The Big Ugly Truth of American VS German Streets
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 พ.ค. 2024
- A typical street in modern Japan, France, or Germany is under 20 feet wide, while many American cities require widths of between 50 and 60 feet, even on quiet residential streets. Here's why it is not only dangerous to people, but killing our environment and pocketbooks too.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:12 Size Matters
05:10 The Cost of Super Sized Streets
10:05 Land Prices & German Yield Streets
14:55 Size, Speed and.... Smaller Roads?
18:30 Making Beautiful Cities
21:14 The Big Picture
23:28 Bloopers
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Episode No. 142
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Happy Sunday Everyone! It was fun doing an on-site video today. I hope you all enjoy the bloopers, they are especially funny (and painful to my wallet) 😂😅😬🫣
I personally wouldn't even bother replacing it. It doesn't hurt structurally and even cosmetically, if you don't know it's there, chances are you won't see it. Was also surprised to see all the cyclists that passed you went uphill. Going downhill is so much more fun.
I did enjoy it. Considering tighter streets, do you think that is wise considering the subpar driving skills of beginning US drivers?
If it's any consolation, I haven't had a curb contact in over twelve years, but shortly after purchasing a new car I encountered a magnetic curb within the first 200 km. Would cost > 600 euro,. Therefore, I now drive a new car with a scratched aluminum rim.
@@Hans-gb4mv The side of the tire is also damaged, I WOULD replace it. You can't know how damaged the tire is on the inside. Using it like this is gross negligence.
I hope "Practical Engineering" stumbles over this video and gives his thoughts on it.
As a civil Engineer in Infrastructure his thoughts could be interesting on this topic
When I once walked from my hotel in the USA along a wide street to the supermarket about 3 km away, I felt like I was the first person to use the sidewalk. A driver even stopped and asked if everything was ok 😅 It felt very strange.
That is right! 😂👍🇺🇲 ✝️
many do see pedestrians as either homeless people, or someone whose car has broken down. what i personally find fascinating is how sidewalks here in the US often suddenly end say 50 feet from the entrance of a neighborhood. There is no expectation that one can walk to the grocery store. even if it is less than a mile away. you would literally be walking in a ditch next to a 4 lane divided highway.
@uliwehner Or a two-lane 45 mph secondary road.
It is ridiculous to have to walk in the grass and mud 1000 feet to reach the bus stop. But it is common.
The reason it gets that way is that most cities have laws saying the home builder has to put a sidewalk in front of every house they build. In many cases the city does not assume the responsibility of building the sidewalk. So walking in front of a vacant lot, you may have to walk in the grass or mud because no house was built on that lot.
But of course everybody drives to the market. So the city putting in sidewalks may not justify the expense.
Also businesses have to put in the sidewalk when they build.
The developer also builds the street by the way . . .
Bro, you weren’t OK!
Some of us do walk. 😂
having lived in Japan now for 2 years as a German I can safely say the narrowness of some Japanese streets is next level compared to Germany. Hence why Kei-cars (literally "light cars") are so insanely poplular here.
I don't know about Japan, but I always thought Americans talking about 'narrow streets' were talking about old towns and such. Turns out they just mean 'not insanely wide'.
@@walkir2662 imagine not being able to fit 6 cars next to each other within city boundaries. Insane.
Have seen the roads in Japan, when I traveled there, wouldn't want to drive a car there, since I already dislike driving in urban areas in Germany with a car. I stick with bicycle, motorcycle or public transport.
Oh yes!
Standing with your hands stretched out and almost touching the houses and it being a TWO-WAY street?
If you've experienced that the "narrow" streets in the USA are a joke
I love those Toyko walking videos through the backalleys where an average American car would physically not being able to drive though, not to mention corners.
It's always so quiet there, in the center of one of the biggest town on earth! I wonder why...
The answer is of course: Cities aren't loud, cars are.
All that asphalt also increases the heat island effect! The plantings with the flood control swales help to physically cool the environment. I’m American who just moved to Scotland and I’m wrestling with the little roads, but after watching this video I appreciate them much more.
Thank god you moved, because I for one don't want you here in the USA. Both I and my spouse are disabled and we LOVE our nice comfortable BIG vehicles.
It's bizarre with all asphalted areas that are unused most of 24 hours. Like extra lanes on streets and roads that are only filled for a couple of hours a day during rush hour and parking spaces outside shopping centers. During holidays, they can be empty for days, as can parking lots outside tourist attractions in the off-season.
@@dansihvonen8218 The american rush "hour" is at least 6 hours.
Building small streets in a neightbourhood is not just about cost. Living on a small, slower, calmer street means less through-traffic, more peace and quiet, and a large increase in safety.
A lot of neighborhoods in the US are designed to have NO through traffic.
In my neighborhood people live next to a highway (40 ft) but would need to drive a mile to get onto it.
The separate businesses and living areas and it makes it much quieter.
I see where you are coming from (I really do), but increased saftey from crime? Definitely not. It's your homes on small streets in the US that get broken into. There is less traffic which means a burglars is less likely to be seen by someone. Both large streets and small streets have pros and cons.
@@tedtimberson4262 how can it be quiet, when every time somebody leaves a house, they have to drive (or be driven)? In German cities, often 2/3 of all trips are done without a car. Because the basics are spread all over the city, to be in walking distance - and for the rest we have public transit or bicycles. Car trips are only for obscure destinations, transporting freight or just laziness.
@@jessicaely2521 When it comes to burglaries, it often depends on the neighborhood.
My family lived in a big city and there was an attempted break-in in an apartment on the 4th floor (my parents' apartment), the perpetrators were one floor below and acted as if they were visiting the neighbors (my brother's apartment).
A friend of ours on a side street was burglarized because there were hardly any neighbors at home there.
While on our quiet play street the neighbors pretty much talk to anyone who is hanging around one of the houses and whom they don't know.
A craftsman was approached by three neighbors because we normally wouldn't have been home at that time.
@@kailahmann1823 1. The houses are farther apart. The odds of somebody that lives within hearing distance needs to leave is less because there are less people in that distance.
2 they don't need to leave as often, larger shopping trips and less of them. Bigger yards to play in and do whatever (pools playsets)
3 you can walk to the store if you want, but you don't live next it its on the outside of the neighborhood. Anywhere I've lived I have walked to the store EXCEPT when I lived in apartments ironically.
I've been in my front yard for like 20 minutes and haven't heard a single car. There's a kid playing basketball and a bird chirping. Why am I in the front yard? Because my kids are playing in the street.
The reality is its nicer to live in the suburbs.
Those "rocks" on the edges of mostly older buildings are called Radabweiser and protected buildings from carriages.
The do a pretty good job of protecting them from cars to 😉. I do wish people would paint them white had a couple of close encounters with them in low visibilty weather (not to close though).
horse drawn carriages?
@@Gsoda35 might also have been oxen but yes the animale type.
Yepp, the much greater size of horse or ox drawn cart wheels allowed them to "jump up" and lodge themselves far more easily on lower fences or walls. So these Rammsteine / ram stones (yepp, just just like the band) were set to protect the buildings from being bumped or scraped into a lot.
What will protect my wheels from them :)
@Ashton You completely forgot to mention that smaller streets incentivise the people to buy smaller (more sensible) cars. Nobody buys a car you can't use. (At least if you NEED to use that car.)
Imagine navigating Freiburg with a Cadillac Escalade ESV or a Ford F-450 Super Duty Crew Cab.
Or heaven forbid a pick up!
And yet cars seem to be getting bigger and bigger (or, at least, wider, if not longer) in Europe.
@@franhunne8929 Ähmm...the Ford F-450 is a pickup
Probably not those large SUVs and pickup trucks, but I do not see people giving up their large (by European standards) Amaroks, Porsche Macan, Ford Rangers, Range Rovers, etc.
No. Even a Cadillac requires only a regular street size. And you just will park it somewhere, before going into the city center. Also: Small streets, which are too small, will always be increased. If by construction or "no parkways", and more secure walking ways somewhere else. The problem in the US is a standard design given out by a central planning State, which doesn't help. In Germany, besides often times more dumb than solid protestors blockading them, you have well designed bypass routes the US doesn't have.
