[...] In mid-January, the borough’s police force will close 60 streets to all drivers aside from residents and people employed in the borough during the morning and afternoon rush periods, effectively taking most of the town out of circulation for the popular traffic apps — and for everyone else, for that matter.
[...] While a number of communities have devised strategies like turn restrictions and speed humps that affect all motorists, Leonia’s move may be the most extreme response.
[...] Borough officials say their measure is legal, although it may yet get tested in court. Some traffic engineers and elected officials elsewhere say the move may set a precedent that could encourage towns to summarily restrict public access to outsiders.
Source: Navigation Apps Are Turning Quiet Neighborhoods Into Traffic Nightmares
Also: New Jersey town will close streets to fight navigation app traffic
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday December 26 2017, @11:28PM (9 children)
There's a narrow street like that near my workplace, that was recently turned into a traffic jam escape route by real-time satnav apps. The street has been closed off to non-resident traffic and marked as such in the online maps (and for the obstinate drivers who know the area and still use it, the police is often there too). But bicycles can still go through. That's great for me: I commute by bike, and my commute has become a lot more peaceful. Also, I notice many more cyclists going through that street in the morning now: we're happy, and so are the locals because we don't make any noise.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:14AM (5 children)
we're happy, and so are the locals because we don't make any noise.
Must be some unique demographic, because most Americans absolutely despise cyclists, believing them to be some kind of insult to their religion, which says that people who God loves the most drive the biggest SUVs they can find.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Kilo110 on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:52AM (3 children)
If cyclists had their own lane, where they can separately go a third of the speed of normal traffic, and they also followed the same laws then I'd have no issues coexisting with them.
But they seem to want it both ways. They want to be permitted on automotive roads but don't want to follow the same rules or feel they don't apply to them because they're not cars. I've lost count on how many time idiots cycle the wrong way on a road, or run reds, or ignore stop signs and just charge into the middle of the road. Just last week, I even saw a guy bike straight into an intersection on a red light with oncoming traffic. He just expected other drivers to stop for him.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 27 2017, @02:42AM (1 child)
If cyclists had their own lane, where they can separately go a third of the speed of normal traffic, and they also followed the same laws then I'd have no issues coexisting with them.
I'm sure 99.9% of the cyclists would love this too.
But they seem to want it both ways. They want to be permitted on automotive roads but don't want to follow the same rules or feel they don't apply to them because they're not cars.
They ARE permitted on automotive roads: that's the law, like it or not. Yes, there's some who break the rules like running reds, but I see plenty of that with car drivers too, and that's far, far more dangerous (at least to other people in traffic than the one committing the offense). But some of those other things do make some sense, as far as why cyclists think the rules are stupid: it's because those rules are made with cars in mind, and cause huge inconvenience to cyclists.
Stop signs: these things are generally stupid in 100% of all cases, for cars and cyclists. Why should you stop, when simply yielding is sufficient? If you need to stop to yield, that's fine: "yield" means you don't have right-of-way, and need to yield it to whoever else is there, so if you need to come to a stop to ensure you're clear to go, that's your responsibility. Yield signs already cover all this; there's no reason for a stop sign, ever. For a cyclist, coming to a full stop is actually more dangerous, because the transition between having your feet on the pedals and on the ground, and then back on the pedals, is the one point in all your riding where you're most unstable and most likely to fall over, and even worse if you have clip-in pedals. Given the low speeds cyclists travel at, simply slowing to a near-stop and yielding is sufficient. If I'm coming to a 4-way stop and there's clearly no one else there (no obstructions to my view, perhaps late at night so no cars to be seen anywhere), then where is the sense in stopping at all? One-way roads are pretty stupid for cyclists too; we had a one-way road around a drillfield when I was in college, and it was stupid to require cyclists to ride a half-mile around that instead of going a hundred feet to where they needed to turn. Even worse, car traffic was frequently backed up for 10-20 minutes because of all the students crossing the road at various point when classes changed, and the pedestrians never let any drivers go. They really shouldn't have even allowed cars on that road at all, just cyclists (going both ways) and official vehicles. If going only the correct way on one-way roads means adding a half-mile to your trip, you bet your ass cyclists are going to go the wrong way. Plan the fucking roads better, or close them to car traffic.
But yeah, changing out into moving car traffic is pretty stupid, I'll grant you that. But I see reckless driving *all the time* with car drivers too, so don't feed me any BS about it being unique to cyclists. It's not. And when car/SUV drivers do it, they're risking many peoples' lives; when some idiot cyclists does it, he's only risking his own. There's no possible way a 150-lb guy on a 25-lb bike is going to hurt anyone in any kind of car or SUV, unless you've strapped a rocket on his bike or something.
