Item — HN Reader

That's only true because of car-centric design, not a rule of the universe. We can easily make public transport the better transport option if we wanted to.

Yes, going to bumfuck nowhere will be more efficient by paving 800 miles of concrete, but by definition most people are in urban centers, and there's no reason you can't have cities that are human-friendly while still having cars as options for the people that need it. In the Netherlands, ~65% of people still have cars and take their cars for long journeys, it's just that we have alternative options to get around so the people who can't or don't want to have a car can choose to do so without being crippled in their mobility.

1 comments

Well, in the Netherlands it's also very flat, which makes enabling cycling there a much smaller achievement than anywhere else, except possibly Vatican City. Now we have battery-powered bikes more things are accessible for more people, but the clock starts now for those places.

I mean sure, if you take a surface-level look at things that is true, but the Dutch government has spent a lot of time, money and effort into actually thinking about their urban design and how they tackle building their cities for the quality of life of its inhabitants, rather than the QoL of its inhabitant's cars. It helps, of course, that it's a flat country, but just being flat isn't enough, it takes deliberate planning and good choices being made at the governmental level.

What's the excuse with cities like Oulu in Finland, which isn't flat and is covered in snow more often than it is dry? Despite those 2 potentially huge issues, they still have incredible cycling infrastructure. Or Switzerland, where in my experience in at least Geneva and Bern the cycling infrastructure was also superb despite the mountainous terrain? No one's saying you need a cross-country bicycle highway, as long as the dense urban centers have good bike infrastructure it's more than enough.

Also I didn't even mention bikes in the comment you were replying to, I was talking about public transport like trains, trams and buses. Again, Switzerland despite being extremely mountainous has a world-class rail system that literally cuts through massive mountains.