In the old mediveal city center of Erfurt, at the narrow and difficult corners of crossing streets, big blocks of stone were placed to stop horse carts from damaging the house. When these were houses and streets were renovated in the Nineties, some of these stones had to be replaced, because the were too much broken. A guide on a tour pointed to one of the new ones and told with a smile: Here you can see, these blocks fulfill their purpose also in modern times, you can see the new scratches and remains of car paint. And please more bloopers!
Guard / turning stones … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_stone
true that. They are quite common here where I live, in Galicia, specially to protect certain house from the carts pulled by cows (or oxen). One in front of my house was retired a few years ago 'cos the owner of the house decided he preferred to have that space, nor for the car or whatever, just because it was a big rock.
In Cadiz Spain the corners have old cannons from the navy. Good luck damaging those.
I grew up at a former major street (originally on the stagecoach route down to Italy) converted into an intra-urban residential street some 30 years before we moved there. As such the speed limit was 50 kph (31 mph), and it was wide enough to be used as route for an overland bus. On my way to school along that street I encountered every week multiple overrun animals, mostly cats, and our family also lost about 4 cats to the street over the years. In the time after I left school the street was converted into a 30 kph zone (18.6 mph) and narrowed by new parking rules as well as by some "obstacles" like converting part of the street into flowerbeds, so at certain points two cars could no longer pass each other without stopping and giving yield to the upcoming traffic. Since then I did not see one overrun cat at the curb - and children are now sometimes playing on the street.
Big fan of narrower roads when I studied in Valencia, Spain last fall. It was so refreshing not having to run across a 5-lane stroad to get where I needed to go. I miss the amazing public transportation there too 😢
th-cam.com/video/TyUv8pipri4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=4gi2Jou2o5-m-iCu&t=142
You must be a pedestrian . . .
@@Matthew_Loutner all humans are pedestrians
@@rolflin Nope.
All humans are "bipeds."
People are only pedestrians when they are "walking along a road."
Amen you tell them, pedestrians have rights too! The roads belong to all of us.
So true. My Aunt lives in Hamburg. She is 91 and has to walk to the store once a week. Aldi is 5 minutes away and Lidl is 15 minutes away. The bus stop is 5 minutes away too.
"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!"
(Emmet Brown, nutty scientist, 1985)
I am from Germany like Klaus Schwab. You have nothing and you are nothing in 2030!
Was just in Central Europe. Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Germany. I saw one large 4x4 in Czechia. Everywhere were smaller cars, smaller streets. Even the campers were smaller. Public transport in cities, and between them, is second to none. You really don't need a car there unless you live in the country. Kids CAN be more independent in those kinds of places. It was common to see young teens, and even younger, on the trams and metro by themselves.
We have a lot of vans in Czechia but much fewer American style trucks like RAMs or F-150s even though a lot of people purchased some kind of SUV in recent years.
I think my company owned Ford Transit is around 235-240cm (96inches) wide with mirrors, cca 560cm ( 224 inches) long and there are some roads that are not comfortable for a car of that size but I have rarely found a place that I couldn't drive through if patient. That's a car that can load 4 EUR sized pallets and over a ton of cargo...
@@mortisCZ You are talking about a van used to move goods. It is not necessarily too big a vehicle. Now imagine a SUV with the same footprint used to transport one person or, at best, a small family, two parents and two children.
Don't know where you've been. In Germany, you can't get around without a car.
I believe you should check also road planning in Netherlands. I lived there for 5 years and compare to the Germany, this is on another level.... Not Just Bikes does very good job showing the differences and the ideas behind it.
Oh yes, visit NJB! Do a collab, the Netherlands are a great example of how to build roads.
@@ThePixel1983NJBs video about Freiburg almost is a colab.
Exactly, what I was going to say. Germany is still a very car centric country. We have so much to learn from the Netherlands.
"Not Just Bikes" is a "must" for every person with only the slightest interest in urbanism and transit.
"Adam Something" is also a great channel with a similar (but wider) focus.
@@mina_en_suiza I live in the Netherlands i think americans are probable better of looking at what germany is doing and yes Germany should be looking at the Netherlands for what they still need to do. Overall i think the Netherlands are the furtest along with good livable infrastructure. Plenty of places abroad where they do one or 2 things better then in the Netherlands so we can also learn from those places. Thats how we got so good overall, we just nick any good idea sombody else has comeup with. Adapt it for the dutch situation and inmplement it (or discard it if its not practicale or way to expensive).
The Dutch mantra seems to be “always improve on the previous design” while the USA never ses to want to improve on an initial design.
In part I blame the difference in election systems. Our representatives do a much better job representing us because we don’t have the outdated feudal British first-past-the-post but replaced it with proportional representation back in 1917.
I was visiting my dad in our old village - literally medieval layout with narrow cobblestone roads and half-timbered houses - and some special individual had the bright idea to import a Ford F150 with lifts and huge off-road tires. Like, a genuine Texas level vehicle in Mittelhessen. Parked on the side of the road it blocked a little more than half of it. It was absurd and surreal...and kinda funny.
There is one of those monsters here too - though not uplifted (or not much, it looks so for me but think that ius just the normal hight). If the owner drives it through one of the smaller medieval streets, it looks like a war elephant invasion.
Sorry, but " cobblestone roads " ware made of round stones. You don't see them any more. You mean street stones, that are with flat top.
They still exist in many places. Espeically old town centers.@@Peter-oh3pm
@@Peter-oh3pm I'm sorry but when you say "street stones" you mean setts. 😆
Maybe the truck owner could use some help with a proper tire pressure.
The wide boulevards in Paris and Berlin, for example, were made so that the army could more easily put down uprisings.
The hygiene problems were largely because there was no sewage system and no/hardly any street cleaning.
The boulevards also stopped the building of barricades. So easier to move and harder to stop being moved.
US cities look like they would be far easier for the government to take over militarily than European even if the people with guns wanted to fight.
No, the key factor in many those European boulevards was that many were built with spokes radiating out from a central plaza. That allows a small military force with cannons and machine guns to control movement across a wide swath of the city. The only U.S. city I know that is designed that way is (revealingly) Washinton, D.C. Other cities, for instance, NYC, make streets in a far less militarily useful N-S, EW pattern. @@johnclements6614
You also need to realise that these boulevards aren't even that wide by modern standards, the big boulevards are basically 4 (2 each way) lane roads. And these are the big arteries in the city. And then there are the really big boulevards, but these are quite rare and basically long squares originally (like the Champs-Élysées, which is famous for a reason). Pre-modern cities had many roads where you could literally barely pass each other on foot. A 2m wide road with 3-4 stories high was no exception in pre-modern Europe. It's nowhere near what any modern street is. I live in one of those few small pre-modern streets (you can't drive there, a car literally physically doesn't fit between the buildings, you can even barely meet each other while cycling). It has its charm for a few small streets, but if the entire city is like that it would be pretty bad (it isn't btw, it's like a 50m long street that ends in one of the biggest squares in the city). And then indeed think of cities where households lived with 12 people in what we would now call a studio for 1 person and where everyone just dumped their excrement on the street. Yeah these cities got pretty vile. But that was more of an extreme density problem than a street width problem. And with plumbing we kinda fixed the biggest problem with extreme density anyway. Also I'm not saying most (or even any) new development should be like 2m wide. You can also make it like 11m wide (facade to facade) The road is about 7m wide (almost 23 feet, which is the standard 2 lane road width in the Netherlands, where I'm from) + 4m for sidewalks. You don't really need a lot more than that. In a truly residential road you don't need the bikelanes (all travel is slow) after all and a 2 lane road can be smaller than twice the width of a 1 lane road, so you can easily trim this down to something like 10m if you want. A pretty big car like a Volkswagen Passat is still less than 2m wide, so you could get away with a 4m wide road, although that would be very narrow indeed. But 5-6m is more than fine for a residential area. And you'd still have all the amenities you want.
