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Making America into Amsterdam



 
 
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  #11  
Old June 26th 18, 11:40 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Joerg[_2_]
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Posts: 6,016
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On 2018-06-26 13:34, sms wrote:
On 6/26/2018 11:25 AM, Joerg wrote:

No, that comes from not having the stupid zoning laws we have. If I
needed groceries or nearly anything else I could walk. As in "just
across the street" which is, for example, where the grocery store was.
The bank was immediately next door, literally. The post office was
diagonally across the street. The next church was less than 500ft
away. And so on.


This feeds on itself.

We have approved numerous "Mixed-Use" developments. The businesses
struggle and don't last long. The amount of housing isn't enough to
support the businesses and the people that don't live there expect
plentiful parking to be easily available, and close, which it isn't. I
talked to a commercial real estate broker about this.


They need to go to Europe and learn. Why has none of the mixed use I was
exposed to over there for decades failed?

The only businesses that went bust were factories but that had nothing
to do with mixed use. Those went because Eastern Europe and Asia had
much cheaper labor and no unions.


See
http://cumbelich.com/blog/the-inconvenient-truth-about-mixed-use.
"As far as trends in retail real estate development go, none during my
30-years in the industry has been more counter-productive or
government-driven than residential over retail mixed-use development
(RRMU).

Pick just about any Bay Area city and you will easily identify any
number of RRMU projects that have been proposed, entitled and/or
developed over the past ten years. And with rare exception, these
projects suffer the same ills…relatively high vacancy rates,
substantially below market rents, poor credit tenancies and a high
turnover rate of the brokerage firms that try, with little success, to
lease what is un-leasable.

Don’t get me wrong – as a design concept RRMU...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Therein lies the mistake. Stop master-planning everything, get
government out of that process and let the free market take care of it.
That is how it was in all towns I lived while in Europe. A neighborhood
pub would only open if there was enough potential. Same for dentists,
grocers and so on.

An example: There was a residential neighborhood 5mins walking from me
in the Netherlands. Single family homes, like in America. One guy
decided to open a french fries and sausage kitchen in his garage.
Actually in part of the living room backing up to the garage and the
garage became the "waiting room" with chairs and all. So he and his
family could play games, watch TV, someone would come in, order
something, he cooked it and took the cash. You could eat it right there
or take it home which most customers did. Hardly anyone came by car and
he served a small community. This provided a nice supplemental income
for the guy in the evenings and a source for quick food for the locals
(his fries were really good).


... works beautifully…in
Paris. And in Manhattan. And therein lies a big part of the problem.
City planners and city councils across Northern California have revealed
an inferiority complex to major urban markets around the world and tried
to force feed this utterly urban product type into sprawling suburbs
from Concord to Novato to San Jose. Only guess what, the most important
ingredient is missing – concentrated, massive, pedestrian populations."


So why did we have that in Vaals, Netherlands, pop 5000? I've seen in in
much smaller villages during recent Germany trips. Pop 1000 and less,
everybody knows everybody else.


One new development decided not to leave space for parking along the
road, building all the way out to the street, then asked the city to put
in limited time street parking. We declined because of the cost of
enforcement.

You chose to live in an area where it's far to everything. From my
house, in 15 minutes I can walk to three grocery stores, two drug
stores, and about 30 restaurants. By bicycle it's less than five
minutes. A house close-in was much more expensive per square foot than a
house in the distant suburbs of San Jose. We could have had a larger,
newer house for the same money. But it sure is nice to not have to drive
everywhere.


I could walk to one supermarket in 20mins, another two in 30mins.
Problem: No sidewalks! It's tough enough to cycle on a partially
shoulderless 45mph road where people routinely do 55mph. Did that
yesterday evening but I am not going to walk on the fog line.


You also have the issue that, despite the astr-turf YIMBY groups, that
families with children generally want to live in single family homes.



So do we. We also did in Europe and could walk to the dance club, to
numerous pubs, grocery stores, railroad station, almost everywhere.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Ads
  #12  
Old June 27th 18, 12:36 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Joerg[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,016
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On 2018-06-26 13:19, sms wrote:
On 6/26/2018 11:04 AM, jbeattie wrote:

Or the 1960s, as in NL. 25% mode share at five miles is great -- even
at 9-12 miles, the percentage of trips by bike is way better than any
US city. Portland's city-wide bicycle mode share is 7% -- for all trips.

