this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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Having to only go as far as the Dutch for travel would be helpful for transitioning to bicycles. The moment American city distances ( hundreds of km) are applied, everyone scraps bikes. Buses and trains and cars and planes become the conversation - bikes aren't realistic for actual travel but nice for local commutes like groceries.
Spreading out like that was a deliberate choice on the part of American city planners. It was an unnatural experiment that failed, and which can and should be undone.
https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment
Are you suggesting time travel as a solution?
Bike lines to commuter hubs for mass transit is the answer I'd go with, personally.
No, I'm suggesting zoning law reform. Right now, it is very often literally illegal to build in a sustainable way, and that has to stop.
I agree with that, but sorry I don't understand how thats related to biking more and mass transit, other than a complete rework of the layout of towns and cities across the country that would take decades or more to have an impact.
It is true that the US has a loooong way to go. It's insane to me that even the most progressive among y'all don't even see the point of starting this journey.
The rework is the suggestion, I think A gradual rework would already help and wouldn't take that long. It's just that somebody would have to start that, and I am not sure if the will for that exists.
I would have to disagree on it taking that long (as in so short) - not the change to zoning law, but the actual existing building infrastructure.
Cities are one thing, and often have better infrastructure in place (though absolutely not a guarantee), but general suburbia you wouldn't find much shift in a short time. For one, availability of sites for new construction, and two, its the most likely place for quick capitalist change (new expensive clothing store rather than say, a small grocer).
Its going to get harder the further rural you get, there is more space but won't be as much appetite. Small businesses had already been squeezed out by the likes of Walmart and their ilk, and wouldn't sensibly be able to return without other changes (like being low cost enough and affordable to the local folks to go there instead of a Walmart Super Center or whatever those giant warehouse mini mall ones are called), which means financial incentives and lower and middle class folks having more money to spend.
Which you'd need to start having people stay more local for work to grow the local community.
Its a part of a solution, but it isn't a solution by itself IMO. And its going to take time to have an impact. Time that will be on a decades-long scale, considering many towns have been around for a hundred years or more that isn't a staggering timeframe, its sensible.
It definitely can't be done in the same kind of timeline as bike lines and bus infrastructure.
(Edit: stupid mobile keyboard)
You might be surprised at how much pent-up demand for density there is in the inner suburbs (the ones old enough to still have been built on a reasonable grid system instead of cul-de-sacs).
People really gotta start saying what they mean by "density", because I've had 4 people in 700sqft, and cannot imagine people actually want to live like that.
When people complain about lack of density they’re complaining about 2 people living in a 4500+ sq ft suburban house with an even larger yard.
Are they? I've heard that 100sqft is ideal for a single person, but I can't see how.
Lol. 100 sqft is the legal limit under which you cannot rent a place in France.
It is the size of the worst rooms in student dormitory. Those have "extra" space that are shared for shower, toilet and kitchen. They barely exist today.
Not even the cheapest hotel rent that. No sound people wish that.
I've lived in very small sized appartement and would estimated that ideal to be around 430 sqft (40 m²). Even with a poor laid out place a single person doesn't need more that 590 sqft (55 m²).
Really? The legal limit in the US is 70sqft.
This is why I get so confused whenever people bring up increasing density without specifying. Like, we just had a local legal initiative about homeless housing where people were arguing that 8x10 units were acceptable for families to live in.
8x10 ft? That's crazy.
Well... The thing is even with 590 sqft per person you could stack them of top of each other and have a low rise appartement building which only used on average 148 sqrt of land per person. Si even with enough space per person and without building new skyline better density can be achived in many spaces.
It was getting couched as an "it's an emergency measure" and a "if it's uncomfortable, they'll work harder to be less homeless" thing that we love to do over here, to my eternal frustration. Back when I worked at a low-cost hotel, we'd get migrant farm worker companies rolling through town, and they'd get a tiny room with two queen beds and have four workers split it for a couple months at a time, so it's not even a particularly unusual arrangement either.
I'm not, I just don't think there is that much by comparison to the huge swaths of the rest of the country.
For the record, I've lived in city, suburb, and more rural, and have spent long periods of time in really rural (like a town of 200 people that my mom has family in, and a not-even-a-town where its just 50+ acres of woods between everyone's home and its only 20 minutes by car, on roads with no speed limit, to reach the highway).
The time scale for those sorts of changes is long, and need other changes to make it work.
I suggest fixing what you can to stave off an even worse climate catastrophe. It's that or go extinct. I am sure the USAians will make the sensible choice.
Cars have only existed for ~150 years, American cities are mostly older than that. Spreading out was a choice but it wasn’t because of cars.
At one point in time 100 years ago you could take commuter rail systems all the way from NYC to Cincinnati. Those systems were removed 1950s and then the bus companies that removed them ‘mysteriously’ stopped having so many routes (many were owned by GM…).
