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US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

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Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#61

Post by thatswrong0 »

brucedawson wrote: post #47
notch898a wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average American is biking for leisure. If they had to bike on their commute it totally changes and instead of a planned low-risk leisure route you're on the highway to hell in the thick of rush hour traffic. It's completely incomparable.

I bicycle commuted for years in an American city. It is as safe as your local council decides it should be, and my commute always felt safe. Don't give in to the belief that unsafe cycling is inevitable.

I mean, it's inevitable for a lot of Americans unless they're willing to devote a significant amount of resources and / or time to try and convince local politicians to spend a bunch of money and fix decades of misguided urban planning, while potentially trying to dodge pushback from local interests who think that changes to make biking safer and more convenient is a zero-sum situation that comes at the expense of others.

I would never bike commute where I live currently, and I don't think that will change any time soon despite it being a relatively left leaning urban area.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#62

Post by zamzoid »

giantg2 wrote: post #21
zamzoid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is simpler than your framing alludes. There are other modes of transit that are much safer with far fewer negative externalities than private cars, like walking, bike, bus, and rail. We repeatedly make a political decision in the US not to prioritize them. This spending for street safety is a step in the other direction, but by and large does very little to change the dominance of public spending on priva…

That political decision is due to a lack of support. Preferences have to change. One major factor standing in the way is the overwhelmingly poor service by most cities. So it's a bit of a catch-22 since service can't improve without money. I'm not even going to bring up places like rural or lower density suburbs as the service there is almost non-existent.

I agree with everything you said in this comment, except for the lack of support. It's kind of a meme in online urbanist circles at this point that in the US you can pick either walkable or affordable. There's incredible demand for walkable places where you don't have to use a car, to the point where these places are not affordable for most people (I'm not saying all the demand for these dense places comes from walkability, but there is good research saying it's a strong factor). Your comment is also sort of based on the view that "whatever the (federal) government is doing is what the public ultimately demanded", which is clearly not true. Federal government agencies like USDOT act with a certain degree of autonomy, and their actions are very much open to public criticism as we are doing in this thread.

To bring up one more thing related to your point on rural and suburban areas, the low-density car-dependent development across the vast majority of the US is a deeply ingrained problem here. That is changing with more dense transit-oriented development happening across the country, but it will probably take decades for the needle to move significantly. And unfortunately the street safety measures that this money is going to are not going to help very much with this, which is sort of the point of the original comment.

These issues are all intertwined, but I don't understand the arguments in these comments that point out the problems are intertwined and stop there, as if that's a death knell for change (for example, political support for transit service is tied to the quality of that service). Yes, no one is denying they are intertwined, that is even why urbanists have started using terms like "car culture" that encapsulate the messy ball of issues. The more we discuss these issues, even online, the more consciousness arises in the public about how things can change; and things eventually do change. Hence the use of attention-grabbing call to action phrases like "cars are the problem" that started this thread, which provide an alternate framing.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#63

Post by bsder »

zip1234 wrote: post #16
giantg2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Speeding kills more than 10,000 people each year in the U.S." That's a little misleading. Excessive speed is a factor in about 30% of US traffic fatalities. That can have an overlap with other factors, like DUI, inattentive driving, or failure to yield. Speed itself is not the issue, as we see with lower fatality per mile on the autobahn, including areas without limits or with high limits. Speed mixed with bad decis…

"Excessive speed" in the statistics is purely based on posted speed limit. The way posted speed limits are set in the US is not based on safety.

> The way posted speed limits are set in the US is not based on safety.

You need to advocate for street redesign, then.

In California, most speed limits have a relation to the median speed that drivers drive on the roadway. If you want them to drive slower, you need to design the roads so that they drive slower.

Unfortunately, you will be fighting the local residents who don't want to spend extra time on every task because their local roads are so slow.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#64

Post by ultrarunner »

hammock wrote: post #40
mjmahone17 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding more shoulder space induces higher speeds, unless you also add obstructions in the widened shoulder. If it feels like your car is not squeezed, the natural inclination is to drive faster. You need to resist that inclination to stay within the speed limit. Basically, increasing the perceived width of the lane you’re in increases speed, and speed of crash is one of the core determinants of crash fatality.

The stated goal of the improvement is not to reduce speeds, but to reduce roadway departures. I would wager wider shoulders can do that even in the face of marginally higher speeds. And your assumption that higher speeds are unsafe is unfounded- unless you want to eliminate cars altogether (“there is no safe sex/speed”), a given roadway has a generally safe speed and typically this would be calculated and considered…

I've alluded to this before on Hacker News, but the supposedly residential road that I live on is wide enough to fit approximately 7 full-size Hummer H1s side by side. The posted speed limit is 30 mph, and just riding with my elderly father-in-law today I noticed he was going 45 mph and being tailgated. I have personally lost a (thankfully parked and unoccupied) car to a collision, which wound up 100 ft down the road from where we left it. Many garbage cans have also fallen victim over the years.

