Definitely has his grip on reality, this one
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Gee, I wonder what causes congestion in high speed lanes and roads? Too many fucking cars at the same time? Nah, it must be some communist subversion
It’s wild deer, there might not actually be any but just the idea of them makes people drive in a less efficient manner. It doesn’t help that the deer are communist.
“No one in New York drove. There was too much traffic.” -Phillip J. Fry
“Please bro one more line on the highway bro please just one more lane”
See not congested at all.
There’s quite some room in between the lanes. If they all move in a bit, I bet there’s plenty of room for an extra bike lane on either side.
this line makes me think of ai:
bro just a few more power plants, gimme a nuclear one and some coal fired, please bro, it’ll all be worth it with just a few more gigawatts. It’ll make sense then, just a few more plants broooo
Fun fact: The faster a car travels, the bigger the spacing between the cars gets. That’s necessary to leave enough distance for emergency stops.
While the speed increases linearly, the spacing increases with the square, meaning at double the speed, the spacing quadruples, which in turn means that throughput (number of cars per hour) halves.
This is the reason why many regions use electronic speed signs to drop the speedlimit lower when there’s congestion. Because it increases throughput and thus reduces travel times.
The optimum speed for high throughput is 30km/h.
Counterintuitive as it might be, drivers should be all for 30km/h speed limit in cities, because it would make them get to work faster.
That’s also the fastest speed before sharply increasing the likelihood of fatality in pedestrian collisions
You can cite an infinite amount of proven facts and studies, car brains will never accept your „communist propaganda“. This whole discussion is too emotionally loaded to be based on facts.
Another related fun fact: Larger vehicles are harder to see around, so people have to leave even more distance which reduces throughput.
The problem is that often streets are not congested, and then 50km/h is much more time efficient.
And there’s where we invent roundabouts. Even when the streets are not congested the time to cross any urban area is dominated by the stops. It much more beneficial to eliminate stop signs and red lights, to keep you moving consistently than to let you speed a little more to your next stopping point
Yeah, big thumbs up for roundabouts.
Yeah, unless you’re a pedestrian.
Why’s it a problem? I crossed them every day, cars usually drive quite slowly around them.
Yep, and at that speed, 50km/h on an “empty” street INSIDE a city, that’s also the most “efficient” speed to avoid those pesky children bits getting stuck on your windchill were you to tackle one while checking your phone.
Apologies for the sarcasm but most drivers I encounter on a daily basis absolutely do not have the sustained concentration behind wheels to safely drive a 50km/h within actual cities.
I have seen old people driving around with oxygen tubes in their noses more times than I feel is safe.
If children are a factor (residential street, school zone, playground, etc) there’s all the reason to limit to 30, or even 20 (like the street I live where kids are playing around). Optionally time restricted.
Main avenues with clear sidewalks separated by a green strip can have 50 or even 60 km/h limits.
As an adult, relatively big (1m85) who doesn’t randomly run across a street but rather use solely clearly marked zebras I sadly have to report that I had numerous encounter with cars at a very uncomfortable distance to my body, some even touching me (not an accident proper though). I did have of course the occasional wave saying “Oops, sorry I didn’t see you or care for slowing down, moving on!”. When I say occasional it’s probably once a month or more.
To clarify this happened next to a park with very VERY good visibility, a straight line without trees, where it’s slightly higher speed than around. Namely small streets around the park are 20km/h, that avenue is 50km/h. It is actually such a problem a red light has been installed 200m further. I assume that enough cars refused to yield so that this change was made.
This makes me believe that unfortunately, even though MOST drivers are indeed able to safely drive in “Main avenues with clear sidewalks” there is still a non negligible amount from my experience as a pedestrian who absolutely can not and are a danger for everyone, kids and adults alike.
That being said, you have the right to believe that few accidents are acceptable if it allows most people to keep such a certain speed.
I sadly have to report that I had numerous encounter with cars at a very uncomfortable distance to my body
When I was younger and had worse impulse control, some fool in a sports car blasted through the zebra crossing I was in, missing me by less than a foot, only to stop a few feet from me because there was a stationary queue of traffic ahead of him (so why go through the zebra crossing at all?). So I kicked out one of his tail lights, kicked off his driver’s side wing mirror, and when he tried to get out of the car, repeatedly kicked the door shut on his ankle each time he’d try to open it. At some point, he realised I was not only much larger than him but also much crazier, and drove on (the queue had cleared by then). Ah, the days before there were ubiquitous cameras!
