Like most cyclists, I think the world would be a better place if we all drove less and rode our bikes more.

For a long time I've advocated communities based on sustainable modes of transportation, and cringed every time highway appropriations - perpetually encouraging more driving - were passed.

No longer. America is a nation of drivers, and the best we can do is deal with that fact constructively.

The surface roads in my area are overrun with people avoiding the freeways, beating up the roads and creating unsafe cycling conditions.

I think it would be great if we rethought our lifestyles to avoid all of this driving, but it I don't think it will happen in my lifetime.

It's a bad "fix", but I'm now in favor of building the biggest possible freeways so that we can ride our bikes in peace on the surface roads.

Am I crazy/selfish/cynical?

Don't remember where the quote came from but....

"Widening the highways to resolve the traffic problem is like loosening your belt to cure obesity."

At what cost would these freeways come? I would be more in favor of investing in a rail system.

Rail systems would be nice, problem is the majority of the population would now have to drive to the station. And you've got to lay those rails, and build the infrastructure, in already built up regions. It's a problem with no easy solution.

And I'm in favor of building NO more roads at all. Neither of us will get our wish.

My own personal experience tells me that highways spawn more surface roads, more housing, and more far-flung commercial areas. It's a solution to nothing. Additionally, they serve to funnel traffic down the very roads I want to ride on. Before they built an outer loop near my house, traffic was relatively calm, with drivers taking back roads to reach their destinations. Since, the housing market exploded and the arterials in the area are crammed with cars trying to get to the highways.

Now, I know some of you prefer to weave your way through neighborhood streets to get to your destinations. I don't, however. I want the most direct route, without having to stop every block for a stop sign.

Of course, there's also the issue that the highway-spawned growth just increases the chance that your job, your house, the bike shop, and whatever else will be 20 miles apart. Low-density sprawl fueled by road building is the answer to nothing.

Yes, if you designed it that way. It's not the way it has to be though.

A town in my state, Charlotte, is putting in a light rail that parallels a major road and run into downtown. Last I checked, the rail wasn't even running yet, and medium density housing is sprouting up all along the line - and it was zoned purposely to require this. They have effectively created an urban infill zone that will place a great many people in close proximity to shopping, transportation and a short ride from their jobs.

No, it doesn't help the people who already live 20 miles outside of city-center - but if you keep waiting around for a solution that will help everyone, you get absolutely nothing. Of course, the self-obsession of many voters will make it very hard to get funding for limited-area projects.

If you include the shoulders/break down lanes and hte interchange ramps, this Freeway is 18 lanes wide:



During rush hour traffic slows to a near stop every day in this area.

I ride on surface streets parallel to this freeway - 45mph arterial. They take all the overflow, especialy when there is an accident that closes a few lanes on the freeway.

I like the concept of getting motor vehicles on urban freeways to free up roads for lower speed vehicles. Which on the surface appears not to spawn new buidling in this case as they are put in/widened in already built out areas. (this freeway above was four lanes in the exact same spot 15 years ago when I moved here)

But the reality is that it just enourages more growth in the city edges as more traffic can make it to those further reaches in a timely manner (at least at first 6-12mo, then everyone moves there and that 18 lane freeway becomes a parking lot)

In practice I think more freeways are not the answer.

Al

The fact is that this country already has a major rail system, it just needs to be rehabbed and stations built. Major roads sometimes have a turn lane, which in my opinion is worthless, so why not use that space to install light rail within the city to take people to their trains for longer travel?
The biggest problem is that most areas do not have good local public transit, so when you take a train long distance and you arrive in a new city you have no way to get away from the station to your final destination. What would people do then? They would probably rent a car or take a taxi, not really taking cars off the roads.

We got ourselves into this mess, dismantled tramways in favor of building highways, and people now live far away from their jobs and the city center. Future zoning and rezoning should include ample mixed use development, because this type of development encourages people to living more locally and aquire what they need within walking distance of their residence. In the future people are going to revert back to living more locally and concentrating on defining meaningful space instead of strip mall after strip mall complete with acres of parking facilities.

