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The problem as I see it is that we force everyone onto the freeway. Need to get somewhere a few miles from here? They make it very difficult to get there withou
by donatj 10y ago
The problem as I see it is that we force everyone onto the freeway. Need to get somewhere a few miles from here? They make it very difficult to get there without getting onto the freeway.
There was some point in the last 30 years where city designers decided the best way to handle local traffic was just to force everyone onto the freeway. It's horrible.
There should instead be a reasonable main grid of smaller (2 lane max) low stop count streets such that I can get across town without getting on the freeway.
A large number of small roads can handle a lot more traffic than a small number of large roads.
- r00fus 10y agoMaybe we should also consider the concept of mass transit? The increased likelihood of injury or death from increased transit time in automobiles alone is a health hazard.
- donatj 10y agoI'm certainly not writing mass transit off but I've simply never seen it work in practice. I know that my 7 minute commute is well over an hour by bus. I'd rather just pay the aforementioned tolls than waste 2 hours of my day on a bus, every day. That would add up to years of my life wasted pretty quickly. I'm far more hopeful for self driving cars than mass transit.
- whorleater 10y agoNYC is an abnormality in the US, but it's certainly better than almost all the rest of the cities in the states. Western Europe also has fantastic mass transit that definitely works in practice.
- vkou 10y agoSelf-driving cars are, unfortunately, an expensive half-assed solution to transportation in the US. Buses (And really, any at-grade transportation that has to share the road with cars) are, unfortunately, not mass transit. 7 minutes vs an hour sounds atrocious.
- sampo 10y ago> I'm certainly not writing mass transit off but I've simply never seen it work in practice. You've never been to New York, London, Tokyo? Or any 0.5m+ city in Europe or Japan?
- r00fus 10y agoEvery time I see this SMAC video [1], I think of Hong Kong. [1] https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/secret-project-the-planetary-transit-system/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/secret-project-...
- nickthemagicman 10y agoLA is getting better with mass transit. The problem is it's not running 24 hours. It shuts down around 1am so you it's not really good for doing things at night like in NYC. Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people, or kind of thuggish people. There needs to be some sort of loitering code enforcement on the train along with more security. I feel uncomfortable as a dude, I bet women feel even more so. Also need more train tracks! Fix those problems people will ride transit way more. Thats the way to solve the traffic problem.
- ghaff 10y agoAlmost no cities have 24 hour mass transit including many that are considered to have good transit systems. That's a very high bar you're setting.
- _-__--- 10y ago24hr service would be very expensive, but it seems that they should run the transit services until a little after the majority of bars and clubs close. It was nice here in Boston when they ran the T until a little past 2AM; they've since pulled that back to 12:30 or so. It can be kind of a pain, but Uber/Lyft are well established here.
- Rebelgecko 10y agoIt's certainly usable for that in LA, where last call is also 2am. I believe every train runs until 2 or 3 AM (on Fridays/Saturdays), and starts back up again by 5. Not quite 24 hours(except on NYE, when they don't stop), but still very usable.
- sampo 10y agoIt's pretty much enough to run some lines till 4am on Fridays and Saturdays, so people can go and party.
- ghaff 10y ago
- kirykl 10y agoWaze will get you anywhere in LA without a freeway. Once you learn the side streets, there's always a faster way when the freeway is backed up.
- sologoub 10y agoYup, and most people speed on "side streets", which are actually residential streets and people actually walk on these... Can't tell you how many times I almost got run over by such a fine motorist glued to yet another app...
- jayarcanum 10y agoOk fountain and venice are not going to save anybody from the free ways. People know about side streets, they're not really that much help. This problem isn't going away just like the cities revenue problem which is the only reason this is happening.
- paulsutter 10y agoElon Musk: “Without tunnels, we will all be in traffic hell forever. I really do think tunnels are the key to solving urban gridlock. Being stuck in traffic is soul-destroying. Self-driving cars will actually make it worse by making vehicle travel more affordable". http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14391410/elon-musk-tunnels-traffic-tesla-spacex-boring-company http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14391410/elon-musk-tunnels...
- majormajor 10y ago> The problem as I see it is that we force everyone onto the freeway. Need to get somewhere a few miles from here? They make it very difficult to get there without getting onto the freeway. This applies to many American cities, but not really most of LA. The relatively grid-like nature of the surface street network + the level of highway congestion makes short trips do much better on surface streets most of the day. Of course, the flip side is terrible surface street congestion (to to go east from Santa Monica to UCLA at end-of-day rush hour... or south to LAX on Lincoln). But it reflects that LA's street planning is in many ways much more like an "old" city than a "new" one with lots of intentionally-confusing local road routing and consistent, easy routing to the highways instead. But when every street going west->east or north->south is backed up, whether they're 1 lane or 3-to-4, I'm not sure there's any room for a denser grid of narrower streets, or that it would improve much.