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How we can reduce traffic congestion

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Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#281
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ver…

I think you underestimate just how much many people like their cars and enjoy driving. People generally spend far more on their vehicle than they really need to.

If I lived in London or Paris I wouldn't commute by car. But I don't live in a big city and, at this point in my life, I don't want to (although I'd love to have a little pied-a-terre for part time use). Instead, I live in the 'burbs of a pretty car-friendly city and life is good.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#282
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ver…

I think you vastly underestimate how much people like their cars. Sure there are corporate interests who benefit, but they don't force folks to change cars every 3 years or make big "crossovers" and SUVs the most popular car type in the US and, now, Europe[1].

Cars are just really convenient to have when you need them and folks will put up with all kind of costs and other inconveniences to own one.

I think it's really important to have robust and safe public transit so car use can be minimized when it's unnecessary, but I don't have illusions that this will lead to some kind of car-free utopia.

[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/707655/suvs-more-popular-europe-...

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to stop congestion is to get cars off the road. Cars are the congestion. There is no other definition, and no other solution. HOW you get cars off the road is worthy of debate. Pretending that there's a "war on cars" is not and never has been. Cars and their drivers have been subsidized for more than a century, never paying the full cost of the damage that they do to the environment, the roads, etc. 1. C…

Wrong. Cars are high utility and should remain on roads. They increase quality of life by giving you a fast way to get to exactly where you want on your own schedule. And designing for cars IS designing for people, obviously. Who do you think is inside cars?

My quality of life is increased by having more bike lanes so that I can get around _faster_ and _healthier_ than having to use my car. I'm also able to get where I want and need to be on my own schedule by car, bike, public transit, and walking — which mode matters based on the needs of the destination.

I shop at Costco by bike most of the time. Once every couple of months there's enough that needs to be bought that I use the car.

I have a dental appointment tomorrow: I can walk or cycle there faster than I can drive and find parking. I have another appointment on Monday at a hospital and I'll cycle there far faster than I can take public transit _or_ private car, and I won't have to pay ~$15/hour for parking or park a kilometre away.

Get out of your North American car bubble and look at what Paris and the Netherlands have done: they have not banned private car ownership or use, but they have removed some of them from streets. Utrecht just opened a massive underground _bike parking garage_ but it's also one of the busiest cities in the Netherlands in terms of car traffic.

There is no war on cars; that's something that has been invented out of whole cloth. Those of us who agitate for improved _options_ simply want (1) cars to pay their full freight (they don't, not by a long shot); (2) safer roads for pedestrians, cyclists, and those who want alternative mobility options; (3) more public transit; and (3) fewer cars moving slower because that's the only way to alleviate traffic.

You're not in traffic: you are traffic.

Your claim that designing for cars is designing for people is risible. Designing for people first (that's the goal!) means larger sidewalks, more barriers so that distracted or angry drivers find it harder to find themselves on those sidewalks, and fewer cars with clear rules so that vulnerable road users have absolute priority over people in cars. The larger and faster your vehicle, the more responsibility you should have, both in terms of liability when you inevitably collide with an obstruction and in terms of what you pay to keep the roads and surrounding infrastructure maintained.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#285

Earlier 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…

Making driving worse instead of making public transport better is such a public sector-brained take.

Driving has been subsidized and "made better" for so long that it feels natural. Forcing your private steel box through public spaces should be the most impractical and expensive thing to do, yet it's not.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> station within 5 minutes walk either end, trains every 5 minutes Describes large parts of London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, etc

Sure. Also Shanghai. But that isn't an ideal scenario for public transit regardless of whether somebody tries to describe it that way. Very frequent stops ("station within 5 minutes walk") mean that your journey through the subway system will take a very, very long time. Driving can easily cut that time in half.

And now we return to the idea of big tall buildings so that things are close together.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is possible if you’re not picky about where you live, where you work, your career options, how crowded your local vicinity is, or how much you pay for your residence. The more your preferences or financial constraints come into play, the more you have to give up. Most people settle in for driving because it allows them to pick from more job options than those that happen to be located near their house and more h…

This is like, a post-hoc rationalization. Most jobs, not all, can take place inside a city. If you build your cities densely, people can live and work within the city and have all their needs met without the need for a car (see: the great cities of the world) If you design economic hubs properly, businesses can be located within reach of homes without the need for cars. If you instead prioritize the need for, I don’t…

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Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is possible if you’re not picky about where you live, where you work, your career options, how crowded your local vicinity is, or how much you pay for your residence. The more your preferences or financial constraints come into play, the more you have to give up. Most people settle in for driving because it allows them to pick from more job options than those that happen to be located near their house and more h…

This is like, a post-hoc rationalization. Most jobs, not all, can take place inside a city. If you build your cities densely, people can live and work within the city and have all their needs met without the need for a car (see: the great cities of the world) If you design economic hubs properly, businesses can be located within reach of homes without the need for cars. If you instead prioritize the need for, I don’t…

> Most jobs, not all, can take place inside a city. If you build your cities densely, people can live and work within the city and have all their needs met without the need for a car (see: the great cities of the world)

Most people do not want to live in dense cities in high rises.

The number of jobs which cannot be moved into dense city high rises is much higher than you’re thinking. It might seem that way if your world is office jobs and email jobs, but there’s much more to the world of work than that.

Dense cities also have very high turnover as people grow up and want families.

It’s not about having lawns and staying away from “lower class people”. This feels like a poor attempt to cast moral shade on people who choose not to live in a high rise.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#289
post #156

How 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…

[deleted]

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#290
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

City planners and zoning have been a disaster for US cities.

That's not what the parent is talking about. You're using the strawman of what appears to be occupancy zoning or something similar to argue that a techno fascists should have free reign to manipulate the mass movements of people within a city for their own purposes.

Generally you need to be pretty competent to get to the level of where these Google maps guys are.

To get to the competence level of a local traffic planner, you need to have stuck it out through a Civ E degree and maybe went through the motions at a firm for for 15 years before getting laid off and then wanting a "cruise control" job with the power you never would have achieved in private industry for the rest of your career.

You end up dealing with guys where you live or die based on the opinion of someone who hasn't bothered to learn anything new since 1991, and have no interest in breaking their "cruise control".

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