Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Boston Bicycle Advocate Visits Amsterdam – IOTW Report

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Boston Bicycle Advocate Visits Amsterdam

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Boston Bicycle Advocate Visits Amsterdam And Complains Dutch City Planners Focus On Needs Of Dutch Cyclists Rather Than On Bike-Hating People Of Color.

VDare.com:

From StreetsBlog, which pushes for mass transit and bike routes:

Guest Column: Europe’s Bike and Transit Systems Are a Marvel, But Only For Some

By Lisa Jacobson
Aug 10, 2022
13 COMMENTS

Editor’s note: Lisa Jacobson is a StreetsblogMASS board member, and the Barr Foundation is a major funder of StreetsblogMASS.

This does not appear to be a parody: the author made some of the same points in her Twitter feed.

During a recent six-day study tour with a group of climate grantmakers and advocates in Amsterdam and London,

Amsterdam, perhaps with Copenhagen, is the safe urban bike-commuting capital of the world. So, American advocates of cycling like Jacobson visit it to learn its lessons. But one of its big lessons — the advantages of majoritarian utilitarianism — are downright unAmerican these days.

I marveled at the frequent and fully functioning rail, in contrast to my frustration with the T. The vast, connected networks of protected bike lanes, navigable without fear of Boston drivers or cavernous potholes.

… And yet, throughout the trip, I began to notice gaps in the way transportation solutions were planned. One key takeaway for me was that their approaches were not sufficient for the future of cities in the United States — and that we need to build and improve upon them.

Planning for people means asking who is being served, and who is being left behind

Who? Whom? more

27 Comments on Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Boston Bicycle Advocate Visits Amsterdam

  1. Cincinnati had a prototype scam like this. It was just City money though so guy didn’t get the BIG money, but he was something of a trailblazer.

    A Black theatre in a Black neighborhood had fallen into disrepair. A Black man claiming to own it got the city a year after race riots to give him money and they vetted his finances based on him having a net worth of 1.6 million, but because they were so high on a Black man saving a Black theatre they didn’t notice the 1.6 mil was in YEN.

    Dude got almost 200k (American), which he proceeded to spend on himself.

    Meanwhile, the theatre collapsed and had to be torn down.

    http://news.cincinnati.com/story/news/2013/12/17/empire-theater-thief-returning-to-face-prison/4071023/

    …chump change compared to this navel gazing guy who literally has a nonexistent bridge to sell you, but ya gotta start somewhere…

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  2. Yes indeed! We need to double the width of bicycle lanes so we can see more 350-lb welfare mothers pedaling their fat asses (and perhaps peddling their fat asses) along all the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevards of America.

    Does anybody make bariatric bicycle seats?

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  3. I bet that 6-day trip for her and her team was financed by taxpayers.

    “I’d never seen that many bicycles in one place. The Dutch really are good at getting all the Dutch to ride bikes.”

    The Dutch [government]…getting all the Dutch to ride bikes. There ya have it – government coercion to change people’s behavior.

    The Dutch government is now emboldened to steal the land from 33% of its farmers to reduce cow methane, reduce the need for “harmful” fertilizer, and to turn the land into migrant centers.

    Governments world-wide want millions of its “citizens” in chains, or even better, dead.

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  4. Do you know why they ride bikes over there instead of driving as many cars?
    The sales/excise tax on a vehicle is 100%!!
    So they don’t have to have as many roads which makes room for tracks and bike paths.
    The people still have to buy their own bikes.
    If dark skinned people (probably illegals) don’t want bikes and the country is set up for bikes, that’s their own problem, not the government’s problem or anyone else’s.

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  5. “I’d never seen that many bicycles in one place. The Dutch really are good at getting all the Dutch to ride bikes.”

    Liberals/leftists without doubt do not know or care about what made America Great – freedom and independence (from government). She is the kind of person who, in today’s America, make it to the top levels of local, state, and federal government bureaucracies. She will get wealthy by stomping on the necks of us regular folks. We won’t have many choices when people like her are in power.

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  6. conceited cow believes everbody lives in s city like she does. conceited cow has no notion of the vat open speces of the southwest. me, all me, my way, ever day, all the time.

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  7. “I’d never seen that many bicycles in one place. The Dutch really are good at getting all the Dutch to ride bikes.”

    …which must make getting your geriatric mother with spinal stenosis and severe rheumatoid arthitis and balance problems to the doctor REALLY interesting…

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  8. …and my house is 50 odd minutes from my work by car.

    I don’t think I have the 8 hours every day, much more in bad weather, to make the trip on a bicycle. And then there’s my knees that I sacrificed over years of crawling around in burning buildings and snaking through wrecked cars so I could hoist lard butts onto gurneys that make pedaling somewhat problematic…

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  9. Tim Buktu AUGUST 11, 2022 AT 1:10 PM

    “The Dutch [government]…getting all the Dutch to ride bikes. There ya have it – government coercion to change people’s behavior.”

