406
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
406 points (95.5% liked)
News
23259 readers
3390 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think the focus here really needs to be on supporting alternative forms of transport.
We have a city that’s already filled with gridlock almost 24/7, even at 2am in the evening. The city planning is such that it’s hard to go significant distances without a car without spending hours in transit. If the primary lever for change is to institute slower speed limits and traffic calming measures, it simply makes things miserable for everyone involved.
IMO the root of the issue is we have way too many cars and not enough alternative infrastructure to make going without a car especially practical.
Denverites love to walk and bike when it’s convenient and they feel safe. I firmly believe that dedicated infrastructure would dramatically reduce the number of car trips as well as give structural safety measures walkers and cyclists. This would reduce deaths while making the city a more pleasant and healthy place to be. Thats why it should be the primary focus in terms of change.
I agree with everything you said in the second half. Better non-car infrastructure should be the primary focus!
But I don’t see why traffic calming and slower car speeds would make things miserable for “everyone”, like cyclists or pedestrians. I wouldn’t ride my bike nearly as often if cars could go 45 mph on Canadian streets. Making cars uncomfortable is part of encouraging other modes of transportation.
There are many reasons why it is bad for everyone, but I will cite a few specifics.
To start with, in the absence of good alternatives, vast majority of pedestrians and cyclists would also be regular drivers. The only exceptions would be people who are too poor to avoid a car. If the drivers and the walkers are the same people then the people who regularly walk still suffer from slowed traffic because they still take the car for some trips.
Poor mobility for cars also translates to increased cost of living. Most businesses rely upon vehicle transport in some way or another and the increased cost of doing business gets passed onto the consumer.
In addition, the existence of high throughput streets with higher speed limits tends to concentrate traffic into specific predictable areas. When you reduce the throughput of those areas, traffic gets distributed onto more roads. The result is that cyclists and pedestrians are less able to avoid cars with strategic route planning.
To clarify, this isn’t every street in the USA, it’s only major thoroughfares. Most side streets in US cities have a 25-30 mph speed limit. In a world with well designed bike infrastructure we would have dedicated paths separated from traffic so you don’t have to share the road with fast moving cars.
Nope, that's backwards. Poor mobility for cars comes from higher-density development, which is also efficient development because you don't have to spend huge amounts of money building parking. Getting rid of the cars is the thing that lowers the costs!
Futhermore, getting rid of the cars is also the thing that enables walking/biking/transit to be viable (because there's physically less distance to cover, since you don't have to cross a wasteland of pavement), which also lowers cost of living.
The bottom line is that if you build to accommodate cars, you will never have walkability. It's geometrically impossible.
Distributing traffic onto more (uniformly-slow) streets means that cyclists and pedestrians have less need to avoid cars with strategic route planning because slow-moving cars aren't nearly as much of a danger to begin with.
Did you actually read anything I have written?
The point is that simply lowering speed limits as the primary lever to improve quality of life isn’t useful. It does nothing to reallocate that space in a beneficial way.
I’m literally arguing in favor of reducing space for cars for more pedestrian, cycling and transit infrastructure
Guess what? The city is already built. I agree with you.
The question is how to move forward and slapping lower speed limits on everything isn’t the solution. You need to actually spend money on revamping the infrastructure so there are meaningful alternatives. Try to read more and jump to conclusions less.
You're literally arguing for going about it ass-backwards in a way doomed to failure, which is a disingenuous, passive-aggressive way of opposing it.
In order to actually spend money on bike/ped/transit, the politicians have to allocate it for that purpose. That doesn't happen unless the public is made to hate driving first!
I’m sorry but most of what you say doesn’t make any sense. Why would making it easier and faster to drive encourage cycling and walking?
Let me address your points in turn:
Yes, slowing car traffic makes car travel worse. That’s the point. Cars are massively prioritized right now.
Cars are a cost of living disaster. The US and Canada spend the most on transportation costs in the world. The US actually spends more public tax dollars on transportation because car infrastructure is the least efficient and most expensive to build. Cars themselves are the biggest household expense after housing. Businesses also thrive in car free environments. In Europe, businesses know this and fight to remove car infrastructure. Ever wonder why the most economically vibrant areas are the least car dependent? The US and Canada are brainwashed.
The solution to cars driving on cycling routes is to lower the speed limit even more on those routes. Like I said, in Canada many cycling routes are 18 mph. Most drivers go even slower on cycling prioritized routes. It’s mind boggling to think it would be safer if cars could go faster.
I’ve lived for many years in both countries. The US drives way faster and is much more dangerous, despite similar looking streets. In most other developed countries, traffic accident rates are falling to record lows. The US is a tragic outlier.. Prioritizing “traffic flow” is the heart of the problem.
More infrastructure for cars = even more cars on the road, as simple as that.
You want to fix a gridlocked city with awful traffic? You start taking lanes out and making them exclusive for public transport, and you build big sidewalks and a cycling lane. Now you can get where you want to go in 10 minutes using public transport or bike, or you can sat in traffic for an hour - magically, you'll see traffic getting better and less cars on the road.
It's not as if this is some mistery - it has been done in many cities around the world and it works. The alternative is the american way, "just add one more lane", and you guys live with the results.
I think there's a lack of understanding on just how differently American and European cities are structured. Unless you're in the Northeast, cities aren't densely packed. They're broad and sprawling. This is especially true of mid sized cities. Housing is typically far from businesses. A 10 minute bike ride would barely get me out of the neighborhood, and I'd still have aways to go before a major road.
On the other hand, I biked around campus in college and took the bus system all the time. I didn't need a car for my day to day.
Public transit is a real challenge for us. There's no easy answer. Our cities just aren't structured for it. And I don't think there's a public transit model yet that could totally replace cars for us.