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Until cities have a better alternative to driving than "use our terrible mass transit in our poorly-designed cities," this will remain a problem. American citi

Until cities have a better alternative to driving than "use our terrible mass transit in our poorly-designed cities," this will remain a problem. American cities are designed for cars, so that bicycles, scooters, or any other human-scale transportation is not just inconvenient, it's dangerous. Forcing skateboards, scooters, gyros, bicycles, etc., into the road with 4,000 pound cars is insanely dangerous. If you're riding something that can't be carried into a building with you, it's inconvenient at best to park it outside. Just removing parking from new construction won't solve the problem, it will compound it. People still won't want to get on slow, crowded, uncomfortable buses or packed, unreliable, dirty trains. We'll just get more people driving endlessly around the block looking for parking and polluting the air, more accidents from drivers hitting people in the road, more sprawl as people shun the city so they can drive in the suburbs instead. Roads have to be repurposed to make light personal transportation safe. Take every two-way two-lane and split it into a one-way, with a physical separation between a car side and a personal transport side. Remove parking from the curbs, and put it in the middle so one side can be for cars and the other for bikes, scooters, skaters, etc. Public transit needs a major overhaul, major investment, and a new attitude. It has to be about riders' comfort, convenience, and happiness, not just jamming people into routes as if they were statistics in a planning meeting. New development should be aimed at walkable, human-scale neighborhoods, planned for people first, not cars. All these things have to happen to solve the problem. It won't be easy, but unless we do something like that, we'll be living with the car problem for a very long time to come.

ebikelaw 8y ago
Kind of a weird argument that nobody wants to take the bus or the train because it's too crowded. Very Berra.
- lozenge 8y ago
  It just means there aren't enough bus routes or busses on the route.
  - cozzyd 8y ago
    Or the buses are too slow because there's too many cars in the way.
  - taeric 8y ago
    Me thinks you missed the joke. Being that enough people take it so that it is crowded, but the claim is essentially nobody is taking it.
- runarberg 8y ago
  Take the Sound Transit 550. It is the main (only direct?) busline between downtown Seattle and Bellevue. During rush hour it comes at an interval of 10 - 15 min. The bus it self is a double wagon (with an accordion connection), it fits maybe (beware I'm pulling this figure from thin air) 50 people. It is always crowded with people standing back to front. During these 10 - 15 minutes one can only imagine how many people cross on the motorway between these places in their private cars. So it is accurate (although it sounds like a contradiction) to say that *"Nobody wants to take the bus because it is too crowded".
  - ulfw 8y ago
    10-15 mins is a loooong wait during rush hour. Subways come every 2 mins in Hong Kong at that time. There's no reason (besides Seattle not wanting to spend the money obviously) not to bring down those times to say 2-5 minutes and tripling to quadrupling the amount of buses on said route.
  - wool_gather 8y ago
    50 is too low for an articulated bus. Including standing room, but not at sardine levels, you should at least be getting close to 90.
    - stephengillie 8y ago
      The bus has 50 seats, and standing room for maybe 20-25. This includes having 1-2 people standing unsafely on the swivel plate in the middle of the bus. One of the issues in general with increasing Seattle-Bellevue throughput is having to bridge the lake. I-90 traded a separate bridge of dedicated express lanes, for HOV lanes combined with other traffic - so the under construction Link light rail can use that separate bridge. 520 is another option, but there's a toll since they just replaced the narrow 2-lane pontoon bridge with 4-lane highway that's suspended higher above the water.
    - runarberg 8y ago
      Regardless, 50 - 90 people every 10 - 15 minutes. I’m sure this number is dwarfed by the number of people that travel the same route over the same bridges in less time, more comfortably in their private cars.
greglindahl 8y ago
Yeah, people make exactly this argument every time it's proposed to build denser stuff with less parking in the middle of downtown Palo Alto, which has relatively good walking/train/bus/bike lanes... we can't possibly do it yet because we aren't ready. Even though surveys show that people who live or go to downtown use cars less than the rest of the city. And so parking spaces are built which are never used.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Downtown Palo Alto and Berkeley both have a nice model with affordable public garages just off the main strip. So the pedestrian area isn’t (as) inundated with cars and parking, but you can still get there as a motorist.
btrettel 8y ago
> Roads have to be repurposed to make light personal transportation safe. Take every two-way two-lane and split it into a one-way, with a physical separation between a car side and a personal transport side. Remove parking from the curbs, and put it in the middle so one side can be for cars and the other for bikes, scooters, skaters, etc. As a cyclist, I'd argue that most separated lanes as implemented are less safe than taking the main travel lane. These lanes seem to be based around the idea that intersections don't matter for safety, and in practice they tend to greatly increase the number of problems at intersections. In Austin, TX, where I live, the city had added several fully separated cycle tracks near where I live. The only reason I ever use any of them is if I'm stopping at a location on them. If I'm continuing further down the same road, I instead take the regular travel lane. I do this because so many drivers turn directly into the cycle track without checking for oncoming cyclists. This is despite the signs placed prominently on every one of these to look before turning. (In my view, signs like that are strong evidence that a particular location is dangerous for cyclists. They don't noticeably change driver behavior in my view, and seem to exist more for the city to cover their asses than anything else.) I'm not the only cyclist who has a problem with these cycle tracks either. A friend of mine has additionally pointed out that the city tends to put the cycle track on the downhill side of the road, but not the uphill side, which is exactly the opposite of what they should do because cyclists go much faster downhill than uphill. If I had to guess, I'd say the problem comes from politicians and bureaucrats who are not cyclists being the driving forces behind the construction of these lanes. You don't need to talk to too many cyclists before you'll hear my views about cycle tracks. I'm okay with separated facilities when done well, but the vast majority I've seen are poorly designed and amplify problems.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  > A friend of mine has additionally pointed out that the city tends to put the cycle track on the downhill side of the road (but not the uphill), which is exactly the opposite of what they should do because cyclists go much faster downhill than uphill. I saw a really good example of an unsafe bike lane when I lived in Kent, wa. As you say the planner had put it on the downhill side of a 45 mph main thouroughfare dropping 500 feet in 1000 feet. It had a lot of great twists and turns for drivers to cut using the bike lane. And there was nothing on the uphill side. Meanwhile I could bike a mile south and drop the same elevation by rolling through quiet neighborhoods with school zones and no traffic. It boggled my mind how none of the planners thought to redirect bicycle down this route instead of the most dangerous downhill they could find.