The ultimate answer is exactly what you yourself said in your first line: give cyclists their own lane, or better yet their own road. Some cities have cycling trails in certain places, and it works very well: it gets the cyclists off the car roads a lot, and gives them a place that's totally safe for them to do their commute without worrying about getting hit, at least until they get to parts of their trip where the cycling trails aren't convenient. There should be plenty of cycling lanes so cyclists can just stick to these; if there aren't, that's the fault of local government, and by extension YOU, because you're a voter, and the local government is the responsibility of you and your fellow car drivers.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday December 27 2017, @05:03AM
A dedicated lane for slow-moving vehicles works until a cyclist wants to turn left (US, CA) or right (GB, IE, AU, NZ, JP). Then he needs to cross one or two lanes of through motor traffic to get to the turn lane.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:52PM
I see people in cars do that all the time. I also see them make right turns across three lanes of traffic from the 'left turn only' lane. And change lanes and make turns without ever using a turn signal. I've even seen cops (with no lights or siren active) do all of the above too. The problem isn't cyclists, the problem is fucking assholes and idiots who think the rules don't apply to them. And there's *plenty* of drivers in that category too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:44AM
I love cyclists. They're worth 75 points! [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:24AM (2 children)
Closed to Non-Residents means it has become a private street, and the residents then become responsible for maintenance, repaving, etc.
You have a traffic problem because you have inadequate traffic control devices. Or your city allowed a sub standard street to be built.
Put in stop lights that make the router slower and all the flow through traffic goes away, and exiting your driveway is easy again.. Make it one way and half the traffic goes away.
Any restrictions that apply equally to every driver are fair. But handing a public street built with tax money over for the use of a tiny subset of residents is just wrong headed.
There's no mapping software that can keep track of residents only.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by KiloByte on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:43AM
And, what if I'm there to visit one of residents? What if a delivery goes there?
The police may or may not believe you — which has near-100% correlation with whether they're currently prowling for fines (even if your host is there to defend you, the cop will quote letter of the law). Also, if such an argument works, it will lead to drivers who want a shortcut getting trained to lie.
A street should never have such restrictions, unless it's gated away, with some sort of entry control — and, as you say, maintained by residents rather than taxes.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday December 27 2017, @02:12AM
Those residents pay taxes to build roads too. They may not have even voted to change the rules. It may be that the extra services to deal with the inevitable accidents were costing the local government more such that this particular mitigation effort simply returns things to the status quo.
You seem to have quite the sense of entitlement to the side streets there.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Tuesday December 26 2017, @11:29PM (15 children)
Several years ago, on vacation in Blowing Rock, NC (a mountain village in Pisgah National Forest), I left my motel hungry, trusting the GPS to find me food. It did so, but at one point, it took me down what was basically a single-lane driveway that connected to different roads on each end of a small housing development.
My thoughts at the time were basically:
#1: This road sucks. Bad choice by the GPS.
#2: That is a rude GPS that keeps taking people through these folks' driveway.
Finding the motel again, I drove past the driveway and let the GPS "recalculate," which it didn't have trouble doing.
If that was my driveway, it would probably sprout anti-outsider technology; at least a keep-out sign if not speed bumps and/or automated electric gate.
Civil engineering best practices mean that local neighborhoods have low-density streets for residents to get in and out, while thoroughfares have medium-to-high-density roads to take the through traffic. If some significant percentage of everyone starts to cut through the neighborhoods as if they were thoroughfares, then some significant percentage of everyone is doing it wrong. Law, technology, whatever, will take the place of common sense when common sense is no longer common.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:17AM (11 children)
No, the problem is that the civil engineering utterly failed, otherwise the nav apps *would* route the traffic on the main thoroughfares instead of these tiny residential roads. Either the main roads are so poorly placed that driving through some slow-ass residential road is faster (which it shouldn't be because the apps take into account the traffic speeds), or they're so overcrowded that the same happens. Either way, the engineers and the city planners failed in their job. The apps are just using automated algorithms to work around this failure in politics.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:44AM (3 children)
The answer probably is that there are good - rich areas where taxes built good roads - and poor bad ones. Similar to schools.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 27 2017, @02:48AM (2 children)
The answer probably is that there are good - rich areas where taxes built good roads - and poor bad ones. Similar to schools.
Honestly, I doubt this. Money isn't a guarantee of competence. Places with local governments with more money have more resources to take advantage of, true, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do a better job with traffic engineering. Just look at the NJ town in this article: that's not a poor neighborhood at all. But they're obviously too stupid to plan their roads well. I used to live in northern NJ, in and among many very wealthy towns, with very high home values and utterly absurd property tax rates, and the roads there were a complete fucking disaster. They were paved well enough (and repaved because they got torn up every winter by the snow plows), but the layouts were utterly stupid, and there wasn't any apparent effort to fix that. Getting from town to town almost always meant driving on little 2-lane (1 each side) roads, and passing people on the shoulder when they were turning left, and frequently using weird little short cuts because there simply was no rational planning to these roads at all. There was absolutely no shortage of money: the local schools had absurdly high budgets and could afford very expensive football fields, and the local cops got ridiculously generous pay and pensions and early retirements.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:09AM (1 child)
In places like New Jersey, which was settled well before the advent of motor vehicles, a good many roads were originally horsepaths. Most of those designed for motor vehicles were originally built in rural areas where no more than a single lane in each direction was needed. Most of those areas of course can no longer be considered rural by an stretch. Many roads have been reengineered to deal with more traffic after the fact, which is far less optimal than designing roads at the start to deal with a lot of traffic. The end result is what they have, a few major arteries fed by a mismash of local roads of all sorts, where any attempts at "rational" planning is merely an attempt to incorporate and deal with what was already there.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 28 2017, @03:39PM
Yes, but many of these places are also very wealthy with huge tax bases, so they have no real excuse for not methodically exercising eminent domain and cleaning up the mess and putting in better highways.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:34AM (1 child)
He said it was a single lane driveway. That would suggest it was not a public street. So you can't blame the city engineers.
