Comment by usrnm
1 day ago
I live in the Netherlands and have absolutely no need for this ticket. When I need to go somewhere, I just walk or bike there, never takes more than 20 minutes. I cannot even imagine living in American suburbia
1 day ago
I live in the Netherlands and have absolutely no need for this ticket. When I need to go somewhere, I just walk or bike there, never takes more than 20 minutes. I cannot even imagine living in American suburbia
I moved here from The Netherlands in 2004, and have now lived in Florida, California, and Mississippi and stayed for prolonged periods in many US cities for my job. I wouldn’t feel safe riding a bicycle anywhere here considering the speed of traffic, the size of the vehicles, and lack of dedicated biking infrastructure. It’s a completely different world when you share the road with angry F150 drivers blasting past you at 80 MPH. No, thank you.
And drivers who themselves would never ride a bike. They see you as a nuisance.
We Dutch just hate both. If I'm on bike I hate all car drivers. If I'm in car I hate all bicycle drivers.
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I’m from the US and moved to the Netherlands but there are still some things I prefer about the US (bug screens on windows for instance)
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And? What's the gotcha you're implying?
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I live in American suburbia and that's how I live. I can walk or bike whenever I feel like it, drive if it suits me. I sometimes wonder what the average European assumes American suburbia to be. Endless tract homes? Such places do exist, true. But that is far from universal.
I'd be curious what metropolitan area you live in for this to be true! If you're not comfortable sharing for privacy reasons, that's all right. But it seems like this is the case in inner-ring suburbs in the Northeast megalopolis.
I grew up in the Philly suburbs. They’re mostly pre WW2 in layout, so relatively walkable and bikeable.
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Of course you can walk. But can you walk to your workplace, your kid’s nursery, your local bakery/supermarket, your doctor, your dentist, the pharmacy?
I bike to all of those. Only work is typically so far away that you need to drive, the rest exists in every suburb and is in bike distance.
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>But can you walk to your workplace
In most of my jobs in Europe(Austria specifically) I couldn't walk to my workplace because most tech companies in my current city put their offices in ugly concrete industrial techno parks outside the city where I don't want to live, meaning driving to work mostly as public transportation there is slow busses only every 30 minutes or one hour of biking. Similarly my GF needs to drive 40 minutes to work outside the city, to one of the few employers in her field. Not everyone lives and works in the city center to be able to walk to work.
So walking to work is such a weird and subjective metric since not all companies in everyone's' area of work will be clustered in your vicinity of your house unless you're lucky or you make active efforts to keep moving close to work which might be in undesirable areas for living.
>your doctor
My current one yeah, but she's terrible and to change her, the only one I found that accepts new patients is on the other side of town so no walking there either, unless I like walking for an hour each direction every time.
MY point is Europe can be highly spread out as well, with people and businesses fleeing inner cities due to space constraints and rent costs, leading to commute distances too long to walk economically. That's why you see traffic jams at highway ramps at rush hour. It's not like those people were too stupid to realize they could walk to work instead of driving if that was an option.
It is though, like, 90-95% of suburbia, and why the US has close to 100% of car commuters ( https://vis.csh.ac.at/citiesmoving/ ). Even small cities like Rennes (or even Clermont-Ferrand, which has objectively mediocre transit) have less car commuters than NYC, which is insane.
> But that is far from universal
I mean even just perusing around a lot of metro areas on Google Maps its by far the norm. I know its by far the norm for just about every metro I've spent more than a week or two in.
Definitely not universal, no. And in some place the "norm" can be pretty different, even in somewhat surprising locales. But generally speaking? Yeah, pretty terrible experience for a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in US suburbia.
I mean, most places I've visited traveling around the US suburbia, bike lanes were practically non-existent, there was zero notable public transit at all, and sidewalks were usually an afterthought if they existed at all.
I already have the NS Flex free weekend subscription (with 1st class addition) and it's the only way for me to travel longer distances. It's also just about the only available public transport in the neighbourhood because I live in a polder.
Nearest train station is a 35 minute walk, nearest supermarkets are almost an hour walk. One advantage, before Covid and I had groceries delivered, mandatory walking back and forth three times a week to the village did wonders for losing weight.
That means you never leave your town of residence. I am Dutch too, and I walk and cycle (of course), but I have friend and family elsewhere too, want to visit other nature, cities and countries as well.
I mostly use a car since it's so much cheaper and faster than public transport, but I bought this ticket in order to do some longer distance journeys as well. I don't really like driving.
I work with a guy from holland. There, he lived in a condo. Here, he owns 40-acers, a couple horses and is trying to grow his own corn. He can play out his rural lifestyle dreams and still work a desk in a city, something that isnt an option without personal transportation. (I would say "car", but he rides an R1 to work most days.)