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We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

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Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#241

Post by jacques_chester »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #77
oftenwrong wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give you an idea: I have a 3 grocers within walking distance, and I will usually just go buy what I need for whatever I am going to make the same day. One bag is usually fine. I have never purchased that much fertilizer, but I have purchased a 50lb bag of sand at the hardware store on the corner. It is so close, I would be surprised if my walk home was not shorter than your wife's walk back to her car. Living in t…

Well, how many people can physically live as close to those things as you do without having a 1-hardware-store-per-100-feet or 3-grocers-per-square-mile density?

I'm on the Upper West Side. 42,000 per square kilometre. More people live in these 500 hectares than the hundreds of square kilometres of Darwin where I grew up.

At the end of my street there is a cleaner, a hardware store, grocery store and restaurant. Within view of the grocery store is another grocery store. A street over from the hardware store is another hardware store. Two streets down? Another restaurant.

You get the idea. And then if I need something really specialised, I hop on a train and go to one of the mini-districts where I can find a whole street of something. Or I ring them, or visit their website, and get it delivered. A month ago I was in a three-story cloth store with a friend. On a street full of cloth stores. I had no idea such things existed. But they do. There's a curtain district. A street where I find several places selling mattresses. Famously, a street of jewelers. Again: you get the idea.

Living a middle-class life in a dense city is a kind of convenient normally reserved for the rich.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#242

Post by bschwindHN »

peterwwillis wrote: post #166
btingle wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do I look like, mother Theresa? It's not my job to solve the city's homelessness problem. Do you mean to say that politicians/public officials/etc should be dealing with the problem?

No, I'm saying citizens should solve the problem. And I know it's not your job. It's nobody's job. That's why nothing has been done. I mean, the stupidest thing about this is this isn't that hard a problem to solve. Homeless people are just regular people with a problem and no resources to fix it. You provide them resources and help and they are no longer homeless and no longer a nuisance. Instead, people see them li…

What concrete steps are you taking to solve this that others could emulate?

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#243

Post by dsfyu404ed »

munk-a wrote: post #73
reaperducer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Why? Studies show that narrower streets cause cars to drive more slowly, making neighborhoods more livable. (Less noise, among other factors.) There are other methods used that also cause cars to slow down - road humps, textured (fake cobblestone) crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, pedestrian bump-outs, replacing parallel parking with angled end-in parking, etc... When you have raised sidewalks traffic spee…

Also, amusingly, it's usually the case that everyone gets where they're going faster if roads are cut down to a single lane (or 2-lane, depending on if you count oncoming traffic) because a complication in car flow brought on from complex passing interactions is highly reduced. This holds ever for the country roads with a lot of passing-legal portions.

That's false if left turns are permitted.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#244

Post by u801e »

drb91 wrote: post #171
AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

> bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bit of traffic, or dropping a few bucks on an Uber/Lyft. How can this be true? Public transit allows your attention to wander and typically is much, much faster than traffic. Adding uber/lyft will get two of the worst attributes: traffic and high cost, although you’ll be able to do something else simultaneously. Furthermore, it’s not clear how parking fees affe…

It really depends on the public transit system. For me, driving to work takes about 8 minutes. Biking to work takes about 12 minutes. Walking to work takes about 35 minutes. Taking the bus to work takes about 45 minutes (which includes one transfer).

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#245

Post by saosebastiao »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

> It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bit of traffic, or dropping a few bucks on an Uber/Lyft.

The solution is to charge correct prices. Nobody in the US knows what the actual societal and cost burden of driving is, because none of them pay for it. Yes, that would make it "too expensive" to drive for those at the margin, if that didn't happen it wouldn't be a solution.

The way that you get the benefit of correct prices without burdening the poor specifically is to refund the difference via a general tax mechanism like the income tax. If driving taxes go up by $5000/yr but income taxes go down by $5000/yr, then the net burden is zero for those who don't change their behavior but it's a net benefit for those who do.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#246

Post by epage »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #189
AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

>> It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". It's more like the other way around: the idea is to make public transport cheap and efficient enough that it's a reasonable alternative to driving everywhere. >> For example I live in a very public transit friendly city, but…

> It's more like the other way around: the idea is to make public transport cheap and efficient enough that it's a reasonable alternative to driving everywhere.

