SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Jalopnik has a story about how the Norwegian capital, Oslo, recorded only one death on its roads in 2019.
Speed limit laws and reducing the very presence of cars in the city center and downtown areas have resulted in a very aggressive, downward trend of traffic-related fatalities in the Nordic country's capital city. There was only one traffic-related death in Oslo in all of 2019.
No children were killed in traffic in Norway last year, Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported.
There was only one road-related death of a pedestrian, cyclist or child in 2019 in Oslo. No children were killed in traffic in Norway last year, either.
Norway plans to reach "Vision Zero", and eliminate road-related deaths within four years and do more to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, serious injuries.
The only person who died last year, according to Aftenposten, was a man whose car crashed into a fence in June.
This sharp decline is due to the fact that Oslo heavily regulates places where people are allowed to drive and has set strict speed limits. The city is also very friendly towards cycling and walking.
Olso's road fatality rate for 2019 was 0.1 death per 100,000 people. American States vary between 12 and 26 per 100,000 people
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:12AM (9 children)
Depends. Does that real mass transit go where you want it to go?
Since, our betters have been trying for decades to get mass transit working again. They have yet to succeed except in some isolated cases (like downtown New York City). Point to point transport beats mass transport that doesn't go where you want to go at the time you want to go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:45AM (4 children)
After sufficient education you simply do not want to visit places where the mass transit doesn't go. Easy to do to city consumers. People who live in villages are a different story if outside of just living they need to work - and mass transit does not deliver you to fields and farms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:50AM (3 children)
That's the thing, rural people are likely to always need their own car. In the city, things should be zoned so that mass transit can get people where they reasonably want to go. With the odd taxi trip when that's not the case. But, most of the time you should be able to get to and from where you want to go on mass transit in a reasonable period of time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:10AM (2 children)
Part of the problem is that in the US you're rarely permitted to live and work in the same neighborhood due to zoning restrictions. This necessitates commuting.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @09:07PM (1 child)
That's not really an issue. You'd still commute, but proper mass transit wouldn't require long distances or long waits to transfer.
Mixed use neighborhoods can work, but it's not what messes up mad transit.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:22AM
In the old days lots of people lived upstairs from their shop. Current zoning prohibits this in many areas.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:48AM (1 child)
There have been improvements, but without a lot of cash to properly build out the systems, it's going to remain that way. In places like Norway where corporations and the rich haven't stolen control of the government, they can do things like this as they can build the mass transit needed to get people around town.
Places with real mass transit are arranged so that mass transit takes you where you want to go in a convenient fashion and you're able to live close enough to where you work and shop that it's not an issue. In much of the US, that's not the case because we prioritize allowing the rich to get richer over livable cities and functioning mass transit.
After a point, point to point just sucks. I've been watching as driving gets more and more miserable and less and less efficient every year because buses aren't routed to take people where they want to go in an efficient manner. The routes are largely based upon what the traffic patterns were 50 years ago with relatively minor revisions as time goes by. Half the buses in the county go through a very narrow area that often suffers from the worst traffic in the entire county.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:02AM
Of course they go through there! Obviously that's where people want to be or there wouldn't be so much traffic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:31PM (1 child)
Yes [lifeinnorway.net], it [globalmasstransit.net] does [businessinsider.com].
Your betters aren't good enough, then. That's telling about the "lessers" too.
True for certain values of "beat" - in real world that's mostly bullshit [cnn.com].
Which is showing the khallow lesser doesn't live in the real world. Now, we could accept that as an excuse for his failings, if only he were to refrain from delusional suggestions on how to organize the real world. But he compounds his delusions with a compulsion to show them, his case is hopeless.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:10PM