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Urban highways destroy wealth

urbankchoze.blogspot.com

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Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#51

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

DrScump wrote: post #16
lnanek2 wrote: post #5

Having some trouble swallowing this paragraph: " The richest metropolitan areas in the US are San José, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Washington, Houston, New York, Portland, Hartford and Salt Lake City. Areas with relatively few urban highways are overrepresented in that list, with Houston being the one big exception. " When I need to get anywhere in New York, most of the time I am better off grabbing the west sid…

With respect to San Jose, it's a crock. The only remotely "urban" area is downtown, and that is fully served with highways (880, 280/680, 87). Light rail is a joke, with routes having been chosen for political reasons rather than true demand, and it is useless for transporting goods. This article, like many on the topic, also take a one-dimensional view of highways -- as people movers. The flow of goods and services…

And two of those highways (87 and 280) are pretty decent sized barriers between neighborhoods and downtown. Ever try walking from Diridon to SJSU or the Federal Building? There's also a lot of historic housing south of SJSU cut off by 280.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#52

Post by kchoze »

msandford wrote: post #39
lmm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good mass transit that got cars off congested roads would speed your kind of journey just as much as building urban motorways, and be more effective overall.

No it wouldn't, it would just allow more people to move even further out! I call this the law of constant misery; people continue to move further and further out as far as a roughly 45 minute commute will allow them. The better a transit system gets, the further the reach of the roads to the city center in 45 minutes, the bigger the city grows. There's nothing that can be done to stop this without extremely draconian…

Author here.

The principle you refer to here is Marchetti's constant. It's the idea that people will make decisions about where to live and work to achieve an average commute time of 30 to 45 minutes in general. So the faster transport options are, the farther from their workplace people will live.

And yes, IF you already have a complete network of urban freeways in a metropolitan region, THEN using fast transit options like commuter rail or commuter buses can help take people off of the highways, freeing up space for more people living even farther away. A good example of this "transit as highway capacity extension" approach is the commuter rails in North American cities that only go downtown during peak AM and go to the suburbs in peak PM, and not running the rest of the day. These forms of transit clearly exist to take pressure off of the highways at their most congested time, to free up the space for even more cars and perpetuate highway-oriented development.

Good transit options in the absence of highways have a different impact. And as you mentioned, transforming highways into expensive toll roads also can serve to deter sprawl built along them.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#53

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

DrScump wrote: post #16
lnanek2 wrote: post #5

Having some trouble swallowing this paragraph: " The richest metropolitan areas in the US are San José, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Washington, Houston, New York, Portland, Hartford and Salt Lake City. Areas with relatively few urban highways are overrepresented in that list, with Houston being the one big exception. " When I need to get anywhere in New York, most of the time I am better off grabbing the west sid…

With respect to San Jose, it's a crock. The only remotely "urban" area is downtown, and that is fully served with highways (880, 280/680, 87). Light rail is a joke, with routes having been chosen for political reasons rather than true demand, and it is useless for transporting goods. This article, like many on the topic, also take a one-dimensional view of highways -- as people movers. The flow of goods and services…

Significant portions of 87 and 280 ringing downtown San Jose are elevated. That doesn't spell critical infrastructure to me, in event of an earthquake.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#54

Post by gr3yh47 »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #47
superuser2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not exaggerating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Roads Urban highways in the US are a facet of the American Dream vision of the suburbs as "a safe place to raise your kids," which is basically a euphemism for "far away from the scary minorities who live in cities."

Well, out of curiosity, do you think suburbs are actually safer than inner cities?

crime data would seem to indicate so

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#55

Post by pmiller2 »

kaybe wrote: post #43
awjr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BART + fold-up bicycle?

Or/And, if safe storage exists at both ends, bicycle with electric support, which should increase the no-sweat speed even further.

