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

301–310 of 783 posts

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

#301

Post by seadan83 »

thereisnospork wrote: post #195
light_hue_1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There is not. You've totally misunderstood induced demand. You can build unlimited roads and they will all be used up and commutes will increase for everyone. People engineer cities and development around transit. If you provide massive amounts of transit to a desirable location people will saturate it. This is why initially highway projects look like successes. Wow. My commute is so much better. And then. In a d…

>People engineer cities and development around transit. If you provide massive amounts of transit to a desirable location people will saturate it. well yes, that is the objective of building transit[0]: to get people where they would like to go. That people 'induce demand' by moving to a place where they can go where they would like to go with (initially) less friction is the system reequilibrating - from places wher…

It's not that adding capacity is bad, that it can be ineffective.

Given that personal transport is such a large percentage of the nations' carbon footprint, adding more cars detracts from that goal. From that perpsective, or a localized pollution perspective, or people wasting time in traffic jams (because NO alternative exists) - those are bad things.

I've generally lived in places in the US where driving is the ONLY viable option. By adding lanes, an ineffective tactic, instead of investing in more scalable (ie: effective) solutions - therein lies a problem.

> well yes, that is the objective of building transit

The US traffic engineer currently tries to optimize for throughput as defined by vehicles per minute, rather than passengers per minute. Therein lies the rub. Take a 2 lane road, dedicate one for buses, and it turns out the passenger throughput per minute goes way up, a single bus can be equivalent to 50+ cars.

Which is all to say, build more lanes of road for single occupancy cars has a limiting factor for when that is no longer an effective solution to the transit problem. Yet, adding more lanes is often still the only solution applied in many jurisdictions.

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

#302

Post by ksplicer »

someguydave wrote: post #49
turnsout wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But induced demand shows that traffic will only increase… more lanes means you're waiting more.

That’s because people are waiting too long on other roads! There is a point where traffic will not increase as all the demand has been sated.

This would only be true if additional lanes were built on top of each other instead of next to each other. As lanes are widened though they just keep pushing things apart and making other types of transit less pleasant, which will then create demand that wasn't there before (because people now need to be on roads longer to get where they want to go). There is a maximum density that cars can support that is LOWER than most cities are built up at.

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

#303

Post by kjkjadksj »

balfirevic wrote: post #138
appplication wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, a motorcycle is a complete nonstarter for this reason. It’s just not responsible for anyone with a family.

Would you say the same thing for bicycles, in places without dedicated bicycle lanes?

I would not because you don’t go 60mph with a leather jacket for protection on a bike, you go about a quarter that if you are really pushing between lights.

And honestly as a biker taking the entire lane is so much safer than some bike lanes even. Sure people honk but they arent psychotic they will pass you by merging the lane. If you ride on the shoulder they try and squeeze by and thats where there are issues. You are also more visible to turning traffic from other directions when you take the lane.

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

#304

Post by RoyalHenOil »

balfirevic wrote: post #138
appplication wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, a motorcycle is a complete nonstarter for this reason. It’s just not responsible for anyone with a family.

Would you say the same thing for bicycles, in places without dedicated bicycle lanes?

I know a large number of people who commute by bike in Melbourne. Every single last one of them has at some point been hit by a car or has suffered serious injuries trying to avoid being hit by a car. Many of them have had this happen multiple times, and these are all cases where they have dedicated bike lanes — they weren't riding with general traffic, which is of course far more dangerous.

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

#305

Post by seadan83 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #281
itishappy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop punishing people by widening roads! It hasn't been shown to decrease transit times, but it has been shown to harm local standards of living.

The point of widening roads is to let more people use them, not to decrease transit time.

Roads are widened all the time with the goal to increase average speeds.

I can think of counter-example where it's more clear that travel time is not an independent variable to road width:

- lanes on highways are extra wide so you drive faster. (The wider the lane, the faster people will drive, the margin of error is greatly reduced allowing a faster travel speed). If what you were saying is true, then there would be first a lot of projects to narrow lanes to the minimum in order to increase the number of travel lanes. IIRC, US highways have as a standard a 13 foot width (I might have that somewhat wrong), IIRC as well, the absolute minimum width is more like 9 feet. There could be almost 50% more lanes by narrowing, but that would reduce traffic speeds.