To clarify this happened next to a park with very VERY good visibility, a straight line without trees, where it’s slightly higher speed than around.
That’s not surprising to me (as an engineer); the dangerous encounters probably happened because the street was straight and had a generous clear zone.
Strong Towns “30 days of confessions” series has a couple of good (short! – under 2 minutes each) videos explaining it:
Fascinating, thanks for sharing!
Of course it makes sense. In fact I believe I have a similar problem while cycling on a one way street for cars while cycling on the (non protected) bike lane of the opposite direction. I hate that street because very often cars do not move away… because they don’t look up. They are busy doing I don’t know what in their cars… probably because, if I understood the idea properly, they think it’s all fine, nobody “should” come from anywhere but behind them, so the “can” be “distracted”.
Also makes me think of Jevons’s paradox (or the rebound effect) but for attention or even more broadly cognition.
I’m an adult just slightly bigger and have never had an encounter like you describe, and I lived in a big city decades, using public transport and walking exclusively. If drivers in your environment are that bad, stricter limits are reasonable.
Yet I also see them and a lot more frequently since pandemic. I still claim everyone forgot how to drive safely.
For me the big problem is that it’s legal to “turn right on red”. However people for get that you’re supposed to come to a full stop and to yield to any road user. So many times I’m in the crosswalk with the walk signal lighted yet someone zooms through to take a right on red barely slowing and without concern for pedestrians
We also seem to have gotten a lot worse with “stretching a yellow”. Why is it that I can wait for a light to turn red, then wait a couple more seconds for the walk signal to come on, yet still be endangered by someone blasting through the intersection claiming “my light was yellow, bro”.
Or maybe it’s just the self-centeredness. People have so much trouble being aware that someone is travelling differently than they are. Pedestrians are invisible because “everyone drives”, cars zoom right up to and through crosswalks at a red light because “no one will be in the crosswalk”.
It’s become a running joke with my kids that you always have to look the wrong way before crossing the street. We regularly cross a one way street where we have twice had close calls with someone going the wrong way. Knowing the layout, I’m pretty sure it’s intentional. It would be difficult to do on accident and I can see the “short cut” being much more convenient
My guess North American (because of the turn right on red) and European car cultures are different. European cities are much more walkable and drivers are used to pedestrians. I rarely have a car not stop if I come up to a cross walk, and basically 100% if I’m with my kids.
I drive. The biggest causes of congestion I see are…
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Dumb driving because Americans aren’t taught to zipper merge and can be dangerously unpredictable due to do widespread emotional instability.
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Bad car design. The customer isn’t always right, regular folks should not be driving tanks and should not have AI superseded user control. People die here all the time because of these things. Cybertruck is the most obvious example given its lack of bumper zones and tech that’s so cheap it kills it’s own users but the most common example is probably a Ford or GM pickup truck. I think the Japanese may have the best cars as I saw a compact van that seemed far more practical and safe than many American vehicles. China has some good looking ones too. Compact doesn’t look as sexy but is way better for everyone.
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Bad road design. I have no problems with bike lanes or even less lanes if travel time is roughly the same. I love roundabouts and sidewalks full of trees to shade pedestrians and wide enough to protect them from cars. I love when corners give me good visibility going around corners. In the US this is rarely the case. We are plagued by construction contractors milking cities to do projects slowly and create problems the people will want them to fix in the future and lack of regulation to ensure all modes of transport are viable in all but a few cities.
I think it’s established fact that you can’t reduce congestions by adding more lanes and roads. Not because of bad road design but because the amount of cars will fill up those new lanes. So saying ‘cars cause congestions’ is pointing at the fact that regardless of how many roads or lanes we have the will be filled. Hence roads aren’t the problem, but cars are.
I think it’s established fact that you can’t reduce congestions by adding more lanes and roads.
I mean, if it worked we would see the successes in all those giant freeway cities but instead the problem just grows.
If we just turn everything into road then nobody will have anywhere to go. It’s the perfect solution
I think more lanes can be a solution but it has a more particular place than does now and there seems to be diminishing returns after about three lanes.
