4 ms·

You're describing urban environments. A lot of people live in those places already. But a lot of people prefer to live elsewhere. Differences in preference is f

You're describing urban environments. A lot of people live in those places already. But a lot of people prefer to live elsewhere. Differences in preference is fine. What doesn't make sense though is driving in urban environments, especially single-occupant vehicles that make up the vast majority of motor traffic in major cities. Keep the suburbs. But I think it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in for all but the folks who need it (e.g., people with mobility issues, or families with small children). If you're able-bodied in an urban environment, you should be the last person to be driving around regularly.

josephcsible 3y ago
> it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in This is the wrong approach. Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. If you want people to use transit instead, then improve it until it's a better option than driving is today.
- tekla 3y ago
  Nope. This is why pedestrians die. Force cars to go slower in cities. They recently added a pedestrian island in the road near where I live. It is not unnoticeable. With paint lines, high reflective markings, and literally a concrete wall. Literally on day 1, a car made an illegal left turn and hit the clearly marked island at 20mph faster than the speed limit. It jumped the 3 foot high barrier, but the pedestrian on that island was saved. Make car life in cities miserable.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    If you want to make pedestrians safer, you can do that without having to make driving miserable, by building elevated pedestrian walkways.
    - tekla 3y ago
      Or reclaim street space from cars at infinitely cheaper initial cost, time, and effort.
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      And how do I walk in to a shop from this walkway?
      - josephcsible 3y ago
        By walking back down the ramp from it to the regular sidewalk. I just meant I want to add elevated walkways to cross streets with, not for them to replace sidewalks entirely.
        retzkek 3y ago
        I assume you mean for crossing busy roads and highways, not city streets? Certainly there are places for that, like Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. They're expensive and take a lot of space themselves, though, especially to meet accessibility requirements, and they can add considerable distance to the pedestrian's route. Otherwise, what you're describing sounds like someone looked at this well-circulated cartoon and said "hey that's a great idea! Just raise the planks by 15 feet!" https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestrians-sidewalks-roads https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestria...
    - daveliepmann 3y ago
      Elevated pedestrian walkways are miserable for people walking. You seem pretty deeply carbrained.
      - josephcsible 3y ago
        How so? I've used them before and didn't see a problem with them.
        daveliepmann 3y ago
        How are they for a grandparents pushing a stroller? Would you say they encourage a vibrant street culture of cafes and shops? The ones I've seen, especially in Berlin and İzmir, are loud and a hassle to cross. That's because walkways and bikeways over multi-lane roads are car infrastructure. They are there to prioritize high-speed automobile traffic with few interruptions. I'm happy for the one going up at my gym, but I know it's there to ensure bike/ped political forces can't endanger the trunk road underneath. True pedestrian infrastructure there would involve a major speed and size downgrade to the road, which is unacceptable, thus the political defensive move to pay out the nose for something car advocates would never normally fund.
    - MandieD 3y ago
      Elevated/buried pedestrian walkways make walking harder for a lot of people. A wheelchair-accessible ramp that goes up 12 feet is going to add at least 100 feet more distance up and down - and still be painful for a lot of people with otherwise manageable foot/joint issues. Pushing a stroller for the last few years, plus spraining my ankle a few weeks ago has given me a little taste of what trying to use sidewalks is like for people with even tighter mobility constraints, and this in an area that is relatively accessible without a car.
  - ars 3y ago
    > Make car life in cities miserable. Make life in cities miserable, is more accurate. The reason is that transit is worse than cars always. If you make travel in cars worse, then all you did is make life worse for everyone. And in reality it simply means that fewer people go there, because going there is miserable. The city starts converting to low income because anyone with income goes elsewhere.
    - Chilko 3y ago
      > The reason is that transit is worse than cars always As long as 'always' is restricted to a certain lifestyle and worldview, and doesn't take into account the excellent transit systems that exist around the world. > And in reality it simply means that fewer people go there, because going there is miserable. The city starts converting to low income because anyone with income goes elsewhere. That's incredibly naive, and I think a lot of European cities are direct counter examples to this. It often makes things a lot less miserable for the people who actually live in the denser urban areas that were previously overrun with cars.
