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> It seems the network of roads built in the 40s, 50s and 60s just can no longer be done efficiently. Of course they can, we have not lost that capability. It'

> It seems the network of roads built in the 40s, 50s and 60s just can no longer be done efficiently. Of course they can, we have not lost that capability. It's not a matter of efficiency but effectivity. Road constructions of the 1960s are not effective for 21st century traffic demands. Today's level of traffic far exceeds the anticipated level of traffic at the time of construction. Germany sees this all the time, esp. with regards to bridges. Maintaining a road or a bridge to be effective at supporting the original traffic levels is easy but under today's load would require constant maintenance to not deteriorate immediately. Those constructions need to be upgraded which is hard to impossible to do in situ. Let's take a well-known construction in Germany, the Leverkusener Brücke an der A1. It was originally built in the 1960s for a traffic level of 40,000 cars (and trucks) per day. It was upgraded and refurbished over the decades (meaning almost constant construction work happening) to a level of 100,000 cars per day. It wasn't enough, in 2016 about 120,000 cars crossed the bridge per day. At the same time trucks got about 30 % heavier from 1960 to 1990 and we all know that passenger cars got heavier, too. So the whole bridge was replaced, which took 7 years, ending in 2024. During that time traffic was rerouted over two nearby bridges in Cologne and Düsseldorf. The Cologne bridge was so badly damaged by the additional load that it had to be partially closed down and now is up for refurbishment or, maybe, replacement. Network effects at work ;) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: we are actually better at building stuff than our predecessors but the demands put on our constructions are much, much higher. I don't dare to say if our capabilities have grown as much as the demands require.

cyberax 1y ago
> Road constructions of the 1960s are not effective for 21st century traffic demands. Citation needed. As I see it, the US is still riding on the coattails of 1960-s road construction. We should be doing more of it, in fact, not sabotaging it with bike lanes and road diets.
- cuu508 1y ago
  More roads? More lanes?
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Less housing density, to be precise.
    - cuu508 1y ago
      So, to get anywhere, you would have to use a car? To each their own, but I would not want to live in a place like that.
      - cyberax 1y ago
        > So, to get anywhere, you would have to use a car? Sure. Why not? In 10 years it will be self-driving and accessible for everyone.
- ekunazanu 1y ago
  > not sabotaging it with bike lanes and road diets If done right, human-centric infrastructure can create much better urban environments than car-centric ones.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Yes. Human-centric, not bike-lane centric. And humans prefer cars.
    - ekunazanu 1y ago
      > And humans prefer cars. No. People who do not have access to other modes of high quality transit, and are already used to cars, prefer cars.
      - cyberax 1y ago
        Nope. When given a choice between grade-separated level bike lanes, and an equally good road network, people overwhelmingly prefer cars. Actually, people prefer literally _anything_ else including transit. See: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960... Another example is China, it had bikes as the main transportation mode in many cities, but it abandoned them as soon as they could. Bikes are a freaking _miserable_ transportation mode. Try biking in subzero temps, or during rain/snow.
        ekunazanu 1y ago
        > When given a choice between grade-separated level bike lanes, and an equally good road network, people overwhelmingly prefer cars. > Bikes are a freaking _miserable_ transportation mode. Try biking in subzero temps, or during rain/snow. Your entire argument seems to revolve around car vs bikes. I am arguing for prioritizing human-centric infrastructure over car-centric infrastructure. This simply means not prioritizing cars above other modes of transit. For urban environments (high density areas) cars are sub-optimal at best and other alternatives like rail, buses, bikes, and trams are simply better. Granted, sometimes cars are appropriate, but I would not use those minority of cases as an argument to justify having a city designed around cars. > Another example is China, it had bikes as the main transportation mode in many cities, but it abandoned them as soon as they could. Because Chinese cities now have better public transit. Just look at the size and ridership of their suburban rail and metro networks.
- prmoustache 1y ago
  Bike lanes reduce congestion. Do you prefer being slowed down by people riding bikes?