More freeways are indeed NOT the answer!

Extended subway system. Although it might not be possible in all the areas.

I don't think any kind of infrastructure will change any of this.

The fact is that people adore their cars too much, it's ingrained in part of the culture here. People need to be less reliant on their cars, then open themselves up to *gasp* walking to the bus stop, or *gasp* walking to the train station and then *gasp* walk from there to a bus stop, or their office building.

It seems that the majority find walking for in excess of 10 minutes is beyond their comprehension / level of acceptance. The attitude is clear when you look at the roads, you have people *screaming* at each other on the roads and racing toward stop signs/red lights/lines of traffic. Everyone is in a rush to get everywhere FAST.

The mindset needs to change, then the rest will follow.

Oh, but I guess this post is trying to be realistic... hmm I really don't know what would aid people in making better choices for their health and community. Cycling, walking and public transport are all much more healthier and social means of getting to work/school/anywhere - I've rarely encountered any aggrevation from people using any of these forms of transportation. It's not the cars, though. They're inanimate objects.

There is a study that finds that building freeways just makes for more traffic congestion because of the subrban flight phenomena. A highway is built in a relatively unpopulated area, and then developers biuld all around the highway and people buy houses there because they think they will have an easy commute. The first ones to buy do have an easy commute for a while, but then the sprawl takes over and the new highway becomes a parking lot during rush hour.

Another study showed that if you completely paved over every inch of an urban area so that cars could travel on it, there would be no decrease in traffic congestion.

Americans will not give up their cars until the inconvenience and cost of driving is so huge, they will switch to mass transit. And from what I can see, Americans will put up with huge cost and inconvenience because the only places that mass transit is popular is in very dense urban areas of the notheast.

I've heard that one of the widest/busiest stretches of highway/freeway/motorway is in Toronto, too:



The 401 at the Don Valley Parkway is, if I can remember right, 12 lanes across not counting shoulders and on/off ramps. Yay for the big smog.

But unless all these extra people are being generated on the spot, they're presumably relieving traffic elsewhere.

Ideally, building infrastructure goes hand-in-hand with proper zoning and urban planning, so as to discourage the strip-mall blight you're talking about.

You can debate rail vs. road vs. bike, but the root of the problem is that we've created a situation where people need to travel a lot farther and more frequently than they used to. Working near where you live is a rarity in the United States these days -- it didn't used to be, because you used to have to walk or take a streetcar or ride a horse or whatever. The commuter train and then the automobile created the opportunity for people to live distant from their daily work, and now, if people suddenly had to bicycle, it would be too far for a lot of people. Likewise, adding public transit doesn't cure the problem of point-to-point travel: people who traveled daily by train used to live a short distance from the train station, and factored in the inconvenience of walking or taking a streetcar to get there. The locations of our homes and our workplaces are what drives the need for a road system that supports automobile traffic. Until a lot of individuals voluntarily start living a lot more locally, that's the way it's going to be.

There is a proposal underway to widen I-10 thru Phoenix to 24 thru travel lanes, with inside ones dedicated to express with no (or limited) ramp access, the outer ones for within city travel.

Al

Isn't that the same spin they always use to build more freeways?

Here's the thing. The more people drive on the freeways the more acclimated they are to driving at higher speeds and they attempt to maintain those higher speeds when on the non-limited access roads. Also, as the freeways become more and more congested, people use other roads as detours...but of course are in a hurry and again attempt to drive them at the same freeway speeds.

So yeah, you're pretty much crazy...welcome to the club!

I remember a high school friend's dad had this internal cruise control - 40mph on the highway, 40mph on neighborhood streets, location made no difference...

You are exactly right. I was having a conversation about my car free lifestyle with someone a couple of weeks ago and they told me "i can never do that because i live 20 miles from my office." I replied that if you make a decision to be car free then you have to choose not to live 20 miles from your job. When people's attitudes and mindsets change is when we will see actual change.