Another reason it doesn’t reduce congestion is that lane changes are frequently the cause of accidents or hard braking, which creates traffic jams. And Americans’ complete lack of lane discipline just makes it all worse.
Actually, inadequate lanes do contribute to congestion. The traffic will always be pretty much standard… the time of transit however is slowed so it may seem like there are less cars… but no, it is less road. Also, the curvature of the roads – especially on on ramps can affect visibility of oncoming traffic and not providing for a properly lengthed merge lane is also a big problem. Some things that can help slow down (prevent speeding at merging areas/onramps) so it is easier to merge is having islands between the right and left lanes with greenery, more lights/slowdowns and providing a fast lane for carshares and buses. Building in service roads and bypasses also decreases the congestion.
pretty sure that mostly applies to mega cities that shouldn’t have multi-lane roads to begin with
It applies to smaller cities as well as fat as you I’m aware, not just mega cities.
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Bikes are not usually allowed on the highway, yet the highway experiences congestion. How is that?
I once had the pleasure of cycling the Shimanami Kaido in Japan, a bike route that connects the islands of Honshu and Shikoku, hopping between all these minor islands on the way over suspension bridges carrying the main highway.
The bike lane is protected the whole time. In one case, the bike route is actually below the deck of the bridge, and you’re on a fenced-in catwalk hundreds of feet over the channel between the islands. Views for miles over Osaka bay.
Honestly, when I look back at my life, it’s probably my favorite thing I’ve ever done. If only the U.S. invested in bike infrastructure like that.
Current plan for the new cape cod bridges include a protected bike lane with a great view over the canal!
Too many people complain we could fit an extra lane in that space without thinking. Sure there are huge backups, but those are addressed with the new design not making cars slow down and not having entrance and exit ramps right there. Most importantly, you’re crossing to a two lane highway so there is no benefit to more than two lanes. Allowing continuous flow to the amount that the other side can handle reduces congestion. Anyone you can get on a bike is the one that will reduce congestion. And for all that is holy, let’s run the Cape Flyer often enough to be useful
That’s great to hear! I was actually living in Somerville when I did that Japan trip. The extension of the bike path and really that whole rails-to-trails project were wonderful for the community. We need more projects like that - glad to hear the cape is getting some.
What… next thing you know you’ll ask people to use reason. /s
Because of the bike lanes in the other streets of course.
communism is when bike lanes.
What it wrong with that guy? Did a bike fuck his wife or something?
You’re right. They don’t create congestion.
They ARE congestion.
This, exactly.
You’re not sitting in traffic … You are traffic .
The guy in the OP also gives off small dick energy. Just saying.
Is water wet?
“Ants don’t *create* ant colonies.”
See, the problem is that you only have two lanes in the city /s
one_more_lane.copypasta
Just one more lane bro. I promise bro just one more lane and it’ll fix everything bro. Bro, just one more lane. Please just one more, one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro, bro c’mon just give me one more lane i promise bro, bro bro please! Just need one more lane
In the end the city will have to bulldoze the houses and offices that make up to the city to make room for more roads and cars, increasing costs and destroying their own tax revenue in the process, or realize less cars are the answer.
In addition to all the parking lots that the increased car traffic would require
Man, I’m flashing back to my visit to Detroit and the massive ‘boulevard’ that cuts the city in two. The car I was riding in had to get on to what was basically a highway, change lanes a half dozen times, and exit via ramp in order to get from one neighborhood to another. (In the span of a quarter mile).
It was eerie, but doable, because there weren’t many other cars on the road. I can only imagine how difficult it would have been when there was actually traffic.
Roads can be walls as well as nooses.
When you have enough tarmac, you don’t even need lanes or lights, there’ll be space for everyone.
Lanes are a commie plot to steal freedom anyway.
It’s obvious from the picture that it is the buildings in the city that cause the congestion. get rid of em.
I once got stuck behind someones house once, I politely honked three times and flashed my headlights , but it wouldn’t budge, so in the end i had no choice but to ram right through it. Fucking cities stealing all our open roads.
Long story: short the city will eventually have to decide whether to put one last parking space or one last lane.
Do you have the key for the car colour coding? Is it occupancy?
It probably just attempts to indicate it’s the same 3 cars again, likely pointing out the fact that there are legitimate reasons to drive, those people are just fucked by everyone else and brain-dead traffic planning.
