this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Welp, this is awkward. I support most of those (disregarding the uncharitable way you spun the descriptions, anyway). I'm interested to hear why you think they're "crap."
"Let’s make driving harder not mass transit easier" -- The problem with doing it the other way around is that the act of accommodating cars makes transit non-viable, both by (a) sucking up funding in an (ultimately futile) effort to build our way out of congestion by widening roads, and (b) physically forcing trip origins and destinations further apart by shoehorning parking lots in between them, lowering density and therefore the maximum potential transit ridership along a given route. People are going to use the transportation mode they think is best for them (quickest, cheapest, etc.), and to continue bending over backwards accommodating cars is to put a thumb (if not your entire body weight) on that scale.
"Traffic circles!" -- meh, I'm not going to argue this one 'cause I agree they're overrated. They often perform better than traffic lights in terms of their level of service (LOS) moving cars, but they take up lots more space and aren't necessarily great for cyclists and pedestrians. Besides LOS often isn't the right thing to measure to begin with.
"Tax on poor people who have to be work at a certain time" -- By this you mean anything that increases the costs of driving, I assume? The problem with that kind of thinking is that it uses a current symptom of the problem as an excuse not to solve the problem. In other words, increasing the costs of driving wouldn't be a problem for poor commuters if, in so doing, we also solved their need to drive to commute.
"More zoning laws can fix the problems zoning laws created" -- I, for one, argue for straight-up repealing things like minimum parking requirements and restrictions on density. That sort of idea often gets [mis]represented as "abolishing single-family zoning," but in reality it's not about prohibiting property owners from building single-family houses; it's about ending the mandate to build single-family houses and giving them the freedom to build higher-density things instead if they want. Frankly, this common criticism is usually just flat-out backwards.
"Force upper middle class people to move to areas with poverty" -- I have almost no idea what you're talking about here. However, I suspect that, like the previous bullet point, it's another backwards argument confusing an option for a mandate.
In that case every proposed solution needs to solve the need to drive for a commute on Day 1 of implementation. If you don't want to disproportionately hurt poor people and the working class, that is.
That's the issue. It is like saying we could get rid of fire departments if we installed fire suppression systems in every home, then we get rid of fire departments.
We need to make mass transit better, once that happens people will stop driving as much by choice.
Exactly. Fixing the underlying issues to a problem takes time to propagate. It's only about 2 years after a president takes office that their policies have affected the national economy and such.
Great analogy by the way. We need the fire department until those systems are installed. In this case, it probably means avoiding congestion taxes and the like until there's viable public transit for commuting. Otherwise we're just squeezing the working class.
This is why technologies to reduce emissions on cars and electrify them are so important. We need to minimize their impact since they're going to stick around.
What happens in practice is it is easier to make roads shit then it is to make buses good. So the town makes it shit and everyone stops going there. It is better to put up with the existing bad solution and make a better replacement instead of breaking what you have even more so and hope some Messiah figure will fix it. Go check out what happened when Buffalo NY built its rail. That is a perfect example and the entire downtown died.
Glad you agree. They aren't safe and rarely a good option. Forcing cars to make sharp turns and pedestrians to walk longer distances in the road to cross.
Congestion taxes. They don't impact somewhat wealth-off people like me since we can adjust our schedule. They punish poor people who can't. It isn't even regressive, it is reverse-progressive.
My city has a rule that satellite dishes can't be street visible. When I see urban cough...planners...cough willing to admit that rules like that should not be a thing I will be inclined to take you guys seriously about density.
Gentrification and white flight. I suspect you knew damn well what I was referring to but enjoy backwards arguments
I think you're scapegoating the rail and the real problem was that declining rust belt cities just suck.
See also: https://www.buffalorising.com/2007/10/what-really-killed-downtown-retail/
No, everything you wrote is wrong: roundabouts are relatively safe because they minimize path conflicts, forcing cars to make sharp turns (and thereby slow down) is a good thing, and although pedestrians walk longer distances around the edge of the roundabout, the crosswalks themselves are generally shorter and thus safer.
The reasons I think roundabouts are overrated have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with lack of space-efficiency and how the good performance for cars comes at the expense of other street users' convenience (e.g. making pedestrians walk farther).
Oh, that's what you were talking about? Never mind then; I agree with you on that point.
Discouraging people from driving in downtowns needs to be accomplished by physically choking the traffic off with road diets and traffic calming etc. "Lexus lanes" not only create unjust privilege, they also fail at reducing capacity since they're just shifting the usage from one cohort of drivers to another.
No, I really didn't. What confused me was your use of the word "force." Nobody's forcing upper middle class people to do a damn thing. If they're moving to impoverished areas and gentrifying them, it's because they saw an opportunity they liked and took it. Conversely, if they're engaging in white flight, they're being "forced" by nothing but their own bigotry (which obviously doesn't count).
The upper middle class people have all the power in the situations you're talking about. Painting them as somehow the victims of their own choices is laughable.
Wow again wrong about everything. Laughable
The real problem was people not able to get to a place for a decade. Not having customers for ten years tends to be a bad thing.
Still wrong. You do not want cars to randomly turn. It makes them flip over. This isn't a hard concept.
Oh libertarian definition of force
"Cars can't possibly negotiate roundabouts because slowing down so they don't flip over is too much to ask of drivers" 🙄
The amount of car-brained shit like this getting upvoted around here is too damn high! WTF is wrong with you people?