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Past a certain population density, cars absolutely do not accomedate everyone. There's simply a finite amount of street space in the city, if everyone chose to
by paulgb 7y ago
Past a certain population density, cars absolutely do not accomedate everyone. There's simply a finite amount of street space in the city, if everyone chose to drive in Manhattan the streets would cease to function.
Case in point, if you walk around Broome St. between 4:30 and 6:00 PM on a weekday, there are regularly cars (and pedestrians) that miss an entire light cycle because there are too many cars stopped across the intersection in the perpendicular direction. This is a ticketable offence, but police have effectively given up on enforcing basic traffic laws because there are too many cars to reasonably expect them to follow those laws.
- bobbylarrybobby 7y agoNo, police don't enforce traffic laws because they all drive in from Long Island and spend their whole day in a car, so they view cars and their drivers as belonging to the same tribe as police, which puts them above the law. Pedestrians and cyclists are "the other" that is capable of actually breaking laws. Put cops on bikes and see how enforcement changes.
- paulgb 7y agoAs a general concept, I agree, more police would benefit from the perspective of riding a bike. But the problem I'm describing is not that cops don't care to ticket, it's that enforcing the rule incentivizes the wrong behavior. Traffic is so choked and sporadic that it's hard to know whether you will end up in an intersection, so people would be afraid to enter the intersection entirely, further slowing down traffic. If you actually enforced the law and ticketed it would just effectively be a stochastic congestion tax. Far better and fairer, in my opinion, to just do the real thing.