Lazy or cloud Mapping companies, perhaps? Waze was famous for this, because one guy would find this route and report it, and that's all it took. Originally nobody even checked to see if it actually existed. I doubt they have even fixed that yet.
Since its a single lane driveway, chip in and buy some Dead End (No Outlet) signs, and put them up. If that doesn't solve it rent a jersey barrier for a month after explaining to the neighbors.
After all, its a private street.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday December 27 2017, @05:52AM
When I first moved into this area (outside of Vancouver, BC) I ordered some topographical maps from the government, large scale, perhaps 3x4 ft official maps from the government. I was surprised how there were non-existent roads on the map including one going right by where I lived. it was just a gated logging road.
Looking at Google maps, it still shows these roads, even has a name for the one I mentioned, some avenue according to Google.
Perhaps at one time it was a road, I did find an old Hupmobile up there, but it sure isn't now but I guess Google is just getting the info from the official maps, so you can't blame them too much. I do hope they update these things as reports come in.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday December 27 2017, @02:18AM (2 children)
Yes, but at the top of a mountain, that situation often reflects "success", not failure, in that a road was placed and serviceable where it probably initially appeared that none would be. Mountaintop road placement is nontrivial.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:31PM (1 child)
No mountains in New Jersey.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:48AM
Sure there are. They may not be that high anymore, but they have been there for far longer than mountain ranges in the western U.S.
(Score: 2) by http on Wednesday December 27 2017, @06:55PM (1 child)
It's not clear from the rest of this thread why you've got such a blinding hate-on for planners, engineers, and councillors - only that it's blinding you. It's really hard, politically and financially, to put a main road directly through an established residential neighbourhood. Impossible, if it's rich. You're asking a bit much of the baby-kissing pencil pushers to re-write history.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 28 2017, @01:34AM
No, it's not that hard. It's called "eminent domain": if century-old crap is in the way, you exercise eminent domain, buy up the properties, bulldoze them, and build a new road. It happens all the time in various jurisdictions, even here in the US. Not using this tool when it's appropriate is a failure of local government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:49AM (2 children)
Blowing Rock? Was the city founded by crackheads?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:41AM
The town was named for an adjacent geological feature.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:48PM
You have to wonder about some of these places [facebook.com], I will agree, but Blowing Rock has an explanation in that there is a big rock there sitting in the prevailing winds. When I was last there, it was snowing a few flurries, and they highlighted the wind flow; it was pretty neat looking.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @11:38PM (5 children)
This is what a "smart" city looks like. Once you give decision making to algorithms, you'll get stupid unintentional and emergent behaviours, that human intuition would have excluded.
10x worse when you throw in machine learning, which will always have artefacts in its pattern recognition.
It's going to be a Kafkaesque digital bureaucracy from now until the Butlerian jihad.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:20AM (3 children)
It's not stupid. What's stupid is the decisions made by humans in the city governments; if it weren't for their mismanagement, we wouldn't have most of these traffic problems.
You seem to be assuming that humans are capable of better decisions than algorithms. Where did you get this crazy idea? What makes you think you can take some random idiot off the street, and get a better result with his decisions than with an algorithm designed by an expert? Now before you try to poke holes in the logic of that statement, ask yourself: what exactly are the qualifications to get into municipal politics? Is there some kind of college degree needed to get onto city council, and then be able to make these decisions about traffic engineering (which of course involves overriding the recommendations of actual engineers)?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:37AM (2 children)
Even if there were, the vast majority of people with college degrees are incompetent, including in their supposed area of expertise. Most colleges don't have very high standards, after all.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:00PM (1 child)
There's also corruption. I know, I know, Hanlon's razor. But there is plenty of corruption, and it warps a lot of decision making. A whole lot of people get screwed a little bit with a decision everyone knows is slightly suboptimal, so that a few can rake in the big bucks, and kick a little of that back to their "friends". As long as the corruption is not so extremely unfair to the majority or so exceptionally large or stupid or evil that it gets noticed, it generally flies.
Naturally, politicians doling out favors do not want gross incompetence on the part of the recipients to come back and embarrass them. Sometimes, however, events can expose problems that are rooted in corruption. For instance, turned out that the New Orleans levies that failed in Hurricane Katrina were shoddy thanks to corruption.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:33PM
Don't attribute to malice or stupidity, that which can be adequately explained by self-interest. Not the version you've heard?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:50PM
This is what concerns me about any self-driving vehicle not confined to an enclosed track.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @02:15AM (10 children)
Europe has had this policy for decades. Streets that provided a shortcut path were walled off in strategic places, or signed with "No powered vehicles" + "except residents" signs that provided enforcability. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic would be let through the walls.
Later on, streets that couldn't be blocked were equipped with traffic calming devices, like speed bumps, and tree planters to force a single lane of traffic.