  - Eavolution 1y ago
    To be fair there is a massive difference between separated bike lanes, which do achieve this, and just a painted line on the ground so the government could say they put a bike line in. Significant amounts in a lot of places are the latter.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    > Bike lanes reduce congestion. Wrong. The INCREASE congestion. Even new fast transit lines increase congestion in the vast majority of cases. Surprised?
    - prmoustache 1y ago
      They increase congestion of bikes but decrease congestion of cars ;-)
- Fulgen 1y ago
  The Netherlands proved you can do bike lanes quite well, not every country has to be a nightmare for life quality like the US aspires to be.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    You're thinking of Amsterdam? I used to live there. Bikes are used there ONLY because there's no alternative to them. Transit takes too long, and there's no space for cars. And yet still around 20% of commutes in Amsterdam are by car. > not every country has to be a nightmare for life quality like the US aspires to be. The US is far, far, far ahead of Europe in urban quality of life that it's not even funny, if you disregard the dense hellscapes of SF and NYC. This is easily seen in the number of children per capita. In modern societies, two groups of people tend to have more children ("inverted J-curve"): 1. Happy content people. 2. Desperately poor people. Now look at Europe and the US, and I suggest looking at the US suburbs and not the dense cores.
    - Kim_Bruning 1y ago
      I've worked in Amsterdam. Used to take my car out to a park and ride station out in "the province" and joined the first standup of the day out of the "long yellow office building" [1], then a short walk to the tall grey one to actually get coding. In or near Amsterdam I've seen and/or used busses, trains, ferrys, trams, bicycles, cars; and aircraft on approach to Schiphol looked like they almost flew past the window. I also kind of like New Amsterdam (New York). It's cozy! Can't argue with taste I guess. %-) [1] Intercity trains: Long, Yellow, with electricity, free wifi, a place to sit, and you can bring your own Starbucks on board. Do try to avoid rush hour, or you'll be taking "standup" a bit too literally.
      - cyberax 1y ago
        > I've worked in Amsterdam. So did I. And I had to be at the office at 7:30am. Even when the weather outside was "bracing". > [1] Intercity trains: Long, Yellow, with electricity, free wifi, a place to sit, and you can bring your own Starbucks on board. Do try to avoid rush hour, or you'll be taking "standup" a bit too literally. So basically, you wasted around 2 hours a day on the commute?
- Propelloni 1y ago
  You are talking policy, I'm talking material science.
- Kim_Bruning 1y ago
  Naive intuition says adding more roads and lanes would finally solve the bottlenecks, right? And it does, briefly. But after a little while it's back to bumper to bumper. That’s induced demand [1]: when new capacity just encourages more driving. Counterintuitively perhaps, bike lanes, road diets and public transport actually work better. Give people other ways to move around, and you take pressure off the road system, making traffic better for everyone. And that includes the drivers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
  - jerven 1y ago
    I would like to state that good bike lanes and trains also have induced demand. The Netherlands and Switzerland, have demand for more of both (as well as more demand for car lanes as well) It is just that trains and bikes are much more efficient in terms of land use. The 3 lane road in front of my house is "good" for 16,000 cars a day. The 2 lane train line a 5 minutes walk from my house is "good" for 120,000 passengers a day. A train line can carry about 10x the traffic of a car lane (in practice) with similar ground usage. So when a train system has more demand/use than expected (e.g. leman express in the geneva region) there are more options to increase throughput (in the leman express case double level trains) that require less new infrastructure to be build. When new infrastructure is required, limitations of space mean that a 15 year period from plan to implementation is normal. Which means infrastructure which has more head-room is preferred over quickly saturated ones. To add the adding of one lane to the A1 for 18KM costs half the total of the leman express infrastructure. But has significantly less benefits in total transit capacity.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      > The 2 lane train line a 5 minutes walk from my house is "good" for 120,000 passengers a day. But that's not true. Your chances of living within 5 minutes of a train stations are slim, unless train stations are spammed everywhere. And if stations are spammed everywhere, then they become inefficient. Meanwhile, cars are only mildly affected by additional 400-500 meters of distance. There's a great resource: https://www.geoapify.com/isoline-api/ https://www.geoapify.com/isoline-api/ - it shows isochrones for different commute methods. > A train line can carry about 10x the traffic of a car lane (in practice) with similar ground usage. In practice, a train line effectively is only slightly better than cars, unless you enshittify your city into a Manhattan-style dense hell. Moreover, self-driving cars with mild carpooling (think 4-6 people per vehicle) blow ANY transit mode out of the water in speed and efficiency. It's not even close. A good approximation of this are airport pickup vans (the ones that you arrange in advance). > To add the adding of one lane to the A1 for 18KM costs half the total of the leman express infrastructure. But has significantly less benefits in total transit capacity. Yeah. Imagine that instead of wasting money on useless transit (see: Seattle ST3), we used them to incentivize companies to build more offices outside of dense city cores. Then these lanes wouldn't even be necessary!

