Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 783 posts

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#251

Post by thereisnospork »

lkurtz wrote: post #233
thereisnospork wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's consider a library with both a manned librarian and a self checkout, two different queues, same objective. Let's call the self checkout the 'highway' queue and the manned one the 'surface street' queue. Each of which could be expanded to improve throughput (more lanes:more self checkout lanes, more streets:more librarians). Ultimately the problem with anti-car rhetoric is that it seeks to limit access to the ob…

In your example, replacing bulky self-checkout machines (analogous to removing road/surface parking real estate) offers a significant benefit to everyone. More room for what everyone actually wants most: books. The preference for self-checkout machines forces a cost on everyone for the benefit of a few.

And in a lot of cases it does, but the important point is that the argument needs to be framed as you've put it: how do we get everyone what the most of what they want [transportation/books]? Most cost efficiently being implied of course. Being dogmatically "anti" or "pro" anything is looking at the problem wrong.

To the specific example, removing self checkout lanes makes sense if the removal adds more value than the lanes were providing, but not if they are providing more value than their opportunity cost -- perhaps because of woefully understaffed registers and a buggy mobile checkout app the self-checkout machines are responsible for a large portion of checkouts. Which would make them counter productive to remove.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#252

Post by prmoustache »

kentonv wrote: post #164
s1artibartfast wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each their own. Most Americans hate high density. I'd rather drive 2 hours than live high density.

High density is awesome right up until you have kids and then it's awful. I think a lot of young people who don't have kids have trouble understanding this. If I had no kids I'd love to live in a downtown high rise apartment. Really wish I had done so when I was younger. Among a lot of things I wish I could go tell my younger self to do...

I love having kids that I don't have to drive because they can go to school or meet their friends by walking.

I'd rather have that than spending half an hour or more driving 2 overweight kids to school twice a day, then having to taxi everywhere they want to be after school.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#253

Post by bee_rider »

sien wrote: post #193
Gigachad wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If boomers want to continue driving, they can. Just make them pay for what they use. Work out the real market value for the space and charge for it.

Yep. The same should be done for public transport. In the US Farebox Recovery Ratios of 20% or less are common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#United_... Only 58% of fuel tax in Australia is spent on any kind of transport including rail. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being... Australians drive a similar amount to the US. From https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/11/13/h…

These transport options—more notably for cars, but everything else too—are still heavily subsidized in the sense that we’re allowing them to ignore the cost of cleaning up after them, or the cost of climate change (if they aren’t cleaned up after). If we stop that theft from everybody’s grandkids, the economics might get some people to switch over to public transit at least.

But it is really easy to steal from these people, they are tiny babies or not even born yet, they can’t vote. Like stealing candy from a baby, except the candy is their planet’s ecosystem. Sucks to be them, I guess.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#254

Post by kiba »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #151
xp84 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. You have a 1 hour commmute because the good house you can afford is about 1 hour away. I would propose that if we (all taxpayers) added 6 more lanes to the road you drive to work, your commute would dip for a short while, more people just like you would move to the new suburbs beyond yours, that are now an (improved for them) 1 hour commute, eventually re-saturating the new wider road. Now your…

To clarify, I'm not dogmatic about Transportation methods, at least for work commuting. I would love if cheap mass transit took some load off of local roads and the highway system so that they could be more effectively used for tasks besides commutes. I mostly wanted to highlight that there's a trade off of preferences at play. Using your terms, Urban living is also a misery for many people. If you want to talk about…

These are all land use policies.

The fact of the matter is, roads and highways required a lot of space for use and storing vehicles. Space that would otherwise go to homes or supporting mass transit or other more desirable infrastructure and uses, part of the puzzle why owning homes are so expensive but of course, not the only reason why.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#255

Post by cjalmeida »

ambyra wrote: post #36
infecto wrote: post #15

Sounds like the Bay Area. We don't like cars but we refuse to build comprehensive transit. To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen. Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life was while living in the Bay Area with the massive traffic jams.

Here's a nice study: https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/ They say 10% of traffic being replaced by motorcycles reduces congestion by 40%. California has pretty good weather so it's probably feasible to commute by motorbike almost every day.

