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Your rhetorical question has an obvious answer, which I'll illustrate with evidence: I live in Manhattan, the USA's most crowded place in terms of bikes and pe

Your rhetorical question has an obvious answer, which I'll illustrate with evidence: I live in Manhattan, the USA's most crowded place in terms of bikes and pedestrians. Yet, we are not anywhere near capacity for bikes and pedestrians, anywhere, anytime. For cars, we are at/over capacity pretty much all the time during the day. Why is obvious -- cars are way bigger. Duh. Cars are just very space-ineffecient -- the space consumed by one car could service many times more transit riders, pedestrians, cyclists. Getting people to switch from car to anything else multiples manyfold the number of people we can service, which is a good thing. Getting people to switch from anything else, on the other hand, doesn't do much good. Even if we did reach sidewalk capacity somewhere, it would make sense to just convert one car lane into additional sidewalk, since a lane can fit at least 10x as many people if they're walking versus driving.

oftenwrong 10y ago
Look at what Manhattan would need to become if every commuter drove a car in: https://mtayloranalysis.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/an-auto-oriented-manhattan/ https://mtayloranalysis.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/an-auto-ori...
- galdosdi 10y ago
  Holy !@#$%! Yeah, exactly. Very nice visualization of how space-inefficient car transport is.
maxsilver 10y ago
> I live in Manhattan, the USA's most crowded place in terms of bikes and pedestrians. Yet, we are not anywhere near capacity for bikes and pedestrians, anywhere, anytime. This is not true. From the NY Times -> "New York’s Sidewalks Are So Packed, Pedestrians Are Taking to the Streets" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/nyregion/new-york-city-overcrowded-sidewalks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/nyregion/new-york-city-ov...
- galdosdi 10y ago
  That's unfairly using a different standard of congestion for pedestrians as for motorists. The kind of congestion midtown manhattan experiences for pedestrians is comparable to stop-and-go-but-moving car traffic. A bit unpleasant but there is still capacity. There's wasted capacity in the streets right now so pedestrians will overflow there, yeah, but if there was a fence, we could still increase the pedestrian density a good bit before reaching capacity. In other words, it's more comparable to stop-and-go averaging 15mph car traffic - uncomfortable, but still plenty of capacity left. It's not comparable to what we actually observe in car traffic at rush hour often -- mostly stopped, barely inching occasionally, averaging well under 5mph. When an event like a protest happens, THEN you actually see what true full-to-capacity looks like, and you realize that the day-to-day, while crowded and uncomfortable, has a long way to go before getting to capacity. Outside of an event like a protest, I've NEVER been walking through midtown and felt unable to make any progress at all. Compare that to driving. Or to put it another way, even at the worst of pedestrian congestion, the pedestrian is still faster than the car, so there is obviously still room left to make it even slower.

oftenwrong 10y ago

Look at what Manhattan would need to become if every commuter drove a car in: https://mtayloranalysis.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/an-auto-oriented-manhattan/ https://mtayloranalysis.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/an-auto-ori...

galdosdi 10y ago
Holy !@#$%! Yeah, exactly. Very nice visualization of how space-inefficient car transport is.

maxsilver 10y ago

> I live in Manhattan, the USA's most crowded place in terms of bikes and pedestrians. Yet, we are not anywhere near capacity for bikes and pedestrians, anywhere, anytime. This is not true. From the NY Times -> "New York’s Sidewalks Are So Packed, Pedestrians Are Taking to the Streets" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/nyregion/new-york-city-overcrowded-sidewalks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/nyregion/new-york-city-ov...

galdosdi 10y ago
That's unfairly using a different standard of congestion for pedestrians as for motorists. The kind of congestion midtown manhattan experiences for pedestrians is comparable to stop-and-go-but-moving car traffic. A bit unpleasant but there is still capacity. There's wasted capacity in the streets right now so pedestrians will overflow there, yeah, but if there was a fence, we could still increase the pedestrian density a good bit before reaching capacity. In other words, it's more comparable to stop-and-go averaging 15mph car traffic - uncomfortable, but still plenty of capacity left. It's not comparable to what we actually observe in car traffic at rush hour often -- mostly stopped, barely inching occasionally, averaging well under 5mph. When an event like a protest happens, THEN you actually see what true full-to-capacity looks like, and you realize that the day-to-day, while crowded and uncomfortable, has a long way to go before getting to capacity. Outside of an event like a protest, I've NEVER been walking through midtown and felt unable to make any progress at all. Compare that to driving. Or to put it another way, even at the worst of pedestrian congestion, the pedestrian is still faster than the car, so there is obviously still room left to make it even slower.