Should there be any doubt that LA belongs among the big 6 urban US cities?

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Car friendly doesn't necessarily mean pedestrian unfriendly, but being car unfriendly generally lends itself to pedestrian friendliness. SF is car unfriendly enough to make pedestrianism viable, but not to the degree where having a car is both unnecessary and a total liability like it is in, say, Paris. Nobody is saying that SF has Parisian-level urbanism — I know. I'm just using an extreme example to make my point.

Define viable.

It's got the top walk score in the US.

[38 Geary]

Out of the top 6 urban cities, SF also has the highest % of workers commuting by bike.

Urban travel is not simply limited to cars or public transit.

1. SF 1.7%
2. Boston 1.0%
3. DC 0.8%
4. NYC 0.7%
5. Chicago 0.6%
6. Philly 0.6%

https://anytimeestimate.com/research/most-bike-friendly-cities-us-2022/

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

We primarily engage with urban neighborhoods on foot, not by transit.

Transit (whether mass transit or via car) is needed for neighborhood-to-neighborhood travel. If your neighborhood is suitably walkable, you'll only have to leave it on a daily basis for work or - for certain people - to go to a university or something similar.

This is a great point.

And why I've always carefully constructed my life to be very walkably close to neighborhood amenities wherever I've lived, and always a 10 minutes walk max to an L stop for those work commutes (and <5 minute walk for 7 of the different 9 addresses that I've called home in Chicago over my five decades of living here)

[craigs]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Out of the top 6 urban cities, SF also has the highest % of workers commuting by bike.

Urban travel is not simply limited to cars or public transit.

1. SF 1.7%
2. Boston 1.0%
3. DC 0.8%
4. NYC 0.7%
5. Chicago 0.6%
6. Philly 0.6%

https://anytimeestimate.com/research/most-bike-friendly-cities-us-2022/

Los Angeles ties Chicago and Philadelphia for the percentage of workers who commute by bike.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Klippenstein

I would think as a decentralized metro area it would be in LA's favor to have people working closer to where they live. That's all I've been saying. This is one advantage that I'd love to see LA take advantage of. I'd be curious to see LA's average commute time/distance as well as how work from home changed these numbers.

LA does achieve this at a macro level though, as seen by those relatively low commute time figures. The jobs are where people want to live and work.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by craigs

Los Angeles ties Chicago and Philadelphia for the percentage of workers who commute by bike.

Yes that’s right. I thought about including it on the list as well as Seattle which is at 1.0% tied with Boston if we want to expand to the top 8 urban cities.

Portland, btw, tops the list at 2.0%.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

This is a great point.

And why I've always carefully constructed my life to be very walkably close to neighborhood amenities wherever I've lived, and always a 10 minutes walk max to an L stop for those work commutes (and <5 minute walk for 7 of the different 9 addresses that I've called home in Chicago over my five decades of living here)

Yep. You guys get it. It’s very easy to both own a car and live a car lite lifestyle.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by homebucket

SF also has more outdoor lifestyle orientation than those other cities (close enough to drive to but too far to walk/take transit to).

Take a drive North on 1 from SF to Bodega Bay or South to Santa Cruz and you'll see why.

If you don't mind I'm also going to use the "cool places to drive to" excuse for LA's high car ownership rate.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Yes that’s right. I thought about including it on the list as well as Seattle which is at 1.0% tied with Boston if we want to expand to the top 8 urban cities.

Portland, btw, tops the list at 2.0%.

These numbers are significantly lower than those of the 2010s. I remember a city (I think it was Minneapolis, but it could have been PDX) hitting something like 3.5% bicycle commuter share.

[Steely Dan]

The bike commute stats say lot more about the physical size of the city than relative levels of urbanism, IMO.

Of course the three small little boutique cities are gonna do a little better on that score than urban goliaths like NYC, LA, and Chicago, with their hundreds of square miles of land. It would only be surprising if they didn't.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Yep. You guys get it. It’s very easy to both own a car and live a car lite lifestyle.

Yeah, that's like most of urban Chicago.

It certainly ain't Paris.

It also ain't Schaumburg.

It's an extra-creamy middle and it's fucking delicious!!




You can easily own a car, AND not have to use it on a daily basis.

It's like having your cake and (not) eating it too!

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

The bike commute stats say lot more about physical size of the city than relative levels of urbanism, IMO.