- 2023throwawayy 3y ago
  > Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. Why not?
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  Improving transit is often achieved by making driving less attractive. For instance, by creating bus-only lanes that cars may not use, or by taxing/tolling car use to fund transit improvements.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  No, it is the correct approach. It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian safety. Some of the huge volume of parking has to be given over to other transit modes, which will increase demand and eventually price for what remains. Urban speed limits need to be lower, pedestrians need to have more and safer ways to cross, which will also lower average speeds. All of this will make driving less pleasant and convenient, the cost of making walking safer and easier. As it is driving is "artificially" easy, the consequence of decades of it being prioritized very highly. It needs to come down somewhat.
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    And even when cities invest in non-car transit, cars will still steal those resources. It's not uncommon in my city to see cars idling on bus lanes, or gig delivery workers parking in protected bike lines inside the bollards.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      Yeah where I am there is little and half-assed bike infrastructure. Cyclists facetiously and bitterly call the bike lanes "uber lanes." They are simply painted and unbuffered, unenforced. Extra parking in residential areas and loading, ride share, and delivery space everywhere else. Cyclists ride in the lane or not at all, and then are blamed for being there when we're injured or killed in traffic.
      - AlotOfReading 3y ago
        I used to knock on these people's windshields to ask them to move on busy roads. I had to stop doing that after one person tried to run me over a few blocks later (they missed and hit the sidewalk). Others were content to simply scream, or back up onto me.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    > It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian safety. I've never seen an urban center where "free and cheap parking is widely available", or one with a speed limit above 25.
- dublinben 3y ago
  Road space in cities is a zero-sum game. Currently cars command the vast majority of it, with obvious consequences. Highly efficient uses of space, like dedicated bus lanes, directly transfer road space from cars to improve transit. This necessarily makes driving "worse" in the short term, until enough marginal drivers shift to the now-improved busses, leaving the car lanes quicker and less congested. In most cities, cars are physically obstructing better transit, which makes traffic worse for everyone involved.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. Why not?
- CalRobert 3y ago
  The best way to improve transit is to take space away from cars and give it to busses, bikes, and walking.
- ehaliewicz2 3y ago
  Making roads narrower e.g. in residential areas, causes drivers to slow down, making it more safe for everyone.
- everdrive 3y ago
  Driving in urban environments is already terrible. This is the de-facto effect of density, regardless of what intended policy is. It seems to me that there’s just no way to have a large number of cars be comfortable in a dense urban environment. Might as well just try to minimize them.
- daveliepmann 3y ago
  Researchers like Giulio Mattioli have shown pretty well what should be clear from watching politics: getting people out of their cars requires sticks as well as carrots. >Improvement to public transport is the only win-win policy measure in the diagram. As a matter of fact, all policies that reduce the need for an automobile to access jobs and services by improving the effectiveness of other modes are generally seen as contributing to alleviating social exclusion, insofar as they improve the situation of households without a car (Shaw and Farrington, 2003, p.109). They should have a positive impact on environmental sustainability as well, insofar as they encourage a modal shift from the private car to less polluting means of transport. However, transport researchers generally agree that “pull” measures that encourage voluntary reductions of car use – or “carrots” – are unlikely to effectively bring about change at an adequate scale and speed (Huby and Burkitt, 2000, p.390); therefore it is generally pointed out that there is a need for complementary “push” measures, which aim to reduce car use in a more direct and coercive manner (“sticks”). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giulio-Mattioli-2/publication/270893293_Car_Dependence_Sustainability_and_the_Transport_Policy_Stalemate_The_Potential_Trade-offs_between_Intra-_and_Inter-generational_Equity/links/54e2346d0cf2c3e7d2d3138d/Car-Dependence-Sustainability-and-the-Transport-Policy-Stalemate-The-Potential-Trade-offs-between-Intra-and-Inter-generational-Equity.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giulio-Mattioli-2/publi... Or see this thread: See https://twitter.com/giulio_mattioli/status/1625081005089366016 https://twitter.com/giulio_mattioli/status/16250810050893660... Making driving worse is good, actually.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  > getting people out of their cars requires sticks as well as carrots Or...it requires that governments stop prioritising car-based travel over all others, i.e. they should provide carrots for all forms of transport in equal measure, according to the long-term costs of providing it. I live in a area with far better cycling/walking/PT infrastructure than probably most suburbs in my country, yet I'm still regularly struck by the degree to which infrastructure dedicated to moving people around in private automobiles takes up far more space and taxpayer budget than all the others combined.