It's a bit more complex. Boulevards and avenues were made for faster military intervention and prevent barricades as much as possible. But smaller streets around were made so it is easier to conduct guerilla warfare while the main troops are kept busy on the wider ways.
@@BelazirafThey also were built just for show with the express intention to be surrounded by representative public or very high class residential buildings to show every visitor your power and capabilities.
The problem with these extremely wide roads in the USA, at least as far as states with a warmer climate are concerned, is the fact that the building materials can heat up much more on sunny days. On the one hand, this leads to more wear and tear and thus the need for repairs at short intervals, but also to a significantly warmer microclimate in the respective area. The building material releases the stored heat in the cooler hours and ensures that the area stays warm. This leads to more electricity consumption for air conditioning and generally less healthy sleep. There are infrared images of cities that clearly show that the core of the city is significantly warmer than the area around the city. And that is a significant contribution to climate change.
I can just agree with it. This can also be proven in Germany. But it's not just roads that absorb a lot of solar heat. But the roof tiles in Europe, especially in Germany, are so hot in summer that you can fry fried eggs on them. And I can say that because I worked in construction for years. And it is a phenomenon of cities. When I went on a trip, the temperature difference outside the city was 3 degrees. And it was even pleasantly cool in the forest, while in the city it was hard to sleep because of the heat.
Those are called heat islands.
Grew up in phoenix, totally false. Roads in phoenix are great because the lack of frost heaving. Hardly even knew what a pothole was.
Apparently in cold climates, wide roads will save electricity by heating up and warming buildings in the night?
But what seems to be ignored in the American west is that the roads are water infrastructure, and not a bad thing like this video makes it seem.
Thus would be true 15 years ago. They have special kind of pavement. Not all places have adopted this kind of pavement.
Places like Florida has used cooling pavement. The pavement reflects the heat away from the pavement. You have to do it correctly in order for it to work. Don't ask me what's the correct way. Florida has also used pervious concrete. This kind of concrete has interconnected holes in the pavement that allows water and air to flow through it freely. This also cools streets.
@@michaelkuschnefsky362Yes, once upon a time I lived „under the roof“ for nine months. It was cozy on sunny winter days, but became a drama in already hot summer nights.
I am missing „my“ Black Forest. Greetings from Canada 🇨🇦 wishing your Black Forest Family and all viewers a beautiful Sunday!
Canada is not green country, downtown full of cars and concrete.
Just from the thumbnail i can say that the road is wide enough that you could fit the entire length of a new build house and its garden in Britain accross the width of that road, and probably still have space to spare!
if you also add the front yards into the calculation, you can probably regularly replace those streets with two one-way streets and build an additional line of houses in the middle. :)
@@kailahmann1823 20 meters or sixty-some feet would be such a pathetic, tiny house by USA standards. My home and the lot it sits on (65 feet wide by 120 feet deep) is considered quite small, but it is still twice that size. You folks really do live in such poor areas to have such tiny dwellings and yards. Sad.
Side note: Thanks for the bloopers at the end. During Ashton's performance in the video, I kept wondering if the road behind her was really empty the whole time. Or if she was just greenscreening using a background picture of the road. At one point I even focused on the trees to see if they were moving in the wind, confirming that it wasn't a photo. So the bloopers confirmed it actually took much longer to record the report compared to the final footage. 👍🏻 Well done 🤗
According to Murphy's law: selecting a road with less traffic doesn't work. I was wondering as well for 'no traffic' until the bloppers. Ashton: this was hard work for you keeping the tone all the time !
You can usually spot green screening by the lighting not matching (the light does match here, very diffuse but still coming mainly from above with the mountain and the trees providing some shading).
...and it showed vehicles preferred in Germany...
In suburban parts of the UK, it's not uncommon to see streets that are effectively a cul de sac for cars but have a pedestrian footpath to the next cul de sac so that through walking is easy while through driving is impossible. I don't know why this isn't done in the US.
Because it increases travel time.
I have seen this done sometimes in the US, but not nearly as frequently as in the UK. I know a decent number of housing developments in California and the West that have this sort of configuration. This is particularly common in townhome, multi-unit, or denser single-family housing. But in general, yes, residential roads are fast and wide in the vast majority of new housing developments, particularly in low density single-family neighborhoods.
The main difference is that in the US, there isn't anywhere to walk *to* - the number of people who would walk to another house in the same neighbourhood is small. Whereas in the UK, they allow people to walk a more direct route to nearby shops, schools, bus stops etc.
@@steemlenn8797 Not necessarily. There are plenty of neighborhoods in the US that have the same basic principle of cul-de-sacs so that you don't get through traffic, so people are still driving the long way round, all that's different is the missing pedestrian cut-throughs.
@@steemlenn8797 How do cut-throughs 'increase travel time'? I would love to know, as my experience has been entirely different, in several different countries.
Bike and pedestrian alleyways, ginnels and cut-throughs such as we have here, give so much faster, easier and more healthy accessibility to everyone, for everything.
No reason to do it.
Great video again.
I was going to say how impressed I was that you had found a road in a tourist area of Germany where NO cars were. I thought maybe you had blocked the road at the top and bottom of the mountain ........ and then I watched the bloopers!
I lived for a while on Anza Avenue in Torrance CA. There was a small plaza with a few stores on the otherside of the street. We would drive there to go shopping as it was the only safe way to cross the road.
I now live in a very narrow street in Germany which is a designated 'play-street'. Pedestrians have the absolute right-of-way and the maximum speed allowed (for everything, cars, bicycles, go-carts, etc) is "Schrittgeschwindigkeit", walking pace.
I enjoy living here more.
I used to live right next to a busy road. It made me sick. You couldn't open a window or use the balcony. Noise is stress. Stress makes you ill.
Ashton deserves sooo many more subscribers for the amazing content she produces!
Lucy, a big fan from Germany 😊
P. S. I don’t really have a connection to the US (except that we are all influenced by some aspects of culture,politics and of course I am interested in what is going on there), but I also have the experience of adapting in Germany coming from another country 20 years ago. The analysis Ashton delivers is so on point, so fascinating plus it’s educational and fun, I really really like the channel.
Back in the eighties one of Perth, Australia's inner suburbs widened their streets because the residents kept complaining that the narrow streets were dangerous. The next complaint, once the roads were widened, was that people continually sped down the streets so they put traffic calming in to slow the vehicles down. I believe the current issue is the high maintenance cost of the traffic calming.
The maintenance of these roads is another huge consideration that I didn't even touch upon in this video. Extra wide roadways also have a spillover effect when it comes to properly clearing snow and added cost of salt/rock for the super-size surface area in the winter months.
Snow. I am always severely disappointed by my colleagues lack of thought when designing suburbs and services. I noted that, in the US they reworked the streets of some cities to clear snow by use of Steam Tunnels and then placed services in them. For me, I think that if, in the cities we want to avoid disruptions caused by replacing old services the whole "services in culverts" is a must. the issue there, of course, is the expense of making the service culverts, particularly large enough to work inside of.
I practically grew up with the chalk in my hand that we used to draw playing fields for jumping and ball games on the street. Outskirts of a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia. Unfortunately, that was almost 50 years ago ;-) But my children were still able to do that today on the outskirts of a small town in Schleswig-Holstein. And cars are realy slowing down without honking or speeding. I love that!!
When i was 2017 in the US i nearly had a hearth attack on the roads! No one ever thought it was necessary to blink and the rule :" dont pass a car from the right side on a highway" was completly ignored. And dont get me started on LA roads...
This "rule" doesn't exist in the US. If you cannot adopt to other country's rules you should perhaps stay at home.
@@Henning_Rech Precisely! And thats also the reason why the deaths by car acidents per 100000 are 3x higher in the US than in germany. :D
@@kiritomato1908 You mean per 100,000 capita? - while this is not a fair comparison, Americans drive nearly twice the annual distance than Germans, so per km or per mile it is only a factor around 1.5.
Slower cars are required by law to drive in the far right-hand lane. If people were passing you on the right, you were in the wrong lane.