ebikelaw 8y ago

Kind of a weird argument that nobody wants to take the bus or the train because it's too crowded. Very Berra.

lozenge 8y ago
It just means there aren't enough bus routes or busses on the route.
- cozzyd 8y ago
  Or the buses are too slow because there's too many cars in the way.
- taeric 8y ago
  Me thinks you missed the joke. Being that enough people take it so that it is crowded, but the claim is essentially nobody is taking it.
runarberg 8y ago
Take the Sound Transit 550. It is the main (only direct?) busline between downtown Seattle and Bellevue. During rush hour it comes at an interval of 10 - 15 min. The bus it self is a double wagon (with an accordion connection), it fits maybe (beware I'm pulling this figure from thin air) 50 people. It is always crowded with people standing back to front. During these 10 - 15 minutes one can only imagine how many people cross on the motorway between these places in their private cars. So it is accurate (although it sounds like a contradiction) to say that *"Nobody wants to take the bus because it is too crowded".
- ulfw 8y ago
  10-15 mins is a loooong wait during rush hour. Subways come every 2 mins in Hong Kong at that time. There's no reason (besides Seattle not wanting to spend the money obviously) not to bring down those times to say 2-5 minutes and tripling to quadrupling the amount of buses on said route.
- wool_gather 8y ago
  50 is too low for an articulated bus. Including standing room, but not at sardine levels, you should at least be getting close to 90.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    The bus has 50 seats, and standing room for maybe 20-25. This includes having 1-2 people standing unsafely on the swivel plate in the middle of the bus. One of the issues in general with increasing Seattle-Bellevue throughput is having to bridge the lake. I-90 traded a separate bridge of dedicated express lanes, for HOV lanes combined with other traffic - so the under construction Link light rail can use that separate bridge. 520 is another option, but there's a toll since they just replaced the narrow 2-lane pontoon bridge with 4-lane highway that's suspended higher above the water.
  - runarberg 8y ago
    Regardless, 50 - 90 people every 10 - 15 minutes. I’m sure this number is dwarfed by the number of people that travel the same route over the same bridges in less time, more comfortably in their private cars.

greglindahl 8y ago

Yeah, people make exactly this argument every time it's proposed to build denser stuff with less parking in the middle of downtown Palo Alto, which has relatively good walking/train/bus/bike lanes... we can't possibly do it yet because we aren't ready. Even though surveys show that people who live or go to downtown use cars less than the rest of the city. And so parking spaces are built which are never used.

closeparen 8y ago
Downtown Palo Alto and Berkeley both have a nice model with affordable public garages just off the main strip. So the pedestrian area isn’t (as) inundated with cars and parking, but you can still get there as a motorist.

btrettel 8y ago

> Roads have to be repurposed to make light personal transportation safe. Take every two-way two-lane and split it into a one-way, with a physical separation between a car side and a personal transport side. Remove parking from the curbs, and put it in the middle so one side can be for cars and the other for bikes, scooters, skaters, etc. As a cyclist, I'd argue that most separated lanes as implemented are less safe than taking the main travel lane. These lanes seem to be based around the idea that intersections don't matter for safety, and in practice they tend to greatly increase the number of problems at intersections. In Austin, TX, where I live, the city had added several fully separated cycle tracks near where I live. The only reason I ever use any of them is if I'm stopping at a location on them. If I'm continuing further down the same road, I instead take the regular travel lane. I do this because so many drivers turn directly into the cycle track without checking for oncoming cyclists. This is despite the signs placed prominently on every one of these to look before turning. (In my view, signs like that are strong evidence that a particular location is dangerous for cyclists. They don't noticeably change driver behavior in my view, and seem to exist more for the city to cover their asses than anything else.) I'm not the only cyclist who has a problem with these cycle tracks either. A friend of mine has additionally pointed out that the city tends to put the cycle track on the downhill side of the road, but not the uphill side, which is exactly the opposite of what they should do because cyclists go much faster downhill than uphill. If I had to guess, I'd say the problem comes from politicians and bureaucrats who are not cyclists being the driving forces behind the construction of these lanes. You don't need to talk to too many cyclists before you'll hear my views about cycle tracks. I'm okay with separated facilities when done well, but the vast majority I've seen are poorly designed and amplify problems.

jschwartzi 8y ago
> A friend of mine has additionally pointed out that the city tends to put the cycle track on the downhill side of the road (but not the uphill), which is exactly the opposite of what they should do because cyclists go much faster downhill than uphill. I saw a really good example of an unsafe bike lane when I lived in Kent, wa. As you say the planner had put it on the downhill side of a 45 mph main thouroughfare dropping 500 feet in 1000 feet. It had a lot of great twists and turns for drivers to cut using the bike lane. And there was nothing on the uphill side. Meanwhile I could bike a mile south and drop the same elevation by rolling through quiet neighborhoods with school zones and no traffic. It boggled my mind how none of the planners thought to redirect bicycle down this route instead of the most dangerous downhill they could find.