With its lower densities and longer distances, is suburbia inherently incompatible with cycling for transportation, or could high-quality protected bike infrastructure make this environment comfortable and practical to bike in? While not all suburbs are created equal, you might be surprised at how much potential there is.
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Data & Analysis:
The data analysis was done in R, using the ‘osmdata’ package to pull data from OpenStreetMap and using ‘cancensus’ and ‘tidycensus’ to access Canadian and American population data.
References:
Median commute in different parts of the Los Angeles metro area: https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ej_jhfit_scag_2021trb.pdf?1612993870
31 Comments
A lot of those places could use more gyms.
I live in the Dallas region, and they are correct about the biking potential. You can have two pharmacies about three blocks apart, multiple schools about 2 miles apart, and other amenities in the shopping centers. Unfortunately, to get to them the area is awash in stroads.
Dallas could be great. Lots of neighborhoods could easily be bikable and we have decent city transit. Attempts at bike infrastructure though are miserable. Lol
I live on a flight path great for gazing without the noise, near freight and commuter lines, a metro line, many bus lines, bike lanes, am not far from a rail junction, a highway, a large park with a stadium in it and two massive shopping malls. It's an urbanist paradise with a bit of everything.
Tapering out to St. Laurent via TMR is such a forgiving ride. I don't like the suburbs much at all but it is wild to live just south of Marché Centrale's new bike path and be able to check out different less dense parts of the city so easily while living in old row housing just to the southeast. I bike on the road by Crémazie at night and it is pretty forgiving, it's not as scarily massive as in US cities although close ebough. I value safety but am part of the minority of humans who feel more comfortable out there – the paths are integral to getting higher speeds and getting to places more quickly and safely as possible with zero contact with cards.. I just hit 1700km in Montréal this year and can back that up on Strava. I should start my own channel!
But seriously, my existence has become a love letter to Parc X, Villeray and Ahuntsic-Cartierville and your channel is a massive exploration for my expiration and understanding of this city. Thank you!
Is it really important to explain that Oshawa is not the same as Ottawa? Do people confuse them?
Bikes only have two wheels, which isn't enough to carry your typical American
I make this very point lot when people say bike infrastructure is just for Downtown, and point out that by judiciously adding protected infra in a lot of areas of the suburbs, they could be unlocked for cycling safely to do local errands by bike. Even just legalizing sidewalk cycling would empower more people to do what they're already doing, riding on little-used sidewalks along stroads, as a way to be and feel safer when cycling between a subdivision and a local destination such as schools, stores, etc.
Unfortunately, many suburban residential streets, which should be quiet with low-speed traffic are often designed to be so wide, with such sweeping turns and often without sidewalks, that it feels quite normal to drive 40 or 50 km/h there, which significantly increases the likelihood of serious injury or death in the event a motor vehicle strikes a pedestrian or cyclist.
I live in Sweden in a neighborhood with good bike infrastructure. All my neighbors have a car, but almost nobody drives to work. The type of trips that you discussed in this video are the only trips that we take by car in my suburb. If you try to go shopping with a bicycle, you will never want to do it again. We should embrace the good part of cars. Why should we make our lives harder?
Making you hate your life if you’re not in a car is the most accurate thing I’ve heard all day.
NO!
If I care about someone, I tell them do not bicycle on busy roads even if there are bike lanes.
You guys? Please do so. Especially do so in the early and late hours where sun is in faces, drunks may be on the road and my favorite distracted drivers are out all day long!
It's even a lot faster with a Ebike, Ebikes are the future, i have one and use it more than my car.
This is all super solid analysis, and I’m really impressed by how much hard work you put into this!
And just as a side thing, as a Dallas resident, while I can confirm that many common destinations (like schools or cafes or pharmacies) are ostensibly bikeable in Dallas if solely using distance as metric, the reality—as you surmised—doesn’t always align with that hope.
And in addition to Dallas’s road infrastructure being a huge impediment (as you had surmised), another daunting factor in this area happens to be the elevation changes. Or to put it another way: many would-be biking destinations from my house would require a lot of biking up hills that, while maybe not impossible to manage on a bike, would likely be quite an impediment to an average biker (including me).
So if I might toss out an idea if perhaps you were to sometime do a “version 2” of this analysis—might it be possible to potentially also incorporate each area’s overall elevation changes into its bikeability scores? If so, I think that that could paint much more of a picture of the bikability state of each area?
They are also perfect for motor biking without mufflers.
Amazing analysis. I'm amazed just how good Canada's suburbs are. Here I was as a Canadian giving up on our suburbs lol
My god, this video must've taken forever. That's a lot of data visualization.
Do they even lift?? I know I can always count on Oh the Urbanity to ask the important questions 😂
7:42 fellow R fan 🙂
as someone who grew up in fairfax county within the highlighted region, unfortunately school trips would still have to be by bus or car unless they redistrict the school zones which i don’t see happening anytime soon. There’s a lot of county politics with parents on that one, the richest areas are districted for schools that produce the best academics. I had to go to high school 11 miles away with 2 different high schools within biking distance. Biking to the store was common for me though!
Great video, good simplifications to get the point across. Though don’t discount the impact of terrain and slope of roads as a deterrent to cycling.
I can say from experience that, yes, suburbs can actually be made bikeable with just a bit of bike-focused infrastructure. Oak Brook, IL is… well, a big chunk of suburbia, complete with office parks, big-box store strip malls, a really big satellite mall and lots and lots of suburban sprawl – albeit with a bit of a weird and lopsided balance as it actually has very little in the way of residential zoning and a very large amount of office parks relative to everything else. But what it also has is two very notable things: nature reserves and, most importantly in terms of relevance, bike paths. Very nice, fancy bike paths that weave throughout the "town" and connect to many points of interest, such as the McDonalds Corporate Headquarters Compound (which doubles as a nature reserve), the Oak Brook Park District, the entire length of Joliet Road, and even the Oakbrook Center Mall (that big satellite mall I mentioned). These bike paths also connect to or run most of the residential subdivisions allowing for easy access.
10:23 Thank you for discussing the 132 Ave Bike Lane project in Edmonton 👍
I live in Orange County, CA and it’s bikable but man is it unsafe. Between the bigger grids, oversized vehicles, and 60 mph stroads, it is not a fun place to bike. I can only really think of 2 places near me where I could bike to and be separated from the road. I biked about 16 miles round trip to work and half my trip was on the bike death trap that is PCH. I really wish my city was better at implementing bike infrastructure because it’s some of the best weather year round, with flat streets for miles.
I live in Salt Lake County, and can confirm. I started cycling for transportation when I returned to Salt Lake after a year in NYC and I realized that cycling in SLC was time-equivalent to walking in Manhattan.
Another thing that makes suburbs feel more distant is the roads that wind around. But bike paths could make a much more direct path
When I have stayed in Europe & ask for a local gym, I get laughed at.
Big Hills, extreme weather, high speed dangerous roads. As big as distance.
I have gym in my basement. Then you add exercise from walking & cycling
Surrey ( Vancouver ) is # 1 most dangerous (high crime) city in Canada according to statitis Canada most dangerous cities . You better take your own car .
If every suburb city added protected bike lanes to every arterial cycling would pop off. With an ebike you could fly down them going 25mi/40kmph.
I'm from Nassau county and everything could be an easy bike ride away if it weren't for the overabundance of stroads on every side
Does anyone know of an interactive map that provides this data with walk and bike info?