    …so if you are Dutch and get in Dutch with the Dutch goverment, is that Double Dutch?

    …also, it seems like everyone would have orthopedic problems anyway from trying to go through Dutch doors when they only opened the upper half and didn’t realize the lower half was still closed, but maybe they are used to it, although it DOES make me wonder if Dutch doors are manditory at Dutch prisons as well…

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  10. I just got back from a 15 mile bike ride, after also riding 15 miles yesterday. I told myself today to not go cause my knee was hurting and needed more time to rest. I didn’t listen to myself and now can barely go up or down stairs.

    Thought my knee was the problem. Now after reading this story I understand my knee is fine and it’s the rest of my able body that is racist against my knee.

    6
  11. SNS
    “Monkeypox Has Become A Predominantly Black Disease In Atlanta”
    Should read, “Early data shows monkeypox disproportionately affecting Black “GAY” men.
    They always leave that fact out.
    And I would bet they all voted for Biden.

    6
  12. Genipero
    AUGUST 11, 2022 AT 1:48 PM

    Thank you. May He return your blessing tenfold.

    “24 The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

    25 The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

    26 The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”
    Numbers 6:24-26

    2
  13. “If you are an immigrant, or a child resisting cultural norms, you might not, and you are excluded, especially if you ride a moped or walk.”

    FIFY:
    If you are an immigrant, or a child resisting cultural norms, you need to assimilate or leave.

    5
  14. I used to ride my bike everywhere when I was a little younger until about 15 years ago when I crashed and burned on my way to work early one morning when I hit an oily wet patch of road by Gonzaga University in Spokane. It’s a good thing I was wearing a helmet, but I scraped myself up really good and I was a bloody mess when I got to work and had to take my work van and go home and get cleaned up and change my clothes. I haven’t ridden my bike a whole lot since then. It was also a morning when I almost didn’t wear my helmet, but I had a nagging feeling in my head that I should wear my helmet that day which probably came from my kids always telling me to be more careful. My next youngest brother was a breach baby, he was born feet first and we always joked that he was born riding a bike which he still does at 68 years old even after he crashed and broke his hip a few years ago on his way to work one morning. He still rides with a longtime older friend of ours and another master bike rider, master bike mechanic and bike shop owner. Sometimes I think that they’re both psycho but they’re both still loving their bike rides together. My brother and a cardiologist friend once rode the Trail of the Coeur d’ Alene’s a bike trail across the Idaho panhandle from Plummer, Idaho to Mullan, Idaho and over Lookout Pass into Montana down into Missoula, Mt. on I-90 and South another 45 to 50 miles to Hamilton, Mt. (the doc lives in Hamilton now) with their wives trailing them in support to make sure that these psychos would make it safely. They made it in about in about 20 hrs. wearing small headlights to see in the dark and approximately 200 miles or so riding all night in the dark into the next day. One of my brother’s dreams was to ride in the RAM (Race across America) from Long Beach, Cal. to the New Jersey coastline as fast as he could. The RAM was psycho with riders riding across America pretty much nonstop as fast as they could, the record set was somewhere between 8 to 9 days of nonstop, pure adrenalin filled bike riding. A mailman from Chewelah, Wash. once won the RAM one year back in the 80’s. The RAM is even more psycho than the Tour de France is and that usually takes up the whole month of July every year.

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  15. Wait’ll Biden hears about so many people riding bikes in The Netherlands and sees that picture of the bike parking lot in the video.

    Biden: Jill, I wanna go to that place in Yurp where all those folks ride bikes…can you get the staff to schedule it?

    Jill: Uh, Joe is it a matter of state that you want to go to Amsterdam?

    Joe: Uh, uh. Hey, yeah. You know, to do the thing I like to do…sniffin’ girls bicycle seats…yeah it makes me feel like a man that can stand up to Putin.

    Jill: Joe, sushhhh…quiet down…you are talking too loud…your “hobby” is something we don’t discuss with others or let anybody know about. Remember?

    Joe: OK, OK…nobody knows except you and me. A little girl saw me doing it but the FBI said they took care of her.

    Jill: Well, your son Hunter told Zelensky about it a couple of years ago…don’t you remember we made a deal with Zelensky to give him as much money he wants as long as he doesn’t tell anybody about the bike seat sniffing?

    Joe: Oh…No, I don’t remember any of that.

    Jill: I just heard a rumor that Trump said Putin told him that you get gratified by sniffing girls bicycle seats…If the voters hear that, you may lose the election. So no more talk about sniffing girls bicycle seats…and you are certainly not going to Amsterdam just so you exercise your proclivities. Are we clear on that?

    Joe: I’m confused…I want my pudding and my teddy bear.

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