150 years ago, most cities were a bunch of unconnected small towns surrounding a central smaller city. They slowly grew together into the sprawl we have today.
The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and again that’s not even talking about the commuter rail systems that I was mentioning before. You could take a train from New York to Philadelphia in the 1830s. Car companies want you to forget just how connected we used to be.
Uh...you can take a train from New York to Philadelphia today and it leaves like every 20 minutes. Two a day from New York to Cincinnati, but 19 hours. Car would be half that, airplane a fraction. I think it's less conspiracy and more convenience...
They didn’t have cars or airplanes 150 years ago… but they did have trains.
What complete nonsense. The suburban sprawl of the US is a relatively recent phenomenon that definitely happened after cars had become widespread.
So I live in one of America’s oldest streetcar suburbs, from the 1890’s. They had horse-driven streetcars since the 1860’s or so, steam from the 1870’s, and electric ones from the 1880’s. LA’s urban sprawl is entirely due to their historic streetcar system. The person you’re responding to is basically correct…
I mean... It's not like Dutch people use their bikes to go between cities (maybe sometimes, but they got buses and trains, too). The bikes are for local trips, which make up the vast majority of trips you'll do. It sure helps that cities in Europe are laid out in a less spacious manner, but that's not an unfixable situation for the US.
The car desert that is suburbia can be split into micro cities (perhaps with bike friendly trains) with a few local food supplies and necessary services. Far from impossible with a cultural mind shift.
10-20 km is an easy bike commute distance if the infrastructure allows it. Especially with electric bicycles. I'd guess that most people in the US don't travel more than that for their daily routes.
I wouldn't say easy. 20 km takes me an hour or more, although I am slow and don't have an electric bike (yet).
Let's be real, we have long since given up on USAians coming to their senses. But the rest of humanity might like to save themselves still.
But how much "actual travel" do you do? Most of my travel is urban, where cycling tends to be the fastest and most efficient option when you factor in traffic, parking dilemmas, etc.
I'd say outside of 2-3 months in the winter, I make around 80% of trips by e-bike. The car is still there when I need it. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not an either/or proposition.
For me, actual travel is 35 miles every day. Uphill elevation change over that distance is 800ft-1500ft depending on the direction.
Most places in the US never considered biking as a valid travel method when being designed.
Is that 35 miles round trip or one way? If it's round trip, that's actually not so bad. You'd clearly need an ebike to handle those climbs though.
Also, I don't know your situation in terms of whether you could take trails or cut through parks to reduce the distance? I sat down with google maps and figured out a shorter route for my commute. It actually involves more climbing because there's a ravine trail I follow now, but that's not an issue for the ebike.
That's round trip mileage.
An e-bike would be nice, but would definitely add commute time. I commute via motorcycle most days.
I have regularly commuted by bicycle when living in The Netherlands, England and Germany and bicycles are really only for traveling inside the city not for going between cities.
Back when I lived in The Netherlands at one point I had a bicycle at home and another parked at the train station on the city where I worked, so I would commute to the train station nearest to were I lived using my home bicycle, leave it there, travel by train to a different city, pick up the bicycle I had there from the train station and use it to do the last leg to get to work. At the end of the day I would do the reverse.
Even having a bicycle to cover just 1 or 2 km is quite a time saver (easily turning a leg of a journey that takes 15m walking into one that takes 5m).
That said, I could do it like that because in The Netherlands there are proper parking places for bicycles at all train stations plus trains are pretty good.
When living in London (which at the time seriously lacked good conditions for cycling) I just used my bicycle to go from home directly to work, which was maybe 4km, took me around 23 minutes and was actually faster than using the Tube (the subway), whilst in Berlin it was sorta the same length of ride but from where I was living to were I was studying.
Obviously in all those places the bicycle was also useful for things like doing my weekly shopping (just get some bicycle bags).
Mind you, having a bicycle doesn't exclude also having a car, though I never really got a car in Germany (I was there for 3 months only, living and studying in Berlin) whilst in London I actually ended up selling my car because it was just a massive money drain (especially because in the last place I had to pay for a garage) which I barely used since even without a bicycle, public transportation is excellent when living inside in or near the core of the city (so, Zone 1 - 3).
The Netherlands is also one of the flattest countries in the world. We should still all cycle more, but it would require much more effort to cycle 5km in San Francisco or the Himalayas than in the Netherlands.
It's also very rainy and windy.
And come on, not every city is like SanFran -- it's disengenious to imply so.
Oh, I’m not trying to imply that. I ride a traditional bike myself in an incredibly hilly area, and it can absolutely be done (though it really sucks sometimes). I’m just noting the reality that there’s less effort involved in flat cycling than in hilly cycling and the Netherlands is famously flat.
People in really hilly areas can also get e-bikes, which would still be a huge improvement over driving, but wouldn’t bring us down to the transportation emissions of the Netherlands.