5 ms·

> Was adding the lanes a win for the city? The commuters? The environment? It was a win for the local economy. By allowing more people to drive to and from lo

by Rescis 8y ago

> Was adding the lanes a win for the city? The commuters? The environment? It was a win for the local economy. By allowing more people to drive to and from locations they please, you are allowing more people to work jobs they otherwise wouldn't be able to, and purchase goods and services they wouldn't otherwise. I'm rarely a fan of government spending; but, roads, police, and firefighting are probably some of the least evil.

lhopki01 8y ago
Why not public transport? Over the long term it's cheaper.
- AlgorithmicTime 8y ago
  It's pretty inflexible. Public transit generally feeds into a hub from the outlying areas. If you need to go from one of the spokes to another, it will generally be incredibly inconvenient to make the trip via public transit. I don't see increased funding really fixing that.
CalRobert 8y ago
Giving people an all-you-can-eat buffet of asphalt encourages extremely inefficient resource allocation. Doing this without asking for anything to offset the negative externalities exacerbates the problem. So far the negatives of increased vmt have been completely ignored - they are not minor. Ask yourself - would you enjoy living on a busy street, or a quiet one? A wide one, or a narrow one? Which would you rather see your kid walk or cycle to school on? Which will have cleaner air? More noise? Would you rather your 85 year old parents or grandparents had to walk across an 8 lane road or a 2 lane one to get to the post office from their home?
- freehunter 8y ago
  You're comparing streets with roads, here. Fundamentally I agree with you, big roads divide communities and make cities unwalkable. But they are necessary. A street is made for transporting humans first and foremost. It has sidewalks, driveways to houses are accessed directly from the street, and pedestrians can cross with relative ease, to the point that crosswalks are basically unnecessary. A road is made for transporting cars first and foremost. There shouldn't be many residential driveways directly leading into a road, there may be sidewalks but they're not going to get used often, and you should rarely see pedestrians trying to cross. Crosswalks are very necessary on roads. There's no getting around the fact that we need roads. Cars and trucks need ways to move long distanced quickly. The problem becomes when city designers try to mix streets and roads (to make a stroad), leading to massive arteries running through the heart of a residential neighborhood. Proper city design puts roads outside of pedestrian-heavy neighborhoods and fills them with easily and safely walkable streets instead. There's nothing wrong with an 8 lane road, as long as that road isn't supposed to be used as a street as well. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-...
  - CalRobert 8y ago
    we agree to an extent, but we've shoved roads and motorways where we should have streets. Santa Monica ridiculously slapped a 25mph sign and unguarded crosswalk on a Wilshire, a disaster of a road at the best of times, and of course people are killed on it now and then. How many nearby will die young from cancer,lung disease, etc - who knows? Interestingly autism rates appear to be higher near freeways (like the ones we put in the middle of cities), yet the anti-freeways-in-urban-cores crowd somehow lacks mindshare compared to antivaxxers.
    - freehunter 8y ago
      If you haven't been familiar with the organization Strong Towns before, you should really look into it. They've got tons of articles that are right up your alley on the dangers of just putting a 25mph speed limit on a road and calling it a "street". This one is my favorite: Just Another Pedestrian Killed https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/12/3/just-another-pedestrian-killed https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/12/3/just-another-p...
      - CalRobert 8y ago
        Thanks - I'm familiar with them. This is an issue I care deeply about, and one of the key reasons I emigrated.
Sharlin 8y ago
This is 2018. A reasonable, sustainable policy would aim to decrease, not increase, the number of kilometers people drive around in private cars.
- rplst8 8y ago
  Not if electric cars take over and we have clean abundant wind, solar, and nuclear power.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Building electric cars is not exactly good for the environment either. They're also loud and kill people in accidents a lot more often than subways do.
    - Sharlin 8y ago
      And they do nothing for the congestion problem either. Private vehicles are simply a horrendously inefficient way to move people around, regardless of the source of motive power. Not to mention how inefficient (and people-unfriendly) use of land highways and parking lots are.

by Rescis 8y ago

lhopki01 8y ago

Why not public transport? Over the long term it's cheaper.

AlgorithmicTime 8y ago
It's pretty inflexible. Public transit generally feeds into a hub from the outlying areas. If you need to go from one of the spokes to another, it will generally be incredibly inconvenient to make the trip via public transit. I don't see increased funding really fixing that.

CalRobert 8y ago

Giving people an all-you-can-eat buffet of asphalt encourages extremely inefficient resource allocation. Doing this without asking for anything to offset the negative externalities exacerbates the problem. So far the negatives of increased vmt have been completely ignored - they are not minor. Ask yourself - would you enjoy living on a busy street, or a quiet one? A wide one, or a narrow one? Which would you rather see your kid walk or cycle to school on? Which will have cleaner air? More noise? Would you rather your 85 year old parents or grandparents had to walk across an 8 lane road or a 2 lane one to get to the post office from their home?

freehunter 8y ago
You're comparing streets with roads, here. Fundamentally I agree with you, big roads divide communities and make cities unwalkable. But they are necessary. A street is made for transporting humans first and foremost. It has sidewalks, driveways to houses are accessed directly from the street, and pedestrians can cross with relative ease, to the point that crosswalks are basically unnecessary. A road is made for transporting cars first and foremost. There shouldn't be many residential driveways directly leading into a road, there may be sidewalks but they're not going to get used often, and you should rarely see pedestrians trying to cross. Crosswalks are very necessary on roads. There's no getting around the fact that we need roads. Cars and trucks need ways to move long distanced quickly. The problem becomes when city designers try to mix streets and roads (to make a stroad), leading to massive arteries running through the heart of a residential neighborhood. Proper city design puts roads outside of pedestrian-heavy neighborhoods and fills them with easily and safely walkable streets instead. There's nothing wrong with an 8 lane road, as long as that road isn't supposed to be used as a street as well. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-...
- CalRobert 8y ago
  we agree to an extent, but we've shoved roads and motorways where we should have streets. Santa Monica ridiculously slapped a 25mph sign and unguarded crosswalk on a Wilshire, a disaster of a road at the best of times, and of course people are killed on it now and then. How many nearby will die young from cancer,lung disease, etc - who knows? Interestingly autism rates appear to be higher near freeways (like the ones we put in the middle of cities), yet the anti-freeways-in-urban-cores crowd somehow lacks mindshare compared to antivaxxers.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    If you haven't been familiar with the organization Strong Towns before, you should really look into it. They've got tons of articles that are right up your alley on the dangers of just putting a 25mph speed limit on a road and calling it a "street". This one is my favorite: Just Another Pedestrian Killed https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/12/3/just-another-pedestrian-killed https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/12/3/just-another-p...
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      Thanks - I'm familiar with them. This is an issue I care deeply about, and one of the key reasons I emigrated.

Sharlin 8y ago

This is 2018. A reasonable, sustainable policy would aim to decrease, not increase, the number of kilometers people drive around in private cars.

rplst8 8y ago
Not if electric cars take over and we have clean abundant wind, solar, and nuclear power.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Building electric cars is not exactly good for the environment either. They're also loud and kill people in accidents a lot more often than subways do.
  - Sharlin 8y ago
    And they do nothing for the congestion problem either. Private vehicles are simply a horrendously inefficient way to move people around, regardless of the source of motive power. Not to mention how inefficient (and people-unfriendly) use of land highways and parking lots are.