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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

#691

Post by graemep »

chgs wrote: post #589
graemep wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK where we do not have net subsidies for ICE cars (because of taxes on car ownership and fuel) and we do not have minimum parking requirements (AFAIK - there are certainly newish city centre blocks of flats with no parking at all) this does not seem to happen. We have a lot of policies and a rise in the expense of owning a car, but we have not had the required rise in investment in public transport (we need a…

The lack of parking leads to more demand for on street parking, which is delivered via the ballot box. Majority of housing developments have minimum parking stipulations, although in practice those aren’t really practically met (a garage is claimed as a space for example, or a drive which only fits one behind another), which leads to on road parking. With public transport there are two elements. The capital expenditu…

> Why do you think someone who walks and bike everywhere should pay increased taxes to subsidise empty buses running around the place?

Also, I assume that for consistency you would say someone who never cycles should not pay increased taxes to pay for things like cycle lanes? Do you think we should make no provision for cycling, or introduce a road tax on bicycles to pay for it?

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

#692

Post by analog31 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #646
prmoustache wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have probably hit that big board because you are driving an extension of your living room and are thus totally incentivised by dangers and not following legal and recommended security distance between you and the vehicle in front of you. Also dangers are easier to avoid on a bike provided you are going at reasonnable speed because your own vehicle is smaller. The biggest danger is target fixation but that is some…

You can’t imagine that someone driving safely wouldn’t hit a board? On a highway you are rarely afforded the luxury of having a full stopping distance anyway. I think the book says for every 10mph you go you should factor in 10 seconds. So 60mph would be a 6 second stopping distance, so I would need to see a car pass something and count to six before I pass that. If I had that sort of spacing on my commute, people wo…

Indeed, I speculated that this is what happened based on your comment. It's also what I mean when I say that drivers are not fully in control of their cars in congested traffic, and why a cyclist would avoid those situations -- to avoid being that board.

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

#693

Post by HDThoreaun »

itishappy wrote: post #616
HDThoreaun wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People are already complaining about traffic! Drivers taking I70 between Denver and Loveland on weekends aren't doing so because of their love of the road. Why would we want to increase the number of people experiencing traffic? To assume my prior hyperbolic tone: Widening roads is punishing people for driving! I'd argue the true goal of the exercise is to increase the capacity of the transit system, and that include…

People complain about everything. Certainly the bus is a common complaint here in Chicago even though it’s difficult for me to imagine it getting much better. Even if they add BRT people will complain about that. Of course the goal is increasing capacity of the transit system the question is how to do it.

I think the US has a big problem where SFHs are the epitome of what it means to be successful for a huge number of people. These people will always vote for policies that enable living in a single family home, even if they don’t live in on themselves and will never be able to afford to because the freedom to do so is so deeply ingrained. Highway expansion is a policy that enables single family home living as it enables people to live farther and farther from the city center so I suspect it will always see a large amount of political support.

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

#694

Post by bobthepanda »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #575
squeaky-clean wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked the bus stop near my parents' place in Miami (I'm living in NYC now). The next bus arrives in 14 hours lol. Busses for that stop run hourly between 11am-4pm. I don't get how they think anyone can depend on that. Not only is an hour between busses incredibly frustrating, if I needed to do anything past 4pm, (like I don't know... commute to work?) I would have no way back home until the next day.

The next bus is loud, uncomfortable, slow, filled with other people you don't want to share space with, stops every 2 minutes, and doesn't go where you want. The bus is run by a government that doesn't care what you want, and probably is either more expensive than you want, or basically "free". Transit systems need to be about twice as fast, comfortable and convenient as car options to be competitive, and in the US p…

The transit systems used to be private. They went broke competing with free highways.

Compare this to Japan, where transit is still going strong because the highways must recoup revenues via tolls.

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

#695

Post by chgs »

nilamo wrote: post #677
chgs wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who benefits from running empty buses? What population density do you need to sustain a 15 minute service from point A to point B on a Sunday at 6am? Or 9pm?

Who benefits from not having service?

The driver who ain’t carting air around. The environment that isn’t burning fuel to cart air around.

At some point it becomes far more efficient to simply provide on demand service.

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

#698

Post by nilamo »

chgs wrote: post #695
nilamo wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who benefits from not having service?

The driver who ain’t carting air around. The environment that isn’t burning fuel to cart air around. At some point it becomes far more efficient to simply provide on demand service.

But we're not comparing a bus with an on demand service, we're comparing it with no buses...?

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

#699

Post by HDThoreaun »

Jensson wrote: post #578
HDThoreaun wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just isnt true. Every metro area in the US has highways. Including the dense ones. NYC and Chicago are not concrete hellscapes

You say NYC and Chicago has enough highways to fill demand so there is no congestion? I am fairly certain that isn't true, I've read so much about congestion problems in NYC at least. Adding enough roads to fill all demand leads to concrete hellscapes, that was the point, the guy I responded to thought it was reasonable to add roads until all demand was satisfied.

No one is saying no congestion. The idea of highway expansion is to allow more people to travel while keeping congestion about constant. NYC and Chicago's highways allow the massive suburban areas and the tens of millions that live in them to semi conveniently go to the city. To do that with trains would require driving to a commuter rail station and then transferring to the metro to get where you want to go. Suburbanites just wouldnt go to the city in that case unless the destination is easily accessible on the commuter rail

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

#700

Post by HDThoreaun »

epolanski wrote: post #353
HDThoreaun wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think to would be extremely difficult to make the bus better than driving for people that already have a car. The most obvious option is making parking expensive or hard to find but I think that would lead to new politicians before people really embrace the bus. Reality is that americans dont enjoy being in enclosed spaces with strangers, hard to overcome that.

That's how it is for many in Europe. You've got a car but using it to get to work is inconvenient due to parking, and buses often have priority lanes. But the idea of commuting to Paris or Rome in car is...tough..

The problem is that we live in a democracy and most American voters dont want to live in europe. They mostly want a single family home in a low density suburban area, which makes public transit difficult.
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