Nice for concerned locals, but a ball ache for people trying to get somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @09:25AM
And they wonder why housing is unaffordable and people do not have children.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday December 27 2017, @09:30AM (8 children)
> Europe has had this policy for decades. Streets that provided a shortcut path were walled off in strategic places, or signed with "No powered vehicles" + "except residents" signs that provided enforcability. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic would be let through the walls.
Where in Europe did you see this? Despite living (and driving) all over Europe, I never saw that. There are a few roads that have been blocked off in the middle, with bollards that just let emergency vehicles through (which is a massive dick move, but that is a rant for another day).
> Later on, streets that couldn't be blocked were equipped with traffic calming devices, like speed bumps, and tree planters to force a single lane of traffic.
> Nice for concerned locals, but a ball ache for people trying to get somewhere.
Not only a ball ache, but it actually makes the situation worse. Once it was possible to have a small city car, then the local government started putting in speed bumps. Peoples cars started wearing out much faster (worn suspensions, hitting the bottom of the car, etc...), so they responded by buying bigger cars. The authorities noticed the speed bumps had become ineffective to the majority of drivers due to larger cars, so they made the bumps larger. People responded by buying larger cars again.
Now we have a situation where people basically drive honking big 4x4's in the city just to make the traffic calming measures bearable, however the larger physical size means more exhaust gases, and more congestion as the roads haven't been made wider. In fact, in another genius idea that can only come from government, they actually narrowed most of the roads in the city, reducing lanes either by planting trees, or making one lane of a two lane road for buses/bikes only.
And it doesn't really help the residents. When I was a resident in the city the traffic calming measures caused me a lot of grief, not to mention the increased noise of trucks and cars bouncing up and down on the road all the time. Accelerating then decelerating, etc... It made congestion worse due to lane narrowing and putting bollards in the middle of the streets, so now traffic is awful. The governments "solution" was to start "congestion charging". Genius, create a problem by spending my tax money, then charge me for it in an ongoing fashion as a penalty for the problem you created.
No amount of complaining by residents of traffic calming measures has an effect on the local government changing their mind. In fact it was in the news a few years ago here, one resident (who was a builder) got so sick of the traffic calming measures the government put in his street (and refused to remove) that he took his digger and ripped them all out of the road himself. The rest of the road was grateful, but when the council found out they arrested and charged him with vandalism (and then spent a bunch of taxpayer money putting the calming measures back in again).
It is also perverse that there is more of a need of a massive 4x4 in the city than the country. I now live in the country, in a little village. Almost nobody has a 4x4. The farmers have cars, and if they need to go to the fields, they have tractors or other specialised machinery.
I have a normal car. My car is fine for driving on forest dirt tracks, unpaved roads on fields and the normal roads round the area (because the government hasn't put any "traffic calming" measures anywhere), and traffic flows freely. Sure, if I actually want to go off track into the forest, a 4x4 would be good, but the only people who need that around here are game hunters.
However as I have started commuting to the local big city for work again, my suspension needs replacing after 2 years of city driving, I am actually looking to buy a 4x4, just for the city.
It is a crazy situation. Cities would be less congested, noisy and more livable in if the government hadn't put these traffic calming measures in. Indeed I lived in the city before the government got it into its head to manage traffic. It was far more pleasant, then they ruined it to the point where I decided to relocate out of the city and spend more than an hour a day commuting (which I am sure really improves the emissions statistics, as before I could use public transport or just walk/cycle to work).
Now the governments new brain fart is to ban cars from the city, which (if they do it) I am sure will end up well when nobody bothers going there for work or to spend money. Just like when they made it impossible to park a car in the city centre, they found all the shops closing and going bust because nobody actually went there to spend money anymore, and instead went to the big malls outside the city, where there was parking.
It is like governments have the reverse Midas touch, I swear.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 28 2017, @01:39AM (7 children)
What country was all this in?
Even here in the US, you don't need a 4x4 in the city; traffic calming measures aren't that bad.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:31AM (6 children)
The United Kingdom, specifically. London for the city that eventually drove me out.
Can't really comment on the US, not having been there, but would not surprise me if the traffic calming measures were not as extreme. I get the feeling the authorities actually hate people with cars in London, and if they could, they would ban them all and force people to use public transport.
However they can't make public transport appealing enough, and they can't ban cars directly, so they just make it as slow, painful, expensive and inconvenient as possible to own and drive a car, in the hope they will make it a horrible enough experience to force people to walk/cycle or use public transport. The traffic calming measures are not there for the residents or the environment so much as are put there deliberately to make driving a slow, difficult pain.
And I guess it does kind of work, because many normal people gave up on owning cars in the city. I just gave up on the city and moved out myself. The rich in the city buy 4x4's or SUVs to get around the place easily, but those cars are expensive to run (road tax, fuel costs + the congestion charge) unless you are well off.
When I decided to move out of the city, I explicitly researched where in the country were the "car friendly" regions. Turns out there are none that are actually car friendly any more, but Milton Keynes and Oxfordshire (minus Oxford city) were the most car friendly of the set.
