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The Stroad

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Re: The Stroad

#251

Post by jeffbee »

PaulHoule wrote: post #248
zonotope wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is _very_ big. Bigger than Europe even. That means that there are lots of different development patterns all across the country. While it is true that most places are car dependent, there are also cities where the majority of people who live there don't even own a car. I lived in Boston/Cambridge Massachusetts for 10 years and New York for 8, and I have never owned a car (or bike). Walking and taking the subw…

The "low density" of the US is deceptive. It's true that there are vast expanses of desert, and even that New York has a forest in it the size of the Netherlands, but when you compare the density of individual US states to European countries, you see it is no excuse for us not building broadband infrastructure and otherwise being sensible about things. California, in particular, has a population density of about 100…

The population-weighed density - the density experienced by the typical American - is also much higher than you’d think. For example California is expansive and empty-seeming on paper, but half of the state lives in L.A. Population-weighting makes more sense than dividing the gross population by the gross area.

Re: The Stroad

#252

Post by jeffbee »

dagw wrote: post #169
rubidium wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the Midwest.

What are some nice, livable and affordable cities you can recommend in the Midwest where you don't need a car?

Any college town, to a fair approximation.

Also Carmel, IN for some reason.

Re: The Stroad

#253

Post by calvinmorrison »

throw0101a wrote: post #15

Another article that may be useful: > Americans do not understand the difference between a road and a street. [...] > The value of a road is in the speed and efficiency that it provides for movement between places. Anything that is done that reduces the speed and efficiency of a road devalues that road. If we want to maximize the value of a road, we eliminate anything that reduces the speed and efficiency of travel.…

We do understand it. It's why Americans love quaint towns. There's a few in my suburbs. It's why many old towns you see a BUS sign. It's not for a bus, its' the 'business' route and the highway has been sent around them.

Doylestown PA: succesfully petitioned and built TWO of these. A 611 and 202 bypass leaving historic doylestown beautiful.

The problem is, for those suburbs that never had strong town centers, there was little objection and so as you go down 611, it's a 4 lane major travel route that passes right through a bunch of other suburbs leaving them without a downtown and a place thats not comfortable to travel.

of course, Doylestown was surrounded by farmland when this was build making it much easier to do... Good luck building a bypass through other towns

Re: The Stroad

#254

Post by wffurr »

hef19898 wrote: post #227
wffurr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The center turning lane isn't there to avoid rear end collisions, which are only problematic due to too-high speeds in a commercial area. They are about improving throughput. What makes them dangerous, particularly in the five lane configuration, is the poor visibility for crossing uncontrolled intersections of multiple traffic lanes.

Center turning with five lanes? wow, that's crazy...

The examples in the article show anywhere from 5 to 7 lanes. The outermost lanes in one of the 7-lane examples are parking lanes.

There's a stroad on Staten Island that scares the crap out of me - Hylan Blvd. I have family that live on it. It's six lanes with a median, but sometimes and in certain places parking is allowed in the outermost lanes. So you can suddenly come up on parked traffic but only at certain times of day in certain places. It's totally insane.

To get in the driveway, you have to loop the block to the closest light, wait for the green, and then drive halfway down the block and back-in before the light changes and traffic starts up. It's quite stressful.

Re: The Stroad

#255

Post by osullivj »

zonotope wrote: post #224
dagw wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large supermarket in 5 minutes And even when the supermarket/mall is close by in the US, you still can't necessarily walk/bike there. I was visiting a friend who lived in the Midwest and his house was less than a mile from the mall. I asked him how to walk over there, and he admitted he'd never tried. So I set out to try, and the only way I found was by running ac…

America is _very_ big. Bigger than Europe even. That means that there are lots of different development patterns all across the country. While it is true that most places are car dependent, there are also cities where the majority of people who live there don't even own a car. I lived in Boston/Cambridge Massachusetts for 10 years and New York for 8, and I have never owned a car (or bike). Walking and taking the subw…

Boston/Cambridge and NYC were initially built during colonial times, before cars and railroads, so were originally built for navigation by foot or horse.

Re: The Stroad

#256

Post by timwaagh »

gibolt wrote: post #57

For anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend this channel's series. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN... 'Not Just Bikes' has a ton of other great videos on the channel about what infrastructure makes a good city and what makes one hostile to residents.