josephcsible 3y ago

> it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in This is the wrong approach. Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. If you want people to use transit instead, then improve it until it's a better option than driving is today.

tekla 3y ago
Nope. This is why pedestrians die. Force cars to go slower in cities. They recently added a pedestrian island in the road near where I live. It is not unnoticeable. With paint lines, high reflective markings, and literally a concrete wall. Literally on day 1, a car made an illegal left turn and hit the clearly marked island at 20mph faster than the speed limit. It jumped the 3 foot high barrier, but the pedestrian on that island was saved. Make car life in cities miserable.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  If you want to make pedestrians safer, you can do that without having to make driving miserable, by building elevated pedestrian walkways.
  - tekla 3y ago
    Or reclaim street space from cars at infinitely cheaper initial cost, time, and effort.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    And how do I walk in to a shop from this walkway?
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      By walking back down the ramp from it to the regular sidewalk. I just meant I want to add elevated walkways to cross streets with, not for them to replace sidewalks entirely.
      - retzkek 3y ago
        I assume you mean for crossing busy roads and highways, not city streets? Certainly there are places for that, like Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. They're expensive and take a lot of space themselves, though, especially to meet accessibility requirements, and they can add considerable distance to the pedestrian's route. Otherwise, what you're describing sounds like someone looked at this well-circulated cartoon and said "hey that's a great idea! Just raise the planks by 15 feet!" https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestrians-sidewalks-roads https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestria...
  - daveliepmann 3y ago
    Elevated pedestrian walkways are miserable for people walking. You seem pretty deeply carbrained.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      How so? I've used them before and didn't see a problem with them.
      - daveliepmann 3y ago
        How are they for a grandparents pushing a stroller? Would you say they encourage a vibrant street culture of cafes and shops? The ones I've seen, especially in Berlin and İzmir, are loud and a hassle to cross. That's because walkways and bikeways over multi-lane roads are car infrastructure. They are there to prioritize high-speed automobile traffic with few interruptions. I'm happy for the one going up at my gym, but I know it's there to ensure bike/ped political forces can't endanger the trunk road underneath. True pedestrian infrastructure there would involve a major speed and size downgrade to the road, which is unacceptable, thus the political defensive move to pay out the nose for something car advocates would never normally fund.
  - MandieD 3y ago
    Elevated/buried pedestrian walkways make walking harder for a lot of people. A wheelchair-accessible ramp that goes up 12 feet is going to add at least 100 feet more distance up and down - and still be painful for a lot of people with otherwise manageable foot/joint issues. Pushing a stroller for the last few years, plus spraining my ankle a few weeks ago has given me a little taste of what trying to use sidewalks is like for people with even tighter mobility constraints, and this in an area that is relatively accessible without a car.
- ars 3y ago
  > Make car life in cities miserable. Make life in cities miserable, is more accurate. The reason is that transit is worse than cars always. If you make travel in cars worse, then all you did is make life worse for everyone. And in reality it simply means that fewer people go there, because going there is miserable. The city starts converting to low income because anyone with income goes elsewhere.
  - Chilko 3y ago
    > The reason is that transit is worse than cars always As long as 'always' is restricted to a certain lifestyle and worldview, and doesn't take into account the excellent transit systems that exist around the world. > And in reality it simply means that fewer people go there, because going there is miserable. The city starts converting to low income because anyone with income goes elsewhere. That's incredibly naive, and I think a lot of European cities are direct counter examples to this. It often makes things a lot less miserable for the people who actually live in the denser urban areas that were previously overrun with cars.