City density does not explain the relative lack of cyclists in NYC,
Boston, Chicago, etc. -- and other places that are flat and that have
compact metropolitan areas. There are many other differences.


Of course the statistic that was quoted is not true, but no surprise there!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/620201/average-biking-distance-per-person-per-day-netherlands-by-age/


There are four things that need to be necessary to increase bike share
in the U.S., and they all need to be present at the same time. You can't
do one and proclaim that it's hopeless.

1. Separated bicycle infrastructure that goes between housing centers
and job centers.

2. Security so there is no danger of theft or vandalism.

3. Financial or other encouragement

4. Shower facilities.


5. Brewpub along the bike trail for the way home.


I recently did a bicycle/train combination trip to San Francisco for a
meeting. The meeting was at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission,
which you would think would be very pro-bicycle. In fact they just talk
the talk. Two of us were ready to leave and not attend the meeting
because of a lack of secure parking, which is vitally important in San
Francisco. When I told one of the check-in people that I was turning in
my badge and leaving she suddenly decided that we were worthy of the
lovely, two-level, indoor bicycle parking room.


That is also a major problem at large shopping areas. It is the reason
why I shop less at Walmart, they don't let me take in the bike. I shop a
lot more at Lowe's and Trader Joe's because they are smart enough to let
me take the bike in. Of course, I make sure not to show up with my MTB
dripping mud.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
  #13  
Old June 27th 18, 01:38 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
SMS
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 9,477
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On 6/26/2018 2:32 PM, David Scheidt wrote:
sms wrote:
:On 6/26/2018 11:25 AM, Joerg wrote:

: No, that comes from not having the stupid zoning laws we have. If I
: needed groceries or nearly anything else I could walk. As in "just
: across the street" which is, for example, where the grocery store was.
: The bank was immediately next door, literally. The post office was
: diagonally across the street. The next church was less than 500ft away.
: And so on.

:This feeds on itself.

:We have approved numerous "Mixed-Use" developments. The businesses
:struggle and don't last long. The amount of housing isn't enough to

Every one I've every seen has been done wrong. Not enough density.
Stupid zoning that reduces density, like requiring setbacks and
clearances, and parking. Do that, and get back to us.


Tell us where to build the additional schools, where to get the
additional water, where to get the money for transit, roads, water,
schools, parks, etc., and get back to us.

The problem with "just build taller and denser" is that those entities
advocating that don't want to look at the big picture. In fact they are
explicitly told to ignore the big picture by their handlers. The last
thing that a developer wants to talk about is money for schools, parks,
reservoirs, transit, or roads.

It's short-sighted to not include parking in areas with no transit. What
happens is that the residents still have cars but they park in adjoining
neighborhoods. Look at NYC where the car-ownership rate is 46% and there
are 0.63 vehicles per household, which indicates that some households
own multiple vehicles. In San Francisco car-ownership rate is 70% with
an average of 1.10 vehicles per household. Even though many people don't
commute by car, they still own a car for other purposes. Commuting is
only 21% of private vehicle use (by miles).

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html

http://traveltrends.transportation.org/Documents/B2_CIA_Role%20Overall%20Travel_web_2.pdf
  #14  
Old June 27th 18, 01:50 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On 6/26/2018 6:40 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-06-26 13:34, sms wrote:
On 6/26/2018 11:25 AM, Joerg wrote:

No, that comes from not having the stupid zoning laws we have. If I
needed groceries or nearly anything else I could walk. As in "just
across the street" which is, for example, where the grocery store was.
The bank was immediately next door, literally. The post office was
diagonally across the street. The next church was less than 500ft
away. And so on.


This feeds on itself.

We have approved numerous "Mixed-Use" developments. The businesses
struggle and don't last long. The amount of housing isn't enough to
support the businesses and the people that don't live there expect
plentiful parking to be easily available, and close, which it isn't. I
talked to a commercial real estate broker about this.


They need to go to Europe and learn. Why has none of the mixed use I was
exposed to over there for decades failed?

