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The whole road cost argument doesn’t make sense to me. The problem is density, not mode of transport - we all need roads! The common denominator access requirem

The whole road cost argument doesn’t make sense to me. The problem is density, not mode of transport - we all need roads! The common denominator access requirement for all housing is a fire truck and ambulance for safety and delivery trucks to make space livable with bulky items like furniture, which also account for most of the wear and tear. The money nondrivers pay in taxes for roads aren’t a subsidy to drivers, it’s the cost they pay for the safety and convenience we expect from modern civilization

lotsofpulp 3y ago
You need a lot more road for everyone to have individual cars than you do just for deliveries and emergency vehicles. http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_orig.png http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_...
- ghaff 3y ago
  I don't see the data outside of GIS databases, but I'd be willing to bet that in a lot of (most?) places a significant majority of roads [ADDED: total mileage] are 2 lane roads to home and business endpoints. Add in the fact that you're going to have an interstate/etc. highway system even if you only had truck traffic and the wider roads are mostly denser suburbia main routes and areas within cities.
Timshel 3y ago
Less traffic might mean you don't need a 4 lanes road and less maintenance maybe ? You don't think it would impact budget ?
- civilitty 3y ago
  I’m sure it would impact the budget but based on the state of roads here in California, the vast majority of the damage seems to be from trucks. A lot of those four lane roads can’t be sized down without blocking emergency vehicles’ basic mobility. They’re sized for worst case scenarios and at least in my small hometown, for example, meant to allow large numbers of emergency vehicles to move quickly between suburban sprawls in case of large fire or earthquake.
  - Timshel 3y ago
    Yes truck does most of the dammage on specific axes and they probably could be limited to even less, you don't need 40t trucks in city center. Unless you are on a narrow one way street (not common in the us I believe) I would say that congestion is the limiting factor for emergency vehicule mobility. And there is quite a lot of study that wider street do not reduce congestion.
    - civilitty 3y ago
      > Unless you are on a narrow one way street (not common in the us I believe) I would say that congestion is the limiting factor for emergency vehicule mobility. And there is quite a lot of study that wider street do not reduce congestion. Congestion is a separate problem from road design and it's not the limiting factor most of the time. Emergency vehicles need a grid of arteries with two lanes in each direction so cars can pull over in normal traffic conditions to let them through. These arteries lead into smaller 1 or 2 lane roads which don't see much traffic so there's little risk of the emergency vehicle getting impeded. In the suburbs of my city, for example, these arteries are placed every 1/2 mile to every mile depending on population density, which super-stroads every four-ish miles. Areas with real congestion like main thoroughfares and city cores need different solutions like specific road designs (no center dividers) so that emergency vehicles can move onto oncoming traffic.
      - Timshel 3y ago
        "Congestion is a separate problem from road design" what ?? I will just say compare the space dedicated to cars between a random american city and Amsterdam, so much space wasted and so much more infrastructure to maintain; and I believe emergency vehicule are still able to circulate (might even be faster with less cars ?).
        civilitty 3y ago
        > "Congestion is a separate problem from road design" what ?? Sorry that was poorly phrased. I mean that road design has to respond to congestion so that it's not a limiting factor to emergency service mobility. A low density suburb can afford to have a four lane road every mile with beautiful center dividers with plants whereas downtown needs four lane streets every block and they have to be completely flat to accommodate emergency vehicles moving into oncoming traffic lanes to get around congestion. City planning/permitting is (usually) supposed to prevent situations where congestion might become a problem as a matter of life and death. For example, a large housing development next to my house was recently forced to stop building after completing less than 20% of the planned units because they miscalculated worst case traffic flow. Wildfires are a concern and the fire marshal calculated that the roads feeding into the development would not be able to handle all the traffic from people evacuating and emergency vehicles coming in. > I will just say compare the space dedicated to cars between a random american city and Amsterdam, so much space wasted and so much more infrastructure to maintain; and I believe emergency vehicule are still able to circulate (might even be faster with less cars ?). The average American city has a third to a fifth the population density of Amsterdam, awful biking infrastructure, and little to no public transportation. The density and age of old world cities have so many side effects that I think it's impossible to meaningfully compare them with American cities. That said, don't read this as an endorsement of urban planning in the average American city. Here in SoCal even the suburbs are relatively dense and well designed (tons of parking lots notwithstanding) but I've seen some really awful examples like Salt Lake City where it seems every other street is a six lane megastroad.
- Lukas_Skywalker 3y ago
  You are very correct about the maintenance. The fourth power law [1] states that trucks are about 10'000 times as destructive as cars, and cars in turn are 160'000 times(!) as distructive as bicycles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
  - gunapologist99 3y ago
    From your citation: "The accuracy of the law of the fourth power is disputed among experts"
- Filligree 3y ago
  Smaller highways? I guess. House streets won’t get any smaller though.
throw0101a 3y ago
> The money nondrivers pay in taxes for roads aren’t a subsidy to drivers, it’s the cost they pay for the safety and convenience we expect from modern civilization There were roads before cars and trucks: > Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” He considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change. * https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/ * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic Various goods and services managed to be delivered even before cars/trucks. FedEx is experimenting/using cargo bikes for example: * https://curbsidecycle.com/blogs/blog/fedex-launches-first-north-american-fleet-of-cargo-bikes-for-last-mile-logistics https://curbsidecycle.com/blogs/blog/fedex-launches-first-no... The 'extra' use by personal vehicles and non-essential transport trucks adds to shortened lifespans and higher maintenance costs.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

