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

How we can reduce traffic congestion

research.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 373 posts

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#291

Post by alistairSH »

philipallstar wrote: post #276
simondotau wrote: post #206

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.

IMO, it's not so much "make driving worse" (ie actively make roads worse, etc).

Instead, it's actively make transit better be reallocating road funds... Add buses or light rail or dedicated/separated bike lanes instead of brainlessly adding traffic lanes. Every bike added to that bike lane is one less car (very roughly).

Additionally, tax car infrastructure appropriately. Free road-side parking is not an entitlement. Reduce parking minimums in redevelopment/new development and let the market determine the supply of spaces. A good example - it's increasingly common for apartments in DC to charge extra for a parking space.

Most of the above applies to urban areas as well as moderately dense suburban zones.

Large cities can take additional steps - no car zones (common in Italian towns), congestion pricing (London, NYC, and others already do this), and changes to road design to better accommodate pedestrians (plenty of YT videos about various plans to do this).

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#292

Post by WarmWash »

Tade0 wrote: post #280
mwexler wrote: post #275

I'm a fan of Beaty's work from 1998. Nothing I've seen has been as easy to implement: leaving space in front of each car creates smooth motion. https://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html or easier at https://web.archive.org/web/20260114173129/https://trafficwa... https://web.archive.org/web/20251214172912/http://trafficwav... has some nice visualizations. MIT got more press when they "rediscovered" this in 2017: https://p…

This is one of those things which would work beautifully if: -Everyone's creep speed was the same. -No one figured it would be more beneficial for them slip into that gap.

The whole idea is to let people slip in the gap. It's the very lack of gaps that causes the whole jam in the first place.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#293

Post by HEmanZ »

Aurornis wrote: post #76
ctkhn wrote: post #52

Surely the top way to avoid traffic congestion would be communities where it's possible to live near where you work, shop, go out, etc. and not doing everything else exactly the same but taking a slightly different highway in your car

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…

I am liking the term “car brained” more and more for this type of attitude.

Have you ever heard of trains, busses, bikes? The options for transportation are not binary car or no car. Maybe in North America where they refuse to provide even crappy public transport in most cities it feels this way, but in the rest of the world they are smart enough to build trains and don’t have this problem.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#294

Post by thunderfork »

philipallstar wrote: post #276
simondotau wrote: post #206

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.

Sometimes you have to nerf something because it's been buffed too many times, beyond what's sustainable or reasonable

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#295

Post by HEmanZ »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #243
throw0101a wrote: post #223

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. Perhaps the problem is the lack of options for those people that want human-centric (versus car-centric) communities. Maybe if we let The Market™ decide, versus forcing low-density sprawl via zoning, more options would be available. Right now, if…

We already tried that experiment. The result was Houston.

Houston is not a free market for housing at all. They don’t have “zoning” because they call it “land use covenants” and “parking requirements” instead, and it ends up amounting to the same thing as “zoning” in other cities.

And the market doesn’t build the streets, sidewalks, or set up public transport routes.

I remember visiting my friend in an 400+ unit apartment complex in Houston. When I got up in the morning I was like “hey I’m going to walk down and get coffee.” My friend said to just Uber Eats it, I was like that’s insane. So I went down to the ground floor and found out there was literaly no way to walk to the coffee shop that was 0.1 miles away less than 30 minutes because of the absolute nightmare that is Huston streets and sidewalks.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#296

Post by HEmanZ »

Aurornis wrote: post #288
lwansbrough wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Most people who live in dense cities don’t live in high rises…

It is very clear you have never lived in a well functioning city before, and just have no idea what you are talking about. Take the L and admit you just don’t have experience with it. North Americans often don’t because North American cities are extremely bad in this regard.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#298

Post by HEmanZ »

rwyinuse wrote: post #224
lwansbrough wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What if I want my own garden and not monoculture lawn? What if I want my children to be able to walk in nature near their home? Neither is possible in a densely built city where there are only apartments. Then there are all the social problems, bad neighbours that become more common in densely built areas. I don't want to deal with that. Suburbs are popular because they provide a superior quality of life for many peo…

[flagged]

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#299

Post by zarzavat »

philipallstar wrote: post #277
zarzavat wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What kind of nonsense is this? People take public transport it's better than driving. You don't need to expend mental cycles focusing on the road, you can do something else while you're on the go: chat to frien…

> People take public transport it's better than driving Public transport is also much more expensive, particularly when you have more than one person in the vehicle, even with loads of tax added to car fuel, doesn't depart from your house or arrive at your destination, and means you can't take much stuff with you.

Driving is more expensive than public transport when you factor in the cost of the vehicle, maintenance, fuel, insurance, taxes, parking, etc.

If driving were more cheaper than public transport then nobody would use it. Yet, almost wherever you go in the world if you go to a station at 8am on a weekday it will be full of people.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#300

Post by pibaker »

simondotau wrote: post #212
simondotau wrote: post #206

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…

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…

Shortwave radio had a reputation for hosting political nut jobs before the internet existed. So are podcasts.

At least transit users don't get road rage.

Post reply on HN