But I grew up in central California and surroundings in the 90's and rode my bike everywhere. And it was horrible. I nearly died multiple times, and drivers were sometimes furious at someone biking on the road. I rode from Sac to Folsom once over a narrow bridge with no shoulder and can't believe I lived.
I thought it might be better in cities, but Berkeley, while better, was still mediocre, and Santa Monica was bad. Really, everywhere in the US is somewhere on the spectrum from "merely horrible" to "dire hellscape".
Ten years ago my wife and I moved to Ireland. Ireland is also bad, but still massively better than anywhere I've lived in the US. But now we have young kids, and we don't want "better than the US", we want "good enough your child can bike to school, and when people kill children with their cars the people are angry with the driver, not sympathetic towards them". Which means the Netherlands, or perhaps Denmark. So that's where we're going. Ireland being wildly incompetent bureaucratically it took 4 years just to process mine and my wife's naturalisation applications.
Hope you enjoy your stay. I'm going on 8 years in the Netherlands (originally from the USA). The freedom my kids have here is a major reason we are still here. Biking everywhere is amazing. Work life balance and the ability to work part time is also a huge benefit over the US.
I live in a relatively (for the US) bike-friendly city (Tucson AZ). There's a lot of cycling infrastructure, but sometimes you have to ride on a 7-lane stroad with distracted/aggressive/inebriated drivers, many of them in vehicle types that are especially dangerous to get hit by. I'm envious of places that don't have the USA's car culture.
I'm curious how you'll find living in Netherlands as an American.
Thanks, I'm curious too. Incidentally it's not near Tucson but https://culdesac.com/ is in Tempe and looks really interesting for a car-free development.
Not sure I agree. Looks like upmarket rentals all owned by a single company. If everyone is a renter, it limits the amount of community that will develop. There's a light rail station but otherwise you're in lawless Phoenix traffic.
It looks like stick-built / Type V / combustible construction, and they're giving everyone an e-bike, which is mildly scary given the trouble NYC is having with structure fires started by bike and scooter batteries.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, and new housing without included parking is major progress in Arizona. Thanks for sharing in any case!
I grew up riding bikes every damned day (including to and from school) in the Chicago suburbs and don't recall ever having an incident with a car. I also didn't tend to ride in busy streets.
I walked to work daily for the past 9 months and approximately twice/week someone would blow through the marked crosswalk while I had a signal because they didn’t check for pedestrians. In multiple cases I was less than 3 feet from their car.
The problem isn’t people walking or cycling- it’s people driving and car manufacturers who make cars so big you can’t adequately see the space around them.
It's disgusting. If cities would even enforce the existing, feeble laws, they'd be awash in revenues. Every intersection. Every block. All you have to do is turn your head 90 degrees and see three people dicking around with phones while driving.
Your comment made me curious what the penalties for this were in my own country, Britain. It seems as if one can lose one's driving licence for both offences, but with drink-driving, there is an additional possibility of incarceration. With texting, if one has been driving for more than two years, that person cannot lose their driving licence from just that one offence.
In the U.S. it varies by region, but I've never seen a penalty more than $120... whereas red-light cameras and speed cameras are used to impose $400 fines or more.
It's a disgrace. I really wonder why we must tolerate this, and who or what is behind the refusal to address it.