Motorcycles are substantially more dangerous than cars. We can’t even convince people to buy European style compact cars instead of large trucks and SUVs

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#256

Post by kjkjadksj »

ksplicer wrote: post #244
rufus_foreman wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I believe the argument would be that not creating induced demand will provide market effects to encourage the use of transit Induced demand is a concept that anti-car people use, but I don't think it makes much sense. Imagine a library that only has a few copies of some best selling children's books. There's a very long queue to check out those books. Someone might argue that, "We should buy more copies of the bes…

What you are missing is that every time we widen roads to allow more car throughput we are making every other type of transit and mobility less attractive. Busy streets with big parking lots are unpleasant to walk or bike along, so people just drive to their destinations instead, which makes the street even busier, louder, and smellier starts this cycle all over again. Every time a road is widened or a new parking lo…

People always seem to forget the bus takes advantage of having multiple travel lanes and faster intersection clearance too. City of LA is starting to take advantage of their wide roads and put in bus only lanes, something they could easily do with some paint since the pavement already exists.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#257

Post by prmoustache »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #165
kentonv wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High density is awesome right up until you have kids and then it's awful. I think a lot of young people who don't have kids have trouble understanding this. If I had no kids I'd love to live in a downtown high rise apartment. Really wish I had done so when I was younger. Among a lot of things I wish I could go tell my younger self to do...

Yeah, it seems like a huge personality disconnect and critical lack of comprehension that other people simply dont like what they do. Ive spent a lot of time in excellent dense European cities and it still doesnt appeal to me. I dont like going out to bars, crowds, or general city life. I like privacy, having a workshop, chickens, fruit trees, and a garden. I like having a huge kitchen, a pantry, a meat smoker, and h…

Well meet me. I hated having to spend hours taking care of a garden instead of going for a bike ride.

Also you can have a workshop while having high density.

Suburban is probably the worst of both world for me: expensive, impractical and not even quiet/isolated enough for when you need that. I'd rather have a flat in a european city + a small rural house in the middle of nowhere than a house in US suburbia.

All this to say that we don't have to agree on what is best for everyone because everyone do not value things the same way.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#258

Post by notatoad »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #5

"Induced demand" as a reason not to do something is illogical. The Green Revolution increasing crop yields induced demand for humans. Metro systems existing and building new lines induce demand, in some cases resulting in overcrowding. Building housing and offices induce demand in a location. There is nothing wrong with improving a thing so that more people are able to do that thing. I can understand concern about em…

>But induced demand is simply a good thing - you are allowing more people to realise their desires.

projects usually have a goal. especially multi-billion-dollar transportation projects. if the goal of the project aligns with the behaviour it is inducing, then induced demand is good. if the goal of the project (according to the people making decisions about funding it) contradicts the behaviour it induces, then induced demand is a bad thing and it's not going to get funded.

for a highway project, the goal isn't usually to allow more people to drive cars. it's to reduce congestion, improve safety, or to improve the flow of commercial vehicles through a corridor. the demand that more lanes induces is contrary to that goal, which is why the induced demand is a reason not to do it.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#259

Post by HaZeust »

ambyra wrote: post #36
infecto wrote: post #15

Sounds like the Bay Area. We don't like cars but we refuse to build comprehensive transit. To build transit that works you cannot value everyone's opinion equally and have to just make it happen. Some of the worst localized pollution I have experienced in my life was while living in the Bay Area with the massive traffic jams.

Here's a nice study: https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/ They say 10% of traffic being replaced by motorcycles reduces congestion by 40%. California has pretty good weather so it's probably feasible to commute by motorbike almost every day.

I'm risking enough of my life around the common man in a car - no shot I'm taking the chance in a motorcycle long-term.

Motorbikes as a solution to congestion is a post-autonomous driving game.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#260

Post by prmoustache »

akira2501 wrote: post #236
prmoustache wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it has been shown that removing cars increase commerce.

This is a universal outcome with research to back it up?

yes but I am about to go to bed so the link mihht come only tomorrow.

Also some studies have calculated the impact on health in the society and calculated a cost to the society per km of driving a car and the money saved when doing the same km walking or with a bicycle.

Post reply on HN