Why is the infrastructure so bad in most places in the USA for pedestrians and bicyclists ?

As a Scandinavian living in California . I am amazed how lousy and inconvinient everything is for bicyclists and pedestrians. Why is bike trails only something that is used for recreation, and why is it not part of the infrastructure for transportation ? And why are there so few running trails, nicely marked loops from 2.5 to 10 km and lighted at night. Where am I supposed to go run ? On some tread mill or at some high school track ( oh I cant do that either because the lock the gates to early )

Why is the infrastructure so bad in most places in the USA for pedestrians and bicyclists ?
Whenever I'm in Finland or Sweden I'm amazed as well. I'm out in the middle of nowhere, a few miles from the nearest town, and there are bike trails including underpasses at the occasional intersection all the way to the next town. I think it's great!





Of course, I also realize that I can drive from one end of the country to the other in one day. The size of the US is such that we will never have the kind of access to describe.





It isn't just the size of the country. It is also a matter of tax policy and social priorities. Americans (including myself) are not willing to pay the taxes (nor forego the liberites) required of a socialist system that might execute on such an infrastructure change.





Of course, given what does motivate us and how politics play out, the $4/gallon gas we will see next year and perhaps $5/gallon the following year may shift some priorities.
Reply:you're better off there in the United States.


The people living in some poor country in Africa don't even have good roads and they lack food.


Our road here in the Philippines was swept by a landslide because of a storm.
Reply:THINGS ARE DIFFERENT HERE HIGH TRAFFIC VOLUME %26amp; HIGH CRIME FOR NIGHT LOOPS
Reply:It's true, it's about the grip the oil companies have on our government, now they have one of their own in the big seat. It's sick I know., we really need a civil war to iron out our government back to the way it was.
Reply:Americans live in a delusion of car worship, that it somehow signifies "freedom" and "success". Ask them, many will say a person without a car is a "failure", a "loser". Americans still live under the delusion of "cheap oil", of "unlimited oil", that prices will return to US$40 per barrel, and that they have some right to it while the world does not.





It's only when reality comes crashing down hard that they'll wake up. Until then, if you choose to live in the US within built-up areas, you're out of luck. Perhaps if you moved to a suburban area where the streets are more open, less curbing and more houses than apartments, you might have more luck.





Where I'm from in Canada, the weather is similar or worse than what you are used to in Scandinavia (a metre of snow and -40C temperatures in January) and a vehicle is often required for survival, not vanity, and that's a much different matter. The advantage you have back home is distance: Scandinavian countries are tiny in comparison to Canada and the US. As the saying goes, "Americans think 100 years is a long time. Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance."





Currently, I live in Taiwan and have lived in other Asian countries. It's even worse here for joggers and cyclists because of the attitude of drivers here. The notion of "defensive driving" is absolutely lost on Asians, except for the Japanese. Drivers here genuinely expect pedestrians to jump out of the way of their cars, they will turn in front of you deliberately and think nothing of it. And forget about sidewalks because those on motorcycles and scooters think they are roadways.
Reply:it's a car culture. our public transpo sucks everywhere. big oil.
Reply:The truth, because politicians approve or disapprove the plans before something is funded, not the expert engineers. The freeway system is the same way. In Seattle, back in '71, the city planners and the city commission wanted a double decker freeway, the top one having no offramps, just a few onramps, so the travelers not stopping in Seattle could go uninterupted, the bottom one was to be off and on ramps like all freeways are through a city. Govenor Dixie Lee Ray dumped that idea, and I-5 was built like it is all up and down the west coast. Now, it's about a 3 hour journey to go through Seattle, instead of 15 minutes.



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