It looks like the green cars have passengers, while the red cars have single occupants.Nevermind, some of the red cars have passengers, too. I guess the green cars survive to the final graphic… why that’s relevant, I don’t really understand.
Might just be that those three cars have legitimate reasons to be driving. Like, it could be a carpenter’s or electrician’s van on the way to a job site in the city.
That’s what tripped me up too, haha
I think it’s more for design language, you’re subconsciously drawn to the green vehicles because they’re different, and subconsciously when you’re looking at the traffic, you’re reminded what it’s like being in the traffic yourself.
So you imagine yourself as the green car.
1st scenario: traffic is really bad. 2nd scenario: they’ve added more lanes, but you, the green car, are still stuck. 3rd scenario: public transportation has alleviated the traffic and it’s better for all.
Notice in the 3rd scenario, all the transportation is green. I think it’s to make you think, “I can ride my bike to work” or “I can take the bus” or “I can still drive my car if where I live requires me to” depending on your own situation. It’s to show all options can be viable, if you support public transportation.
That’s how I see it at least.
Full marks for interesting nuance, for what it’s worth. I would love to think every designer thought this hard about their own work.
I assumed that Green = Moving. The pedestrians in the city are green, as are the busses and bikes in the bottom diagram. The greens in the top two are there to show just how few vehicles can actually move at any given time.
I think red is just to show the effective capacity advantage of the bus lane once it appears in the final diagram.
I was thinking it’s electric?
A bike lane on a highway seems like a terrible idea.
Denmark checking in. A lot of our highways have separate parallel bicycle highways. It’s really great! They have exits in the same spots as cars do and have big sound barriers.x
Separate makes sense
You’re looking at what is obviously a conceptual diagram and acting as if it’s some kind of literal blueprint. IMO it’s something closer to a Sankey diagram showing the overall flow and moda share of traffic into the city than a plan sketch of an individual road. I don’t think it’s even reasonable to conclude that it’s actually suggesting using the same alignment for cars, bikes, and pedestrians at all, let alone strawmanning it as “a bike lane on a highway.”
Frankly, I’m found it to be a tough call deciding whether you genuinely didn’t understand that or if you were commenting in bad faith (which violates rule 1), and the only thing that made me give you the benefit of the doubt was your later comment talking about the cement barrier (i.e. a somewhat constructive comment about how to make it better) instead of continuing to flatly reject it.
If you had looked at my replies to other people who replied to me, you would see I wasn’t antibike lanes in general. The diagram looks far closer to a city street than a highway.
If you had looked at my replies to other people who replied to me, you would see I wasn’t antibike lanes in general.
I did, hence my reference to “your later comment talking about the cement barrier.”
The diagram looks far closer to a city street than a highway.
The right side of it does, sure, because that’s what it’s depicting the highway transitioning to.
I was referring to other comments. Ones the people I blocked could have checked before attacking me.
Nobody “attacked” you until you attacked them first. That’s why your comments were removed for being uncivil and theirs weren’t.
anywhere that you might say “we shouldn’t have a bike lane here, it’s too dangerous for cyclists” is a place where there should be a bike lane.
And this is why the Marianas Trench needs a bike lane.
Inside rail racks? That is such a dumb decision making process.
Spending billions of dollars connecting two cities and not spending a couple percent more for parallel active transportation infrastructure also seems like a terrible idea.
On and near are not the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get blocked, you-know-what. You are noise.
As if you don’t block people who are rude and bad faith with you.
Nobody cares if you block them. We object to the things you say. You don’t just block people and get on with your life, you attempt to weaponize blocking people. For your own petty needs.
Ah so it is considered petty to tell someone why you are blocking. We? You are plural?
Well it’s a good thing no one is proposing that! Seriously, where do you people come from?
the return of /r/all
Removed by mod
You are the asshole. You need to look at the image again. They are separated.
Removed by mod
When cars are going 70+ mph 6 feet of fucking grass is not enough there needs to be a cement barrier.
Definitely put cameras in the bus lane and fine all the cars who are driving in it then.
There are solid black lines in the bottom diagram instead of dashed in the top two, this suggests something more than a lane line, it might be representing a kerb or could easily be a more physical barrier. but as far as a simplified diagram goes that looks pretty clearly separated as can be depicted in plan view.
I assume this is not the detailed plans. If it is those buildings are way too small for all of these people to fit inside.