Better promotion for nl doesn't exist

Re: The Stroad

#257

Post by PaulHoule »

jeffbee wrote: post #251
PaulHoule wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "low density" of the US is deceptive. It's true that there are vast expanses of desert, and even that New York has a forest in it the size of the Netherlands, but when you compare the density of individual US states to European countries, you see it is no excuse for us not building broadband infrastructure and otherwise being sensible about things. California, in particular, has a population density of about 100…

The population-weighed density - the density experienced by the typical American - is also much higher than you’d think. For example California is expansive and empty-seeming on paper, but half of the state lives in L.A. Population-weighting makes more sense than dividing the gross population by the gross area.

I've wondered for a while how you would do that.

One approach is scale-dependent (divide the area into a grid of square kilometers, sort by population, pick the square kilometer where the median person lives.) but you would get different answers if you picked different scales.

The median of "How far away is your nearest neighbor?" seems parameter free at first but it is absurd if you live in an apartment. (e.g. ignores all the space around your apartment.) I guess you could look for the median (or other decile) of "What is radius in which N people live?" where N might be 100-10,000 but then you're back to having a spectrum instead of a single number again.

Maybe you can't avoid that.

Re: The Stroad

#258

Post by zonotope »

jeffbee wrote: post #251
PaulHoule wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "low density" of the US is deceptive. It's true that there are vast expanses of desert, and even that New York has a forest in it the size of the Netherlands, but when you compare the density of individual US states to European countries, you see it is no excuse for us not building broadband infrastructure and otherwise being sensible about things. California, in particular, has a population density of about 100…

The population-weighed density - the density experienced by the typical American - is also much higher than you’d think. For example California is expansive and empty-seeming on paper, but half of the state lives in L.A. Population-weighting makes more sense than dividing the gross population by the gross area.

My comment about how big America was had nothing to do with density. I only mentioned the size of the country to highlight that there are a lot of different jurisdictions with lots of different development patterns.

Re: The Stroad

#259

Post by acdha »

GordonS wrote: post #165
frereubu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The centres of most UK towns and cities are now limited to 20mph. Although in practice that means that people drive around 25mph - i.e. just low enough not to be caught for speeding - it does make the streets less threatening for both pedestrians and bikes. The thing that would make it better for cyclists is to line up the speed limit of e-bikes (currently set at a max of 15mph) and the speed limit. Currently the 15m…

> Currently the 15mph / 20mph disjunction means that some idiots still try to squeeze their cars past relatively fast-moving e-bikes (which then often catch up with the car at the next set of lights...) To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic. Now, of course car drivers should remain vigilant and cont…

> To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic.

This is conflating two different activities: when a bicyclist or motorcyclist is moving in space between cars, they're using space which is already open and it doesn't impose a risk to the driver of the vehicle or require the cars to move. That's distinct from people trying to illegally pass, which creates new demands for space and frequently endangers other road users and often obstruct oncoming traffic.

The underlying issue here is that cars are the least efficient use of space by a significant margin. That means that drivers see other people taking advantage of space which they are unable to use and feel like they're losing in some way, which often leads to attempts to prevent it. When I lived in California, even though lane-splitting was legal I used to regularly see drivers move their vehicles to the edge of a lane or a few times even open their car door(!) to block motorcyclists. This was clearly because they perceived it as unfair that someone else wasn't jammed the same way they were, but misattributed the problem to the motorcylist rather than the drawbacks of their personal vehicle choices.

Re: The Stroad

#260

Post by netrus »

bsanr2 wrote: post #226
fho wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: I regularly go 40-50 km/h on my (not e-)bike on a downhill rural road (40 km/h speed limit) and drivers still feel obligated to overtake me.

I tend to overtake cyclists specifically for their safety. I figure that the farther I am from them, the lower a chance of a collision there is. If that holds true, then the only options when encountering one is to slow down and possibly impede other traffic, or speed up, overtake, and move away. This works for single cyclists. Groups would be different, but I've never encountered them.

If there is traffic, that means that your spot behind the cyclist will immediately be replaced by another car. If everyone acts like that, the biker caries a bubble of faster-than-average cars with them. Hardly ideal.

I propose a different protocol: Slow down, and follow the cyclist until the situation allows to safely overtake the cyclist at a nice distance without speeding up too much. You will still travel faster than the cyclist, and you have actively contributed to the safety of the cyclist.

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