Plus, pedestrian deaths are most likely at night, presumably due to the decreased visibility. The statistics also show the lowest death rate amongst children, and the highest amongst the elderly (with middle–aged adults barely overtaking the elderly in this race in the last couple of years). School children thus seem to be the least at risk, though I don’t know why; it could be because they no longer walk to and from school, or it could be because they are more likely to survive an accident than the elderly are, but neither of those explain the much larger drop in deaths amongst the elderly pedestrians. And of course national averages tell us nothing about the specific location in question.
Still, I agree that the pedestrian accident rate really ought to be lower. A lot lower! I also think that the pedestrian accident rate is just not high enough to declare that areas like this are unsafe to walk in. Especially with a dedicated pedestrian bridge that allows people to avoid the car traffic at the busy service interchanges to the east and west.
No, when people talk about the “walkability” of an area, they are almost always talking about the sheer density of businesses in the area not about safety. How they can walk to the grocery store, and their dentist, and their favorite bar, and also three different art galleries. How everything they need is never more than a 15–minute walk away. How each parking lot represents a wasted opportunity, because there are no services there, and nobody lives there either.
But when this bridge was built they clearly were willing to walk further to access vital services like the school, past any number of parking lots. People are just a lot pickier today than they were in the past.
> No, when people talk about the “walkability” of an area, they are almost always talking about the sheer density of businesses in the area not about safety. How they can walk to the grocery store, and their dentist, and their favorite bar, and also three different art galleries. How everything they need is never more than a 15–minute walk away. How each parking lot represents a wasted opportunity, because there are no services there, and nobody lives there either.
I guess I’m confused why people wouldn’t want this. Walking through empty car parks is unpleasant, and discouraging people from doing it, and it’s obviously not benefiting drivers either. I’m lucky enough to live in place where I can walk to shops, parks, cafes, transport etc etc within 15-20mins, and do so under cover of trees, surrounded by green, and without crossing roads due to well designed pedestrian facilities. This is all in a medium built area, and leads to wonderful quality of life. Why wouldn’t people want to live like this?
Visiting the U.S. I’m honestly bamboozled that people seem to want live surrounded by car parks, having to drive from place to place, because walking is almost impossible. Not just due to car parks, but also because the boundaries between car parks and businesses seemed to be designed to prevent foot traffic. The U.S. strange belief that good walkability is something that can’t happen in the U.S. for reasons, is right up there with the U.S. belief that effective gun control can’t be implemented in U.S. for reasons, or trains and public transport can’t be implemented in the U.S. for reasons either.
All off strikes me as weird given how much evidence that these thing can work in a country like the U.S., with plenty of that evidence existing in the U.S. own past! There’s an old quote attributed to Churchill that I think summarises my views very succinctly “You can depend upon the Americans to do the right thing. But only after they have exhausted every other possibility.”. I look forward to the day the U.S. has exhausted every other possibility, no doubt they’ll learn plenty of valuable lessons for everyone else along the way.
GP is just pointing out its interesting our tolerance for long walks seems to have decreased, which is not a commonly discussed factor. Also that pedestrian safety is not necessarily why people do not want to walk. (I agree with this, I don't think average people think about it at all. Though I do think they think about it for bikes.) Perhaps lowering costs of car transport or increased comfort or something like that contributed.
> I guess I’m confused why people wouldn’t want this.
> Visiting the U.S. I’m honestly bamboozled that people seem to want…
It is very parochial to believe that everyone will want the same things as you.
Some people want open fields of wildflowers, farmland, pastures, creeks, shady forests, mountain paths, and perhaps a few neighbors. You can’t get any of that in an urban area. Yes, you might find parks and shaded avenues in a nice urban area, but those are a far cry from real nature.
Many others want to live in a suburban area. They want everything within 15 minutes walk of them to be a school, or a church, or a neighbor’s house. They want to sit in the back yard with a cold drink on a hot day and hear children playing near by, with the drone of a lawn mower in the distance. They want to build a deck there in the back yard, and invite their friends over for dinner on that deck. They want to plant an oak tree when they move in, and one day hang a rope swing from it for their grandchildren to swing on.