Electric and fold-up are both decent options. I rate them both above taking Muni and below just walking for myself. It still irks me that I can't just hop off a train at Embarcadero and onto a local BART train to somewhere closer to work. Once again, as in so many other situations, the last mile is the killer. :(

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#56

Post by cauterized »

lnanek2 wrote: post #5

Having some trouble swallowing this paragraph: " The richest metropolitan areas in the US are San José, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Washington, Houston, New York, Portland, Hartford and Salt Lake City. Areas with relatively few urban highways are overrepresented in that list, with Houston being the one big exception. " When I need to get anywhere in New York, most of the time I am better off grabbing the west sid…

When you need to get anywhere in New York, you're better off hopping on the subway than sitting in traffic.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#57

Post by splitrocket »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #54
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, out of curiosity, do you think suburbs are actually safer than inner cities?

crime data would seem to indicate so

However, mortality data would disagree.

Generally speaking, in cities you are more likely to be the victim of homicide and crime. In suburban and rural environments you are substantially more likely to be killed/injured in general.

http://science.time.com/2013/07/23/in-town-versus-country-it...

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#58

Post by ryandrake »

pmiller2 wrote: post #9
chad_oliver wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem were they meant to solve? (That's a serious question. I'm interesting in hearing how other people view the purpose of an urban highway.)

I would think it's primarily moving people from point A to point B (or, possibly from point C to point D via some stretch in between A and B). [Begin Rant] This brings up the biggest problem I have with Bay Area public trasnportation. I live 11 miles from work, but it's impossible to get there via any reasonable public transportation-based route in less than 1 hour. On flat land, I can bike at least 50% faster than t…

And that's just the situation in SF itself. Consider yourself lucky that BART is even an option. Try going from somewhere not-SF to somewhere else not-SF. Chances are, public transit is not even available, let alone a realistic option. The Bay Area public transit system is a disgrace and a joke. Multiple transit agencies that apparently don't know about each other. Unsynchronized, disconnected, few good ways to transfer from one to the other, and schedules that don't make sense.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#59

Post by SFjulie1 »

JackFr wrote: post #49
SFjulie1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shortening the time it takes to go from north to south. All island are plagued with the "points of entries and congestions". Montréal is 30x40km island. With limited bridges. So by making a large artery that almost lead people from bridge to bridge (N/S) you may think you can create a traffic that will not interfere with the inter urban traffic... (laminarizing) thus getting rid of intra congestion. (Since it is in a…

With regard to the island problem, in Manhattan any bridge or tunnel which leads from a highway and primarily dumps you onto a local streets has a toll on the way in. This is expressly a throttling measure, as it's considered better to have a traffic jam on the highway going in rather than gridlock -- literal gridlock -- on the local streets.

Well, it makes sense.

Why don't all city/stated paid engineers paid with public money don't work like and open knowledge community?

A medieval based city (Europe) is often with bridges on a river.

US squared big cities are often on rivers.

And probably the same everywhere. Flux congestion due to bi partition of graphs is such a common pattern out there.

The rivers are here because they were normal way of communications transport. But if it is not a river, it can be highways, mountains...

I may be an idiot but google does not show papers, or stackoverflow, or public conference when I search for "how to solve traffic congestion in city with a bridge". Every single city fight the problem on their own.

Why isn't this problem on the public place?

My answer is engineers don't have the right culture. They believe in canonical ways of doing and do not accept to be scrutinized or share.

Engineers nowadays are for me like a medieval corporation stuck to defend their own privileges at the expand of the community. Maybe it is time to question the education system that build experts.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#60

Post by ryandrake »

jacobolus wrote: post #14
chad_oliver wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem were they meant to solve? (That's a serious question. I'm interesting in hearing how other people view the purpose of an urban highway.)

They were meant to get people from far out of the city into the city, fast, in a way that would only be accessible to professional-class whites, so that they could keep downtown jobs while moving their families to the suburbs and stop spending their property tax money on poor brown people.

Oh, great, now highway design is racially charged. Is there any topic left to discuss anymore that can't be twisted into a conspiracy against some race or gender? Next up: "C++ is not just an unsafe language, its syntax was created specifically to exclude people of color!"
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