I get the feeling that the US is still very much a car friendly area, and I would suspect traffic calming measures are actually used only where their use will improve things, but I could be wrong.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 28 2017, @03:47PM (5 children)
if they could, they would ban them all and force people to use public transport.
However they can't make public transport appealing enough,
Why not? Most accounts I've read say that London's Tube is one of the best subway systems in the world, much better than the mismanaged and broken-down systems we have here in the US. What's your problem with it? If you were complaining about a city where the public transit really wasn't all that great, I'd understand, but you seem to be complaining about a city with probably the second-best subways in the world (Japan's are, of course, the very best), at least according to what I've read since I've never been there.
I get the feeling that the US is still very much a car friendly area, and I would suspect traffic calming measures are actually used only where their use will improve things, but I could be wrong.
Generally, that's correct in my experience. But being car-friendly has huge downsides. Everyone here drives 4x4 SUVs too, just because they're big and they don't care about fuel costs, and this has significant geopolitical consequences. It also makes it rather miserable to live in, because when you make things car-friendly, you're making them NOT pedestrian-friendly by necessity (and also not cycling-friendly). So you can't walk anywhere, and most of the US population is obese, and our life expectancy is poor and falling. And all these car-friendly places are boring suburbia, all with the same ugly cookie-cutter shitty chain stores and restaurants like Applebees and Walmart; it's really not a nice way to live, which is why the younger generations are all moving back into a handful of major cities and gentrifying them.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday December 28 2017, @06:03PM (4 children)
> Why not? Most accounts I've read say that London's Tube is one of the best subway systems in the world, much better than the mismanaged and broken-down systems we have here in the US.
Because if it was good, it would stand on its own merits. Government would not need to force people out of cars if the alternative was better. The very fact they put so much money into forcing people out of cars proves the alternative is worse. That people have to be coerced into a poorer situation for themselves against their will.
> What's your problem with it? If you were complaining about a city where the public transit really wasn't all that great, I'd understand, but you seem to be complaining about a city with probably the second-best subways in the world (Japan's are, of course, the very best), at least according to what I've read since I've never been there.
It is slow, always congested (you are usually packed like a sardine), unreliable, prone to strike action, generally infection ridden and expensive. Not to mention the threats upon your person that happen from time to time. Also, it does not run 24/7, which means if I miss the last train home after a night out, I am either going to spend a few hours walking, or a very expensive cab ride to get home.
Plus it never actually goes to where I need it to, if I am lucky I will get nearby, but having to walk in the cold, wet night isn't fun. It can't compare to having my own personal space, available 24/7 on demand, where I can have the heating set just right for me, a nice comfortable seat, favorite music, and no real worry about fellow passengers being a violent lunatic. Plus I can bring a lot more stuff with me, or load up and carry stuff, without having to do my back in carrying all the stuff, or making multiple trips.
If it is really the second best public transport system in the world, then public transport is seriously lacking. And I am saying this as someone who spent 20 years riding public transport here, and (as is typical for my generation) didn't even bother getting a licence or a car until I was 25.
> Generally, that's correct in my experience. But being car-friendly has huge downsides. Everyone here drives 4x4 SUVs too, just because they're big and they don't care about fuel costs, and this has significant geopolitical consequences.
Well, if you got the space for them, and fuel is cheap enough, then why not? Whatever the geopolitical costs may be, people have chosen that they are worth it. Otherwise you would have $15 a gallon petrol like we have here, or people would refuse to drive big cars out of some ethical reason (just like you get those "Boycott Israel" people who make an effort to buy no goods from that country).
> It also makes it rather miserable to live in, because when you make things car-friendly, you're making them NOT pedestrian-friendly by necessity (and also not cycling-friendly).
Why? Cars, Cyclists and pedestrians don't inhabit the same road area. The place I've moved to now is very car friendly, but also seems to be very pedestrian and cycle friendly. You got people walking down the promenade, and every day you got cyclists, from the casual/hobby people to those who seem to be training for the tour de france ( really expensive carbon fibre bikes, Lycra suits that leave nothing to the imagination, teardrop streamlined helmets. the whole lot).
Seems that is all kind of, works, without needing to engineer problems for people.
> So you can't walk anywhere, and most of the US population is obese, and our life expectancy is poor and falling. And all these car-friendly places are boring suburbia, all with the same ugly cookie-cutter shitty chain stores and restaurants like Applebees and Walmart;
That isn't a problem with being car friendly. That is a problem of poor city planning, lack of imagination when it comes to home design (or more precisely, forbidding people from designing their own homes, and having "standard" identical housing units), and people preferring familiar shops and franchises to something "new/edgy". Nothing stops each block having a small "light commercial" area with local shops etc... so people don't have to drive to a mall.
Trust me, we have such ugly cookie cutter developments here, which are also car unfriendly. No clue who would pay money to live in those places, horrible. Still, they have local shops (and a pub, which is traditional round here. No pub, and nobody will want to move in).
> it's really not a nice way to live, which is why the younger generations are all moving back into a handful of major cities and gentrifying them.
I don't know about the younger generations (I mean, I am a "millennial", which is supposedly the current young generation, not sure the younger ones can live alone yet), but most of the people of my generation don't want to live in the city.