cyberax 1y ago

> Road constructions of the 1960s are not effective for 21st century traffic demands. Citation needed. As I see it, the US is still riding on the coattails of 1960-s road construction. We should be doing more of it, in fact, not sabotaging it with bike lanes and road diets.

cuu508 1y ago
More roads? More lanes?
- cyberax 1y ago
  Less housing density, to be precise.
  - cuu508 1y ago
    So, to get anywhere, you would have to use a car? To each their own, but I would not want to live in a place like that.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      > So, to get anywhere, you would have to use a car? Sure. Why not? In 10 years it will be self-driving and accessible for everyone.
ekunazanu 1y ago
> not sabotaging it with bike lanes and road diets If done right, human-centric infrastructure can create much better urban environments than car-centric ones.
- cyberax 1y ago
  Yes. Human-centric, not bike-lane centric. And humans prefer cars.
  - ekunazanu 1y ago
    > And humans prefer cars. No. People who do not have access to other modes of high quality transit, and are already used to cars, prefer cars.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Nope. When given a choice between grade-separated level bike lanes, and an equally good road network, people overwhelmingly prefer cars. Actually, people prefer literally _anything_ else including transit. See: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960... Another example is China, it had bikes as the main transportation mode in many cities, but it abandoned them as soon as they could. Bikes are a freaking _miserable_ transportation mode. Try biking in subzero temps, or during rain/snow.
      - ekunazanu 1y ago
        > When given a choice between grade-separated level bike lanes, and an equally good road network, people overwhelmingly prefer cars. > Bikes are a freaking _miserable_ transportation mode. Try biking in subzero temps, or during rain/snow. Your entire argument seems to revolve around car vs bikes. I am arguing for prioritizing human-centric infrastructure over car-centric infrastructure. This simply means not prioritizing cars above other modes of transit. For urban environments (high density areas) cars are sub-optimal at best and other alternatives like rail, buses, bikes, and trams are simply better. Granted, sometimes cars are appropriate, but I would not use those minority of cases as an argument to justify having a city designed around cars. > Another example is China, it had bikes as the main transportation mode in many cities, but it abandoned them as soon as they could. Because Chinese cities now have better public transit. Just look at the size and ridership of their suburban rail and metro networks.
prmoustache 1y ago
Bike lanes reduce congestion. Do you prefer being slowed down by people riding bikes?
- Eavolution 1y ago
  To be fair there is a massive difference between separated bike lanes, which do achieve this, and just a painted line on the ground so the government could say they put a bike line in. Significant amounts in a lot of places are the latter.
- cyberax 1y ago
  > Bike lanes reduce congestion. Wrong. The INCREASE congestion. Even new fast transit lines increase congestion in the vast majority of cases. Surprised?
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    They increase congestion of bikes but decrease congestion of cars ;-)
Fulgen 1y ago
The Netherlands proved you can do bike lanes quite well, not every country has to be a nightmare for life quality like the US aspires to be.