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

#306

Post by kjkjadksj »

ambyra wrote: post #153
sotix wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorcycles are not safe, and certainly not safer than cars. However, you can reduce the extreme fatality rate significantly if you cut out drunk riding and even more so if you have more than six months of experience and wear all the gear all the time. It’s a risky activity that attracts people that don’t make smart decisions. When I got my license, the five others in my class all owned a motorcycle and rode them for…

I think that’s limited to the US. In Thailand, kids ride motorcycles from a very young age, and don’t exhibit the crazy driving on that they do here. I think if more families drove motorcycles, it would no longer be considered cool or extreme, and that behavior would disappear. It reminds me of the high drinking age situation in the United States. When people here start drinking, they end up in emergency room, which…

The average age of first drink in the us is like 16 years old. The law doesn’t stop anyone from drinking it just serves to ruin peoples lives with a criminal record for behavior a huge percent of people engage with.

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

#307

Post by analog31 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #300
prmoustache wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of these fatalities involve some daredevils? I became a motorbike in my late 30's and I see I am not taking risks like a lot of riders around me. I am taking ample distance between me and cars, act as if I was invisible and other users would do the most insane thing possible at all times and don't swerve around vehicles. I am even slower descending a mountain pass on my motorbike than I am riding my road bic…

I’ve seen way too many clips of bikers to no fault getting wrecked that its just not for me. At least with a human powered bike you have the physics of only going about 15 miles an hour on your side and aren’t going to turn into a crayon.

Indeed, and you're also not going to travel on a high speed, congested road. For one thing, there's usually no point.

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

#308

Post by kjkjadksj »

ambyra wrote: post #52
someguydave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorcyles have a roughly 30 times higher fatality rate per mile driven compared to cars

Pollution caused by congestion and manufacturing cars kills everyone. By riding a bike people can put their money where their mouth is regarding views on climate change; you're making a statement that says "I'm putting the environment ahead of my personal safety". Also, if you convert enough people, motorcycle riding becomes safer for everyone. Getting bumped by another 150lb Vespa isn't as nasty as getting hit by a…

Motorcycles are dangerous because of the speed honestly. Especially a lot of these bikes people buy that are just way too much power for anyone to be reasonable with. Like why do you need to strap yourself to a rocket that can go to 60 in less than 2 seconds? I’m sorry you aren’t even strapped in you are holding on for dear life. Theres no where you can do that and claim to be safe and responsible short of being a trained rider on a track.

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

#309

Post by seadan83 »

thereisnospork wrote: post #218
lkurtz wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this analogy is quite correct. Driving on a particular route is not a driver’s objective like reading a particular book is a reader’s objective. The driver’s objective is arriving at a destination. The objective in driving is not a finite resource, but the multiple route options to the objective can be, which differs substantially from a library queue.

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…

Ah, I think i just realized how to fix the analogy!

The issue is with how many books are checked out a time. If the line is absurdly long, at some point you will make fewer trips to the library to avoid paying the cost of waiting in line. You would check out more books so you would go less frequently. You would be trading storage space at home in exchange for time (not having to wait in line). If the line were infinitely fast, then why not go to the library exactly after you have finished one book to then go get one new book.

If an automated checkout then exists, the line time would be less, making it less expensive to go to the library, which means a person would be willing to increase their trip frequency to the library. Suddenly, you have a line full of people all checking out exactly one book, and returning the next day to do the same thing again (rather than checking out one weeks worth of books, and coming back a week later instead of the next day).

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

#310

Post by kjkjadksj »

ambyra wrote: post #64
carso wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And are also not great for air pollution - they burn less gas per mile, but the engines are very dirty.

But they reduce congestion, which equals less total time on the road. Everyone gets better MPGs if there is less stop and go traffic.

Imagine stop and go traffic for a minute. Now imagine it with all those cars replaced by ninjas and dirtbikes and harleys. You can’t even hold a conversation when one of these things goes by. Imagine that being everything that goes by.
Post reply on HN