And forget your quoted statistics because they are meaningless when all of the variables are considered.
@@Henning_Rechso an infrastructure requiring everybody to drive insane distances makes a life less worth? Or maybe these distances are THE problem?
"Not Just Bikes" talked a lot about the futility of suburbia. The towns just can't afford to maintain suburbia in the long run. The taxes are way too low to even just cover the maintenance of the streets and utilities.
It's great to see the economic arguments getting more attention. The people who most need to be convinced of this are more likely to be swayed when it comes down to taxes.
@@jimmux_v0 The economic argument is truly funny. I live in an American suburb that is about 80 years old and we have NO problem maintaining our streets and utilities from our taxes. we are NOT one of the rich or exclusive ones by a long shot, just normal working class folks who live in what by USA standards are relatively small houses and average size lots. We CAN afford to maintain our suburb and have done so for many decades. What we cannot afford to maintain itself is the dense urban city center which has been bankrupt twice.
@@gregorybiestek3431 Sure, american working class guy. Everyone talking about this issue is just clueless then. And all the numbers are fake. And Trump is the best president ever.
Taxes in general are too high.
Also high taxes don't necessarily lead to better infrastructure. Compare Germany and Switzerland for example. Germany has double the taxes, but the public transport is dysfunctional and the roads are in worse shape, often forcing lower cruise speeds despite the higher speed limits.
@@svr5423 I think its fair to say that German roads probably see more average use than Swiss roads. They have literally 10 times the population of Switzerland alone, not counting people who come from out-of-country. Roads not being as good as you perceive that they should be doesn't automatically mean that they are poorly planned or designed either.
In my coastal Southern California neighborhood we have recently adopted something called "Traffic Calming" planting borders to our widest residential streets, mine included. Two blocks over was the first, and I happen to know the history of that extra wide street. In the 1940s, this area had hosted an Army Air Corps training facility, and after WWII was when that street was laid out with the unrealistic expectation that we would sometimes have our own family airplane, needing a landing strip in the middle of a subdivision. I know, the "flying car" dream in one of its earliest incarnations.
That street got named "Broadway" and did lead directly to the main business district, which was the upwind end of it. Those retail businesses also had extra large parking lots in the rear, possibly for where the light aircraft were expected to be tied down. Dreaming big never seems to get old, but cycles into and out of vogue several decades at a time.
Someday … in your copious spare time … you should talk about stop signs. It never ceases to amaze me how few stop signs are used (or needed) in Germany. In my US life, coming to a full stop at stop signs is a joke, and stop signs are a great source of irritation when trying to pass through a residential area with little or no other traffic. It seems to me that the German method of putting the burden of 'consciousness' back onto the driver, and their strict conformance to the 'yield to the right' rule is very effective at keeping traffic speeds down and yet reducing total commute time, while keeping everybody safe. I think this sub-topic is worthy of a whole program (when you find the time). Thanks again - you brighten my Sundays.
Speed limit on residential road in Germany is 30kph, that's under 20mph
Because in Germany, usually the more sensible right before left rule applies, especially that road speeds in residential areas are lower, meaning that you don't need to halt an overly speeding vehicle on each intersection.
Low speeds mean that drivers can think and apply simple traffic laws.
its the same in the UK, we don't have stop signs everywhere. We just yield to the right and have mini roundabouts on busier junctions. And most of our residential roads have a 30mph speed limit. Although there are far more 20mph limits being introduced over the last ten years or so. But it's not like they are needed for our junctions to work, they are mostly just to improve the liveability for residents and pedestrians. America is pretty unique as far as I'm aware in using stop signs on regular junctions
Traffic calming meassures are under used in the U.S. They make stop signs irrelevant.
Not to mention the money that saves. Road signs are surprisingly expensive, and if you have 4 of them on any lightly used crossing... though of course the air strips are a lot more expensive.
Just make the streets really small, put boulders on the sides aat crossings and voila, you have your cheap, effective, slowed down and save for everyone living area.
Narrow streets here in Scotland are the norm. We are quite used to them and drive accordingly. Most built-up areas now have 20 MPH limits on them.
If people don't like driving in these conditions, then there is usually public transport to consider as an option.
Glasgow has very wide streets overall, and terrible public transport, like most of the UK. Glasgow sprawls far more than down in England, though nowhere in the UK is that great for land use and public transport overall...
@@svartmetall48so are you comparing public transit in UK to Sweden or?
@@leob4403 Yes. Or Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, JapAn etc.
@@svartmetall48 oh really, I'm surprised to hear that. So the Glasgow subway system is pretty bad then?
@@leob4403 It's a circle.... It goes nowhere.
Here in the Dallas area, there is a lot of debate about how to improve safety on our streets. Narrow streets with more traffic circles and stop signs are being seriously considered for the first time in my 64 years of life.
A big improvement in the reduction of vocal fry, a video that can be watched unlike most so far the last year or so, please continue in this manner, it sounds so much better.
Great vid again! Another concept that is different from the US is that in many (not all though) countries in Europe design guidelines like speed limits and widths are national and not dependent on the city you are in. That means that driving is more uniform, predictable and safe. Be sure to check Not Just Bikes
Wide roads in European inner cities were not planned. The name "boulevard" gives a hint. It is derived from "Bollwerk". So the wide roads are actually at the places of dismantled city walls and therefore often have a ring like shape. A typical example is Vienna.
There are exceptions of course. Wolfsburg was designed to the demands of Hitler initially, and thus, was supposed to get very wide roads for military parades, much wider than they are today. After the war, the roads had been completed with fairly large green belts and trees to the sides of them, but its still possible to instantly notice them. They look like a US town invaded by Germans. XD
Paris is another obvious exception, as it was completely redesigned by Haussmann, with wide boulevards, in the mid-nineteenth century.
It is so important to make communities walkable for the elderly so they don't feel forced into owning a car they cannot afford or driving when they no longer have good reflexes. I was once in our local park when a confused elderly man drove right into it and was trying to drive down the running path. It took about twenty people surrounding the car to get him to finally stop, then he was so confused he couldn't turn around and get out of there.
Driving in America one thing that shocked me was lack of road awareness and general attention. I think part of that is because driving is so easy. In Europe you have to pay constant attention on the narrow roads
Because you get a driver license so easily.
dude, a DL in America is a 15 minute test where the hardest part is making sure you can back up safely
Unless you suck at parking
I believe Ashton made another video about this, especially the death toll on pedestrians and cyclists.
@@tacticallemon7518Isn't it up to the state where you live how extensive your driving test is? I know that some only require a potential new driver to drive around a building and park on the parking lot again, only going out on a public road for a very short while, while there are states that require a full 30 minute test that comes close to the Dutch one (and most likely tests held in other European countries). About the only main difference I once saw was where a learner driver attempting his test was stopped by the instructor for what looked to me no apparent reason at all. I had to read through the comments to find out what the mistake was, but it (apparently) was the one way street the learner driver was about to drive into from the right direction... This was not the way to go during a test, where here in The Netherlands the instructor will usually only give you directions when you need to do something. If you get to a one-way street, he or she will not say anything. Most likely he or she will lead you to this road on purpose to than say 'okay, I want you to find a spot to turn the car around'.
There's even a saying 'If nothing is said, ontinue straight ahead'.
I think the most important thing is how much lessons it takes for one to get a license, but this ofcourse directly relates to how easy the test is. Many students in the Netherlands will need 20 to 25 lessons to pass their test and as 2/3rd fails the theoretical test on first attempt (with another 44% or so failing the second attempt) and you will need to pass the theoretical test first before you can even attempt the driving test, one can definitely say it's not easy.
That is because we can actually ENJOY driving out on our freeways and highways. There are numerous wonderful trips driving along where you can enjoy looking at the scenery every once in a while, not just stay focused solely on the traffic or the tiny excuse of a road.
I would never replace that rim. When you live in Europe, you will get more of those. It's just a cosmetic scratch that a file and some sandpaper will take care of. And great linking to NotJustBikes, he has some nice insights into why our society shouldn't be car centric.
