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How we can reduce traffic congestion

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Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#361

Post by newguy1000 »

simondotau wrote: post #206
trymas wrote: 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…

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…

yes, lets make things harder for people in certain situations cause we know what's best for them.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#362

Post by asdff »

throw0101a wrote: post #236
ryan_lane wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the revenue generated from congestion pricing, and put it into public transportation. Make public transportation free to use. That would be far more impactful to the folks least able to bear an increase in driving fees. In most of the US, people are forced to own cars because they don't have public transit available, or the available public transit is too infrequent, or there aren't dense enough routes. The reas…

> Take the revenue generated from congestion pricing, and put it into public transportation. Public transportation is often not viable for the car-centric design of many American communities. The above is necessarily to do, but development probably also needs to also change to pre-WW2 designs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 See also Dutch suburbs: * http…

I disagree with that take generally. What is the difference between say a UK garden suburb and a new build suburb outside dallas? The commuter rail station really. UK suburbs are similarly labyrinthine. But actually, the dallas suburbs have great bones for a potential transit network. Even though the residential streets themselves look like they were laid out by wandering livestock just like they were in the UK, they have the great advantage of being rigidly bounded by generally 1x1 mile square, cardinal, arterial road networks which are very wide public right of ways. One could just lay a network of brt or lrt or heavy commuter rail on top of this space without even needing to acquire any property at all. And if the stations were say on each 1x1 mile intersecting node, everyone in the inner residential portion would theoretically only be a half mile or closer from their nearest transit stop, as the crow flies at least.

The only real issue is that these transit offerings are not being invested in at all. Not at the level of road expansion investment anyhow. Not that they wouldn't be possible to offer or that the built environment somehow precludes them.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#363

Post by newguy1000 »

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.

Let's make everything harder to use and cost more. It's for their own good!

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#364

Post by denkmoon »

breezybottom wrote: post #358
denkmoon wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid society grows around you. How dare all those productive aspiring people build things near you. Did they not know you had exclusive right of refusal on nearby development?

Landlords...productive...okay then.

Consider the following; the creation of the building is the productive part, not the rent seeking parasite afterwards.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#365

Post by malkia »

andsoitis wrote: post #155
malkia wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this apply to Netflix, Amazon, Disneys, and many other streaming providers's "What to watch next? Recommended..." of sorts (or music/podcast streaming services)...

Routing traffic affects not only the drivers using Google Maps, but also everyone around them IN REALTIME. Netflix personalized recommendations affect only the individual, not those around them who are not using Netflix.

Oh yes, good point! Stand corrected!

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#366

Post by alfiedotwtf »

rchard2scout wrote: post #254
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just drive anywhere with more than usual density in traffic and you’ll find trucks in the fast lane when they stop and start create gaps in the fast lane where no traffic can go. If you took out trucks altogether during peak hours you wouldn’t have these slow bubbles of traffic at the worst times.. Edit: let’s think of this from a pure scientific point of view - if you had 3 lanes and split traffic across them based…

Contrary to this, if you only have two lanes available, and trucks aren't allowed to overtake, you'll eventually end up with a long train of trucks without any gaps, and it'll become impossible to merge onto the highway from an on-ramp.

if trucks had free reign before and after peak times, this wouldn't happen

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#367

Post by philipallstar »

creaturemachine wrote: post #285
philipallstar wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cars replaced the horse and cart. There were roads before cars, and roads carry a lot more than cars. Try getting a fire engine to your house without roads.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#368

Post by jcranmer »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #330
jcranmer wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been traveling around in Europe without a car for several days now, including several fairly rural areas. There's a distinctly American trope in play, that if the bus or train doesn't stop more or less exactly at your destination, then it's going to be totally useless. Except, you look at the rural European countryside, and there is still a fairly reliable--and well-used, certainly not "only one rider on the bus…

It's not a matter of stopping exactly at your destination. If people had to walk two blocks it would do them some good. The problem is that in a low density area, both frequent service and infrequent service result in a low number of riders. You have a neighborhood with three dozen people in it who go to work and back once a day. If you run a bus there every 15 minutes for 12 hours a day, the average bus carries less…

> You have a neighborhood with three dozen people in it

The average household size in the US is about 4. Three dozen people means 9 houses. That's not really a neighborhood, and most people don't live in that kind of low-density.

Picking a random cul-de-sac street somewhere in North Carolina (ended up being near Cary, NC), as representative of what a suburban/exurban density environment would look like, it has 22 houses on it by itself. Just guessing where I'd plop a bus stop on a collector road, there's 4 similarly-sized cul-de-sacs within walking distance, and a similar number of houses on the collector road. So that bus stop is going to have 100 houses it can service, or about 300-400-ish people.

One of the primary problems with transit discourse in the US is that people (on both sides!) tend to view transit as a Manhattan-or-Cimmaron-County density dichotomy, thinking that transit is unviable except in the highest density regions. But my point is that transit is absolutely viable at the density available in exurban, even a lot of "rural" regions (although that's rural more like Berkshires rural rather than Oklahoma rural). And because not a lot of people actually live in the lowest density regions where public transit is unviable... it doesn't actually matter: most people live some place where public transit is viable.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#369

Post by throw0101a »

asdff wrote: post #362
throw0101a wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the revenue generated from congestion pricing, and put it into public transportation. Public transportation is often not viable for the car-centric design of many American communities. The above is necessarily to do, but development probably also needs to also change to pre-WW2 designs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0 See also Dutch suburbs: * http…

I disagree with that take generally. What is the difference between say a UK garden suburb and a new build suburb outside dallas? The commuter rail station really. UK suburbs are similarly labyrinthine. But actually, the dallas suburbs have great bones for a potential transit network. Even though the residential streets themselves look like they were laid out by wandering livestock just like they were in the UK, they…

> What is the difference between say a UK garden suburb and a new build suburb outside dallas?

The ability to do stuff without needing a car.

Re: How we can reduce traffic congestion

#370

Post by ctkhn »

protocolture wrote: post #131
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

>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 I dont even know what this would look like in practice. It feels like an inner city thing, lifestyle priced accordingly. What Socialists/Communists/Liberals/Conservatives/Local and Sta…

It looks like a lot of neighborhoods in American cities that are adjacent or outside the downtown business district or even suburbs on the commuter rail lines. A main commercial street surrounded by 1900-1950s houses and apartments, probably with new built mixed use buildings too. Most smaller cities and even big towns have neighborhoods like this based on my last 10 years of road trips across the US so it's not just NY SF etc where this is possible. This is for the the largest cities like NY DC Chicago etc or even smaller ones like Sacramento or Louisville. Not sure we can work out housing policy to be blacksmith friendly and it seems like a pain even out in the suburbs
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