The problem is the housing outside the city is even more expensive. So not only do you have to spend more time and money in commuting the longer distance, but you have to pay more for the privilege. So they go into the run down inner city areas and "gentrify" them, not really by choice though.
Not much fun living in a place that reeks of garbage, has a high crime rate (the theft of bikes here is off the charts) and serious issues with neighbours and vandalism. I never could have anything nice round here, for fear of it being stolen or vandalised.
I sure never wanted to live in the city, but I grew up here, and then work was here, and I could not afford a house outside and to commute it. Would have loved somewhere with a garden, wide open spaces, and skies with less light pollution to indulge in some astronomy, but had no choice for the last 15 years.
Having talked to my neighbours when I still lived there, they all felt the same way, and quite a lot of them are really quite miserable with their situation (seeing a new family of 4 crammed into a tiny 35sqm flat is quite sad really).
The only people who seem to be really keen on living in the city, are the ones fresh off the boat (either from abroad, or the countryside) looking for some excitement in their life. Very often these are the kids of well off parents, who can provide money for enjoying the city (London is great if you got cash), but who can always go back to the family home if they need a break from it all, or decide they had enough/it isn't for them.
Nothing wrong with that, London really has awesome nightlife, it is a great place to go out and see things, spend money, etc... However you don't have to live here for that. If I still want that, I can just drive down on a Friday night, park up and enjoy myself. All the benefits, without the downsides.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 28 2017, @09:17PM (3 children)
always congested (you are usually packed like a sardine)
If you have a problem being around lots of other people, you have no business living in a large city.
It can't compare to having my own personal space, available 24/7 on demand, where I can have the heating set just right for me, a nice comfortable seat, favorite music, and no real worry about fellow passengers being a violent lunatic. Plus I can bring a lot more stuff with me, or load up and carry stuff, without having to do my back in carrying all the stuff, or making multiple trips.
Ok, and how exactly do you think it's going to work if *everyone* in the city has a car like this? Where exactly are they all going to park? There's no room for all those cars in a city like that. Why do you think you're so special that you should get special treatment that most other people can't?
The place I've moved to now is very car friendly, but also seems to be very pedestrian and cycle friendly.... Seems that is all kind of, works, without needing to engineer problems for people.
So what's the problem? Sounds like you've found a better place. You should stay there.
The problem is the housing outside the city is even more expensive.
Luxury costs more; that's nothing new. You want more luxury, which costs more resources, you have to pay for it.
So not only do you have to spend more time and money in commuting the longer distance, but you have to pay more for the privilege
No, you don't. You don't have to live outside the city, and you don't have to work inside the city. Get a job out in the area you think is so nice, so you don't have to commute. Oh, there's no high-paying jobs there? I guess it isn't as great as you thought then.
Not much fun living in a place that reeks of garbage, has a high crime rate (the theft of bikes here is off the charts) and serious issues with neighbours and vandalism
Then don't live there, move someplace else. Just don't complain about the lack of high-paying jobs.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday December 28 2017, @10:35PM (2 children)
Well yes, I agree with you, which is why I did exactly that, and moved. I also have no intention of moving back.
I don't begrudge people if they want to live like that, I am sure there are some who actually like that kind of life, and more power to them. Just saying that the majority of people round my area were not like that, and that from my experience, most people would flee the city in a heartbeat if they could afford to. Seems to me most of them are trapped essentially.
However, I do have an issue when the government deliberately makes things crap. I fundamentally disapprove of that method of governance because it is a race to the bottom, where you are looking at "what is the least shit" option, rather than "what is the better option". That is what my original point was (even though we sidetracked a bit into why I left the city, and what I disliked about public transport).
Also, by doing that, they indirectly make public transport worse. By forcing people out of cars and onto public transport, they reduced the transport options of people. The public transport company has no incentive to improve service, reduce costs or just invest in infrastructure, because they know that if public transport gets worse, the government will deliberately make cars worse to compensate. London's public transport was much better 10 years ago, but has been slowly falling apart as the load has increased, and little to no investment has been put in (minus some vanity projects that look good for PR). There has long been talk of the "creaky public transport system" amongst the citizens of London, with little to no change in behaviour from the company that runs it.
I would not have minded if the tax money was used to make things better. I do have an issue when it is used to deliberately make things worse, in an effort to force people to change behaviour. If they want to stop people using cars, they should improve the alternatives, not make using a car worse.
And yes, to move out, I took a massive pay cut. My salary is now about 1/3 what it was in the big city, things are cheaper round here though, not sure if it is equivalent compensation, but ok. At least it is less stressful, and so far I feel my quality of life has improved (at least my health has), and I have more free time. I even bought some astronomy kit :-)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 28 2017, @11:01PM (1 child)
I don't begrudge people if they want to live like that, I am sure there are some who actually like that kind of life, and more power to them.
What you're not getting is that it isn't physically possible to have a city like London with every single person owning their own private car. There's no such thing as a perfect living situation; everything has its downsides. The upsides to city life are the economic opportunity which comes with the density that large cities have, plus convenient access to services; this stuff just doesn't scale if you rebuild the city to be totally car-friendly, with gigantic parking lots everywhere: things sprawl out so much that it takes forever to get from one part of the city to another part, eliminating the benefits that came from density. So those people are choosing the benefits of the city over the drawbacks it has.
