7 ms·

Also, people lack intuition for just how much cars hog space. Here's 60 people in cars, in a bus, on bikes: https://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAA

Also, people lack intuition for just how much cars hog space. Here's 60 people in cars, in a bus, on bikes: https://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/uI1bCpNuKNA/s800/picoftheday0012-space-60people.jpg https://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/u... To quote ru paul... "you're not stuck in traffic. you are traffic."

NickNameNick 5y ago
I'm not a fan of that example - the cars photo is more zoomed in than the others.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chmod775 5y ago
  I mean... whatever: https://i.imgur.com/TVeeDBa.jpg https://i.imgur.com/TVeeDBa.jpg Those pictures are supposed to bring a point across, not be used for an accurate scientific measurement. Either way people will be aware not even three out of those 60 cars could drive in the space of that bus.
- amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
  It also assumes the cars have one occupant. I rarely drive alone these days
  - wpm 5y ago
    Most average occupancy rates for private automobiles is less than 2, in the US I believe it’s about 1.3. Still not enough compared to how much space and how many resources they consume, let alone the externalities.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    It also doesn’t illustrate the real scale of space required to operate each vehicle. A car needs several car-lengths of space between them. Bikes can be operated more closely together. At speed all of these vehicles scale up to more space differently.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      In the US road engineers go to strategy for safety is to just make the roads wider. When drivers feel safe they start driving faster than the speed limit. Those roads were designed to be "safe", not fast, meaning high speeds are more likely to lead to worse accidents.
    - amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
      "A car needs several car-lengths of space between them." The distance between bumpers actually cancels out (actually it comes out in the car's favor). First notice that in the picture the cars are almost touching, so clearly you mean in fast moving traffic. In fast moving traffic the carrying capacity of a lane is equal of the inverse reaction time (typically engineers use a large margin of safety and 2 seconds is used -> 1800 cars/(lane hour)). For bikes, since they travel more slowly, you have to add the time it takes to travel their own length. So the carrying capacity of a lane is 1/(reaction time + length of bike / speed of bike). The "several car lengths between them" is literally space that exists only because cars have generated themselves by virtue of going very fast (since fast moving vehicles get to where they want to be quicker and therefore get off the road to make space for someone else). This doesn't mean that cars make sense in dense cities. They don't. This doesn't means cars don't take more space by virtue of being longer in slow traffic. They do But it does mean that, if there are "several car lengths between them", they are in fact operating in a more space efficient regime.
  - donjoe 5y ago
    ... Buses on the other hand are used about 60-80% of the day whereas a privately owned car is used 3-5% of the day. Cars do not just take up space driving. They also take up a huge amount of space when not in use.
    - amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
      That's context dependent. Where I live it's not a problem that a car takes up space (my car is parked in my home's basement). Where I typically go to it's a relatively minor problem - most places I go to only need 4 to 5 places to park cars. Work is in the middle of nowhere, again not an issue except that the government employees have reserved the lot by the building for themselves despite it being large enough to house the contractors as well (the govt. employees want to ensure they get the spots nearest the building). Should the city of Rome have cars? No. But we don't (nor can we!) all live in a small European city
- luckylion 5y ago
  Here are the originals. What's interesting is that the car picture isn't among them in that form. I don't know whether it has been digitally edited, or they've taken another picture as well. However, the car picture looks like four rows with more than 15 cars each, but it's hard to tell as it gets fuzzy. https://www.stadtwerke-muenster.de/blog/verkehr/das-wohl-bekannteste-muenster-foto-der-welt/ https://www.stadtwerke-muenster.de/blog/verkehr/das-wohl-bek...
sandworm101 5y ago
Static space. In the real world people exist in both space and time. Ten people who complete a journey at 100mph take up the same time-space (ie road) as one person at 10mph. Someone at 1mph takes up as much road as 100 people on the same journey at 100mph. If the question is how many people can we shove through a pipe/tunnel/travel network, speed is as much a factor as physical size. Bikes and cars both take up massively more time-space than trains or busses. But pro-buslane voices are rare these days.
- rags2riches 5y ago
  So imagine two hundred people on bikes on a mile of bike lane and twenty people in cars on a mile of freeway. Both are the same freeway width. Just hold the thought of that enormous bike lane for a second. Then go ahead and tell me the same amount of free time-space is available for crossing in both cases.
  - schimmy_changa 5y ago
    So let's say that's 10 cars and 200 bikes (being generous, usually cars have only one person in them, and also bikes esp. with children in biking-heavy countries have more than one person carried by them). If they are evenly spaced, there will be a car every 0.1 miles - and each car is going 100mph according to this thought experiment. This gives 3.6 seconds to cross between 100 mph cars that probably won't swerve to avoid you and may careen out of control if they do. Meanwhile, there is a bike every 26.4 feet, and you have 1.8 seconds to cross. 10 MPH is speedy for a bike, but they have to only slightly adjust to avoid hitting you if you make a mistake (and are about 1/5th the width if not less). I'll take the bikes!
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  That’s all reasonable analysis if you’re optimizing for shoving people through a space. Most people are trying to go places and do things. The bottleneck isn’t just harming transit completion, it’s harming the whole purpose of being in motion in the first place.
  - 5y ago
FranksTV 5y ago
To paraphrase Sartre: "Traffic is other people."

