- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
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Anything except public transportation
Never been a fan of the “we shouldn’t make the smaller, easier improvements because we need to do the bigger, harder things instead” argument…
Yes, we need more and better public transit, but that is going to take a whole lot of time, money, and effort to work towards. Yes, it’s worthwhile, and we shouldn’t STOP working towards it because of this, but I don’t think that’s a reason to balk at a smaller, easier incremental change that encourages safer driving while also simply being more efficient.
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Nothing that involves the phrase “more cars” is more efficient. Cars are massively inefficient monuments to toxic individualism and ecocidal narcissism.
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the number of cars is a given,
No the number of cars is a policy choice.
Nobody is forcing cities and counties to only build for the carbrained, they do that on their own. If they’d make driving less convenient and transit more convenient, the number of cars would decrease significantly.
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For public transportation in the US you need medium density living. So you’re talking about getting everyone on board and uprooting everyone as you upgrade cities or build new cities for that.
“Anything except making incremental improvements that are practical instead of doing nothing because the preferred goal is impossible, at least practically impossible” - not as catchy, I admit :P
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I agree - I should have said medium mixed zoning as that’s what I was intending to convery :)
Also, for wheelchair users like me, higher density would probably lead to cheaper delivery services of all kinds - Walmart has that market cornered at the moment, and I hate that it’s Walmart that figured it out. :|
Isn’t everyone complaining about not having enough housing?
Oligarchs aren’t, which I only lead with because they are a huge fuckin’ part of the problem.
We actually have huge amounts of unused housing being held to drive up prices for the rest.
But it’s largely the wrong type of housing. Consider if you have 10,000 unhoused people, and you have 15,000 unoccupied trailers on land - but these trailers are in a remote county, miles outside the county’s main city of 6000 people. If those 10,000 unhoused families can’t find work out there and don’t have a car, it doesn’t help. An extremely stupid example to say that the current housing we have is largely not the housing we need.
Do you want traffic lights to only turn every 5-10 minutes? Lights were always going to be changing more than transit was arriving, if altering how it changes slows speeding drivers why wouldn’t you want that?
I don’t want traffic lights. If you design your cities properly (with no personal cars) traffic lights are not needed at all. Outside cities traffic lights don’t make sense anyways, intersections there are better off as roundabouts.
Sounds great, but I don’t live there and do have to deal with drivers and traffic lights, and I would like to implement whatever measures will slow them down. If the first and easiest is altering traffic light patterns, cool, do it. I’m supposed to not want this?
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It depends on whether this is about retiming existing lights (which is relatively cheap) or building new ones. Retiming existing lights is fine, building new ones just shows that engineers don’t care about the problem and would rather waste millions of $ on a non-solution.
I don’t see anything in the article about building more lights, just altering the timing so that the default light state is red instead of green.
The main street for all the businesses in a nearby city is set up so you can hit all green lights going down the road from 2pm-~6pm, however if you get caught at a SINGLE light, you’re going to hit reds all the way down.
So it’s become “oh that light is about to change better engage T U R B O M O D E and speed 20mph over the limit to beat this light and stay with the greens” which turns out very predictably at least once a month.
Last week a car rolled twice while speeding up to beat the light and clipped an ambulance coming from another street.
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If you read the article it’s very obviously advocating for fewer green lights. I’ve no idea what this headline is on about
"Essentially, rather than encouraging drivers to speed up by presenting an endless succession of green lights, this strategy makes red the default state for lights on a busy road. When traffic approaches the red light, the cycle triggers. Traffic moving faster than the limit will approach the light while it’s still red, forcing it to slow or stop for the light before it changes, while traffic moving at the limit will be met with a perfectly-timed green.
Drive the limit, in other words, and you’re rewarded with a constant rhythm of green lights."
That’s why the title makes sense
Wait, you mean the thing where people who do the speed limit have to stop at 3 straight reds while people doing 15 over are able to squeeze through all of them is the result of an intentional choice? It irritates the hell out of me how often that kind of thing happens in my town, but I always thought it was just some kind of oversight or inefficiency on the part of the engineers who set up the timing cycles, given how how clearly and directly it incentivizes speeding…
If driving the speed limit is the most efficient way to get where you’re trying to go, people will tend to drive the speed limit. Seems like that should be pretty obvious, imo.
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Interesting… I’m curious to know more about the details of that experiment. I could think of a few hypotheses for why that might’ve happened.
My first thought is maybe that particular road’s speed limit was just lower than what it should be? If the road design and location allow for a similar level of safety at a higher speed, the limit itself might just be a bit too conservative.