Other places that are more car-friendly have their benefits as you've found, but they generally have big drawbacks too, namely poor economic opportunity, long-ass commutes, etc. You can't have it both ways, unless you're extremely wealthy (so you can afford a big-ass house and car while still living in a desirable area of a city).
However, I do have an issue when the government deliberately makes things crap.
They aren't deliberately making things crap, except perhaps for some incompetence here and there. You can't have everyone in London owning their own car. It simply isn't possible: there's no place to park them all, and the streets aren't big enough for them. You'd have to raze the entire city and start over, and then you'll wind up with something like Atlanta, only worse (London has several million more people, about 8.6M vs 5.7M). Atlanta is many things, but a world-class city it is not, and it sure as hell isn't a major financial center the way NYC and London are. And even Atlanta has a subway system (though it's pretty limited in size and service level), so not everyone there has cars either.
The public transport company has no incentive to improve service, reduce costs or just invest in infrastructure, because they know that if public transport gets worse, the government will deliberately make cars worse to compensate.
You can't have competition with subways; it's simply infeasible. NYC tried that about 100 years ago and it was a total mess, and the messy and frequently inconvenient layout of the subways there are directly traceable to that. If you want the public transport company to do better, you need to do a better job as a citizen and voter in holding your government accountable. As I say on this site several times a day now, "every nation gets the government it deserves". However, if you move out of the city and commute in, then you may no longer even get a vote.
I do have an issue when it is used to deliberately make things worse,in an effort to force people to change behaviour. If they want to stop people using cars, they should improve the alternatives, not make using a car worse.
Again, it's your job as a citizen to hold your government accountable.
And yes, to move out, I took a massive pay cut. My salary is now about 1/3 what it was in the big city, things are cheaper round here though, not sure if it is equivalent compensation, but ok
Yep, that's the downside I talked about above. If you want the economic benefits that come from city life, you have to live in the city and put up with the downsides that come with that. Or, you can put competition into use and try moving to a different city that's better run (or that has better advantages and fewer inherent problems). We've been doing that here in the US for a long time, with people abandoning cities such as Detroit and Buffalo and Indianapolis, while moving into other cities such as Seattle. Not sure how well that idea works in the UK; from my perspective over here, it seems like England is basically one giant city (London)plus its suburbs, and then a bunch of countryside with lots of small towns, and a few burnt-out small cities. I'm sure my perspective is skewed though.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday December 29 2017, @12:50AM
> What you're not getting is that it isn't physically possible to have a city like London with every single person owning their own private car.
That is ok, not everyone needs nor wants a private car. There is a natural equilibrium.
> There's no such thing as a perfect living situation; everything has its downsides. The upsides to city life are the economic opportunity which comes with the density that large cities have, plus convenient access to services; this stuff just doesn't scale if you rebuild the city to be totally car-friendly, with gigantic parking lots everywhere: things sprawl out so much that it takes forever to get from one part of the city to another part, eliminating the benefits that came from density. So those people are choosing the benefits of the city over the drawbacks it has.
That is fine, I agree with that.
> They aren't deliberately making things crap, except perhaps for some incompetence here and there. You can't have everyone in London owning their own car. It simply isn't possible: there's no place to park them all, and the streets aren't big enough for them. You'd have to raze the entire city and start over, and then you'll wind up with something like Atlanta, only worse (London has several million more people, about 8.6M vs 5.7M). Atlanta is many things, but a world-class city it is not, and it sure as hell isn't a major financial center the way NYC and London are. And even Atlanta has a subway system (though it's pretty limited in size and service level), so not everyone there has cars either.
I consider deliberately slowing down traffic, placing traffic calming measures everywhere (even when both the motorists and residents don't want them), reducing road widths and tinkering with traffic lights to reduce speeds and increase congestion as "making things crap".
That doesn't mean they have to raze London to turn it into Atlanta. After all that is the other extreme. Forcing people who don't want a car to have one, because they have no choice but to drive to everything.
All they had to do was leave it be, not make the situation worse, which is what they are doing. Was London perfect before? No, but it was better than it is now after they got it into their head to make changes.
> You can't have competition with subways; it's simply infeasible.
The competition with public transport is the car, walking and cycling. Of those the main competition is the car (because most people are limited by distance and carrying capacity if using human power). Also note that all public transport (Trams, buses, overground trains and subway) are actually run by a single company (Transport for London) which is some kind of hybrid private/public partnership.
> NYC tried that about 100 years ago and it was a total mess, and the messy and frequently inconvenient layout of the subways there are directly traceable to that. If you want the public transport company to do better, you need to do a better job as a citizen and voter in holding your government accountable. As I say on this site several times a day now, "every nation gets the government it deserves". However, if you move out of the city and commute in, then you may no longer even get a vote.
My corollary to that, is "If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal". The concept of democracy is nice, but in practice it is limited in its power, which is why eventually people have to resort to violence to change things (and the US founding fathers seemed to have realised this, presumably why the 2nd amendment exists)
I tried getting them to change, so did others, problem is when you have entrenched positions, and people who are profiting nicely off the current situation, they will not give up without a bitter fight. There is also a sizable minority who hate cars, and generally support making life difficult for motorists.