2023throwawayy 3y ago
> Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. Why not?
bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
Improving transit is often achieved by making driving less attractive. For instance, by creating bus-only lanes that cars may not use, or by taxing/tolling car use to fund transit improvements.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
No, it is the correct approach. It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian safety. Some of the huge volume of parking has to be given over to other transit modes, which will increase demand and eventually price for what remains. Urban speed limits need to be lower, pedestrians need to have more and safer ways to cross, which will also lower average speeds. All of this will make driving less pleasant and convenient, the cost of making walking safer and easier. As it is driving is "artificially" easy, the consequence of decades of it being prioritized very highly. It needs to come down somewhat.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  And even when cities invest in non-car transit, cars will still steal those resources. It's not uncommon in my city to see cars idling on bus lanes, or gig delivery workers parking in protected bike lines inside the bollards.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    Yeah where I am there is little and half-assed bike infrastructure. Cyclists facetiously and bitterly call the bike lanes "uber lanes." They are simply painted and unbuffered, unenforced. Extra parking in residential areas and loading, ride share, and delivery space everywhere else. Cyclists ride in the lane or not at all, and then are blamed for being there when we're injured or killed in traffic.
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      I used to knock on these people's windshields to ask them to move on busy roads. I had to stop doing that after one person tried to run me over a few blocks later (they missed and hit the sidewalk). Others were content to simply scream, or back up onto me.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  > It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian safety. I've never seen an urban center where "free and cheap parking is widely available", or one with a speed limit above 25.
dublinben 3y ago
Road space in cities is a zero-sum game. Currently cars command the vast majority of it, with obvious consequences. Highly efficient uses of space, like dedicated bus lanes, directly transfer road space from cars to improve transit. This necessarily makes driving "worse" in the short term, until enough marginal drivers shift to the now-improved busses, leaving the car lanes quicker and less congested. In most cities, cars are physically obstructing better transit, which makes traffic worse for everyone involved.
throw0101a 3y ago
> Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. Why not?
CalRobert 3y ago
The best way to improve transit is to take space away from cars and give it to busses, bikes, and walking.
ehaliewicz2 3y ago
Making roads narrower e.g. in residential areas, causes drivers to slow down, making it more safe for everyone.
everdrive 3y ago
Driving in urban environments is already terrible. This is the de-facto effect of density, regardless of what intended policy is. It seems to me that there’s just no way to have a large number of cars be comfortable in a dense urban environment. Might as well just try to minimize them.
daveliepmann 3y ago
Researchers like Giulio Mattioli have shown pretty well what should be clear from watching politics: getting people out of their cars requires sticks as well as carrots. >Improvement to public transport is the only win-win policy measure in the diagram. As a matter of fact, all policies that reduce the need for an automobile to access jobs and services by improving the effectiveness of other modes are generally seen as contributing to alleviating social exclusion, insofar as they improve the situation of households without a car (Shaw and Farrington, 2003, p.109). They should have a positive impact on environmental sustainability as well, insofar as they encourage a modal shift from the private car to less polluting means of transport. However, transport researchers generally agree that “pull” measures that encourage voluntary reductions of car use – or “carrots” – are unlikely to effectively bring about change at an adequate scale and speed (Huby and Burkitt, 2000, p.390); therefore it is generally pointed out that there is a need for complementary “push” measures, which aim to reduce car use in a more direct and coercive manner (“sticks”). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giulio-Mattioli-2/publication/270893293_Car_Dependence_Sustainability_and_the_Transport_Policy_Stalemate_The_Potential_Trade-offs_between_Intra-_and_Inter-generational_Equity/links/54e2346d0cf2c3e7d2d3138d/Car-Dependence-Sustainability-and-the-Transport-Policy-Stalemate-The-Potential-Trade-offs-between-Intra-and-Inter-generational-Equity.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giulio-Mattioli-2/publi... Or see this thread: See https://twitter.com/giulio_mattioli/status/1625081005089366016 https://twitter.com/giulio_mattioli/status/16250810050893660... Making driving worse is good, actually.
wizofaus 3y ago
> getting people out of their cars requires sticks as well as carrots Or...it requires that governments stop prioritising car-based travel over all others, i.e. they should provide carrots for all forms of transport in equal measure, according to the long-term costs of providing it. I live in a area with far better cycling/walking/PT infrastructure than probably most suburbs in my country, yet I'm still regularly struck by the degree to which infrastructure dedicated to moving people around in private automobiles takes up far more space and taxpayer budget than all the others combined.