NickNameNick 5y ago

I'm not a fan of that example - the cars photo is more zoomed in than the others.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chmod775 5y ago
I mean... whatever: https://i.imgur.com/TVeeDBa.jpg https://i.imgur.com/TVeeDBa.jpg Those pictures are supposed to bring a point across, not be used for an accurate scientific measurement. Either way people will be aware not even three out of those 60 cars could drive in the space of that bus.
amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
It also assumes the cars have one occupant. I rarely drive alone these days
- wpm 5y ago
  Most average occupancy rates for private automobiles is less than 2, in the US I believe it’s about 1.3. Still not enough compared to how much space and how many resources they consume, let alone the externalities.
- eloisius 5y ago
  It also doesn’t illustrate the real scale of space required to operate each vehicle. A car needs several car-lengths of space between them. Bikes can be operated more closely together. At speed all of these vehicles scale up to more space differently.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    In the US road engineers go to strategy for safety is to just make the roads wider. When drivers feel safe they start driving faster than the speed limit. Those roads were designed to be "safe", not fast, meaning high speeds are more likely to lead to worse accidents.
  - amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
    "A car needs several car-lengths of space between them." The distance between bumpers actually cancels out (actually it comes out in the car's favor). First notice that in the picture the cars are almost touching, so clearly you mean in fast moving traffic. In fast moving traffic the carrying capacity of a lane is equal of the inverse reaction time (typically engineers use a large margin of safety and 2 seconds is used -> 1800 cars/(lane hour)). For bikes, since they travel more slowly, you have to add the time it takes to travel their own length. So the carrying capacity of a lane is 1/(reaction time + length of bike / speed of bike). The "several car lengths between them" is literally space that exists only because cars have generated themselves by virtue of going very fast (since fast moving vehicles get to where they want to be quicker and therefore get off the road to make space for someone else). This doesn't mean that cars make sense in dense cities. They don't. This doesn't means cars don't take more space by virtue of being longer in slow traffic. They do But it does mean that, if there are "several car lengths between them", they are in fact operating in a more space efficient regime.
- donjoe 5y ago
  ... Buses on the other hand are used about 60-80% of the day whereas a privately owned car is used 3-5% of the day. Cars do not just take up space driving. They also take up a huge amount of space when not in use.
  - amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
    That's context dependent. Where I live it's not a problem that a car takes up space (my car is parked in my home's basement). Where I typically go to it's a relatively minor problem - most places I go to only need 4 to 5 places to park cars. Work is in the middle of nowhere, again not an issue except that the government employees have reserved the lot by the building for themselves despite it being large enough to house the contractors as well (the govt. employees want to ensure they get the spots nearest the building). Should the city of Rome have cars? No. But we don't (nor can we!) all live in a small European city
luckylion 5y ago
Here are the originals. What's interesting is that the car picture isn't among them in that form. I don't know whether it has been digitally edited, or they've taken another picture as well. However, the car picture looks like four rows with more than 15 cars each, but it's hard to tell as it gets fuzzy. https://www.stadtwerke-muenster.de/blog/verkehr/das-wohl-bekannteste-muenster-foto-der-welt/ https://www.stadtwerke-muenster.de/blog/verkehr/das-wohl-bek...

sandworm101 5y ago

Static space. In the real world people exist in both space and time. Ten people who complete a journey at 100mph take up the same time-space (ie road) as one person at 10mph. Someone at 1mph takes up as much road as 100 people on the same journey at 100mph. If the question is how many people can we shove through a pipe/tunnel/travel network, speed is as much a factor as physical size. Bikes and cars both take up massively more time-space than trains or busses. But pro-buslane voices are rare these days.

rags2riches 5y ago
So imagine two hundred people on bikes on a mile of bike lane and twenty people in cars on a mile of freeway. Both are the same freeway width. Just hold the thought of that enormous bike lane for a second. Then go ahead and tell me the same amount of free time-space is available for crossing in both cases.
- schimmy_changa 5y ago
  So let's say that's 10 cars and 200 bikes (being generous, usually cars have only one person in them, and also bikes esp. with children in biking-heavy countries have more than one person carried by them). If they are evenly spaced, there will be a car every 0.1 miles - and each car is going 100mph according to this thought experiment. This gives 3.6 seconds to cross between 100 mph cars that probably won't swerve to avoid you and may careen out of control if they do. Meanwhile, there is a bike every 26.4 feet, and you have 1.8 seconds to cross. 10 MPH is speedy for a bike, but they have to only slightly adjust to avoid hitting you if you make a mistake (and are about 1/5th the width if not less). I'll take the bikes!
eyelidlessness 5y ago
That’s all reasonable analysis if you’re optimizing for shoving people through a space. Most people are trying to go places and do things. The bottleneck isn’t just harming transit completion, it’s harming the whole purpose of being in motion in the first place.
- 5y ago

FranksTV 5y ago

To paraphrase Sartre: "Traffic is other people."