Calculations and considerations are all well and good, but when the rubber hits the road, wide straight roads will lead people to reason that it's fine to drive fast. I'd much, much rather have people think it's a pain to take my road because it's too skinny than to have 50-60 mph traffic accidentally kill my son or my neighbors when they choose to go outside.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#65

Post by giantg2 »

bsder wrote: post #63
zip1234 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Excessive speed" in the statistics is purely based on posted speed limit. The way posted speed limits are set in the US is not based on safety.

> The way posted speed limits are set in the US is not based on safety. You need to advocate for street redesign, then. In California, most speed limits have a relation to the median speed that drivers drive on the roadway. If you want them to drive slower, you need to design the roads so that they drive slower. Unfortunately, you will be fighting the local residents who don't want to spend extra time on every task b…

In my state, I've seen multiple roads reduce speeds. It's not solely based on median speed (per federal guidelines). The speed limits are based on multiple factors that can reduce the speed below the current median, such as on street parking and terrain. I would be very surprised if CA didn't account for other factors like these.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#66

Post by TheCoelacanth »

brucedawson wrote: post #47
notch898a wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average American is biking for leisure. If they had to bike on their commute it totally changes and instead of a planned low-risk leisure route you're on the highway to hell in the thick of rush hour traffic. It's completely incomparable.

I bicycle commuted for years in an American city. It is as safe as your local council decides it should be, and my commute always felt safe. Don't give in to the belief that unsafe cycling is inevitable.

Yes, it is as safe as your local council decides, which in the US is somewhere between really unsafe and Mad Max.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#67

Post by giantg2 »

hibikir wrote: post #59
giantg2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Speeding kills more than 10,000 people each year in the U.S." That's a little misleading. Excessive speed is a factor in about 30% of US traffic fatalities. That can have an overlap with other factors, like DUI, inattentive driving, or failure to yield. Speed itself is not the issue, as we see with lower fatality per mile on the autobahn, including areas without limits or with high limits. Speed mixed with bad decis…

There are issues other than just speed, but it's not a matter of bad decisions, unless you mean bad planning decisions. The autobahn is a great example: it might be really fast, but how many pedestrians ever have to cross it? How many entrances and exists are you finding per mile? The autobahn is pretty safe, so the speeds can be high. In a similar fashion, pedestrian deaths are rare in US highways, because it's unli…

"The autobahn is a great example: it might be really fast, but how many pedestrians ever have to cross it? How many entrances and exists are you finding per mile?"

Even compared to US interstates, which have similar attributes, the fatality rate is lower.

"But compare this to, say, any of the deadliest roads in the US."

I haven't seen any with more than 4 lanes to cross. Even those have extensive traffic and pedestrian control signals. Do you have some examples?

"It's that too many American roads let you do at least 40"

I've crossed a few with similar speeds. I never felt unsafe though through the use of common sense and traffic/pedestrian controls. It seemed the safety was adequately designed. I'd like to see more info on the actual factors involved in pedestrian deaths. The one with the most attention seems to be alcoho, at about 50% prevalence.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#68

Post by hammock »

ultrarunner wrote: post #64
hammock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stated goal of the improvement is not to reduce speeds, but to reduce roadway departures. I would wager wider shoulders can do that even in the face of marginally higher speeds. And your assumption that higher speeds are unsafe is unfounded- unless you want to eliminate cars altogether (“there is no safe sex/speed”), a given roadway has a generally safe speed and typically this would be calculated and considered…

I've alluded to this before on Hacker News, but the supposedly residential road that I live on is wide enough to fit approximately 7 full-size Hummer H1s side by side. The posted speed limit is 30 mph, and just riding with my elderly father-in-law today I noticed he was going 45 mph and being tailgated. I have personally lost a (thankfully parked and unoccupied) car to a collision, which wound up 100 ft down the road…

It sounds like your specimen road is out of code/guidelines.

If you want to do something about it you can lobby for a traffic study

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#69

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Maarten88 wrote: post #5

As long as safety for people is not prioritized over car speed, no amount of spending will make streets substantially more safe. Cars are the problem, they cause all the deaths.

Would you rather share a grade with slow cars or have actual physical barriers between you and fast cars? Exactly. Separating traffic of different types/speeds is paramount to safety. We've known this for going on 150yr.

Re: US DOT awards $800M toward street safety

#70

Post by dsfyu404ed »

d_burfoot wrote: post #9

So people pay taxes to the federal government, who then doles it back out to the cities and states to spend it, after taking a big cut for their own legions of bureaucrats. If these projects are important, why can't they be funded directly via city and state taxes? If I want safer roads, I can call up my state rep, who is much more likely to listen to me than my congressman or senator.

Because after fed taxes the states are left with a stone they can't squeeze blood from or at least not without pissing people off.

Secondly, there's a tradeoff here. If you take something out of the purview of the feds so that your state can do it "right" you lose the ability to force Alabama or West Virginia or whatever to do it your way.

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