3 ms·

As with any sufficiently complex system, simple solutions fail to take into account knock on effects. As such, I'm curious about what impact that decreased traf

As with any sufficiently complex system, simple solutions fail to take into account knock on effects. As such, I'm curious about what impact that decreased traffic speed had. Did it reduce traffic deaths? Did it increase deaths in ambulances? Was it uniform or were/are there areas that are at a 50% decrease and more at 1%? One issue I think we are seeing is that we, as tech workers, are super excited to fix the immediate problems. We have the skillset and it's really engaging! But we will often miss the forest for the trees and then double down on our solution being the solution instead of one part of the solution. All this to say, thank you for discussing the traffic slowdown caused by increased cars. It's a side effect I hadn't been considering before.

bobthepanda 3y ago
Ironically traffic speeds in New York are measured using yellow cabs since they drive around constantly and are required to have GPS. I think one of the biggest impacts has been on the sustainability of the transit services. For all road users, slower speeds require you to maintain more labor and vehicles out to maintain SLAs/frequencies, or to increase waits. For bus users in particular, it starts a vicious cycle because of several additional factors * some baseline amount of people will just switch to rideshare instead of buses, reducing revenues and decreasing traffic speeds since buses are more space-efficient than cars * with less revenues and less ridership, there is pressure to cut service to be more "efficient" at spending money * with poorer services, more people switch to rideshare, further reducing revenues and decreasing traffic speeds Manhattan bus ridership entered this negative spiral and fell 23% https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/21/decline-in-nyc-bus-ridership-concentrated-in-manhattan-and-brooklyn https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/21/decline-in-nyc-bus-ri... --- Now what level of congestion is 'acceptable' is mostly based on comparing to other cities, and how the electorate is feeling. That being said, the political pressure was so strong that NYC had already implemented congestion charges on rideshare and taxis, and is currently implementing tolling in Manhattan to try and reduce car numbers. Uber actually came out in support of it. https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york/uber-supports-congestion-pricing/ https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york/uber-supports-congestion-...

bobthepanda 3y ago

Ironically traffic speeds in New York are measured using yellow cabs since they drive around constantly and are required to have GPS. I think one of the biggest impacts has been on the sustainability of the transit services. For all road users, slower speeds require you to maintain more labor and vehicles out to maintain SLAs/frequencies, or to increase waits. For bus users in particular, it starts a vicious cycle because of several additional factors * some baseline amount of people will just switch to rideshare instead of buses, reducing revenues and decreasing traffic speeds since buses are more space-efficient than cars * with less revenues and less ridership, there is pressure to cut service to be more "efficient" at spending money * with poorer services, more people switch to rideshare, further reducing revenues and decreasing traffic speeds Manhattan bus ridership entered this negative spiral and fell 23% https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/21/decline-in-nyc-bus-ridership-concentrated-in-manhattan-and-brooklyn https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/21/decline-in-nyc-bus-ri... --- Now what level of congestion is 'acceptable' is mostly based on comparing to other cities, and how the electorate is feeling. That being said, the political pressure was so strong that NYC had already implemented congestion charges on rideshare and taxis, and is currently implementing tolling in Manhattan to try and reduce car numbers. Uber actually came out in support of it. https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york/uber-supports-congestion-pricing/ https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york/uber-supports-congestion-...