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

nytimes.com

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

#311

Post by Maarten88 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #289
ksplicer wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird way to put that. Tax haul for 10 houses is definitely higher than the tax haul for a 10 unit complex, but how many 10 unit complexes can you fit in the space you need for 10 houses? The complex has a much better tax haul per square foot.

You are assuming infrastructure costs would be the same for a 10x denser population. I’ve read articles where even on a per capita basis just about everything is more costly in dense cities, from sewers to schools. It would take some careful scrutiny to identify what is actually optimal, and I expect that to depend heavily on the local economy. For example maybe the fact that the lima peru skyline looks like lima per…

> I’ve read articles where even on a per capita basis just about everything is more costly in dense cities, from sewers to schools.

Link? This NotJustBikes video suggests it is the other way around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

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

#312

Post by [deleted] »

S_A_P wrote: post #196
ambyra wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try a motorcycle! The laws for lane splitting are the best in the country. You could probably fit 6 motorcycles in the space of one car.

The #1 killer of people I know up to this point in my life is motorcycle accidents. I would never ride one and would do all I can to prevent my kids from doing so.

[deleted]

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

#313

Post by TheCleric »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #179
languagehacker wrote: post #51

I just read Paved Paradise as well as The High Cost of Free Parking. This seems like the current gradual trend towards reversing the hidden subsidy for drivers, first by giving them less affordances at remarkably low prices or for free. A few folks in the comments have mentioned a couple of times that it doesn't make sense to make a policy like this without supporting transit. I believe the argument would be that not…

When it comes to transit I think the lol make driving sucky so people will support mass transit is inane because of the backlash potential. Much better to get ahead of the hose than always be trying to grab it's ass. You're not going to get boomers and GenX to take the bus. You probably could get younger generations to do that especially if there are options. Really there should be a high speed rail along the front r…

When I lived in Denver this GenXer gladly transitioned to light rail as it freed up an hour a day that I would have spent concentrating on driving on more relaxing things like reading. I miss it.

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

#314

Post by kjkjadksj »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #284
EasyMark wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s another huge way to put a dent it and let people live where they want: work from home works. The pandemic proved it. It’s not a 100% solution but there is seldom a 100% solution that doesn’t involve totalitarian government since not everyone wants to live in the city in concrete towers.

Or even better, spread out work for those who can't work from home. I live in a small country, where a lot of jobs are in the capital, A LOT of people drive to the capital daily (20, 30, 50, even 100km one way), and complain about it... and complain how everything is there, complain about centralization, etc... ..and then also complain when a company in their smaller city wants to expand or when someone wants to buil…

A lot of american metros are polycentric with their job markets already. That was one of the sells of suburbia: spread out and therefore lower the congestion that was bogging down urban areas at the time. There was a time when it was predicted manhattan would flood with manure in the future should horse traffic increase how it had been. Then of course the car came but still, these were concerns even back then. Someplaces instituted height limits to attempt to spread congestion too, especially done in europe where many cities today have denser urban sprawl but its pretty clearly capped at a height limit which forces it out.

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

#315

Post by seadan83 »

I kinda hate that this topic almost always devolves into similar arguments about what exactly is induced demand. Despite that, these conversation threads did give me a new perspective on induced demand that I feel is worth sharing.

That new perspective - I would now say that induced demand relates the efficiency of how well a resource is used to the cost of using that resource. If cost of use is high, then the resource is used more efficiently, and the inverse is also true.

An example, if going to the grocery store takes a literal minute, then buying one item at a time per trip is very viable. OTOH, if that travel time takes one hour, then a person is likely going to avoid that trip, and when they do make it - they'll buy two weeks of groceries at a time and be very careful not to forget anything.

In the latter case, the number of items transported per unit distance increases, usage efficiency goes up. If the cost goes down, then the number of people for whom it is economical to use that resource inefficiently will increase. That's induced demand.

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

#316

Post by kjkjadksj »

Carrok wrote: post #72
jcranmer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a passenger in a car, watching motorcyclists zip down at high speed on the lane markers between cars in dense, stop-and-go traffic was incredibly unnerving. I can't see how that's safe.

It’s not, because they aren’t following the law. If you follow the lane splitting laws as written, it is actually pretty safe.

Thats what they say but at the same time seems like there is really hardly any room at all oftentimes. I don’t know how these guys have the nerve with the big chopper handlebars sometimes. Seems like they are like an inch from either car on some of these splits and all it would take is a driver to wiggle the wheel a little and they are launched over the handlebars. Doesn’t seem like anyone looks back for bikes coming up.

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

#318

Post by anon84873628 »

detourdog wrote: post #298
languagehacker wrote: post #51

I just read Paved Paradise as well as The High Cost of Free Parking. This seems like the current gradual trend towards reversing the hidden subsidy for drivers, first by giving them less affordances at remarkably low prices or for free. A few folks in the comments have mentioned a couple of times that it doesn't make sense to make a policy like this without supporting transit. I believe the argument would be that not…

The problem I have with reducing minimum parking is that in rural areas it doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t stop people in my rural town of 2,500 houses advocating for reducing parking requirements.

Well, today's rural areas are tomorrow's suburbs. If you want to stop the rural areas from becoming a car slave suburban sprawl, then you need to do something differently than what we did in the past. It sounds like people in your town are forward thinking.

Plus, if there is plenty of room then you'll still have parking, until that land becomes more valuable for something else.

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

#319

Post by ksplicer »

mdorazio wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #17

I'd rather see efforts to make mass transit more attractive and encourage its use in a POSITIVE way, rather than using a stick of clogging the roads and punishing people into using mass transit. Win the market, don't just quash what you don't like. I can imagine this easily being responded to negatively in the end and the political response is to give in and the pendulum swings wildly in the other direction. In the e…

How do you propose doing that, though? Mass transit almost everywhere runs at a significant loss already and if we're talking buses then there's a significant driver shortage. In the US the distances and routes required outside of dense urban centers also pretty much necessitate a huge increase in transit time compared to driving, making the whole thing a bad value for people who can afford a car.

You're making the assumption that roads pay for themselves, but that isn't true at all either. Across the US cities are going bankrupt because they can't maintain roads and other infrastructure. California has a gas tax that pays 80% of road maintenance, the rest of which is often paid from local city taxes that drivers and non-drivers alike pay. Many cities are falling behind in road maintenance though, the true impact of which won't be felt for ~20 years. A hidden cost of car infrastructure is also that the low density increases the costs of other infrastructure maintenance, such as sewage, gas, and power. Good mass transit is ultimately cheaper for everyone.

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

#320

Post by throwitaway222 »

Pipe sizes are 3d, so as you go from 1" to 2" to 3" to 4" the amount of throughput skyrockets.

Roads are flat, not stacked, so you're just somewhat linearly increasing throughput. It might be a bit more since the leftmost lanes can go increasingly faster, but it's nothing like pipes.

So it makes sense to try to think of other ways to handle it... that being said, does having 50 more buses actually reduce anything, 100 more? Trains.

In many cases people will continue to not want to share their space with someone with boobs hanging out, pee all over the seats, weed smell 24/7.

Hmm, so I guess we're just in a stalemate at this point.

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