The only businesses that went bust were factories but that had nothing
to do with mixed use. Those went because Eastern Europe and Asia had
much cheaper labor and no unions.


See
http://cumbelich.com/blog/the-inconvenient-truth-about-mixed-use.
"As far as trends in retail real estate development go, none during my
30-years in the industry has been more counter-productive or
government-driven than residential over retail mixed-use development
(RRMU).

Pick just about any Bay Area city and you will easily identify any
number of RRMU projects that have been proposed, entitled and/or
developed over the past ten years.Â* And with rare exception, these
projects suffer the same ills…relatively high vacancy rates,
substantially below market rents, poor credit tenancies and a high
turnover rate of the brokerage firms that try, with little success, to
lease what is un-leasable.

Don’t get me wrong – as a design concept RRMU...

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Â* ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Therein lies the mistake. Stop master-planning everything, get
government out of that process and let the free market take care of it.
That is how it was in all towns I lived while in Europe. A neighborhood
pub would only open if there was enough potential. Same for dentists,
grocers and so on.

An example: There was a residential neighborhood 5mins walking from me
in the Netherlands. Single family homes, like in America. One guy
decided to open a french fries and sausage kitchen in his garage.
Actually in part of the living room backing up to the garage and the
garage became the "waiting room" with chairs and all. So he and his
family could play games, watch TV, someone would come in, order
something, he cooked it and took the cash. You could eat it right there
or take it home which most customers did. Hardly anyone came by car and
he served a small community. This provided a nice supplemental income
for the guy in the evenings and a source for quick food for the locals
(his fries were really good).


Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* ... works beautifully…in
Paris.Â* And in Manhattan.Â*Â* And therein lies a big part of the problem.
City planners and city councils across Northern California have revealed
an inferiority complex to major urban markets around the world and tried
to force feed this utterly urban product type into sprawling suburbs
from Concord to Novato to San Jose.Â* Only guess what, the most important
ingredient is missing – concentrated, massive, pedestrian populations."


So why did we have that in Vaals, Netherlands, pop 5000? I've seen in in
much smaller villages during recent Germany trips. Pop 1000 and less,
everybody knows everybody else.


One new development decided not to leave space for parking along the
road, building all the way out to the street, then asked the city to put
in limited time street parking. We declined because of the cost of
enforcement.

You chose to live in an area where it's far to everything. From my
house, in 15 minutes I can walk to three grocery stores, two drug
stores, and about 30 restaurants. By bicycle it's less than five
minutes. A house close-in was much more expensive per square foot than a
house in the distant suburbs of San Jose. We could have had a larger,
newer house for the same money. But it sure is nice to not have to drive
everywhere.


I could walk to one supermarket in 20mins, another two in 30mins.
Problem: No sidewalks! It's tough enough to cycle on a partially
shoulderless 45mph road where people routinely do 55mph. Did that
yesterday evening but I am not going to walk on the fog line.


You also have the issue that, despite the astr-turf YIMBY groups, that
families with children generally want to live in single family homes.



So do we. We also did in Europe and could walk to the dance club, to
numerous pubs, grocery stores, railroad station, almost everywhere.


How old were those European towns? When were they founded?


--
- Frank Krygowski
  #15  
Old June 27th 18, 04:22 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
David Scheidt
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,346
Default Making America into Amsterdam

sms wrote:
:On 6/26/2018 2:32 PM, David Scheidt wrote:
: sms wrote:
: :On 6/26/2018 11:25 AM, Joerg wrote:
:
: : No, that comes from not having the stupid zoning laws we have. If I
: : needed groceries or nearly anything else I could walk. As in "just
: : across the street" which is, for example, where the grocery store was.
: : The bank was immediately next door, literally. The post office was
: : diagonally across the street. The next church was less than 500ft away.
: : And so on.
:
: :This feeds on itself.
:
: :We have approved numerous "Mixed-Use" developments. The businesses
: :struggle and don't last long. The amount of housing isn't enough to
:
: Every one I've every seen has been done wrong. Not enough density.
: Stupid zoning that reduces density, like requiring setbacks and
: clearances, and parking. Do that, and get back to us.

:Tell us where to build the additional schools, where to get the
:additional water, where to get the money for transit, roads, water,
:schools, parks, etc., and get back to us.

