#traffic calming

[the-city-in-mind]

Type Ashton compares her childhood walk to school in Sherman, Illinois, with where she raises her kids in Germany.

[opendirectories]

[carhatred]

As a kid, I used to ask my parents why they couldn’t just build more lanes on the freeway. Maybe transform them all into double-decker highways with cars zooming on the upper and lower levels. Except, as it turns out, that wouldn’t work. Because if there’s anything that traffic engineers have discovered in the last few decades it’s that you can’t build your way out of congestion. It’s the roads themselves that cause traffic.

(...) If a city had increased its road capacity by 10 percent between 1980 and 1990, then the amount of driving in that city went up by 10 percent. If the amount of roads in the same city then went up by 11 percent between 1990 and 2000, the total number of miles driven also went up by 11 percent. It’s like the two figures were moving in perfect lockstep, changing at the same exact rate.

(...)  The answer has to do with what roads allow people to do: move around. As it turns out, we humans love moving around. And if you expand people’s ability to travel, they will do it more, living farther away from where they work and therefore being forced to drive into town. Making driving easier also means that people take more trips in the car than they otherwise would. Finally, businesses that rely on roads will swoop into cities with many of them, bringing trucking and shipments. The problem is that all these things together erode any extra capacity you’ve built into your street network, meaning traffic levels stay pretty much constant. As long as driving on the roads remains easy and cheap, people have an almost unlimited desire to use them.

(...) Interestingly, the effect works in reverse, too. Whenever some city proposes taking lanes away from a road, residents scream that they’re going to create a huge traffic snarl. But the data shows that nothing truly terrible happens. The amount of traffic on the road simply readjusts and overall congestion doesn’t really increase.

(...) So where did those other drivers go? Many of them switched to public transit, which in Paris has increased by 20 percent in the last two decades. Other trips have simply been avoided, or done on foot. It’s not just Europeans who are eager to get out of their cars. San Francisco removed a highway section, called the Central Freeway, that carried nearly 100,000 cars per day in 1989. The boulevard that replaced it now only carries around 45,000 daily cars and yet they move. (Yes, I’ve been stuck in traffic on Octavia Boulevard, but it’s not like you never get through.) Perhaps the biggest success story has been in Seoul, South Korea, where the city tore down a highway that was considered a vital roadway corridor, carrying 168,000 cars per day. After replacing the cars with a river, parkland, and some smaller roads, traffic didn’t get worse and many other things, including pollution, got better.

(...) Duranton said that if congestion pricing is a non-starter, a more rational approach to parking could be a good secondary step in easing congestion. Parking in most cities is far cheaper than it should be, and it's too often free.“Because it’s free, people will misuse it and it will be full all the time,” said Duranton. Drivers searching for parking contribute significantly to road congestion. “There are some estimates that say in the central part of cities up to 30 percent of driving is people just cruising around for parking,” Duranton said.

[marzeydoze]

I simply think my boss should let me build Bedstuy Aquarium 2.0 in one of the new bumpouts

[mjalford98]

Discouraging people from driving is popular for improving urban air quality, but it’s unfair and unhelpful without viable public transport alternatives. Read more in my latest Medium article!

[benzinazero]

Ideologia e libertà

Da un Tweet di Cycling Professor Nell’immagine in alto vediamo l’applicazione dell’ideologia che rende invivibili le città con vie che rischiano di essere affollate di pedoni, di bambini che giocano, di anziani che passeggiano tranquilli senza il timore di essere investiti da un’auto o da una moto. Sotto invece vediamo la ‘libertà’ garantita in ogni città dall’automobile privata: traffico,…

[watford-herts-london]

Proposed 20mph Zones for West Watford and Cassiobury Park streets

Hertfordshire County Council is proposing the introduction of a 20mph zone in the West Watford and cassiobury area known as the triangle. (Ref 77002391-001-c) Whippendell Road could see the introduction of road humps and raised table traffic calming features as part of HCC’s Speed Management Strategy. HCC is seeking public engagement responses to the potentially lowering speed limits around…

[raileurta]

It's so funny to watch people go about their tasks normally not knowing the complete shit storm that Etho & Grian are creating.

[pixel8or]

[klbzplb]

this is only 75% as good as i wanted it to be but. art am i right

[enjithequeer]

Jimmy Stop you have enough husband's/partners/Boyfriends/lovers

And Jimmy talking about BigBs hole. Bro needs to chill. /Hj

[artvaris]

Spending my summer vacation days going on looooong walks

[bromcommie]

SKREEEEEEECH TIME

[catalisst]