There’s a bus lane before getting to the cars, and there’s a stoplight and a tighter lane which indicates that that’s no longer a fucking 70+mph zone lol.
Look, it’s ok to not be that smart but being such a massive prick about it is a bad look, broski.
If you only have a hammer …
I’d say he’s right. In a way. Cars don’t create congestion, they are congestion.
Fine. And with this realisation let’s end the phrase “I’m stuck in traffic”. Cars aren’t stuck in traffic, they are traffic.
Every bike on the road is one less car.
Other than that this guy seriously needs to get out into the fresh air and spend sometime around people (if it is a guy, it’s overwhelmingly most likely a bot and so a genuinely harmful thing to engage with, get angry about, republish here, or do anything with other than ignore).
Social media is just getting worse, and although there is much to like about defederation, a lot of the content here is not healthy.
let’s end the phrase “I’m stuck in traffic”.
I’m contributing to traffic? I’m doing my part joining the traffic?
So many tempting options highlighting our individual responsibility to the collective problem… yet none of them actually used. Ever. I wonder why. Surely it’s because of “others”!
I like “I’m traffic.” Succinct, to the point.
It’s crazy how our 18-lane highway, with none of the stuff mentioned, is gridlocked all the time. 🤔
Maybe one more lane, bro!
There was a guy who took his guitar before the Portland City Council and sang a song about induced demand. If you build more lanes, more drivers will come and fill them.
OMG, I love this man! That video is 7 years old… Did they add more lanes? 🫣
The project actually still hasn’t started due to ongoing litigation and budget constraints. It did get redesigned with more bike infrastructure and pedestrian bridges to cross the freeway, but local bike and pro-transit groups still oppose the project.
One of the main arguments is that the state’s proposal is not consistent with the city’s regional plan, which says that the interstate can only be expanded if congestion pricing is also implemented to discourage additional traffic.
At this point, the state is planning to fix up some bridges while the rest of the legal fight plays out. Expansion probably won’t start until 2028 in any case… at which point this song will be an “oldie.”
It’s the stoplight’s fault! Ban stop signs, traffic lights and remove speed limits and we’ll never have gridlock again!!!
I’m unironically all for removing stop signs, traffic lights, and speed limits. If you build streets and roads properly, you don’t need those, frequently ignored, control devices.
It would remove gridlock, but not necessarily congestion.
This person urban designs.
Round about gang for life
As an often pedestrian, i often prefer lights. If it’s a busy dual carriageway roundabout It can often be hard to route pedestrians across. You end up with elaborate and winding pedestrian subways.
Roundabouts are ok on rural junctions, but round here we often have to have traffic lights on roundabouts as you start to get closer in to urban areas - and they do seem to help flow.
I just don’t believe road design alone can remove the need for coordination as population density gets above a certain level. Fuck in central London you need traffic lights just to coordinate all the buses never mind cars. Of course they need an overhead s-bahn type light rail system there though, but planning rules/landowners won’t allow it. At this point they just need less people - but again the govt/electorate/landowners won’t allow that because they’re all a bunch of tw4ts.
As Jason Slaughter (Not Just Bikes) says—and I agree—any city street with more than one car lane in each direction is an abject failure of urban planning. Multi-lane roundabouts should never exist in places where people are expected to walk.
If enough people are going the same direction at the same time that they need more than one lane for cars, then that’s the perfect route for transit.
Abject failure of urban planning, or democracy?
Oh there are many other intersections
Round abouts, peanuts, uncontrolled, yielded, modal filtered, raised, edged, sunken, and more.
There are a lot of ways to give clear cues to all road users on what to do, and how to do it, without relying on signage. Traffic lights in particular are extremely low throughput; their primary advantage is allowing vehicles to drive really fast between intersections, so they are great for roads/highways but not for streets.
Ok with that, but you also need to remove other cars from the road. Every time I’ve been stuck in traffic, it was because there were so many other cars. This has got out of control! Who are all these people and where are they all going?!?
All these bums without cars trying to cross the road made me late! Do they really need a crossing every five blocks? /S
Fix and expand the US public transportation system. Building infrastructure for automobiles is fucking backwards.
My car doesn’t create congestion. It’s everyone else’s that’s the problem.
Like people driving during the pandemic and talking how amazing it felt to drive
