Building offices and commercial buildings closer to homes. Most cities are not bikeable because it's just too far to get to anything that isn't a home.
I live 43 miles from my job, all on major interstates, in a big metro area. What good would this do? Unless you designed the city for mixed living/working/shopping in the first place, most US cities could never change to be bike first. This isn't SimCity where you can raze the whole town.
The major investment I’m referring to is tearing down houses and building mixed use buildings. Otherwise in most cities biking is impractical because of a lack of commercial space near residential.
You're completely right, most cities just aren't built for cycling.
The solution is probably zoning. First, create smaller zones, resulting in more diversity. Second, allow some light commercial use inside residential areas. Ideally, stores like small supermarkets should always be within a 20-minute walking distance inside towns or cities. Third, create denser plots: discourage single-story buildings, leave less space empty on the plots, and create narrower roads.
The problem is the conversion, but it's doable over a longer period of time. If the proper laws are in place, this is probably doable over a year or 50-75.
You also have cities on the coasts (especially west) with weather very compatible with biking. Also no need to tear everything down, just add a few floors and shops at the ground level on existing houses, with maybe larger sidewalks. As long as shops are not all required to be concentrated along a big non walkable road it will work.
What I see as a major part of the problem is zoning laws that require commercial buildings to be grouped away from residential areas. So you have a large number of people commuting to the same area every day and none of them are able to live within walking/cycling distance. If US zoning were more like Japan, where the intended use is a "maximum" limit not an exclusive limit. So you'll see houses and commercial buildings mixed together, so it's possible to live close to work, reducing the number of cars on the road.
I love this optimism. I’ve long held that I would move to a bike only city if it was in my current country (USA). Starting a bike friendly city seems complicated and expensive but renovating a city seems significantly less expensive but much more political. I’m not sure which is harder of the two.
The issue with biking as a commute option is land use. America, more so than other countries, completely overhauled it to suit cars. In 1900 apartments or hotels on top of stores and businesses on small lots was the norm in most American towns and cities. In 2018 it is pretty much illegal to build that kind of development except for a few areas in major cities, and even then the mixed-use structures of today are monolithic, curated shopping mall experiences that are bad at encouraging the kind of convenience that exists in New York, because you get bored of it. And on top of that most cities in America ended up gutting their walkable cores with highways and parking lots in the name of progress.
The fact that it is hard to bike is a symptom of how far things apart are in America. But how far things apart are in America is a symptom of blind faith in new technologies.
A bike friendly building is a good idea if city really, really wanted to promote bike use. Being able to ride your bike into a grocery store, shop, then ride your bike into your kitchen and unload is kind of awesome. But this is the last step after bike only roads and decent bike public transportation.
The average commute in cities with more cycling isn’t 3 hours. People just live closer to work.
The big problem the USA has is that its zoning laws and urban planning are completely screwed up, making it impossible in most places to build bike- and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. (Minimum lot sizes, low units per lot, low height limits, large setbacks, wide streets, massive numbers of car parking spaces required everywhere, few mixed-use areas, neighborhoods cut off by highways, lots of disconnected dead-end streets, very high urban speed limits, ...)
And why, exactly, can't they afford to live within biking distance from work?
Because
1) You're not allowed to build mixed-use areas thanks to NIMBYs
2) You're not allowed to build high or mid-density areas thanks to NIMBYs
3) You're not allowed to build real bike routes (the kind you'd let your 8 year old cycle to school alone on) because of NIMBYs
4) You could cycle the long distances needed on the road, but the US has made it legal to kill people with your car so long as you're sober, so this is dangerous.
Nobody's driving from NYC to LA for their morning commute. The size of the country is not relevant.
I would love to be able to bike to work. But I can't, even if there were bike lanes. I live in an American suburb, which by design is located far from industrial areas, where jobs are. Too far to bike. There are a few high-density residential buildings in the CBD, but they are only affordable for millionaires. The public transportation here is for show.
Two years ago, the highway nearby completed a 5-year widening project. During that time, traffic was so bad I had to check Google Maps every day to find out which route I should use. Now that the project is complete, I never check Google Maps anymore. I just use the highway without even bothering, as the cost to drive on it is now clearly the cheapest. My life is better in the short term, but eventually more homes will be built, traffic will increase, at some point I'll have to go back to checking Google Maps every day, and they'll start another road-widening project.
I've lived here long enough to experience this cycle first-hand, and nothing has changed logically that would stop this loop from executing again and again. At some point, I'm sure a physical limit will be reached. Either we run out of space, or run out of money, or something else.
The bikes are nice idea, but hardly panacea. You need to design the city around it (costly, conflicts with other usages), isn't possible for variety of people (age, disability, distance).
I used to drive 40km to work every day in single direction. Not gonna happen with a bike.
Yeah there are cities that build along rivers and streams, but we really need a cycle network built for connecting residential areas with employers via a direct path, the way we build roads.
From the areas I've lived in, the same people pushing for limiting cars, more bikes are also anti-growth when it comes to housing. Like yeah I'd ride a bike if I lived a mile or two from the office but I can't afford that so have some understanding on the less privileged.
A bike ramp into the apartment is useless. You can just take the elevator with your bike, or you know... Just make a garage for bikes on ground floor. The article doesn't really say much about how to design a city for bicycles, which mostly comes down to providing good roads where you aren't bothered by cars.
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