More green on the side also reduces heat and need for AC
This is a moot point. A lot of cities have used cooling pavement (heat bounces off of pavement) and a type of porous pavement. With the porous pavement air and water can freely flow through the pavement from holes. In the city of Saint Louis Missouri it was 90 F. Out in the suburbs it was 100 F. The reason for the hotter temperature was because the city used cooling pavement and the suburbs didnt. This cools the pavement. Greenery does make a city look more beautiful though.
@@jessicaely2521 Americans… not moot at all. „Bouncing off“ sunrays or „heat“ doesn’t help a lot because it will then heat up the surroundings (buildings, cars, even people). Also its pretty hard to „bounce off“ sunrays, we are not talking rubber balls. Probably they just use some mediocre effect trickery with lighter color. Of course, it gets worse with accumulating dirt and wear an tear. My guess is it only/merely reduces the *surface heat of the pavement* to a certain degree, but not really the overall heat. Phoenix e.g. reported lots of issues with this so-called cooling pavement (see youtube link below - deleted by youtube). It even made people 5.5 (!) degrees hotter and reduced overall heat by only 0.3 to 0.5 degrees… IMO its nothing but expensive junk.
Plants on the other hand are much better because they actually *absorb* sunrays and turn them into matter, into biomass (something we humans still are far from achieving). Treetops keep sunrays and thus heat from even reaching ground level. Assumed the findings of your „study“ are correct, which I don’t know and seriously doubt, it would have been much better with plants/greenery.
th-cam.com/video/8v3T8CTCcH0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=xzK2qHthqAZL5OWz
@@jessicaely2521 @typeashton I would love if you could debunk „cooling pavement“
"Green" creates pollution, e.g. by pollen and by attracting insects, so you can't use the balcony that well.
Better just paint everything white. Mediterranean cultures figured that out hundreds of years ago.
At those couple of times I have driven car in US it has been really fun - for about two or three days. After that it became very stressful when you have to drive literally everywhere and you spend half of the day just cruising endless highways. The absolute low point was when I thought it is just easier to drive from one end of strip mall to another at the parking lot to get to the next store.
I could "cruise endless highways" every day for the rest of my life and never tire of the changing scenery or the sensation of flying and feeling of freedom. 🇺🇲 ✝️
@@Matthew_Loutneryou need to learn from life to be more humble
@@leob4403 Sorry but I don't understand what your trying to say. How does someone enjoying driving equate to them not being "humble".
@@keithrushforth4019 you should try reading his other comments, he's a lier, claiming usa has the best public transit in the world and other such nonsense
@@leob4403 Ah so he's giving it the old "everything in America is better" spiel , well that explains your comment.
Woohoo, Ashton is back. As per my expectation she has links to multiple channels in the description, two of them being the similarly well researched and displayed "NotJustBikes" and "StrongTowns".
Edit: when I saw the 25 mph speed limit for your inlaws residential area, I did a little Überschlagsrechnen. I came to the result that residential areas in the USA have a roughly 40 km/h speed limit, or ten kilometers per hour more than in Germany. With the usual "5 miles over" tendencies of many US drivers to be "safe from speeding tickets" this leads to average speeds of around 49 km/h. Or basically standard speed limits within any built-up area in Germany with 50 kmh.
No wonder your children can't play in the streets.
The standard residential areas in Germany have 30 kmh or roughly 18 MPH.
Like you said each mile per hour higher speed inflicts roughly 1/3 more impact force on a pedestrian. This makes ANY impact even in residential areas roughly three times as deadly than in Germany.
Now we come to the actual speeds in a German narrow residential area with lots of yield streets, or heaven forbid, an actual Spielstraße/ playing street where a WALKING pace of 5 (!) kmh is the official top speed of all vehicles. Or about 3 mph. With narrow roads, constant Rechts-vor-Links narrower intersections, speed bumps, etc the actual speed of most residential areas in Germany is around 20 kmh, or around 12 mph. This means less than half of the official speed limit in the US counterpart.
The results just from just the physical impact forces are more than enough to convince me that your in-laws aren't paranoid, just reasonable NOT to allow their kids to play on the streets. Which is a really sad state of affairs as kids that can't go exploring, playing, and discovering on their own without constant adult supervision CAN'T develop the crucial skill of an open mind without some serious lucky influence from their parents. Problem solving skills, danger recognition, curiosity, all are strongly improved by allowing for such development at the kid's own growth speed, not when parents deem it right to take them to a clinically sterile and overprotective playground safe from litigation by taking any danger out of them.
All of this plays strongly into the development of mindsets that require constant prodding from the outside instead of a natural internal curiosity to explore. Or rather the consumption of spoon fed, premade entertainment instead of making your own.
At least that's my perception. Note: this doesn't mean that it is impossible to develop such an open curiosity (as demonstrated clearly by Ashton), only that it facilitates such development of passive consumption.
Dear Ashton, thank you for another well researched and informative video. Please let me add 2 points I missed: SEALING and MORE LANES CONDITION MORE TRAFFIC.
You might have followed those topics in european media. One reason, why we build narrower streets is also "Versiegelung", so, when you asphalt an acre, it´s gone nearly forever, it´s lost as an productive surface in ecological concerns. Also as an temperature balancing surface. That´s the reason, why you have to plant trees in Austria for every unit of street you build, so: for every acre you steel from nature!
And second, and there´s a huge duscussion about it also in europe. The more lanes you offer, the more cars will come! Meanwhile a few counties try to reduce traffic jams by reducing the avaluable space for driving cars. Of course this is only possible when there are alternatives such as public transportation or bike and walking friendly infrastructure.
But please, go on Ashton!!!
We live at the entrance to a residential area in southern Bavaria. If someone is speeding here, they are very likely the residents. The yield-to-right is completely ignored, because „no one ever comes from this direction“, making this street a de-facto main street. And yes, the street is rather wide and straight with no visual limitations at the side.
Yet another REALLY interesting video. You always manage to fascinate and inform in an understandable way. Bravo. (Again)
03:36 The link to diseases weren't by street size, but by canalization (sewer drainage system). In 1739 Vienna was the first european town that was fully sewered. And they still had narrow streets. Actually, you find narrow streets there even today. And there are no reports of higher diseases there, not even during Corona pandemic.
But back in a day before germ theory people had different ideas about what causes illnesses and epidemies.
Im pretty sure the quarters aren't nearly as packed as around 1900, with even people renting out there bed over the day to night workers.
Guess you are right about the infections, but for pollution and temperature it's important to keep some fresh air corridors open. In summer it can make a difference of a couple of degrees.
I don't think that comparison paints the full picture for 2 reasons:
1. In centuries past it was considerably more common for farm animals to mingle with citizenry on the roads due to open-air markets and the like, which drastically increase the contraction of diseases.
2. People today are generally much more aware of how diseases work and how to protect themselves even when mingling with other people during an outbreak.
I think there was definitely a link with the spread of diseases and narrow roads due to the close proximity people had to one another, though maybe that particular paper didn't touch on it.
Every time I visit my brother in Canada I notice the big difference between the wide and comfortable streets there and the narrow ones here in middle Europe. Thanks for the interesting video
Glad you enjoyed it!!
Comfortable for who? Cars. Not people walking.
Well, this "comfort" induce always a bigger demand and the traffic get always worse. And when this is the only options, because there're no alternatives to driving, this comfort became a nightmare very soon
I’m Dutch without a drivers license (too expensive, don’t really need one day to day). I really don’t like that I’m totally dependent on my brother and his wife to do anything when I visit them in Canada. It’s one of the few reasons I’m considering getting my drivers license after all.
@@Nertez
Residential streets are literally designed to be uncomfortable, including literal speed bumbs, so that people don't even think about driving faster than 30km/h cause it would rip their car apart.
Great video as always.
On a side note: constantly lifting yourself from the seat and stretching your neck to peek is an indication that your seat setting is not optimal. You might want to consider setting the seat higher, closer to the steering wheel and the back a litlle less inclined. You know american vs european driving position ;)
Closer to the steering wheel? She is way too close already!
walkable neigbourhoods, small slow local roads, lush greenery on streets - they all make the area friendlier and more valuable
I love that you include your sources in the end! Yay for science!