You speak the truth. Cars will be pried from American's cold dead hands. and the rest of the world is following suite - as 3rd world countries become wealthy, guess what: people who can, buy cars!!

there is just something about the car=freedom, and cars being used as a projection of self, that is completely addicting to most people.

i wonder if this was the case with horses & chariots? I kinda bet so....

might as well deal with the problem. Human nature ain't gonna change, a fight to do so is doomed to fail.

Cheers and ride on

I think we are getting nearer and nearer to a real "Come to Jesus" moment with our lifestyle in the U.S.A. We have become used to cheap gas, cheap credit, and giant government deficits with no penalties. Global warming, our inability to fight an endless war, and a faltering economy may give rise to changes in lifestyle that we simply cannot envision right now.

Freeways are getting more and more expensive, partly because there is so little land left in the urban environments where they're needed. In San Diego, for example, the I-5/I-805 merge will be over 20 lanes wide when it's all finished. This latest expansion was expensive, but there was still land on either side of the freeway that was sparsely built. That's no longer the case. The next expansion will be much, much more expensive, making alternative forms of transportation more attractive.

I was interested to see in Berlin that bicycle ridership has increased from about 4% of all the trips to 15%, partly due to the government's encouragement of bicycling as a more environment friendly form of transport. We are a long way from that, but I can see that happening in the US one day, too.

I commute 25 miles each way on a bike. Living long distances from work is common when you live in a rural area - indeed so is living a long distance from 'town', where all the goods and services you need are. It's been that way since long before the car culture, yet people have always managed to get to and from town. Granted, it might be a day trip, but what's wrong with that?

RE. Living close to work.
The local power company is moving their headquarters in to downtown and away from my neighborhood. The local paper said that more than 50% of their 2500 employees purchased homes in my neighborhood or close by just so they could walk to work. Now with it being downtown they are going to have to find some other way to get to work. Hopefully they will bike since I work down town too and It'll be nice to have more company on the way.
The office tower they are building will only have 120 parking spots, I'm guessing they have 110 or so executives.

There's nothing at all wrong with it, except that it's not "supposed" to be a day trip. I put the "supposed" in quotes, meaning that there is an expectation -- from your boss, from your family, from the world that assumes that you'll have a car -- that a trip to town won't take a day, and that you'll be able to haul two weeks' worth of groceries and a dozen sheets of drywall home with you. There's a lifestyle adjustment involved in living locally, and it is doable, but it's much harder if all the institutions around you are operating under the assumption that people do not live that way.

If I were to truly "live locally", I'd have to give up a lot. I'd either have to give up my job or my home. I'd either have to give up my dojo or my home. I'd be pretty much heartbroken over any of those choices. If my home, my dojo and my work were all within biking distance, I'd be just about the happiest person around, and I wouldn't mind giving up a lot of other things. Hell, I'd ride a bike to see my family in other states. I think, though, that even though I don't have to, I am going to start experimenting more with non-commute transportational cycling to the next town, say. It's a kind of reality check, for how long it really takes and how much effort is really involved in getting from point A to point B.

BTW, chipcom, do you know the poem Ox Cart Man by Donald Hall?

I think you misread what I am saying. I DO live locally, but that doesn't mean that everything I need is nice and close...sometimes even if you live in town, you gotta travel to another town to find some good or service not available in your town...and yes, sometimes to find a job. It's always been this way, long before our car culture existed. Our car culture made the travel faster and more convenient, but it did not negate the need for travel. It would be nice if we could all live locally, with everything we needed right there within walking distance, but that is an ideal for the future, not the 'way it used to be'...at least in the context of rural America.

Yes, I know that poem.

Building additional roads creates additional traffic - you can't build your way out of congestion (for more than ten minutes): https://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/...-futility.html

What about the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway "intersection" with Don Valley Parkway???? Gawd, that's messed up. It would be nice if someone had a picture of that.

And yes, of course, let's build more freeways....