41–50 of 89 posts
In part because it averages out economic cycles like the one’s mentioned in TFA.
In part because cities change slowly and twenty years is nothing in urban planning (or the life of street trees).
Mostly because urban planning is planning not a collection of hot fixes. It is steering a tanker not a jetski.
Advertising the move as an anti-car policy was just convenient politics. To a lesser extent that was true of promoting it as pro-bike. Market St was built for trolleys and is still the most important artery for trolleys, and that's simply not gonna change. Any serious pro-bike policy would dedicate entire streets to biking (Mission St would be perfect for this), but for some reason nobody advocates for this. I think the pro-bike lobby is more interested in making the city hostile to cars (and now buses) than it is in making the city convenient for biking. (There may also be some esoteric legal and budgeting problems with dedicating entire streets to bikes, but you'd think those would be surmountable if addressed with the same kind of zeal the bike lobby has for poking everybody else in the eye.)
The pedestrian criticism makes no sense. Market St feels infinitely safer to cross without cars zooming up and down with confused and erratic drivers. The emptiness is entirely a product of the office exodus.
So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious: > But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional. Meanwhi…
As a pedestrian, cyclists are a huge danger because cycling culture is built on aggression, ignoring traffic laws like stop signs and cross walks, and treating humans as street furniture.
So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious: > But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional. Meanwhi…
> bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional Also speaking as a cyclist: do you even expect them to be responsive to your presence? I've learned to think of them like they're trains. Their path and timing isn't influenced by my presence in the slightest. If a car driver changes lanes right at me, I think, that carel…
I now record my rides.
So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious: > But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional. Meanwhi…
So the argument is simply that even if most cars were removed, buses still run and still can contribute to the feeling of pedestrian unsafe-ness.
So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious: > But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional. Meanwhi…
Per government data, San Francisco Muni bus pedestrian fatalities are roughly 2 per 100 million miles, while general motor vehicle pedestrian fatalities are a fraction of that, about 0.4 per 100 million miles. Even if you limit strictly to surface streets, Muni buses remain 2-3x more likely to be involved in a pedestrian fatality per mile driven than general vehicles
What matters is the number of people killed.
A steady miles per fatality means more people die as more miles are driven.
And more miles driven is the trend.
So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious: > But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional. Meanwhi…
Per government data, San Francisco Muni bus pedestrian fatalities are roughly 2 per 100 million miles, while general motor vehicle pedestrian fatalities are a fraction of that, about 0.4 per 100 million miles. Even if you limit strictly to surface streets, Muni buses remain 2-3x more likely to be involved in a pedestrian fatality per mile driven than general vehicles
so try the comparison using (miles x flow) instead of miles if you're measuring safety, and if you're measuring worthwhile risk, multiply that by passenger-miles. If you're talking about pedestrian safety, you'll probably have to square the (miles x flow) because pedestrians are also less safe the busier a street is.
I had a contract with a company in the SF Bay Area back in 2011-2012. I spent 50% of my time in the Bay Area, despite living in Florida. I often stayed in a San Francisco hotel and walked to a commuter bus that would take me to corporate headquarters. I visited SF on other occasions in 2015 and 2022. The contrast between 2011 and these dates was staggering. In 2011, I did not have to step around human feces in the st…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I came here to post that, such a nonsensical statement
Noah Smith is like Gell-Mann amnesia personified. He's good at writing columns such that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, until he opines on something you happen to be familiar with, and you realize he's completely full of shit and that his main talent is the ability to rapidly pump out a Wikipedia-skim-tier opinion on whatever happened to draw his attention that day. Would strongly recommend putting…
But maybe it's pedestrians and bicycles.