TriMet is currently looking into moving MAX into a tunnel downtown, and with fewer stops [1]. Part of the reason it's _so slow_ right now through downtown is all the stops, and because it has to stop at lights.

[1] https://www.oregonmetro.gov/public-projects/max-tunnel-study

Houston for example sprawls out to the horizon, which surely makes new development simpler, but this isn’t a path than most NW cities such as Vancouver BC, Seattle and Portland would follow.

Or, obviously, bike. It's typically easier to park a bike than a car - it takes up less space. So you might kill two birds with one stone.

Works in NL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ

The only downside is for apartment dwellers. If you're not on the ground floor you really want a building with an elevator, or secure bike storage on the ground floor. Those suckers are heavy and most people will not want to carry them up and down stairs.

1. https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20328833

I'm skeptical of blind Europhilia, I prefer to see hard numbers and weigh the pros against the costs. They do a lot of good things but the bad things tend to be glossed over, leading to things like "Paris-Syndrome". [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

One thing I've noticed is people tend to miss that cars and driving are already dangerous, and just accept that as a fact of life. Not getting enough exercise, which is a common outcome of a car-centered lifestyle, is also a long-term health risk.

But when biking, nothing less than perfectly safe is good enough. If nothing else, the better health from all that cycling exercise will cancel out some of the increased health risk from accidents.

Freakishly, everything I've read seems to suggest it works for them.

This is exactly what common sense suggested and it's borne out in the data[1]. You sarcasm, condescension, and arrogance were uncalled for, whether or not I was incorrect. You can argue the benefits are worth the costs, but that's a different discussion.

[1] https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/03/top-hat-bike-helmets-w...

Is that a lot? How does it compare to the rest of the world, and especially, other countries with good bike infra? Wouldn't deaths & injuries/unit distance be a better measure, since the Dutch ride so much more than Americans? I think more context is needed on that number.

On a per-mile basis, is biking with children more dangerous than driving them in a car? After all the leading cause of childhood mortality in the US is car accidents.[1] So we could easily conclude that riding in a car is a highly unsafe activity for children.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/safechild/child_injury_data.html

I'm not saying they never get hurt. I don't have studies and articles at my fingertips, but from what I have read, the decision to not require a helmet is part of what makes cycling popular in the Netherlands. From what I understand, studies show that requiring a helmet reduces the adoption of bicycles as a mode of transit. My recollection is that they decided they wanted bike-friendly cities in part because too many children were being hit by cars.

There is a concept called "lying with statistics." When you cherry pick a single data point to support your conclusion and how you think things should be done, sure, you can make it sound like you are clearly right and this is crazy. You can do that on just about any subject.

There are other ways to look at this problem, such as:

1. How many more serious injuries and deaths are prevented by having a bike culture instead of a car culture?

If the answer is you have fewer injuries overall and they are less serious, then accepting the injuries from bicycling makes sense. My understanding is this is what the Dutch found to be true.

2. How much measurable benefit does society get by creating a society where women, poor people, children, etc can still get around?

In some parts of the US, it's nigh impossible to get a job at all if you don't have a car. No one wants to hire you. Public transit is too bad, so they assume you can't get to work reliably. This becomes a poverty trap. You can't buy a car because you don't have a job. You can't get a job because you don't have a car.

Poverty traps foment crime, cause minor health problems to balloon up into expensive major health problems, etc. There are myriad ways that preventing people from getting around unless it is some optimal means to get around can negatively impact society more than just letting them take a few risks on their own recognizance.

I'm not going to look up the articles, studies and data. I'm an American who has lived without a car for more than a decade. I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. Reading stuff about how to get people to walk and bike more is something of a hobby of mine and the Netherlands is generally held up as a gold standard.

I was just trying to give you the nutshell version of what I know while feeling like it was probably pointless because it probably doesn't matter how well I say it or how much evidence there is, American prejudice looks at those pictures of both adults and children riding around without a helmet and goes "Nope!!!!!! That's wrong and bad and terrible and evil!"

The same Americans who say that about bicycle culture in the Netherlands will be all "Meh. Accidents happen." if you try to argue that car culture is maiming and murdering people on a daily basis here in the US and we desperately need to do something about it.

(Yes, I'm aware you may not actually be American.)

Suburban Portland is not Chicago or Singapore. There is no competing transit infrastructure outside of a few main thoroughfares. Also it’s tone deaf for you to propose parking fees for residents in response to the increased number of cars brought about by a density increase in suburban neighborhoods, ostensibly to solve a housing affordability crisis.

Single family neighborhoods need to just be razed to the ground and reconstructed in a sustainable manner, not this bandaid

  density increases would have only happened near transit