Of course the three small little boutique cities are gonna do better on that score than urban goliaths like NYC, LA, and Chicago, with their hundreds of square miles of land. It would only be surprising if they didn't.

Could be a regional thing too. San Jose and Sacramento are both at 1.5% and 1.3% respectively even though they’re not traditionally thought of as being upper tier urbanism (also large and sprawly). I don’t see Oakland on the list but I imagine it’s in a similar ballpark.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by craigs

These numbers are significantly lower than those of the 2010s. I remember a city (I think it was Minneapolis, but it could have been PDX) hitting something like 3.5% bicycle commuter share.

That’s unfortunate to hear. Probably another casualty of pandemic induced commute patterns.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by badrunner

If you don't mind I'm also going to use the "cool places to drive to" excuse for LA's high car ownership rate.

I imagine there aren’t too many bus routes that drop you off at trailheads in the Santa Monica Mountains or Angeles National Forest.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by homebucket

That’s unfortunate to hear. Probably another casualty of pandemic induced commute patterns.

This Washington Post article from September reports that the peak in US bike commuting was 2014. Since that year, bicycle commuting is down 20% nationwide. And this article reports that Portland's bike commute share peaked in 2014 at 7.8%. PDX bike commuting has dramatically imploded since.

[Segun]

In LA you have access to a plethora of cities and small towns that are destinations in their own right. I feel as if the average person in LA goes back and forth between these cities more so than any other metro, even NYC. The average New Yorker probably isn't thinking of New Brunswick or White Plains as a destination to the extent that Los Angelenos think of Pasadena or Santa Monica as a destination. Most of these cities in LA are best situated so you can drive to them, park, get out and walk.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

This is a great point.

And why I've always carefully constructed my life to be very walkably close to neighborhood amenities wherever I've lived, and always a 10 minutes walk max to an L stop for those work commutes (and <5 minute walk for 7 of the different 9 addresses that I've called home in Chicago over my five decades of living here)

I'll also note my experience from when I was younger with NYC was New Yorkers seldom left their own hood unless they had a good reason to (major concert, visiting a friend elsewhere, etc.)

I mean, if you have, in your own neighborhood in your 20s, access to bars you like, just about every ethnic restaurant you could desire, ample nightlife options...why bother taking the subway somewhere else? It just adds needless commute time, and the stuff close to you is good enough.

Of course, not everyone lived in a "good enough" neighborhood. One of my friends lived in Bay Ridge for a few years because it was cheap at the time, and it absolutely wasn't what an NYU grad in their early 20s wanted, so he spent a lot of time hanging out in Manhattan after work instead of by his apartment.

Regardless, the point remains the ideal for urbanity is to have stuff at (or near) your doorstep, not stuff accessible by transit. Walkable cities existed since the dawn of civilization, while mass transit as we understand it didn't really come into being until around 1800, with the rise of the first fixed-route carriage lines and regular urban ferry service.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by Segun

In LA you have access to a plethora of cities and small towns that are destinations in their own right. I feel as if the average person in LA goes back and forth between these cities more so than any other metro, even NYC. The average New Yorker probably isn't thinking of New Brunswick or White Plains as a destination to the extent that Los Angelenos think of Pasadena or Santa Monica as a destination. Most of these cities in LA are best situated so you can drive to them, park, get out and walk.

This. Its very true.

[pip]

With Boston, are college students counted in this vehicles per adult stat?

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by Segun

The average New Yorker probably isn't thinking of New Brunswick or White Plains as a destination to the extent that Los Angelenos think of Pasadena or Santa Monica as a destination. Most of these cities in LA are best situated so you can drive to them, park, get out and walk.

The tri state NY area is very Manhattan centric, although there are places like Coney island, long island, towns along the hudson river, the hamptons. But something about more traditional metro areas in the US & various cities in europe or Asia don't have as much of a multi centric format as LA-Socal does.

London has sometimes been described as multi centric in an LA way too, but I still get a sense that metro area doesn't have as much outside the Thames & Big Ben area to compete with things like where Buckingham palace is located. Or metro London doesn't have coastal beach towns that compete with central London.

On the west coast, the older SF metro area somewhat follows a more traditional pattern....beyond the so called City, there are areas like San Jose, Napa Valley or Berkeley, but they're somehow not as singular or important as peripheral sections of metro LA are....for better or worse.