I'm pretty sure I submitted this idea to the internal "file a patent" drive they were doing like 15 years ago. It was rejected. I thought it was either stupid or too obvious and they were already doing it...
How we can reduce traffic congestion
211–220 of 373 posts
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#212How we can reduce traffic congestion? 1. Extensive support of public transport: metro, tram, dedicated bus routes (separate from car traffic), dedicated paths for bicycles. 2. ... maybe whatever is this ... UPDATE: here's a good graph - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport#/media/File:P... , i.e. car traffic is often congested because of inherent low passenger bandwith. If google wants to manage traffic as…
People will generally choose whichever mode of transport is most convenient and cost-effective, based on how they rationally (or irrationally) weigh various factors. If every road were free of traffic, every destination had unlimited parking at the door, everyone already owned a car, and driving carried no direct or indirect costs, almost everyone would drive everywhere. The only way to shift people onto public trans…
After writing that post, I started drafting an edit to acknowledge that clever marketing is another way to encourage greater use of public transport. In my mind I imagined a campaign highlighting the time people get back not having to drive through heavy traffic. The advertisement could say, "Give yourself more time to do the things you love," accompanied by a wholesome image of a smiling person reading a book on the train.
Then it occurred to me that nobody would actually be reading a book. They would be doom-scrolling Instagram or watching wingnut political propaganda on YouTube. I'm starting to wonder if people might be mentally better off behind the wheel...
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best way is to change our communities, even if that takes time and money.
It is difficult for me to admit I'm an idiot but when I was younger and living in an apartment, I loved the idea of a single family home. And now that I'm living in a single family home, I feel like I was wrong all along. Not that I want to go back to the apartment I was in before. Dear lord no but the idea of a mixed use building not too tall only like first floor with high ceilings for business or shops with two or…
A not top tall building doesn't have enough people to be mixed use. Cities often cheat their with several side streets of residential (it might be zoned mix use but it isn't) only for every street of mixed use. People on the non mixed use streets travel to the mixed use one.
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we had to stick to transportation-specific improvements, I would use the money to eliminate bus fare for a year. (muni generates about $100M in fare, so really it would be enough money to eliminate fare for ~3 years.) Unlike subway fare, bus fare doesn't prevent n'er-do-wells from getting on the bus (they just ignore the fare and get on anyway), and it probably increases ridership and gets some people out of their…
Why not use the money to make bus service better? There is no city that can't effectively use many more buses. Bus riders all put service as their biggest problem over the cost.
Improving service is much better, but the relative scales here are crazy. She options are "completely eliminate cost" or "slightly improve service in one two-mile stretch". Granted, 10 million trips a year go through that two-mile stretch that was improved, but that's just a small fraction of all bus trips in SF.
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#215How we can reduce traffic congestion? 1. Extensive support of public transport: metro, tram, dedicated bus routes (separate from car traffic), dedicated paths for bicycles. 2. ... maybe whatever is this ... UPDATE: here's a good graph - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport#/media/File:P... , i.e. car traffic is often congested because of inherent low passenger bandwith. If google wants to manage traffic as…
People will generally choose whichever mode of transport is most convenient and cost-effective, based on how they rationally (or irrationally) weigh various factors. If every road were free of traffic, every destination had unlimited parking at the door, everyone already owned a car, and driving carried no direct or indirect costs, almost everyone would drive everywhere. The only way to shift people onto public trans…
Yep. In the future, only billionaires and politicians shall be allowed private travel. The common man shall be crammed into public transport where he can sweat, sneeze, touch, grab etc. the rest of the common man.
Forcing the public to abandon the comfort of private travel seems right out of the WEF playbook.
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#216How we can reduce traffic congestion? 1. Extensive support of public transport: metro, tram, dedicated bus routes (separate from car traffic), dedicated paths for bicycles. 2. ... maybe whatever is this ... UPDATE: here's a good graph - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport#/media/File:P... , i.e. car traffic is often congested because of inherent low passenger bandwith. If google wants to manage traffic as…
> here's a good graph The trouble with this graph is that it assumes the buses/trains are full. It obviously doesn't apply to a bus with one passenger on it, which takes up even more space than a car. From which we can observe the problem. Alice is at home and wants to go to work. She travels along a low density street for a few miles, enters a congested thoroughfare for a few more miles, then travels along another l…
I've been traveling around in Europe without a car for several days now, including several fairly rural areas.