One of the nicer benefits to the audience of a rigorous scientific training.
Agreed!
I grew up in a very rural area (village with 494 inhabitants), we could still walk and ride bicycles on the road. Mostly two-lane-streets, but also beside the main roads many roads where not even 2 cars fit on. If you meet another car, both drivers drive half onto the green next to the streets until they passed each other. Which honestly works really well, I never had anybody not doing this automatically. You also have to be careful for holes in the sideways there.
This really fixes the "Sichtfahrgebot" into your brain, which says you should only drive so fast that you still can safely come to a stop within the distance you see. Which leads to driving max. 80km/h (roughly 50 miles per hour) and driving on curves with maybe 10-30 miles per hour max. You have to be aware of your surroundings, because there is no space to escape. Honestly, I prefer smaller roads, as you get to know the dimensions of your car and can drive without cars literally hanging on your bumper while honking.
As an american living in europe now its absolutely crazy how wide american streets in suburban areas are. Ive seen narrower streets on main roads in Europe than in a US suburb.
Czech highways are around 78 feet wide (2 lanes in each direction+sides) so I was perplexed to see a 60 feet road in a housing quarter in the video. :-D
@@mortisCZ yeah its fucking ridiculous. Wider roads just make people drive faster. Either intentionally or because they are not aware of how fast they are going.
I think this is my favourite video of yours so far Ashton! Such a clear and concise argument backed with undeniable facts and figures, it might just be the most comprehensive urban planning video on TH-cam (and yes I follow the entire genre here) simply epic!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Great video, as always. Production quality going up and up and up.
Thank you!
5:15 Concerning the rock: It is really crazy because we too have such a rock standing out onto a narrow street the next village over.
The rock, believe it or not, is so old that it falls under the "Denkmalschutz". A state ordered "monument protection". It is difficult to grasp why and why not one needs to save a certain rock. As far as I know, if a rock sticks out onto the street it's at least from the 18th or 17th century. Sometimes way earlier than that.
No those were placed up untill the 20th century to protect corners of constructions against axel collisions😅
@@user-bz6bz2yy3w Oh, I didn't know that. The mayor and leading architect of the hotel nearby explained it differently to me. They say it belonged to the founding stones of the castles that tumbled down and have been integrated into houses.
The stone doesn't really protect anything.
I live in the Netherlands, without a private automobile. My legs, my bicycle, public transport and rental bikes do the transportation job for me. What our country tries to do best is 1. separate the various transport modes, and 2. pass each mode the optimal infrastructure.
In the cities, buses can run on bus-only lanes, sometimes with prioritised traffic lights (DE: "Ampelvorfahrt").
Our railways are not designed for maximum speed of some trains, but for maximum capacity for all trains.
We have several categories of roads and streets, and use traffic calming rather than an overload of road signs.
Nevertheless, man itself is the limit factor, and we still have a three-digit number of km/miles traffic jams on our motorways Monday to Friday, and at the same time, crammed buses and trains.
Always enjoy our Sunday mornings. I really appreciate your research skills and reliance on data.
Thank you Aston! This video was very important. People in each continent doesn’t understand what follows from the construction of wide local streets.
Maybe that's partly a reason why 14/15 year old teenies are allowed to drive in the US. The same teenager might struggle in europe.
Thanks for another interesting topic Ashton, happy Sunday ❤
Not only teenagers as seen in the video.
I can't speak of the whole of Europe or even the entire Netherlands, but my teens are free and safe on the streets. At 8 or 9 they cycled to school by themselves and went grocery shopping by bike, or walking. They could go to friends or parks or sports or to the local swimmingpool by themselves, walking or biking. I didn't need to taxi them everywhere. From age 12 they cycled to the next city over, had further living friends, went with those friends to the cinema, or a jumping venue, or whatever activity they wanted to go or went to the citycenter to buy stuff they liked. In bad weather they take the bus.
From age 15 they take the train or bus to go events with friends in cities all across the country. At 16 my son cycled (because it's cheap and adventurous) with a friend to Germany (ap. 600 km) and made all the arrangement for it himself: overnight stays, routes etc. At 17 he went even further using all kinds of public transport and bycicle. My kids have never been stuck at home. And their freedom and independent life started from a young age, not at 15 with a drivers licence. Ofcourse this is not the case for everybody, but I'm grateful my kids grow up here. Sorry for essay.
14/15 yr old kids aren't allowed to drive a car on their own. It's more like 16/17. Learner's Permit ages are 14-16. There's only 9 states where you're allowed to get your learners permit at 14 and the states are correct in their age. Absolutely no one lives in those areas. Alaska is 14 and it's mostly wilderness, hence the name "The Last Frontier." The thing you're probably going to run into in Alaska is a moose, grizzly bear, or polar bear.
They would do perfectly fine on European roads if they grew up there. The reason kids drive in the US is because of lack of public transportation. Places like New York learning permit age is 16. You can't get your driver's license until 17. New York (mostly city) has much much much much better public transportation than Billings Montana.
In my area around Aachen, a 5 year old kid was scheduled to go out alone to meet with friends yesterday. He didn't arrive there and it turned out he went to the train station instead and jumped on a train to Wuppertal. Police was called and he was found at the station in Wuppertal and brought back. This kind of things happen when kids live without permanent supervision. Of course there is some danger in letting kids go by themself but there is also a danger in not letting them learn to act independently. This kind of stories is making the news in Germany and not school-shootings.
you're probably right lol
when I did my drivers license here in Germany the parts I was able to drive across the Autobahn were so relaxing. compare that to the narrow urban roads I had to needle through... oh man. when I hit the Autobahn part during my practical exam I literally sighed out of relief.
My Grandma is 91 years old. She lives independently on her own. She walks to the town center and has a supermarket walkable to her home as well. She would not be able to drive a car or ride a bike at her age. She is glad not to have to live in a nursing home.
That is AMAZING. She is my goal for the golden years.
Thanks @TypeAshton! Really well researched and reasoned.
You're so enthusiastic about your new - or old home. Thank you for showing us all those positive aspects in a time where certain movements are trying to make us look bad to achieve their goals.
In the '80 I played , cycling, skated on the street (Belgium)😁😁😁in my neighbourhood
A big street, a big mall, a very big parking place. If you travel throgh the usa, this is what you often see and it is ugly
"Ugly" is in the eye of the beholder.
@@Matthew_Loutnerwhen you're used to seeing ugly everywhere, you have nothing else to compare it, so you stop seeing it as ugly and just normal
I live in The Netherlands, also with most residential roads relatively narrow.
My mother of 86 did most of her activities (social, shopping, etc.) by bicycle until 4 years ago, when she developed balance issues.
So she replaced her bicycle with an electrically assisted tricycle, with a large motorcycle case on the back.
Now she still does her local activities, shopping and visits to the physician & physiotherapist by bike.
This helps her to maintain her physical and mental health and she still lives independently.
Really enjoyable content, thank you! And btw "Type" is an interesting name.
Another great video from Dr Ashton juhuuuuuuuu 😊😊👍👍😁😁😍😍Thank you and Jonathan and kids ❤❤😃😃😍😍😊😊
Funny! YT offered translating your comments to English. Tried that and it simply left out "Juhuuuu" and all the smilies 😢
JUHUUUUUUU❤❤👍👍😁😁 @@wora1111 BTW I was writing in english 😃😃😜😜
Great video Ashton. My wife and I lived in Germany as US military personnel from late 1988 to mid 1993. I really loved the driving experience in the more rural areas and hit very used to the more narrow roads compared to the USA. The streets and infrastructure in the US will likely never change which is fortunate for a number of reasons that you touched on and several you didn’t. One my biggest complaints with our roads is that in most neighborhoods there are no sidewalks at all. The edge of the road goes right up to your property. Also, since kids these days don’t generally spend any time outside playing with friends the local governments seem to think sidewalks are needed. That may be a little tongue in cheek but it seems that way. The other thing is that parents of todays kids would be agast at the way children of such a young age are encouraged to go ride their bikes to a friends house or take a city bus as they are in Germany. Shoot, if a child of 8 or 9 years old in the US went to get on a city bus in the US by themselves some well meaning cop would be visiting the parents and accusing them of child abuse. Life is not perfect anywhere but the USA has a problem thinking they can’t learn anything from any other country or culture. Keep up the great work on the videos.
awesome vid as usual
Great video!