- cyberax 1y ago
  You're thinking of Amsterdam? I used to live there. Bikes are used there ONLY because there's no alternative to them. Transit takes too long, and there's no space for cars. And yet still around 20% of commutes in Amsterdam are by car. > not every country has to be a nightmare for life quality like the US aspires to be. The US is far, far, far ahead of Europe in urban quality of life that it's not even funny, if you disregard the dense hellscapes of SF and NYC. This is easily seen in the number of children per capita. In modern societies, two groups of people tend to have more children ("inverted J-curve"): 1. Happy content people. 2. Desperately poor people. Now look at Europe and the US, and I suggest looking at the US suburbs and not the dense cores.
  - Kim_Bruning 1y ago
    I've worked in Amsterdam. Used to take my car out to a park and ride station out in "the province" and joined the first standup of the day out of the "long yellow office building" [1], then a short walk to the tall grey one to actually get coding. In or near Amsterdam I've seen and/or used busses, trains, ferrys, trams, bicycles, cars; and aircraft on approach to Schiphol looked like they almost flew past the window. I also kind of like New Amsterdam (New York). It's cozy! Can't argue with taste I guess. %-) [1] Intercity trains: Long, Yellow, with electricity, free wifi, a place to sit, and you can bring your own Starbucks on board. Do try to avoid rush hour, or you'll be taking "standup" a bit too literally.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      > I've worked in Amsterdam. So did I. And I had to be at the office at 7:30am. Even when the weather outside was "bracing". > [1] Intercity trains: Long, Yellow, with electricity, free wifi, a place to sit, and you can bring your own Starbucks on board. Do try to avoid rush hour, or you'll be taking "standup" a bit too literally. So basically, you wasted around 2 hours a day on the commute?
Propelloni 1y ago
You are talking policy, I'm talking material science.
Kim_Bruning 1y ago
Naive intuition says adding more roads and lanes would finally solve the bottlenecks, right? And it does, briefly. But after a little while it's back to bumper to bumper. That’s induced demand [1]: when new capacity just encourages more driving. Counterintuitively perhaps, bike lanes, road diets and public transport actually work better. Give people other ways to move around, and you take pressure off the road system, making traffic better for everyone. And that includes the drivers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
- jerven 1y ago
  I would like to state that good bike lanes and trains also have induced demand. The Netherlands and Switzerland, have demand for more of both (as well as more demand for car lanes as well) It is just that trains and bikes are much more efficient in terms of land use. The 3 lane road in front of my house is "good" for 16,000 cars a day. The 2 lane train line a 5 minutes walk from my house is "good" for 120,000 passengers a day. A train line can carry about 10x the traffic of a car lane (in practice) with similar ground usage. So when a train system has more demand/use than expected (e.g. leman express in the geneva region) there are more options to increase throughput (in the leman express case double level trains) that require less new infrastructure to be build. When new infrastructure is required, limitations of space mean that a 15 year period from plan to implementation is normal. Which means infrastructure which has more head-room is preferred over quickly saturated ones. To add the adding of one lane to the A1 for 18KM costs half the total of the leman express infrastructure. But has significantly less benefits in total transit capacity.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    > The 2 lane train line a 5 minutes walk from my house is "good" for 120,000 passengers a day. But that's not true. Your chances of living within 5 minutes of a train stations are slim, unless train stations are spammed everywhere. And if stations are spammed everywhere, then they become inefficient. Meanwhile, cars are only mildly affected by additional 400-500 meters of distance. There's a great resource: https://www.geoapify.com/isoline-api/ https://www.geoapify.com/isoline-api/ - it shows isochrones for different commute methods. > A train line can carry about 10x the traffic of a car lane (in practice) with similar ground usage. In practice, a train line effectively is only slightly better than cars, unless you enshittify your city into a Manhattan-style dense hell. Moreover, self-driving cars with mild carpooling (think 4-6 people per vehicle) blow ANY transit mode out of the water in speed and efficiency. It's not even close. A good approximation of this are airport pickup vans (the ones that you arrange in advance). > To add the adding of one lane to the A1 for 18KM costs half the total of the leman express infrastructure. But has significantly less benefits in total transit capacity. Yeah. Imagine that instead of wasting money on useless transit (see: Seattle ST3), we used them to incentivize companies to build more offices outside of dense city cores. Then these lanes wouldn't even be necessary!