In Austin, they took the perspective "if we won't build it, they won't come". After the unwanted growth happened, it sure feels like the sentiment is "if we don't build it, they won't drive." There are fundamental problems with the driving infrastructure and instead of addressing it, they patch over it with toll roads, some planned or are only a quarter mile long, to allow "those who care (can afford)" through. They ignore major issues, like if one of the major bridges needs work or goes out, the city will be devastated.

When the limited public transport options do come up, they've seemed to be forward looking projects which is fine except they don't do anything about all of the other problems.

> I live in a small town on the South coast of England, which just happens to have one of the largest populations of homeless people, nationally. It also has very good public transport, namely, buses, that are always full. I've never seen a homeless person using a bus as crashing space, or causing trouble of any sort.

My guess is that if this isn't due to better services for the homeless, then the main factor is probably the local climate.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#247

Post by epage »

st26 wrote: post #235
AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bit of traffic It's chicken and egg. Public transit needs ridership to get better. It won't get ridership until it's better. The large stick of presenting more of the previously hidden costs of driving, is partly banking on public transit getting better as more people are nudged towards it…

> It's chicken and egg. Public transit needs ridership to get better. It won't get ridership until it's better.

This is why I'm really happy to see in my area two towns are putting in a rapid transit bus system between all the major hubs (two malls, a downtown, regional transport, and two universities) and the universities are getting all students, faculty, and staff plus families passes. These passes will also cover regional transit (mostly useful to get to the airport).

There is enough incentive in all of this for a massive influx of people to use public transit and make it a way of life (the universities signed 10 year contracts) such that I hope the way of life will have sticking power if they don't renew the contracts.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#248

Post by rorykoehler »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #130

It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". On the surface that kind of makes sense, using a large stick to strongly encourage change, but I think at its core it misses a huge portion of the problem, which is that bad public transit is 10x worse than just sitting in a bi…

>"make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit".

Two observations.

1) We need to think outside of the box.

2) We need to redefine what public transportation means. I would classify Uber/Lyft and dockless bikes/escooters as public transportation, at least from a city planning perspective.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#249

Post by kasey_junk »

maxsilver wrote: post #231
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". It's more like the other way around: the idea is to make public transport cheap and efficient enough that it's a reasonable alternative to driving everywhere. >> For example I live in a very public transit friendly city, but…

> It's more like the other way around: the idea is to make public transport cheap and efficient enough that it's a reasonable alternative to driving everywhere. That would be nice, but that's not the general opinion of urbanists in the US. They (generalizing) really do believe as the parent describes, to "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit", and they truly believ…

So, by your definition I’m an urbanist.

I don’t hate electric cars more than gas cars, what I will say is that electric cars don’t solve a lot of the externalities that actually bother me on a day to day basis (that said of course I would prefer all vehicles switch off of gasoline),

My big issues are that cars take more space than other forms of transport, cars endanger me more frequently when I’m trying to do my thing & we expend insane resources on supporting car centric lifestyles that we needn’t expend.

Basically I’m tired of subsidizing other peoples car centric life styles at the expense of my own.

Re: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars (2016)

#250

Post by rorykoehler »

calohorn wrote: post #222
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It seems this discussion comes up fairly often, and the solution is almost always some variation of "make driving too expensive and/or too inconvenient, to force people to use public transit". It's more like the other way around: the idea is to make public transport cheap and efficient enough that it's a reasonable alternative to driving everywhere. >> For example I live in a very public transit friendly city, but…

>> If homeless people on buses are a problem where you live, that has nothing to do with public transport in general. When you hear of people being aggressive, high, inconsiderate, or here in Portland two people had their throats slit on the light rail recently near my house, it makes the public not feel comfortable using the public transportation. Since it's called public transportation and these things effect the p…

It has nothing to do with public transportation. Wrong level of abstraction. It has to do with the fact the US is turning into a inequality dystopia.
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