This slot based system is hell for pedestrians and bicycles. Let’s put powered vehicles underground and reserve the surface for humans.
“Without tunnels we’ll be in traffic hell forever” -Elon Musk
Light Traffic
31–40 of 124 posts
Re: Light Traffic
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
re shared spaces, from the wikipedia: > Hans Monderman and others have suggested that, by creating a greater sense of uncertainty and making it unclear who has priority, drivers will reduce their speed, in turn reducing the dominance of vehicles, reducing road casualty rates, and improving safety for other road users. clearly, Hans Monderman has never driven in Mumbai, India.
I think that shared spaces make sense in small towns, university campuses, and other contexts where traffic flow is low due to the inherent context (and, above all, where pedestrians can support each other). But for modest to high volume traffic, roundabouts are better (although if the traffic flow is constant, you usually have to place the crossings a bit further away from the center of the roundabout, which makes i…
They actually introduced a shared space at Amsterdam Central Station about 1-2 years ago that I cross daily. The shared space is right next to the incredibly busy ferries and perpendicular to what used to be a bicycle lane. It's now one big square shared by bicycles, pedestrians and scooters.
It does work incredibly well and there are rarely any accidents. The downside however is that it's quite a struggle to cross. It makes me dread to leave the ferry and enter the warzone once again every morning. I understand that it is designed to make me uncomfortable, but it is taken to such an extend that I don't even really want to walk there.
Re: Light Traffic
#33What would people give the odds we achieve a world of autonomous flying drone transport for local travel before a world of autonomous self-driving cars? It seems right now like we’re really close with self-driving cars but objectively flying ones would be a lot better: Shorter distances to travel (point to point), easier to implement collision avoidance, faster, no need for this crazy infrastructure we build/maintain…
Drones are far too loud.
Re: Light Traffic
#34There's been a marked tendency to replace intersections with roundabouts and shared spaces ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space ) in many places, including the outskirts of Lisbon (as well as a few legendary mazes in Britain). There was even a BBC report on the latter (which I can't find right now, as usual, only a follow-up: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33303031 ). Drawing a (admittedly inaccurate) parallel wi…
Roundabout throughput drops when traffic load increases. They are useful (and great) for low volume traffic/suburbs.
Even for large roundabouts with traffic lights?
Re: Light Traffic
#35What are the benefits of this proposal when compared to roundabouts?
I live in the UK where roundabouts are almost everywhere. While they are definitely more efficient than crossroads they still have some flow control issues in some scenarios: each joining road effectively controls the flow of the next joining road further along the roundabout through priority, this is both a strength (automatic flow control) and a weakness (unbalanced flow of joining roads): Imagine a simple roundabout in place of an crossroad with 4 joining roads, if only two joining roads next to each other are active and of those two, the one to the right has an endless contiguous flow, then all traffic on the road to the left is blocked - it's basically waiting for road to the right to be blocked by someone coming onto the roundabout from the next road along.
As a result we have traffic lights on roundabouts as well sometimes, which prevents this unfairness but also takes them back closer to the efficiency of a crossroad.
I think the best combinations would be autonomous + roundabouts, I think fast crossroads are just dangerous (autonomous or not). Roundabouts force vehicles to slow down due to the forced turn and negotiate one stream of traffic going in one direction rather than two streams going in up to 4 directions at speed. The potential injury from the later is so much higher it's a non-argument.
Re: Light Traffic
#36A few thoughts on this matter:
1. Roundabouts are safer and better with human drivers but bad from a usability standpoint. It's annoying to drive, slower, and makes people feel nauseous when driving through many. When we have road usage of autonomous vehicles surpassing 50%, I suggest to remove them.
2. Two-Leveled intersections without left turns seem cost effective and highly advantageous in cities. To lower the cost even further, it may be possible to design them for vehicles only (much lower ceilings needed, so much lower cost). Left turns can be achieved (especially in the US this is viable) bu going right three times (going around the block). Two-leveled intersections without left turns can reach 100% capacity in all lanes from all directions.
3. Lane-specific traffic light already may increase efficiency on intersections. Imagine a 2x2 intersection from both directions: the right turns can be green (where cars turn right on the rightmost lane) while through-traffic can use the left lane.
Re: Light Traffic
#37I feel like so many similar proposals tend to ignore how saturated our roads are, how expensive the road infrastructure maintenance is, and how fast people expect to drive (because of long commutes from endless suburbs).
We need to find innovative ways to implement forms of collective transportation (rail or what not) in already dense areas. Rail/subways have already proven how effective they are. Autonomous vehicles are necessary to improve road safety, maybe they can help slightly reduce the amount space used by roads, but they won't solve most of the problems we have today on our unsustainable roads.
Re: Light Traffic
#38There's been a marked tendency to replace intersections with roundabouts and shared spaces ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space ) in many places, including the outskirts of Lisbon (as well as a few legendary mazes in Britain). There was even a BBC report on the latter (which I can't find right now, as usual, only a follow-up: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33303031 ). Drawing a (admittedly inaccurate) parallel wi…
In Barcelona they have "Superblocks"
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...
Re: Light Traffic
#39For fucks sake, where are the pedestrians??
On roads where you can drive 30+MPH (50 KMPH+), I would suggest removing any possiblity for pedestrians to cross. Either make the road 20MPH (30KMPH) max where all space is shared with pedestrians, bicycles and cars - or make much better, safer & faster 50KMPH+ roads.
Re: Light Traffic
#40What about pedestrians? For me, a future in which vehicles have more control of our public spaces is worse than the present, no matter the efficiency of the arrangement. Many American cities are notorious for being designed for the automobile, not the human. Let's not double down. More Ramblas!
It is kind of funny because pedestrian crossings already kind of work like this in China. The car will never ever stop for you, rather, it will adjust its speed and swerve slightly to avoid a collision (if expected, if unexpected, then its a totally different game). Likewise, the pedestrian is expected to move in a consistent direction and adjust their speed to avoid being in the way of a car. The result is that car…
"The car will never ever stop for you"
This hasn't been my experience. At least twice in the last 7 years, a car has stopped when about to do a right-on-red, to allow me to cross. Sure, that's 0.01% of the time, but not never :)
"The car will ... will adjust its speed and swerve slightly to avoid a collision"
This also does not match my experience. Whether or not I make eye contact with a driver, it's very rare that they make enough of an adjustment to their speed or direction to avoid a collision. I always have to stop, or adjust my speed+/direction.