In the end, I decided it was easier for me to leave. Yes, I don't get a vote anymore, but having a vote before didn't have much effect anyway.
> Yep, that's the downside I talked about above. If you want the economic benefits that come from city life, you have to live in the city and put up with the downsides that come with that. Or, you can put competition into use and try moving to a different city that's better run (or that has better advantages and fewer inherent problems). We've been doing that here in the US for a long time, with people abandoning cities such as Detroit and Buffalo and Indianapolis, while moving into other cities such as Seattle. Not sure how well that idea works in the UK; from my perspective over here, it seems like England is basically one giant city (London)plus its suburbs, and then a bunch of countryside with lots of small towns, and a few burnt-out small cities. I'm sure my perspective is skewed though.
Your perspective is correct, unfortunately. Outside of London work is slim pickings, the situation is dire. London is the entire engine for England, with a bit of manufacturing dotted around the midlands, and some high tech industries (Formula 1 automotive, Satellite and Aerospace/Defense). In fact it worries me, as London is primarily generating money through speculation, banking and what I suspect is massive money laundering. If that economic engine sputters, it will take out the entire country.
It also means that for many people, there is no option but to work in London, so you either live in it, or you live in the suburbs and commute every day. In my case, I actually moved first to Oxfordshire and tried to find local work. After about a year I went to France, where they have multiple big cities, all with varying costs/benefits associated with them, far more choice, and relative ease with which you can move around the country (or indeed even around the EU) until you find somewhere that suits you. We shall see how things go, but so far it has been an adventure!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @05:53AM (1 child)
This works pretty well in the country.
Put up a big gate, along with cattle bars.
Keep a really big, really angry bull on the other side of the gate. Optionally with a few signs reading:
NO TRESPASSERS
THIS PROPERTY PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON
NEVER MIND THE DOG, BEWARE OF OWNER
The ones stupid enough to ignore the signage are probably not going to argue with 1800 pounds of bloodlust and horns.
A flock of geese with bad attitudes and goslings also help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @07:05AM
Didn't stop Andrew Sachs, but he paid the price.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:40PM (1 child)
As usual, a shorted sighted knee-jerk response to a problem with roots that are far more fundamental.
There are too many cars. Too many people driving. There is not enough road for all the traffic. It's as simple as that. North America needs to get it's head out and realize that their precious car culture needs to die. You need massive investment in public transit, and you needed it decades ago.
Oh wait, that will probably require higher taxes. Never mind. Heaven forbid you pay higher taxes such that your quality of life would be improved. An undeserving person's life might be improved in the process, and you absolutely can't have that, even if it means sacrificing your own well being.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @04:40AM
Quick reality check:
It's quite possible in most large (and even medium) cities to do a lot of moving around with mass transit. I've lived in multiple cities in the USA that had rail, light rail, buses and so on (depending on local geographic realities).
So, if you have lots of time, not much to move around, and you only want to be in your local conurbation, you're probably golden.
However, the USA is a large place, with lots (and lots, and lots) of miles between different places. Think of all the times you've heard someone describe Texas as being big - now remember that the USA is bigger than several Texases! Even if you don't count Texas!
Wow, yeah, that's kind of big.
It also turns out that a lot of people live outside the cities where they work for all sorts of reasons. We can piss and moan about suburbs, and white flight, and ribbon development, and all that stuff together, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground; there are a lot of people who want to move from widely dispersed locations to and from centralised locations on a daily basis. Establishing mass transit for all those cases is, in computer parlance, a highly nontrivial problem. More so once you include the economics.
If you're a student of the history of transport, you may be aware that the UK closed down a lot of local train lines that were mostly running empty at simply eye-watering costs, quite a while back. It had been a sort of late victorian, post-victorian ideal of country improvement to build all these railways, and connect the country. This turns out to have been a nice ambition, but impractical in execution. Now bear in mind that the UK is, compared to the USA, insanely densely populated. And it wasn't worth it there. And isn't today. Now expand that case to the USA, and you can see how things like park-n-ride facilities are an attempt to meet that problem halfway.
Of course, they're still slow, inconvenient and expensive, but if they happen to meet your needs, and schedule, and you don't mind your car being in a car thief's paradise all day, cool. You've just received a subsidy (because most of these are money losers, so the taxpayer is picking up your bennies).
Now there are some plans afoot. A positive cacophany of plans involving platooning ropeway recumbent subway vacuums (unfold as appropriate) but the funny thing is that they keep costing insane amounts for limited benefits, and even so the solutions are usually unpopular. I was trying to help someone find an alternative for their long commute, back in the days of $4+/gallon fuel, and it turned out at the time that the best available alternative would be slower, less flexible, and cost more until the price rose to about $6/gallon.
And this is with substantial government subsidies already in place for the alternative. Wow.
So explain to us all again, because maybe we just missed it, precisely which alternative will be fiscally and logistically justifiable, and precisely why? Because I'd love to take mass transit from unincorporated coastal Oregon to unincorporated coastal Florida, in a realistic timespan, but it's not an option right now.
Any time you're ready. I'll be taking notes.