There's a distinctly American trope in play, that if the bus or train doesn't stop more or less exactly at your destination, then it's going to be totally useless. Except, you look at the rural European countryside, and there is still a fairly reliable--and well-used, certainly not "only one rider on the bus"--bus system. And this is in the countryside that is less densely populated than most American suburbs or exurbs. It is totally possible to make mass transit work, even in the car-oriented hellscape of most American cities.
The main thing that American public transit systems seem to be really allergic to is the concept of frequency--a high frequency transit system is generally necessary for usability, but your typical American transit system responds to a perennial funding crisis by cutting frequency, which tends to lead into a ridership death spiral--cutting frequency cuts ridership, loss of ridership leads to loss of funding, which they respond to by cutting frequency.
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the problems indeed. Though IMHO it's just lack of political will. Highways are built at (relative) ease, no matter the cost. Data centers are infamously now being built at society expense (electricity and water capacity), sometimes literally in peoples backyards. At the moment I don't have the receipts, but from anecdotes - it's all just political will. There's a highway extension? Some properties are taken b…
> Highways are built at (relative) ease, no matter the cost. It's like that because it's a misconception that highways are built for passenger cars. They're built for freight and all kinds of business activities - regular people using them are just a bonus. The majority of petroleum-based fuel, wear and tear on the highways and toll revenue comes from everything but passenger cars on highways.
Almost all of the new highway construction is for passenger cars. Yes, the interstate highways were built in part to facilitate intercity truck traffic, but the reason for building yet another beltway around, say, Houston isn't for trucks but for all of the passenger cars in the region that are congesting the roads.
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
People will generally choose whichever mode of transport is most convenient and cost-effective, based on how they rationally (or irrationally) weigh various factors. If every road were free of traffic, every destination had unlimited parking at the door, everyone already owned a car, and driving carried no direct or indirect costs, almost everyone would drive everywhere. The only way to shift people onto public trans…
Yep. In the future, only billionaires and politicians shall be allowed private travel. The common man shall be crammed into public transport where he can sweat, sneeze, touch, grab etc. the rest of the common man. Forcing the public to abandon the comfort of private travel seems right out of the WEF playbook.
waat?
Current situation with prevalent "private travel", i.e. cars in USA (and probably "the west" overall??) IS due to corporate and political interests.
Car manufacturers, "big oil", road construction companies, politicians collecting taxes from cars (fuel sales, road use, cars themselves[0] and car parking), banks leasing money to buy and maintain cars, insurance, landlords owning car parks, etc.
They are very very interested that private car ownership wouldn't go away and are fighting it tooth and nail. You need to own multiple cars per household spend thousands on leasing, hundreds on parking, to just go to work and of course there's fuel.
Though somewhere like London, Paris or Tokyo - why would you want to do daily commute in a car? If you are a billionaire, driven by personal driver in your Bentley or Land Rover - sure, but otherwise metro is cheaper by an order of magnitude and I'd bet often times much faster too. In those places rich and heads of state take trams and metros.
I probably not need to remind you that "richest man" lobbied some failing projects to upsell his car sales, instead of allowing high speed rail to be developed.
[0] this of course depends from country to country and from state to state.
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assertions made without evidence can be disregarded without evidence, and your assertion does not match my personal experience. Public transit is dangerous, especially in cities like SF or Seattle.
Oh don’t worry there is plenty of evidence Deaths per billion miles via car: 7.3 Train: 0.43 From https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8606195/train-safety-driving-c... but you can just google, there are tons of other studies.
It’s a safe bet that sndgndgndgndy isn’t referring to that metric, but to the (perceived) probability of getting shouted at, mugged, etc.
That, I have been told, is definitely a problem in the USA. I think that’s because they’ve painted themselves into a car-centric corner that it is very hard to get out of.
Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Massive ongoing investment into roads. EV incentives that would pay for 3-4 ebikes outright. Big 3 bailout. Cash for clunkers. Impact fees from developers towards roads. As others said parking requirements. There is so much beyond that too.
> Massive ongoing investment into roads Okay, let's stop spending money on roads then. How are you at riding your bike through mud? Pretty good? Got nice chunky tyres?
Road wear increases with the fourth power of axle weight iirc. Bike paths are orders of magnitude cheaper and need a lot less space.