For these people, driving to a grocery store and parking in parking lots are just things they put up with in order to get what they really want.
> It is very parochial to believe that everyone will want the same things as you.
I appreciate the point you make, and I certainly don’t believe that everyone wants the same things I do.
But I also think that it’s false dichotomy to say you can either have walkability or you can have cars and car parks. That’s simply not true.
The Netherlands has plenty of fantastic examples of cities, towns, villages, business parks and industrial areas that are all friendly to pedestrians and bikes, and not just endless slabs of asphalt. Plentiful public transport, that makes it easy to get anywhere without a car. I personally don’t accept the idea that cars are essential for people to have options in their living environments, to say they are just strikes me as an immense lack of imagination.
> For these people, driving to a grocery store and parking in parking lots are just things they put up with in order to get what they really want.
Your point here would carry more weight, if it was legal in the U.S. to build anything except huge empty suburbs, with soulless car park shops miles away. US planning law simply doesn’t allow any other form of building, so people can’t choose anything else. There are obviously small fragments of the U.S. that buck this trend, built before modern planning laws, but there’s so much demand for them, only the wealthiest can afford to live there.
>> For these people, driving to a grocery store and parking in parking lots are just things they put up with in order to get what they really want.
> Your point here would carry more weight, if it was legal in the U.S. to build anything except huge empty suburbs, with soulless car park shops miles away.
This is completely and utterly false. Any laws governing what can and cannot be built are entirely _local_. There are no laws that govern construction on a national scale, or even a state–wide scale.
And you are the one that judges a suburb to be “empty”, and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it. The majority of people in America prefer suburbs precisely because it maximizes the type of neighborhood that they want and choose to live in.
The US use a zoning systems almost to the exclusion of any form of planning system, and pretty simple zoning systems at that. As a general rule the zoning systems simply don't allow mix used zones, you simply can't build a shop or business in a residential area. As a consequence you force a design where shops and homes must be kept physically separated, and usually with a significant distance between them.
Are there exceptions to these patterns? Of course there are, but a general rule, zoning with no mixed used land areas is the only allowed development pattern.
> The majority of people in America prefer suburbs precisely because it maximizes the type of neighborhood that they want and choose to live in.
What are you basing this on? Just because it dominant doesn't mean people want. Stupidly expensive healthcare bills are dominant in the US, do you think people want that?
Where mixed used developments exist in the US, demand far outstrips supply, resulting in crazy high house prices. Given the huge premium these developments command, you have ask the question, why doesn't more of it exist? People are willing to pay, so aren't other people taking that cash? Mixed used, walkable developments demand much higher $/sqft than suburban development does, and is cheaper to construct due to the density. So all the right market signals for medium and high density development exist, what's preventing the market from responding?
> And you are the one that judges a suburb to be “empty”, and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it
True, it's an opinion. But are you honestly trying to argue that Americans find parking lots soulful? I'm not sure what you find so exciting about a featureless slab of asphalt with some painted lines on it, but I've yet to encounter a parking lot with architectural protection, or awards for beauty.
> The US use a zoning systems almost to the exclusion of any form of planning system, and pretty simple zoning systems at that. As a general rule the zoning systems simply don't allow mix used zones, you simply can't build a shop or business in a residential area. As a consequence you force a design where shops and homes must be kept physically separated, and usually with a significant distance between them.
Yes, this is true. But remember that these rules are not the same everywhere, and they are not imposed nationally. Cities and towns are largely free to choose their own zoning laws. In the 50s and 60s they overwhelmingly voted to change them to allow suburban areas, and a huge percentage of the population moved to those areas. They did this because _they wanted to live in a suburban environment_. They weren’t forced into it.
>> The majority of people in America prefer suburbs precisely because it maximizes the type of neighborhood that they want and choose to live in.
> What are you basing this on? Just because it dominant doesn't mean people want. Stupidly expensive healthcare bills are dominant in the US, do you think people want that?
Don’t be ridiculous; of course nobody voted for higher medical bills. During the war, employers were largely prohibited from raising salaries to attract employees, so they had to resort to perks like medical insurance instead. After the war the practice became nearly universal. Higher prices for medical services was an _unintended consequence_ of that change.
