5 ms·

The traffic situation is already pretty bad in that area, seemingly deliberately so. That is the case even during the pandemic, I can only imagine how bad it is

by m0zg 5y ago

The traffic situation is already pretty bad in that area, seemingly deliberately so. That is the case even during the pandemic, I can only imagine how bad it is when _nobody_ is remote. It seems that progressive Austin wants everyone to move to the city and give up their cars, which is not a realistic thing to do for most people in TX because it's not built for such lifestyle. I have no other plausible explanation. Since I'm apparently "posting too fast", I'll just post my reply to the post below here. US cities (including Austin) are not built to make this viable. I grew up in Russia which mirrors the European way of building things. Everything you need for your family is within walking distance, for what I hope are obvious reasons. The US is not built for this. If one's goal is to get rid of cars, you have to build cities with that in mind. This takes decades, which is why nobody seems interested in actually doing this. Instead we get this passive-aggressive "let's build less parking and roads" thing that you see in US urban centers. No attention whatsoever is paid to how the folks actually live, how they raise their kids, and so on. I'd also argue that, as we switch to electric (and eventually to nuclear power, since that seems inevitable if we actually want to solve the climate crisis rather than just make Al Gore filthy rich), cars will become less and less of a problem, and population will spread out rather than move into the cities. Cities are a bad deal as it is. Expensive real estate, congested roads, high crime.

8note 5y ago
Terrible traffic is the result of a city wanting everyone to use cars, rather than the opposite. Slow, low traffic car trips is the sign that the city wants people to not drive. Moving to a non car centric city means you don't need a car for your trips. The lifestyle is to stop having a car, because it's unnecessary
- kelnos 5y ago
  SF seems to be telling me to give up my car, but that's a non-starter unless Muni gets about 500% better (higher frequency, more coverage, faster routes). Even in Manhattan, where transit is pretty decent, the only reason why transit is faster (sometimes) is because traffic is terrible all the time.
- m0zg 5y ago
  In this case terrible traffic is the result of buding a ton of crooked relatively narrow roads without any rhyme or reason. Family with children _cannot exist_ in most of the US without a car. Even in Austin itself if you don't have a car everything is just too far apart, and you could spend an hour or more fetching groceries quite easily. I actually forgot my driver's license at home and while it was being fedexed to me I got to experience the car-less Austin lifestyle. Let me tell you authoritatively, you wouldn't want to live like that. But at the same time if you live in Austin itself you don't want to bother with a car either, there's relatively little parking, so you'll really be struggling to find a spot once COVID subsides. I've seen the same deliberate shrinkage of parking happen in other "progressive" cities. Nobody gives a shit if you got kids and need a car. Another thing that Austin shares with other progressive cities is its massive and growing homeless population, though I must also say that even the homeless people are nicer there than, say, in SF or Seattle. At least I haven't seen anyone shoot up heroin in public or shit on the sidewalk.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>I have no other plausible explanation. Take a ton of people with CA urban ideology and plop them down in a random city in TX and "intentionally bad traffic because we expect everyone in the city to give up their cars" seems like a not unforseeable outcome. Frankly this is why we leave major infrastructure planning up to the states so that the state can wring the best possible outcome out of an entire economic region without getting too bogged down by local politics. Left to their own devices cities would build shit infrastructure because they'd try to exclude the poors and other petty stuff like that.

by m0zg 5y ago

8note 5y ago

Terrible traffic is the result of a city wanting everyone to use cars, rather than the opposite. Slow, low traffic car trips is the sign that the city wants people to not drive. Moving to a non car centric city means you don't need a car for your trips. The lifestyle is to stop having a car, because it's unnecessary

kelnos 5y ago
SF seems to be telling me to give up my car, but that's a non-starter unless Muni gets about 500% better (higher frequency, more coverage, faster routes). Even in Manhattan, where transit is pretty decent, the only reason why transit is faster (sometimes) is because traffic is terrible all the time.
m0zg 5y ago
In this case terrible traffic is the result of buding a ton of crooked relatively narrow roads without any rhyme or reason. Family with children _cannot exist_ in most of the US without a car. Even in Austin itself if you don't have a car everything is just too far apart, and you could spend an hour or more fetching groceries quite easily. I actually forgot my driver's license at home and while it was being fedexed to me I got to experience the car-less Austin lifestyle. Let me tell you authoritatively, you wouldn't want to live like that. But at the same time if you live in Austin itself you don't want to bother with a car either, there's relatively little parking, so you'll really be struggling to find a spot once COVID subsides. I've seen the same deliberate shrinkage of parking happen in other "progressive" cities. Nobody gives a shit if you got kids and need a car. Another thing that Austin shares with other progressive cities is its massive and growing homeless population, though I must also say that even the homeless people are nicer there than, say, in SF or Seattle. At least I haven't seen anyone shoot up heroin in public or shit on the sidewalk.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>I have no other plausible explanation. Take a ton of people with CA urban ideology and plop them down in a random city in TX and "intentionally bad traffic because we expect everyone in the city to give up their cars" seems like a not unforseeable outcome. Frankly this is why we leave major infrastructure planning up to the states so that the state can wring the best possible outcome out of an entire economic region without getting too bogged down by local politics. Left to their own devices cities would build shit infrastructure because they'd try to exclude the poors and other petty stuff like that.