quote, headline and line of thought is all courtesy of Geoff Zeiss:
One of the things that strikes many visitors from Europe is the
concrete and asphalt wasteland of many North American cities, which
were built primarily with commerce in mind.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE), Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a
cost of $78.2 billion a year in wasted time and fuel costs, about $710
per motorist.
- The average daily percentage of vehicle miles traveled under
congested conditions rose from 25.9% in 1995 to 31.6% in 2004,
congestion in large urban areas exceeding 40%.
- As a result of increased congestion, total fuel wasted climbed from 1.7 billion gallons in 1995 to 2.9 billion gallons in 2005.
As much the car is an integral part of the U.S genome, habits may change slowly. Or as Geoff puts it:
On more than one occasion in several American cities I have been in a
hotel literally 100 meters from a customer location and have had to
take a cab to get there because there is no way to walk there short of
playing "chicken" on a freeway.
I myself felt like a teleported extraterrestial in Menlo Park, where I lived for a couple of days, attending Where 2.0 and WhereCamp in San Jose. Like Stanford and the residential areas around, Menlo Park and Palo Alto is not California as the Valley isn't the U.S.
Streets within residential areas are as wide as multilane intercity roads in Europe, 15 meters I'd guess. Mostly empty streets, taking up a lot of land.
Only very few people walk - and riding my borrowed bicycle (thank you again, Elizabeth!) to the Caltrain station at Palo Alto I was friendly greeted regularily by children - naturally in cars driving by. The Caltrain itself has a huge carriage at its top, taking on at least 30 bicycles. The week I happily travelled the Caltrain, at average it was filled with 5 bicycles at most - so it is not about the options, it's about need.
Does this tell us anything?
Of course not. You don't go by bike or walk if infrastructure is all made around the car - why should you bother if gas is cheap like water. Even the latest announcement that "automakers must meet average U.S. fuel-economy
standards of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016" is just a drop of gas on the wide streets. 35,5 MPG is 8 l/100 km translating roughly to the "Volkswagen Golf class". The average price in CA is $2.524/gallon = EUR1.803 per 3.875 l = EUR 0,46/L (checked that twice, still can't believe the ludicrously low prices).
What will hapen to all those overpowered, gas thirsty MPVs on Americas streets?
Presumably not too much as this a genetical defect turned into a national habit turned into a way of life.
Does it tell something for United Maps?
Oh yes. Despite the country-by-country approach we pursued, for the U.S. a "walkable city"-approach makes much more sense. Pedestrian maps are made for people out of the car - so where are these in the U.S.?
A Brookings Institution survey from 2007 ranks the 30 biggest
metropolitan areas according to the number of “walkable urban places”
relative to the area’s population:
| 1. Washington |
5. Portland, Ore. |
9. Pittsburgh |
13. Philadelphia |
| 2. Boston |
6. Seattle |
10. New York |
14. Atlanta |
| 3. San Francisco |
7. Chicago |
11. San Diego |
15. Baltimore |
| 4. Denver |
8. Miami |
12. Los Angeles |
(...) |
(I wonder how Los Angeles and Miami made it onto the list ...)
The bold cities are those that we should concentrate on to produce large scale pedestrian maps including public mass transit services and multimodal navigation. Whereas "modes" are the option to seamlessly switch the mode of transport: drive your car, go by train/tram/bus or walk.
Makes sense?
Auf den letzten Metern zum Appstore: 