Meanwhile people voted for suburban zoning _because they wanted it_. It wasn’t an unintended consequence, it was the _intended_ consequence.
> Where mixed used developments exist in the US, demand far outstrips supply, resulting in crazy high house prices.
This is true today, but remember that we are talking about nearly 80 years of change here since the war. In the 80s and 90s demand for mixed–use development was super low. People had moved out of urban areas by the tens of millions, and very few wanted to move back. _Today_ there is much more interest, as generational changes kick in.
My Grandfather on my father’s side came back from the Pacific theater, purchased a farm, and raised 9 children. This was not for lack of skill or education either; he wanted peace above all else. After a couple of decades or so he sold the farm and moved to a suburban area in a small town, where he took a job as an electrical engineer at a hydroelectric power plant.
To house all of the children he raised the new house by a whole story, dug out a basement below it (the house was on a hill, so that eliminated about half of the digging), then built a whole bunch of bedrooms down there plus a really nice workbench.
His children (my Aunts and Uncles), had a lot more interest in travel and adventure than he did (having gotten his fill during the war), but they all lived in quiet suburban areas, not urban ones. Among the many many grandchildren there are some who live in bustling cities with nightlife, but not all of them.
>> And you are the one that judges a suburb to be “empty”, and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it
> True, it's an opinion. But are you honestly trying to argue that Americans find parking lots soulful?
Seriously? Are you deliberately misreading what I wrote? I said that most people _don’t care_ about parking lots, and I meant it. A parking lot is neither a positive nor a negative aspect of life; it's just a place you spend a few minutes at before and after you do your weekly grocery shopping. The rest of the time it never enters people’s thoughts. Home is the important place that people think about; parking lots don’t matter.
> Meanwhile people voted for suburban zoning because they wanted it. It wasn’t an unintended consequence, it was the intended consequence.
Ah I understand your point better now. But I would position that people at the time probably didn’t completely understand what they were giving up when they instituted those laws. I’m not trying to claim they were stupid or ignorant, suburban style land development simply wasn’t possible before then, and I can why that lifestyle would be seductive if the consequences of such development simply weren’t known.
> People had moved out of urban areas by the tens of millions, and very few wanted to move back. Today there is much more interest, as generational changes kick in.
I think to claim it’s just generational change (which suggest the change is a bit of a fad) is overly reductive. Instead I would argue the consequences, and costs, of suburban sprawl are now much better understood, and its long term unsustainability is becoming apparent. Ultimately a mono-culture, whether in biology or in land development tends to result in bad outcomes, and current U.S. planning doctrine enforces an unhealthy monoculture.
> His children (my Aunts and Uncles), had a lot more interest in travel and adventure than he did (having gotten his fill during the war), but they all lived in quiet suburban areas, not urban ones. Among the many many grandchildren there are some who live in bustling cities with nightlife, but not all of them.
Again there are more flavour of land development and residential design than suburbia, or city. They represent two extreme ends of scale, if you only give people a choice of two extremes, you shouldn’t be surprised when you end up with two large clusters of behaviour.
> Seriously? Are you deliberately misreading what I wrote?
Hey! You’re the one that wrote
> and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it
The opposite of soulless is soulful. You claim that not everyone shares my view, which by necessity means you make the argument that some people find parking lots soulful.
> it. A parking lot is neither a positive nor a negative aspect of life; it's just a place you spend a few minutes at before and after you do your weekly grocery shopping. The rest of the time it never enters people’s thoughts.
That’s kind of the point. Parking lots take huge slabs of potential useful land, and make it almost useless be design. Sure nobody thinks about a parking lot, to say that means their existence is inconsequential is foolish and completely the huge opportunity cost. That thoughtless nothingness could have been a field, an open park or some other productive public amenity. Hell just leave it as unmaintained grass, it massively improves water and runoff management. Instead it’s a slab of asphalt, with its huge negative externalities in the form of contributing to urban heat islanding, increased rain runoff in drains, and reduced water holding capacity on the ground below. Parking lots aren’t free and without consequence, they contribute plenty in turning a potential lush green area into a lifeless desert.
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...