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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

#361

Post by infecto »

em-bee wrote: post #225
SSJPython wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live in a country with the wrong type of political system for that. Valuing everyone's opinion equally is called democracy. Infrastructure should not be subject to peoples' opinions. Like utilities and defense, infrastructure is crucial for security and commerce. People simply don't know better.

but there is a solution to this problem: education. and i don't mean propaganda, but teaching people not to be selfish, to care for others and consider others needs, to contribute to the betterment of society. to have compassion, remove prejudice, etc. if these values were taught in schools, then the next generation would make better choices and they would know better and vote for better infrastructure.

That will never happen. Thats the kind of utopian dream that will not happen regardless of level of education.

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

#362

Post by [deleted] »

rangestransform wrote: post #264
Jensson wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think public transit is full of drunkards? Its mostly tired people getting to or from work, those doesn't harass a lot of people. When its late and its a lot of drunks on public transit sure, but not on normal commutes. Columns I've read from women getting harassed its mostly about dance floors at clubs, not commute trains, when people aren't drunk they mostly keep their hands to themselves.

A crackhead grabbed my girlfriend’s hair on the subway recently Tell me, anti car fundamentalists, what are the odds that happens in a waymo?

[deleted]

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

#363

Post by oceanplexian »

lkurtz wrote: post #206
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…

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.

If you are stuck in gridlock in a two hour commute with a soulless car that functions as nothing more than an appliance, then sure, that sounds like my personal version of hell. But for me “The driver’s objective is arriving at a destination.” couldn’t be more of a false statement.

Give me a nice European sports car, a manual transmission, an empty highway and some nice scenery and commuting can be an incredibly relaxing experience. Even when I lived in the Bay Area commuting this way off-peak was awesome. In fact the commute was the highlight of my day.

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

#364

Post by zdragnar »

ericmay wrote: post #331
kjkjadksj wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big issue with the market argument in converting car drivers to transit riders is the respective networks operate at different scales. Think of a little neighborhood with a bus line on a road; theres probably I’m not even sure call it 20x as many roads in that neighborhood that don’t have a bus line. There is so much more built out of the comprehensive road network everywhere than there is with transit. Cities are…

It’s hard to talk about the topic at very high level but for many American cities like Columbus where I live the answer lies at least partially converting surface parking lots in downtown areas into economically productive assets like housing or businesses which are also not extractive to the local economy. This density makes it easier to walk and bike as well. Many cities, including Columbus, are expanding bus rapid…

> the answer lies at least partially converting surface parking lots in downtown areas into economically productive assets like housing or businesses which are also not extractive to the local economy. This density makes it easier to walk and bike as well.

That only answers where new development should go. It does nothing whatsoever for the people who already live in neighborhoods with no (useful) access to public transit.

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

#365

Post by lazyasciiart »

gotoeleven wrote: post #348
anon84873628 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, these are really bad takes. You think "culture war" explains it all? Nah, it's not that easy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

That’s completely inapplicable to what they said.

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

#366

Post by ilyagr »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #190
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…

>> 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…

I agree, "induced demand" is a word phrase to rally behind.

The argument must be (and, I believe, is) that induced demand for buses and trains is far cheaper to a society than induced demand for cars. Adding a train car at a peak time serves a lot more people than adding a highway lane at a peak time.

I'm actually curious to compare them.

Apparently, 100 people is a reasonable capacity for a train car (200 is possible for BART at rush hour). A lane of 100 single-occupancy cars in a traffic jam is about a third of a mile. So, an extra car lane a mile long is about an extra half a train, give it take.

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

#367

Post by kjkjadksj »

prmoustache wrote: post #240
throwaway22032 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We simply disagree that public transport (or society in general) has to accept everyone regardless of how badly they behave. It has nothing to do with "sectors of society". If you want me on the bus, kick off the dickheads. Making driving worse will not get me on the bus however much you attempt to manipulate me emotionally.

I'd also drive more if roads weren't full of "dickheads" and impaired drivers. You have exactly the same kind of issues while driving. I don't understand your double standard, you should apply the same rules for driving and public transits.

Comparing someone cutting you off while driving to someone with their hand down their pants or smoking meth in front of you is like comparing an apple to an elephant. Surprisingly, from my own experiences, you grow numb to it all before long and just continue about your day.

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

#368

Post by lazyasciiart »

thereisnospork wrote: post #251
lkurtz wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

And since the self checkouts exist, there is no interest in paying to have librarians at the register, or drivers on buses; so the self checkout is the excuse for not providing a librarian, which effectively cuts off some users from checking out books at all.

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

#369

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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.

Minimum parking requirements are just that: A lower bound. Which allows the property owner to choose the number that makes sense. In a rural area that might be a higher number because there is no mass transit and everyone will be arriving by car, but so what? Then the property owner will choose to have more parking spaces, because their patrons will demand them and they don't want to lose business.

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

#370

Post by kjkjadksj »

analog31 wrote: post #307
kjkjadksj wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well from these clips, the road doesn’t have to be congested for things to go sideways before reaction time kicks in. And even from my own experiences, I once hit a big board with my car on the freeway. Didn’t see it until there it was. Four flats and a bit of a scare vs the end of my life probably right then if I were on a bike in all likelihood.
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