Tax parking.

  #16  
Old June 27th 18, 11:09 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Sepp Ruf
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 454
Default Making America into Amsterdam

Joerg wrote:
On 2018-06-26 08:57, Frank Krygowski wrote:
Interesting article, with data, about how much the Dutch actually ride
their bikes.


Who wants to take longer utility rides on bicycles that are designed not to
be worth the effort to get stolen? And sharing paths with stinking motorized
scooters isn't much fun either:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3068522/dutch-cyclists-have-had-it-with-motorized-scooters-invading-bike-lanes
https://nltimes.nl/tags/ban-scooters-on-bike-paths

Last time I was there I had the impression cycling wasn't quite as
popular as in the 80's. New generations? Who knows.


Certain "new generations" seem to prefer rocket propulsion or white vans:
https://nltimes.nl/tags/amsterdam
  #17  
Old June 27th 18, 01:29 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Emanuel Berg[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,035
Default Making America into Amsterdam

Frank Krygowski wrote:

Here's one result:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share


My city (Uppsala) isn't on the list but it is
comparable to Malmö which seems to have pretty
good data (25% cycling). Actually I think there
are even more bikes in Uppsala because it is
a University town as well.

--
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
  #18  
Old June 27th 18, 03:23 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
JBeattie
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,870
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On Tuesday, June 26, 2018 at 1:48:18 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/26/2018 2:04 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, June 26, 2018 at 8:57:17 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
Interesting article, with data, about how much the Dutch actually ride
their bikes.

https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/best...h-hardly-bike/

Turns out they average, oh, maybe a mile or two per day.

That works for them because their cities are so dense that many
destinations are less than a mile away. That comes from having cities
that were founded in medieval times. When things are more than a couple
miles away, they tend to leave the bike and use other modes.

So we can get Dutch bike mode shares if we start work on our cities
early enough. Like, back in 1400 AD or so.


Or the 1960s, as in NL. 25% mode share at five miles is great -- even at 9-12 miles, the percentage of trips by bike is way better than any US city. Portland's city-wide bicycle mode share is 7% -- for all trips.

City density does not explain the relative lack of cyclists in NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. -- and other places that are flat and that have compact metropolitan areas. There are many other differences.


Indeed, there are many other differences. And a look at the cities
listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share shows that any city
over 7% is an extreme outlier.

I notice, though, that it lists Portland as just 3%. I don't know the
details on that survey, but IIRC the one that claimed 7% for Portland
really meant 7% of the city's legal residents said they traveled by
bike. That does not mean that 7% of the travel within city limits was by
bike. The hoards entering from the suburbs are almost all in cars.

Differences? We've been through this before, but I do think average trip
length must be important, along with terrain, weather, history, culture
and perhaps most important, local fashion.


Portland claims 7% of trips in the city are by bike, at least that's how I understand the stat -- it is mode share. That number is zero in places and over 20% in places, and those high percentage places are exactly what you would expect -- flat, high density, close-in and very Bohemian with (believe it or not) modest bike facilities, mostly bike lanes and some traffic calmed streets.

-- Jay Beattie.
  #19  
Old June 27th 18, 03:24 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Joerg[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,016
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On 2018-06-26 17:50, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/26/2018 6:40 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-06-26 13:34, sms wrote:
On 6/26/2018 11:25 AM, Joerg wrote:

No, that comes from not having the stupid zoning laws we have. If I
needed groceries or nearly anything else I could walk. As in "just
across the street" which is, for example, where the grocery store was.
The bank was immediately next door, literally. The post office was
diagonally across the street. The next church was less than 500ft
away. And so on.

This feeds on itself.

We have approved numerous "Mixed-Use" developments. The businesses
struggle and don't last long. The amount of housing isn't enough to
support the businesses and the people that don't live there expect
plentiful parking to be easily available, and close, which it isn't. I
talked to a commercial real estate broker about this.


They need to go to Europe and learn. Why has none of the mixed use I
was exposed to over there for decades failed?

The only businesses that went bust were factories but that had nothing
to do with mixed use. Those went because Eastern Europe and Asia had
much cheaper labor and no unions.