Or, perhaps the previous cycle timings weren’t as effective at slowing down drivers as first thought? I don’t know the previous circumstances, though.
There’s also the possibility that speed-reducing measures just don’t have much of an impact on overall safe driving behaviors, and that dangerous drivers are going to drive dangerously no matter how fast they’re able to go. I could even see the possibility of a negative feedback loop in which being constantly being slowed down by red light cycles frustrates aggressive drivers into engaging in other dangerous behaviors, i.e. running reds.
If it’s that last case… Yeah, I don’t really know what you do with that one. I would hope that safer driving could be encouraged through positive reinforcement, because the alternatives for negative reinforcement are either a massive ramp-up in police traffic enforcement, or aggressive use of speed cameras and automated ticketing. I do not think that making people have more encounters with US police officers would do anything good for public safety, and while speed cameras could work in principle, they would be massively unpopular, and career suicide for any politician that tries to make a push for it.
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Some people seem like driving is a game to them. They’ll speed ahead at a green only to slam on the brakes at the next red, as long as they can get around you first.
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Bullshit
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…or what if we actually punish people who pilot their two-ton death machines irresponsibly?
Remember, though: if the punishment is a fine, then to the rich, it’s not a punishment. It’s a price.
You don’t even have to be rich-rich. Car-related fines are a joke.
I was thinking more along the lines of losing one’s license.
Indeed, though I would suggest that, for more significant infractions, state seizure of the vehicle (as the tool used to commit the crime) should be an option, with proceeds from vehicle sales by the state going to safety infrastructure and perhaps a victim restitution fund.
People are very attached to their cars, so that’s a punishment, and they won’t be needing it anymore without a license!
state seizure of the vehicle
Absolutely not if you’re talking the US. We already have civil forfeiture which is abused far to easily and frequently.
Precisely. I’m saying that, if we already have it anyway, we ought to regulate it. If we can abolish it, great. If not, then it should be heavily regulated, with the funds earmarked for things that aren’t enforcement-related, so that there’s less perverse incentive for law enforcement to just grab things for shits, giggles and greed. The government can and will seize your home for nonpayment of taxes, so it’s not like this doesn’t already happen outside of civil asset forfeiture. It’s just a matter of how well-regulated the system is, and what steps are taken to reduce perverse incentives.
Forgive me if I doubt it could be appropriately regulated and properly applied in the US.
In the current situation? Absolutely. I’m fairly certain it would take a violent uprising, then a constitutional convention, to actually count the US as a country with laws. It’s full, mask-off kakistocratic corpofascism.
There are, however, individual states and jurisdictions which could implement it well with reform.
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Good point!!
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Power tripping murderpigs and ecocidal narcissists with their two-ton pollution powered people crushers are basically equivalent evils, anything that pits them against each other without adding any risk to pedestrians is a win.
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If it scales with income, it stays a punishment.
If it scales with wealth. The rich are very good at hiding their income.
Punishment doesn’t prevent behavior that already happened and is usually missed. Road modifications help every time.
My town has a major road that was one of the most infuriating and dangerous in town. It was two lanes in each direction, constant jockeying for position or to make the light or to get around a turning car.
All it took was repainting. Now it’s one lane in each direction with turning lanes. There is no jockeying for position since it’s only one lane. But turning cars are no longer blocking so no infuriating stop and go. They even coordinated the lights.
Now that road is slower, calmer, no road rage or angry drivers and everyone gets through in less time
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And I’ve done that. While it’s tough to get repeatable traffic, I go through there often. For my most common destination, gps estimate is consistently 3 min less than before
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There’s one street in a major metro near me that has been timed this way for decades and it’s incredibly noticeable because it is a dead straight thoroughfare through a few dozen small blocks of housing. You can see the next 3-5 lights lined up ahead of you at all times. You absolutely learn to pace yourself so you aren’t stopping/starting constantly, looking like an idiot when you get to the next light too fast and have to stop and then watch slow cruising cars whip past you when the light turns green. It’s like a game. I think about nothing else when I’m on that street. Not even remotely new, and it definitely works. But you have to pick which big street gets this treatment and then all streets intersecting with it have to work around that.
Yep. My hometown went to speed limit timed lights over 20 years ago. It was fantastic if you could catch the “Green Wave” and make ot all the way through a busy part of town without stopping.
In the Netherlands they have electronic “green wave” signs on some main streets. They show the speed you need to get all green traffic lights on that street (and turn off when you won’t catch a green wave, e.g. because you entered from another street).
It’s amazing.
there’s a similar street that they’re recently changed like that in my small city. it’s a 25 street. my bike only does 20 until fix the front derailleur. if i catch the front of the wave and don’t have anything heavy in my basket i can usually make 4 or 5 lights in a row before i hit a red and it’s glorious.
