be fine by me!

Cyclists are almost entirely white. Drivers are disproportionately black and brown (because they're less likely to be able to afford to live close to where they work)

All these cockamamie schemes to help cyclists and punish drivers boil down to privileging white people and hurting black and brown people.

Every. Word. Of. This.

Is completely false. Come to Columbia Heights sometime with your head removed from your rear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Tons?

Yes, tons if they didn't have to risk their lives simply to get from point A to B.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For one, our metro system is inadequate, there aren't enough stations.

I live and work in DC, but with an elementary kid in school, it would take me (checks google maps)... 25 min to get my kid to school that's a 10-15 min drive away, then another (checks google maps) 45-55 min to get myself to work that's a 25-30 min drive normally.

This is living in NE, with kids in school in NE, with my work also in NE.

No thanks.

You do realize you're literally driving at bike speed? Probably slower depending on where in NE.

The reason it takes you so long is because of traffic and lights (aka too many cars).

Now imagine your trips if DC had half as many cars.

DP. This is the real answer. It’s not banning all cars, it’s banning any non-DC plates. Or making them pay huge tolls to drive in the city. Anything that reduces MD and VA plates would be fine by me!

Cyclists are almost entirely white. Drivers are disproportionately black and brown (because they're less likely to be able to afford to live close to where they work)

All these cockamamie schemes to help cyclists and punish drivers boil down to privileging white people and hurting black and brown people.

Every. Word. Of. This.

Is completely false. Come to Columbia Heights sometime with your head removed from your rear.

What’s going on in Columbia Heights that you want people to come and see? The famous CVS? The street vendors selling food without health permits?

[Anonymous]

Can’t wait until the sofa I ordered gets biked in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can’t wait until the sofa I ordered gets biked in.

People actually do this. This is a thing that people actually do by bike.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, Chevrolet and Smith & Wesson. If you want to live a European, New Zealand or Australian lifestyle then move to one of those places and enjoy your life.

America is the nation where 40,000 people die and hundreds of thousands of people have their lives destroyed so drivers can blow red lights a full five seconds late and drive with as little responsibility for operating their two ton murder machine as possible. We're also the nation of the highest prison rate per capita and the world's most wasteful health care "system."

How do you like that?

My god you’re so dramatic and very preoccupied with this one issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can’t wait until the sofa I ordered gets biked in.

People actually do this. This is a thing that people actually do by bike.

“People”. LOL no. Maybe “person”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can’t wait until the sofa I ordered gets biked in.

Amazon and delivery vehicles would be exempt, of course. It wouldn’t be possible for us to lead our performative low carbon e-bike lifestyles (and also lecture car drivers about saving the planet), without our daily Prime, Door Dash and Instacart fixes.

[Anonymous]

Maybe we'd be less wasteful if it wasn't so easy to order tons of junk with a click. We're paying for this convenience now with our environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would love for each neighborhood to have a pedestrian only street - 18th st, 17th st, etc where kids can play in the street and people can mull around. So many cities around the world do that (and we can use smaller trucks and back alleys for deliveries, no one is trying to kill businesses)

We should learn from, and emulate European cities.

But alas, we don’t.

Can you please be specific about which European cities you are talking about? I've been to many and I can't think of any that are shining utopias. Maybe I missed the right ones.

[Anonymous]

Ah yes, let's make the city fully inaccessible to people with mobility issues. Nice one, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is such a beautifully designed city, with amazing outdoor dining and cafe potential.

But trucks, busses, cars and motorcycles ruin it for us residents.

DC is geographically tiny, so why not make our streets pedestrian and bicycles- only?

Among the dumber posts in a while. Can't really believe it is real. I think we need to go in the other direction and get rid of bike lanes.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would love for each neighborhood to have a pedestrian only street - 18th st, 17th st, etc where kids can play in the street and people can mull around. So many cities around the world do that (and we can use smaller trucks and back alleys for deliveries, no one is trying to kill businesses)

We should learn from, and emulate European cities.

But alas, we don’t.

We can't because most of America was designed around cars and the American dream of a single family home.
That's not the case for Europe where most of the cities and villages existed before cars. So they invested in rail infrastructure instead.
DC's plan was inspired by Haussman's in Paris - long vistas to counter any mob / revolutionary activity that could otherwise be hidden in the twisty windy enclaves of ancient organic neighborhoods (think of old parts of London here). This town planning was perfectly suitable to the automobile that came along later.

It really would be great if each neighborhood had a pedestrian only street. Asian cities have night markets where the streets are open to pedestrian activities only. It encourages people to meet, everyone can pursue their various interests (shop here for school stationary, oh I need a new phone cover, grab a bite there - one is not committed to being a patron of a restaurant) rather than get plastered in a pub or tiptoe thru a marble floored mall.
Greens and foliage is important too. One of the most unpleasant things about walking around DC is the huge swathes of concrete and very little shading.

The most famous European cities do indeed have lovely center-city areas that are mostly the domain of pedestrians and cyclists. These are the parts of those cities you see on postcards, and the parts that American tourists visit.

But in nearly all of these same cities (especially Amsterdam, the GGW mouth-breather wet-dream of a city), that postcard-perfect center city is completely hemmed in by ugly auto-centric sprawl, and often it's worse sprawl than anything you see in the U.S. But you never see these areas on postcards, and American tourists never visit, so they don't exist in the minds of U.S. visitors because it's outside the quaint 2-square-mile area that they visit.

So can we stop holding up Europe as this paragon of urbanism? It's just not true.

You are just a liar. There is no sprawl in or around Amsterdam (or anywhere in the Netherlands for that matter) that even COMPARES to just the average North American suburb. I traveled around the entire country of the Netherlands with small kids in tow, and never once did we need a car, and every city and town was beautiful (to our eyes anyway, which are sadly accustomed to the strip mall hell that is the US) and incredibly easy to get around in on foot and/or public transportation. Even little towns and villages between major cities had incredibly easy access to trains and buses.

The Netherlands averages 1 car per household and has the highest density of cars than anywhere in Europe.

However this doesn’t tell the whole story. About 60% of the country lives outside urban areas where the country is seeing the highest population growth. And in my those areas, car ownership and car use are increasing significantly.

The population of Dutch urban areas are not growing and in those areas people are owning and using cars less.

Sound familiar? Families with kids and cars in the suburbs. Young people, yuppies and hipsters in the city with their bikes. Here, read for yourself.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358798695_The_widespread_car_ownership_in_the_Netherlands

OK, I had to read on to discover which European cities the PP was fixated on. I spent 9 days in Amsterdam this summer and there was bad traffic, trash piled everywhere, graffiti, and the stink of weed, etc. just like in DC. The only difference was that I had to take my life into my hands getting across the bike lanes on the sidewalk to cross the street or step out of an uber pulled up next to my hotel. I wonder how many pedestrians are hit by bikes there? The towns outside Amsterdam where we spent another week were indeed beautiful, but they all had cars along with public transportation. I don't get the glorification of Europe.