I really like your serious but also enterntaining documentaries.
Great deep dive. Professional. Balanced. Intelligent. (In contrast to newspapers and politicians who make us choose sides and fight about it). Really a great video.
Not balanced
She has an opinion and that opinion is that the European streets are better. That's not balanced! She choose a side that's not balance.
@@josephbee4325in what way was what she said biased? She described the difference between road widths and the pros and cons of each
@SincerelyFromStephen Look at the name of the episode insanity. What is she calling crazy? The size of American streets it is a judgment. Call,. There must be a reason for her to say that, and it's her own particular bias. She doesn't point out that the United States is as large as France and Germany combined. And yes, it's on the count. Of cars, you really need to drive almost everywhere in the United States because the place is so large.
Most Europeans have no idea how large the U.S. is.
@@josephbee4325 I studied in Germany for half a year. The neighborhood where I lived was walkable. It had great public transit, and around the neighborhood was an "orchard" where they grew plum trees. It was nice. In some places I think our streets could be smaller. I don't want to walk to Kansas, but maybe to the grocery store. 🙂
Very much love your video. So many points that absolutely made so much sense
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for the high quality videos.
You could have been more careful to clarify what you mean when you are talking about "street width". It can either be the width of the right of way (driving lanes + parking lanes + sidewalks + green strips) or the width of the paved area (driving lanes + parking lanes) or - where the parking lanes are paved with a different material - the width of the asphalt (only the driving lanes).
A big difference between residential streets in Germany and the US is where the "on-street" parking happens. In the US, on-street parking typically happens on the asphalt. And moreover, the parking lane is usually _not_ delineated with paint. Whereas in Germany, the parking lane can be:
non-delineated and on the asphalt,
on the asphalt and marked with white lines,
half on the asphalt and half on the sidewalk level,
or on a different surface off the asphalt (which usually is separated from the asphalt by the drainage "channel" and storm water drains).
The last one is the most common (though by far not universal). The first option is obviously the cheapest one, and in the northern states of the US and Canada has the advantage that the parking lane can easily be cleared of snow. Obviously, the roads appear (psychologically speaking) thinner the further down on the list you go (even when the impermeable surfaces have the same overall width).
Another great video 👍🏻👍🏻 and I endorse also your recommended viewing of City Beautiful, Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes for people who are interested in this topic.
An interesting historical note is that the trend towards wide streets in the US was started at least in part for safety reasons - highway engineers looked at the data which demonstrated that wide roads had fewer crashes - and so the trend for wide roads with wide lanes (I'm not talking about _multi-lane_ roads here, that's a different story!) started. Unfortunately what they didn't consider was that the data they had was for _highways_ and not for _streets_ - and what works well for a 55mph highway 🛣 between towns isn't necessarily what works well for 25mph residential streets 🏘.
But by the time it was dawning on some people that making side streets wide enough to land a jumbo jet just encouraged drivers to go faster - to the detriment of pedestrians 🚶🏻 and cyclists 🚴🏽 and ensuring that the result of any collision 💥 would be much worse - the idea that bigger roads were better and safer was so firmly embedded in the public consciousness that it has been incredibly difficult to shift, Americans are so used to that environment that it's all most of them can understand and cope with.
It is not "difficult to shift" back.
Most Americans in the suburbs prefer the wide streets for several obvious reasons. As far as safety goes, I like wide streets because they allow the driver more time to see and react to kids running into the street. As far as exceeding speed limits, that can be handled with stricter enforcement. I know for a fact that speeding in a residential area carries hefty fines.
Great video on an important topic. Narrow streets that make people drive slower should be the norm in urban environments. The numbers you provided about the financial burden of a household for a wider street were fascinating. Your research and the visual presentation of each of your videos is so, so impressive. Gut gemacht! 👏🏻
21:15 I would argue that you only think about that because the car is still a major mode of transportation, and that you'd likely be happier with all narrow roads if you didn't feel the need to drive.
Your driving in the Bloopers makes me remember most people driving the first time in my neighbourhood, where the widest roads are less than 6m and Cars are Parked on one Side of the Road an the Streetlights are on the street Too, because ther is no Curbs, the Houses are standing direcly beside the Streets. Oh, and yes, my kids still play on the Road. an as i remember as a kid, there was a big Factoryentrance at the end of one of the little wider roads, where dozens of big trucks delivered every day. an we were stll playing on the roads. Oh, and not to forget lot of cul-de-sac roads,with no space to turn, so everybody drives Backwards two to three hunderd meters for Parking, so you can drive forward when leaving.
Another important effect of narrower streets made out of asphalt is lower outside temperature. Especially when narrower streets are combined with more planted trees, as is very often done in Europe. Not only is it prettier, but it also keeps your surroundings cooler.
When I think about my nightmare version of a suburb, it's an American one. The houses all look more or less the same with a front that is almost exclusively garage door for 2 cars and a slab of concrete, the gardens are just grass and don't have any plants, bushes or trees, and wide streets without any trees planted by city or developer.
After you buy your house, you plant trees, shrubs, and flowers where you want them.
I bought in a subdivision with no trees in 1980 and planted a tiny tree in the front yard. Today the same subdivision has plants everywhere and the tree is huge overwhelming the house.
@@Matthew_Loutner that counts as an older suburb now. Newer ones more frequently have an HOA that dictates what you can and can't do with your yard (80% of new homes have an HOA so it's not a matter of choice anymore). All I remember is the smell of gasoline in the morning as everyone in the neighborhood mowed their lawns.
@machtmann2881 HOAs are not that common and they do not generally tell people that they cannot plants flowers and cut the grass.
If you have grass, they are more likely to tell you to keep it cut.
As an American , my nightmare version of a city or a suburb is your pathetic excuse for a living area in Europe. You could NEVER pay me enough to live in anything like those over crowded prisons you call home.
@@gregorybiestek3431have you been in one of the city's? I have been with a student exchange to the US. For me the suburbs felt like a prison, as there was no possibility for independent mobility as a student. At home in Germany it could independently get to school or my sports club, as well as most friends. Even in primary school I could walk 10min to a friend living around 1km away, because infrastructure was build safer for people.
Just as a comparison this big roads in the US has more then triple the death per resident as in Germany.
For comparison a lot of infrastructure in the US seems to me just like concrete and Asphalt wasteland.
Another factor, which is often overlooked is, that a intersection with same number of lanes, which is smaller in dimensions (less wide roads etc.) has a higher capacity of traffic due to smaller intergreen times.
The effort and research you put in your videos is insane. 👍🏻
Glad you like them!
@@TypeAshton I really do. Your journalistic work is deeper than most pieces by the public broadcast in Germany or Austria, not to mention the private media outlets.
As an American in the US, I like wide open roads for cross-country driving but find appealing the idea of narrow streets in residential neighborhoods since they discourage speeding and noise.
...which is exactly the case in Germany. You have narrower streets in residential areas and then you have the Autobahn, which is wide and fast.
Thank you for another informative and very well produced video, Ashton. You should come visit your neighbors to the west sometime. The urban planning and roads in the Netherlands are like Germany, but even more so. New neighborhood developments in the last 20 or so years don't just discourage non-local / through traffic, it is often physically impossible. Whole neighborhoods will have one way to enter and leave them by car. You can't drive in one side of the neighborhood and find your way out on the other side. All traffic is local and many of the streets are about barely 2 (compact) cars wide. Most of the new development on the north side of the river in the city of Nijmegen are set up like this.