America will do anything but use roundabouts and they already do anything but public transport when given a logistical traffic problem a toddler could solve.
USA has an increasing number of roundabouts.
Roundabouts suck ass at peak traffic times because you can get stuck behind an endless convoy if you’re coming from the wrong direction.
Green waves mean the people on the main road don’t all have to slow down and waste a bunch of fuel (and cause more emissions), but the people on adjoining streets still have a chance to get onto the road they need to get on.
And of course if you don’t do proper green wave planning, people get the choice of speeding or waiting at every red. The worst possible option. But if you already have the lights, it’s much cheaper to adjust the cycles properly than it is to install tons of roundabouts.
You been to Hemel Hempstead?
Did a speeding driver write this?
No it was a cat
In France they installed roundabouts. And a lot of them. I mean really a lot! It works.
Please dont put anymore roundabouts in the US until its included in the drivers license test. Every trip to work is a gamble and I have to slam my breaks while in the circle at least once a day, people will even use the right turn only lane to go fully around…
Multi-lane roundabouts are a horror.
Single lane roundabouts are the solution
If your in the left lane (USA) and nobodys in your half of the circle -> treat it like a regular roundabout and exit anytime after the first exit. If your in the right lane its the exact same except the farthest you can go in the circle is 2 exits
The only thing making it a horror is others not understanding how the roundabout works, which would be solved by making it mandatory on the drivers test
True but even in Germany people won’t let you merge from the left lane to the right one and you take eternal laps
Almost all commenters find some problem with this, but I have seen this work on my own dad who unfortunately prefers going 10kph over the speed limit most of the time. Either the traffic lights are timed in sequence or sensors are placed so that with low traffic, lights stay red until a car approaches and the light is timed with the location of the sensor for going the speed limit. The last one also allows pedestrian and bike lights to stay green when there isn’t any car traffic.
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While I don’t speed, I do feel annoyed with certain lights - the kind that only allow one and a half cars before turning yellow. Personally, I would feel less irritated if at least four cars were given a green before the turning begins.
How about just magnetic sensors near intersections that count how many cars are approaching and do some math to decide what would be the most efficient. If no cars coming in the cross streets then dont turn the light red in the opposite direction.
Nothing angers drivers more than sitting through a full cycle and nobody used the green.
This can be solved with sensors and math.
No fucking AI in my traffic lights!
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Another solution is to go back to actually enforcing it in a meaningful way.
Also you can’t get all lights everywhere synced up that way, and it would only work in places that have a significant number of lights. Places that have 3 on Main Street are still going to have problems.
Maybe there should be more lights? That way we don’t have little old ladies crossing 6-lane stroads without a crosswalk to get to the market, while the nearest crosswalk is a half mile in the wrong direction.
Obviously this only works where there’s one major throughway and most perpendicular streets are minor…like every retail center in every city >35k pop in the country. These roads often have very predictable traffic patterns.
Getting lights synced up for a consistent speed is the easy part.
We need more roundabouts, too.
There should be less car infrastructure, not more. Crossing a 6-lane road will suck regardless. Both asphalt roads and traffic lights are very expensive to build and maintain, better to invest a bit more up-front in tram tracks and rip the socioeconomic benefits for decades to come.
That way we don’t have little old ladies crossing 6-lane stroads without a crosswalk to get to the market
The solution is to not have 6-lane stroads
Sure. But those are necessary as long as we have a car dependency.
The real hard problem is breaking the car dependency…and this, like piracy, is almost always a service problem.
So the solution must be an alternative that is preferable to cars by almost every objective measure…and then we are stuck in a chicken/egg problem.
Nobody wants to make alternatives that are better (or that make driving worse), because people are going to continue to prefer driving as long as it remains the preferable option. Cars are deeply woven into every layer of our society post WWII. That means hardly anybody alive today has ever experienced that America.
There’s a huge investment, and probably at least a decade of work, per metro area, if everything were to go to plan. That’s relying on city and state governments to organize and build transportation infrastructure while simultaneously discouraging car use by means like removing gas stations and parking garages from inside the city, or designing pedestrian-only zones.
I’m highly pessimistic about such a thing happening. I would love it if it did. In the meantime I will continue being a wage slave for the capitalists in one of the last generations of humanity.
Those kinds of places, usually only have one or two blocks worth of store front anyways. The Walmart. The big box hardware store, two churches, cafe and 3 bars.
I do agree we should make our roads safer, but that’s really not going to happen in small town America. Especially when you’re already not enforcing basic road safety laws
But if you drive double the speed limit…
