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Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

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Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#381

Post by waterhouse »

tolbish wrote: post #370
RobRivera wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing my point. Beauty is in the eye if the beholder

Did you grow up with suburban car culture? How do you know your frame of reference isn't biased?

Did you grow up without it? Are you biased as a result of that? Bias is practically impossible to eliminate here.

(You could try to find people who moved from one place to another, and ideally limit it to those whose reason for moving had nothing to do with their preferences... and poll them. I don't know how possible that is. It likely also makes a difference at what age they moved.)

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#382

Post by adrianN »

geggam wrote: post #316
ck425 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an American friend explained it to me at uni I honestly thought they were trying to trick. It's just such an absurd concept, like how does anyone walk anywhere? Then I realised they don't.

Read many posts and what many folks are missing is the amount of space the US has... it takes more than 1 day of driving to get across Texas alone. Where I live there arent even roads being improved in many areas. You just drive across the dirt None of the countries folks are comparing have close to the amount of space to cover. Yes bigger metro areas are dense enough to have public transit... problem is most folks d…

I doubt that pedestrians are trying to cross Texas on foot.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#383

Post by [deleted] »

howlgarnish wrote: post #326
geggam wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read many posts and what many folks are missing is the amount of space the US has... it takes more than 1 day of driving to get across Texas alone. Where I live there arent even roads being improved in many areas. You just drive across the dirt None of the countries folks are comparing have close to the amount of space to cover. Yes bigger metro areas are dense enough to have public transit... problem is most folks d…

Uhh, nobody gets cited for jaywalking in rural Texas. Also Australians find Texas small and cute: https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/aust...

[deleted]

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#384

Post by adrianN »

nomel wrote: post #274
CalRobert wrote: post #199

Criminalizing jaywalking wasn't about making it illegal to walk across the street. It was about making it legal to kill people doing so with your car. If you want to kill someone in the US it's de facto legal to do so with your car. Just be sober and say you didn't see them.

As someone that nearly hit someone that walked out from behind a bush, with a chemically fueled disregard for the world, I don't think the rules are so bad. As unpopular as the opinion appears to be here, I don't like the idea of having to dodge humans randomly entering the road. Should we also take down the signals and barriers that prevent cars from crossing train tracks, since they have the similar goal of prevent…

Trains going any useful speed can't drive on sight because stopping distances are insane. That is why it makes sense to have signals and barriers for trains. Cars' stopping distance is about a hundredfold shorter, so we can expect drivers to drive such that they can brake if humans randomly enter the road.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#385

Post by teloli »

biztos wrote: post #358
dijit wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh! Which one? I can only think of NYC but that’s really inhospitable to cyclists too. :/

Totally doable in San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Downtown Los Angeles, just to name three I know well enough in California to know that about them.

I’m only familiar with San Francisco, but every time I’m there I see that most people use Uber and Lyft instead of the bus.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#386

Post by elliottkember »

tantalor wrote: post #293
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #120

I cannot get to the site (blocked for EU) but the rule in France is two way. The driver must not enforce its priority when there is someone crossing the street at a place they should not. The price is high. A pedestrian can cross anywhere but has priority only on a zebra crossing. They are however expected to use a zebra crossing if there is one less 50 m away. It may cost you 11€ if you do not. The reality is of cou…

> driver must not enforce its priority... pedestrian can cross anywhere but has priority only on a zebra crossing If drivers have priority ("right of way" in USA) but cannot enforce it, then they don't really have it, do they? It's easier to just say pedestrians always have right of way.