I don't get a clear picture of this, but it sounds more like the US and a little bit imprisoning. Classic Germany doesn't imprison, but uses different types of streets.
@@urlauburlaub2222 not at all, they prevent through car traffic but generally have through filters: cars get a dead end but you can walk and bike through with no issue (and they have additional arterial multiuse pathways). I don't know if that's what GP was thinking about but look at a map of Beuningen or Bemmel to get an idea. It does not imprison, it just prevents the neighborhood being used as a car shortcut.
If I’m not mistaken the Netherlands is the only place in Europe that applies the results of scientific research in the area of urban design. Sadly, the rest of Europe is far behind. Absolutely all other places just do what “sounds reasonable” to the person that’s currently in charge.
Going from Germany to the Neatherlands is like going from the USA to Germany...after all Germany still has a very car centered infrastructure planning...
Cant imagine the mental crisis an american driver would have in the Neatherlands :D
@@Bob-nc5hzah ok, understand. thank you.
Very good video well done👍🏼
Great content well presented!
Hej , in Copenhagen we have mostly local narrow streets but we also have wide streets that are use to cross the city rapidly . One big difference with the streets in the USA is that , those wide streets , all have a bicycle path ( 1 to 2 meters wide on each side of the road ) and that these are normally about 10 cm higher than the street level ( between the street and the sidewalk ) ,it makes cycling very safe.
In the old town streets are very ,very narrow so, most of them are oneway streets ( except for bicycles ) .
The United States has 22,000 miles of bicycle lanes adjoining roadways and no one uses them.
@@Matthew_Loutneryou mean that painted nonsense next to highways? German regulations *require* a physical separation above 30 mph, else it's not considered a bike lane.
@kailahmann1823 It is not "nonsense" and you need to work on getting your arrogant attitude straightened up.
@@Matthew_Loutnera rule for bike lanes: If you'd let your 8-year old bike there alone, then its good. On those painted highway line I wouldn't even dare to bike myself - because drivers regularly drive over the line.
@kailahmann1823 According to law, children are required to bike on the sidewalk. Is that a problem?
The white lines are for adults.
I have never seen a driver drive over the line. Who told you they "regularly do it" ?
Drivers are continually watching for any upcoming obstacles. They can see bicycle riders and do not need a white line to see bicycle riders.
I just had to stop the video and comment on this: 1 mile of urban road costs $8-$10 million in the US, here in the UK it costs an average of £30 million (roughly $38 million). So about four times as much. This is insane!
Thanks for the stats, I was thinking similarly that labour costs are generally lower in the US. It's probably much higher here in Australia too.
Excellent video as usual. Thanks .
Glad you enjoyed it
was in Germany this past summer with a rental car. loved it. the small roads are an attraction for me. it's not just the roads, the drivers are just better than in north America. curtesy is mandatory when you drive, not an option
The width of residential roads in the US is insane.
Here in Norway a divided 2 lane road is 12-12.5m wide total with the lanes between markings each being 3.5m wide. These are for speeds up to 90kmh btw.
Undivided highways can be anywhere from 6.5 to 9m wide depending speed (90 or 80), amount of traffic and terrain. The lane width varies from 2.75 to 3.25m. These roads will always have solid white edge lines and yellow center line with various dashed patterns or solid. Similar to US markings, but with way less solid lines.
Main residential streets are 5.5-6m wide and possibly a 1.5m sidewalk on one or both sides. Smaller residential roads, typically dead ends, can be 3.5-4.5m wide.
basically the same standards as in Germany. 5.6m would be the "real" residential without a bus line (20 mph shared for cars and cyclists), 6.5m the typical main street (30 mph, with a separated bike lane). Those "in between" (I think, Americans call them "collector roads") are whatever is possible.
You are amazing with your well researched material - spot on
In the Seattle suburbs, the roads are almost 24' wide and people park in the street on both sides, leaving you with 2 - 3 feet of clearance to drive down them, if you have a normal vehicle.
I loved having wide streets growing up to play games, to have block parties, to have better vistas, and to allow my relatives a spot to park their Winnebago (back when traveling the country was affordable).
I grew up in Santa Clara County! San Jose is where we partied before the cost of living got runaway insane.
Bike distances are huge in California. That's why very few do it.
All of your videos are amazing.
Hahaa Jonathan's "No gopro was harmed for the making of this film" made my day!
May I add another thought to the topic? As our climate warms up more and more, keep in mind how much heat the road stores and radiates back....... so the wider the road, the less green spaces - the hotter the city will be during the summer!
Wide, straight streets increase likelihood of cars hitting pedestrians on cross walks. Many people go into a kind of vegetative state driving there and can not react properly to any event, like people crossing on a cross walk.
On my former workplace we had a car park on the other side of the street and a pedestrian crossing to get over it. It's about 300 m straight in one direction and 1.5 km in the other, also there is small street coming onto the main street shortly to the side of the pedestrian crossing. About 15-30% of people would neglect the pedestrian crossing. Many would only start to slow down 30 m before the crossing, even though you could see for 200 m that someone would be crossing there, when you arrive. One the small street turning right 15% of people would only look left if a car on the main street is coming, then step on the gas and having to break aprubtly for a pedestrian crossing 5 m later. Sometimes so the next car turning right just slams into the back of the car that just did an emergency breaking.
Wide, straight streets make people sleep walk their cars. At least in 🇩🇪
Another well thought through content Ashton, as you were right on point, Finely done. 🙂 Interestingly, when I migrated to US (CA) many eons ago, that was my exact impression; 'Why are streets so damn wide?! Personally, I never cared for them, as I find them an eye sore. Thankfully, I will be retiring in Iberian Peninsula filled with narrow roads and stone paved streets, reminiscing of good'ol days. 👍
Great job, highest quality. Excellent analysis.
Much appreciated!
Some of the differences in width is due to when the roads were built. A lot of the buildings in Germany date back over 100 years with many much older. The access streets were not as wide then because they did not need to be. Flash forward to today and, as you saw, they can be pretty narrow and "interesting" to accommodate modern traffic. In the eastern US the streets can follow similar patterns and be pretty irregular and narrow (driven in Boston or Baltimore lately?). West of the Appalachian Mountains it is another matter. The towns and their infrastructure was built differently. Commerce was a consideration too. Making them big enough for two wagons with four horse teams to pass with an additional one parked for unloading required great width. Look at the old pictures available of both countries. Streets in the "new" US towns were wider. This pattern just stuck as the standard and hasn't changed much. Also being so car centric, we needed places to park our cars and the width needed to be greater to provide a place to park near our destination, be it the commercial area or home. Yes, some cities have gone overboard on street size, but a lot have not. California does have pretty unnecessarily wide streets, but where my friends live in Wichita, KS the residential streets are pretty practical, about 2 1/2 cars wide, to allow for passing parked cars and allow bicycles to share the roads. An unusual feature is that there are very few sidewalks outside major roads, reducing the impermeable infrastructure. This harkens back to a previous video of yours about multiuse structures in Germany not being allowed in the US outside of larger cities coming into play. No first floor stores with living quarters above. Good story and keep up the good work. You are always a key part of my Sunday mornings.
She did address this though at the start of the video, the common theory that the US has bigger roads because of when they were built (i.e. during automobile era). But turned out that’s not a sufficient explanation, because many places in the US with huge roads were actually built long before automobiles.
I already drove cars in the US and I am coming from Germany. To me it seems driving narrow roads is 90% a matter of getting used to it. It is a pain to get used to but quickly turns to routine - and on the long run it keeps driving more „interesting“ and optically more satisfying. I also think the times of oversized US cars with enormous turn around radia are gone in the US also. If You are used to smaller dimensions allover it does not bother You. I did not yet think about the financial aspect - but Yes if Your home street is being repaired they also charge the neiborhood for that. Also a Plus for narrow roed design.
Your comments regarding the elderly really touched me. My mother is starting to really struggle with driving and public transportation doesn’t help; she gets too much money from her pension to get the discounted dial-a-ride, yet the Bus closest to her home is a MILE AWAY. Her option now is ME! 😢