See
http://cumbelich.com/blog/the-inconvenient-truth-about-mixed-use.
"As far as trends in retail real estate development go, none during my
30-years in the industry has been more counter-productive or
government-driven than residential over retail mixed-use development
(RRMU).

Pick just about any Bay Area city and you will easily identify any
number of RRMU projects that have been proposed, entitled and/or
developed over the past ten years. And with rare exception, these
projects suffer the same ills…relatively high vacancy rates,
substantially below market rents, poor credit tenancies and a high
turnover rate of the brokerage firms that try, with little success, to
lease what is un-leasable.

Don’t get me wrong – as a design concept RRMU...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Therein lies the mistake. Stop master-planning everything, get
government out of that process and let the free market take care of
it. That is how it was in all towns I lived while in Europe. A
neighborhood pub would only open if there was enough potential. Same
for dentists, grocers and so on.

An example: There was a residential neighborhood 5mins walking from me
in the Netherlands. Single family homes, like in America. One guy
decided to open a french fries and sausage kitchen in his garage.
Actually in part of the living room backing up to the garage and the
garage became the "waiting room" with chairs and all. So he and his
family could play games, watch TV, someone would come in, order
something, he cooked it and took the cash. You could eat it right
there or take it home which most customers did. Hardly anyone came by
car and he served a small community. This provided a nice supplemental
income for the guy in the evenings and a source for quick food for the
locals (his fries were really good).


... works beautifully…in
Paris. And in Manhattan. And therein lies a big part of the problem.
City planners and city councils across Northern California have revealed
an inferiority complex to major urban markets around the world and tried
to force feed this utterly urban product type into sprawling suburbs
from Concord to Novato to San Jose. Only guess what, the most important
ingredient is missing – concentrated, massive, pedestrian populations."


So why did we have that in Vaals, Netherlands, pop 5000? I've seen in
in much smaller villages during recent Germany trips. Pop 1000 and
less, everybody knows everybody else.


One new development decided not to leave space for parking along the
road, building all the way out to the street, then asked the city to put
in limited time street parking. We declined because of the cost of
enforcement.

You chose to live in an area where it's far to everything. From my
house, in 15 minutes I can walk to three grocery stores, two drug
stores, and about 30 restaurants. By bicycle it's less than five
minutes. A house close-in was much more expensive per square foot than a
house in the distant suburbs of San Jose. We could have had a larger,
newer house for the same money. But it sure is nice to not have to drive
everywhere.


I could walk to one supermarket in 20mins, another two in 30mins.
Problem: No sidewalks! It's tough enough to cycle on a partially
shoulderless 45mph road where people routinely do 55mph. Did that
yesterday evening but I am not going to walk on the fog line.


You also have the issue that, despite the astr-turf YIMBY groups, that
families with children generally want to live in single family homes.



So do we. We also did in Europe and could walk to the dance club, to
numerous pubs, grocery stores, railroad station, almost everywhere.


How old were those European towns? When were they founded?


Doesn't matter. The example I brought above was a new part of town,
built around the 70's. 1970, that is. It works. This is the area,
residential right with industrial and there is also a large supermarket
right in this development where I shopped a lot:

https://goo.gl/maps/Urm6iarPi9B2

Some of these areas were still cattle pastures when I lived there. Other
older areas of town look like this, they always had a mixed-use concept:

https://goo.gl/maps/t9844Fx7mv32
https://goo.gl/maps/LZYmLhpmJH92

There was and may be still is a farmer who has his main buildings in the
middle of town where I bought milk fresh off the cows.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
  #20  
Old June 27th 18, 03:30 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Joerg[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6,016
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On 2018-06-27 03:09, Sepp Ruf wrote:
Joerg wrote:
On 2018-06-26 08:57, Frank Krygowski wrote:
Interesting article, with data, about how much the Dutch actually ride
their bikes.


Who wants to take longer utility rides on bicycles that are designed not to
be worth the effort to get stolen?



I did the bulk of utility rides during my life on cheap department store
road bikes. And yes, even one of those was stolen from me. Then there is
the matter of vandalism. There are low-lifes who seem to get a kick out
of making someone unable to travel the 15mi home by slashing the tires.

As for the scooter and modeps I fully agree that they should be banned
from bike paths. So should fast or souped up E-bikes.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
 




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