Not quite. A driver doesn’t stop for someone crossing the road. That’s the difference. The pedestrian waits and crosses when it’s safe.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#387

Post by staybailey »

dehrmann wrote: post #205
woodruffw wrote: post #100

We in the US do an absolutely horrific job of recognizing and compensating for the externalities of our automotive culture. The criminalization of jaywalking is one major aspect, but also consider: 1. The construction of highways through poor (read: minority) urban areas, causing mass respiratory disease and premature deaths[1]. 2. Allocation of free public space (car parking) to drivers, effectively subsidizing (dis…

> 2. Allocation of free public space (car parking) to drivers, effectively subsidizing (disproportionately suburban) commuters at the expense of residents. The times I've commuted into a city, I had to pay for parking, usually in a private lot. I suspect it's like this in most big cities, and in smaller cities where people still commute, parking is probably private lots owned by the employer, not street parking. Pict…

> parking is probably private lots owned by the employer, not street parking. Picture a standard office park.

But this is still subsidized because regulations mandate that buildings have lots of parking. These regulations are typically quite extreme with requirements intended to support the 99.999% demand case (think peak hour of black friday) conditional on a parking price of $0. Most developments build the minimum amount of parking they can by law suggesting this isn't a free market outcome.

So if you want to have business you have to provide tons of parking and make up for it with higher prices for your goods and services. This subsidizes vehicle driving over other modes a transport. Especially so because giant parking lots make it harder to reach the store front by foot.

Google Donald Shoup for more context.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#388

Post by adrianN »

owowow wrote: post #377
AmpsterMan wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer for there to be a more market incentive to build parking garages than a mandate for commercial/offices to have to all have their own parking, or effectively subsidized free street side parking. Think of all the surface area used up by cars parking on the street; pave that over with a sidewalk and allow bars/restaurants to set up shop there. That's what I would like.

Building a parking spot in a modern building can cost $20k, which is hard to recoup with parking revenue. If the break even target is 10 years with no interest accrued, we are talking about $5.47 a day in revenue needs to be generated (plus the overhead of managing the lot itself). How many paid parking lots do you see that are full on a regular basis? Are they really generating revenue even half time?

So you're arguing parking is way too cheap and we should make it more expensive. I think that's generally a consensus opinion among city planners.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#389

Post by Noumenon72 »

ajuc wrote: post #109
vorpalhex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> encounters with law enforcement are probably more deadly on average than jaywalking 36 pedestrians were killed last year in accidents in my city. We have one contested police shooting. 31 the year before that, two contested shootings. At least biweekly there's an article in the local paper about someone hit while illegally crossing a highway, often at night. I have unfortunately seen a pedestrian get hit by crossin…

Criminalization of jaywalking is like criminalization of drug use (or ownership). It's not only not solving the problem - it's actively making it worse. The right way to fix pedestrian deaths on the streets is to slow the traffic down. It's a solved problem. It's been tested all over Europe. It works. As a bonus you get walkable cities, less suburbanization, smaller rich-poor division, less crime in the cities, less…

Slowing traffic down is the least desired solution because we'd have to remake all of those other things too to get the benefits. It doesn't lead to less suburbanization until people get fed up of wasting time and give up the home they actually wanted.

You could solve people getting run over on the subway tracks by slowing those down too, but criminalization and station design is just a much better approach. Slowing down is inefficient and may cost just as many lifetimes, only in little pieces every day.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#390

Post by bjelkeman-again »

teloli wrote: post #378
megablast wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago, San Francisco. Even la has a decent bus system.

You cannot compare San Francisco with Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, etc. SF is so unsafe that most people avoid public transportation and use Uber instead.

I don’t think unsafe is my main issue, with saying SF is comparable. Having lived in SF, Stockholm, London and worked for years in Amsterdam, SF just doesn’t have the density of public transport.

Let’s us Stockholm as an example: 100 metro stations and 170+ suburban rail stations, 60 light rail stops, on 2.3 million people in 6,519.3 km2 (2,517.1 sq mi).

San Francisco (Nine county, Bay Area), 33 metro stations, plus 87 additional metro stops about 200 station (ACE, Amtrak, BART, Caltrain, SMART, and VTA), on 7.75 million people, In 6,966 sq mi (18,040 km2).

The station density is nearly 2.5 times higher and on less than half the population.

Data from Wikipedia.

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