You need a lot more road for everyone to have individual cars than you do just for deliveries and emergency vehicles. http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_orig.png http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_...

ghaff 3y ago
I don't see the data outside of GIS databases, but I'd be willing to bet that in a lot of (most?) places a significant majority of roads [ADDED: total mileage] are 2 lane roads to home and business endpoints. Add in the fact that you're going to have an interstate/etc. highway system even if you only had truck traffic and the wider roads are mostly denser suburbia main routes and areas within cities.

Timshel 3y ago

Less traffic might mean you don't need a 4 lanes road and less maintenance maybe ? You don't think it would impact budget ?

civilitty 3y ago
I’m sure it would impact the budget but based on the state of roads here in California, the vast majority of the damage seems to be from trucks. A lot of those four lane roads can’t be sized down without blocking emergency vehicles’ basic mobility. They’re sized for worst case scenarios and at least in my small hometown, for example, meant to allow large numbers of emergency vehicles to move quickly between suburban sprawls in case of large fire or earthquake.
- Timshel 3y ago
  Yes truck does most of the dammage on specific axes and they probably could be limited to even less, you don't need 40t trucks in city center. Unless you are on a narrow one way street (not common in the us I believe) I would say that congestion is the limiting factor for emergency vehicule mobility. And there is quite a lot of study that wider street do not reduce congestion.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    > Unless you are on a narrow one way street (not common in the us I believe) I would say that congestion is the limiting factor for emergency vehicule mobility. And there is quite a lot of study that wider street do not reduce congestion. Congestion is a separate problem from road design and it's not the limiting factor most of the time. Emergency vehicles need a grid of arteries with two lanes in each direction so cars can pull over in normal traffic conditions to let them through. These arteries lead into smaller 1 or 2 lane roads which don't see much traffic so there's little risk of the emergency vehicle getting impeded. In the suburbs of my city, for example, these arteries are placed every 1/2 mile to every mile depending on population density, which super-stroads every four-ish miles. Areas with real congestion like main thoroughfares and city cores need different solutions like specific road designs (no center dividers) so that emergency vehicles can move onto oncoming traffic.
    - Timshel 3y ago
      "Congestion is a separate problem from road design" what ?? I will just say compare the space dedicated to cars between a random american city and Amsterdam, so much space wasted and so much more infrastructure to maintain; and I believe emergency vehicule are still able to circulate (might even be faster with less cars ?).
      - civilitty 3y ago
        > "Congestion is a separate problem from road design" what ?? Sorry that was poorly phrased. I mean that road design has to respond to congestion so that it's not a limiting factor to emergency service mobility. A low density suburb can afford to have a four lane road every mile with beautiful center dividers with plants whereas downtown needs four lane streets every block and they have to be completely flat to accommodate emergency vehicles moving into oncoming traffic lanes to get around congestion. City planning/permitting is (usually) supposed to prevent situations where congestion might become a problem as a matter of life and death. For example, a large housing development next to my house was recently forced to stop building after completing less than 20% of the planned units because they miscalculated worst case traffic flow. Wildfires are a concern and the fire marshal calculated that the roads feeding into the development would not be able to handle all the traffic from people evacuating and emergency vehicles coming in. > I will just say compare the space dedicated to cars between a random american city and Amsterdam, so much space wasted and so much more infrastructure to maintain; and I believe emergency vehicule are still able to circulate (might even be faster with less cars ?). The average American city has a third to a fifth the population density of Amsterdam, awful biking infrastructure, and little to no public transportation. The density and age of old world cities have so many side effects that I think it's impossible to meaningfully compare them with American cities. That said, don't read this as an endorsement of urban planning in the average American city. Here in SoCal even the suburbs are relatively dense and well designed (tons of parking lots notwithstanding) but I've seen some really awful examples like Salt Lake City where it seems every other street is a six lane megastroad.
Lukas_Skywalker 3y ago
You are very correct about the maintenance. The fourth power law [1] states that trucks are about 10'000 times as destructive as cars, and cars in turn are 160'000 times(!) as distructive as bicycles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  From your citation: "The accuracy of the law of the fourth power is disputed among experts"
Filligree 3y ago
Smaller highways? I guess. House streets won’t get any smaller though.

throw0101a 3y ago

> The money nondrivers pay in taxes for roads aren’t a subsidy to drivers, it’s the cost they pay for the safety and convenience we expect from modern civilization There were roads before cars and trucks: > Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” He considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change. * https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/ * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic Various goods and services managed to be delivered even before cars/trucks. FedEx is experimenting/using cargo bikes for example: * https://curbsidecycle.com/blogs/blog/fedex-launches-first-north-american-fleet-of-cargo-bikes-for-last-mile-logistics https://curbsidecycle.com/blogs/blog/fedex-launches-first-no... The 'extra' use by personal vehicles and non-essential transport trucks adds to shortened lifespans and higher maintenance costs.