Live data from Hacker News

No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

sfchronicle.com

61–70 of 236 posts

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#61
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bikes shouldn't share the lane with pedestrians any more than they should share it with cars. In an ideal world they would look more like Danish ones, with all 3 separated by at least a small kerb. This helps pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike. Cycling in Denmark was the best cycling experience I ever had relative to the way bike lanes are designed (definitely not related to the cyclists that were sometimes fal…

I'd just like to point out that we've known that mixing classes of traffic in the same space is bad for safety since the industrial revolution brought heavy rolling objects to the workplace. This stuff is well known. It's a politics and resources problem.

If you bother to build the cycling lane then differentiating it a bit more obviously from the sidewalk is not such a big expenditure. Loot at this [0] setup (just outside of Copenhagen). Simply having a few centimeters of difference in height between the 3 lanes (pedestrians, bikes, cars) makes them very obvious and a lot harder to accidentally cross them. It also allows treating the cycling lane as another traffic lane with its own road markings and everything. [1]

It doesn't feel like the extra kerb is a matter of cost as much as of "sharing" the environment. So the expectation is "there won't be too many bikes so pedestrians can just use the entire sidewalk when needed". This just leads to more cyclists trying their luck on the street with the cars which are more predictable than pedestrians.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6450742,12.4589657,3a,75y,28...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.614447,12.475333,3a,75y,294....

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#62
post #58
post #51

>His conclusion: When cities shut streets off to cars, people drive less. The myth of a “carmageddon”-style traffic jam is apparently overblown. This seems to completely ignore the fact that what actually has occured here is that the reduction of drivers is a negative for those drivers. Those drivers now either have to cycle or use public transport instead of their cars or have to move. That might seem positive to th…

Massive? That's a pretty weak negative here. Cycling and walking feels good when there's no car around, public transport is a great time to relax, read a book or meet people. And it's only one street, people can still drive close to where they want to be.

At -20 feels great...

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#63
post #51

>His conclusion: When cities shut streets off to cars, people drive less. The myth of a “carmageddon”-style traffic jam is apparently overblown. This seems to completely ignore the fact that what actually has occured here is that the reduction of drivers is a negative for those drivers. Those drivers now either have to cycle or use public transport instead of their cars or have to move. That might seem positive to th…

Where do you get 'massive negative' from? Cycling and walking are much healthier, so it might even be positive for them.

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#64
post #24
post #20

Studies? Just check out how we do this in the Netherlands. It works great here in most bigger cities.

You live in a flat country, were cities are quite densely populated and you don't have to travel a lot. Mine is not.

The flatness is almost entirely canceled out by the relentless 20km/h+ wind

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#65
post #62
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive? That's a pretty weak negative here. Cycling and walking feels good when there's no car around, public transport is a great time to relax, read a book or meet people. And it's only one street, people can still drive close to where they want to be.

At -20 feels great...

In San Francisco?

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#66
post #57
post #51

>His conclusion: When cities shut streets off to cars, people drive less. The myth of a “carmageddon”-style traffic jam is apparently overblown. This seems to completely ignore the fact that what actually has occured here is that the reduction of drivers is a negative for those drivers. Those drivers now either have to cycle or use public transport instead of their cars or have to move. That might seem positive to th…

We're talking about one street. Is it seriously a "massive negative impact" to drive down the next street over?

I thought it was a routing problem -- the one street half bisected a peninsula, so if you want to get from one side to the other it wouldn't mean "driving down the next street over," it would mean driving down twice its length and dealing with traffic at the squeeze point. Did I misunderstand the geometry?

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#67
I'm always wondering what about people with disabilities, older people with problems with walking, pregnant women, families with four kids, etc.

Sometimes the public transport for such people is problematic and using taxi all the time is too expensive. Total banning cars makes a great space for the healthy ones, the rest is happily ignored. And this is sad.

I like decreasing the number of cars, not forbidding them at all.

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#68
post #51

>His conclusion: When cities shut streets off to cars, people drive less. The myth of a “carmageddon”-style traffic jam is apparently overblown. This seems to completely ignore the fact that what actually has occured here is that the reduction of drivers is a negative for those drivers. Those drivers now either have to cycle or use public transport instead of their cars or have to move. That might seem positive to th…

Maybe it's a massive positive for people who were driving because they didn't feel safe on the road and can now cycle.

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#69
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about one street. Is it seriously a "massive negative impact" to drive down the next street over?

I thought it was a routing problem -- the one street half bisected a peninsula, so if you want to get from one side to the other it wouldn't mean "driving down the next street over," it would mean driving down twice its length and dealing with traffic at the squeeze point. Did I misunderstand the geometry?

Yes you misunderstood - you can cross the street at many points but not drive along it

Re: No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

#70
A big traffic jam would be nothing like 'Carmageddon'

An extremely popular series of computer games starting in 1997, where u race around smashing into other vehicles and running over pedestrians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon

Why do they keep saying carmageddon????

Post reply on HN