Maelochs

Actually, slower speeds would not decrease traffic jams ... every trip would take longer, so there would be more cars on the road to accomplish the same amount of transport.

College campuses (where the speeds are low) are regulated with the expectation of a lot of foot traffic---anywhere else, artificially low traffic speed limits just create more, not less, congestion.

Also, drivers aren't going to change their driving habits---tailgating, squeezing traffic lights, ----and Why would there be Fewer Traffic Lights??? That is idiocy. There are traffic lights at intersections to regulate the flow of traffic. Would there be fewer intersections if speed limits were lower?

Sorry that once again reality contradicts some folks fantasies ... but that is life. Real life ... not fantasy life.

Mobile 155

jon c. 

Cars being on the road for a longer period would also mean greater emissions and a resultant increase in pollution.

Mobile 155

You sir are a fantasy future kill joy..

cooker

That street looks like the Nederlands equivalent of Orange County - it's clearly a sleepy residential area and not downtown - but still, a lot denser, and probably a lot closer to schools, stores, hospitals and any other amenities you might want, than, say, here: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.5968...7i13312!8i6656 (random OC address)

Mobile 155

Mobile 155

wphamilton

All true, and those accelerations from the stop light are extremely wasteful in burning gas as well, and take longer to sort themselves out starting out again which slows everyone down.

It's all just rationalizations, because we all like to go "fast". We don't like "that idiot" up ahead who is slowing us down by going slower than he "needs to", slows down "too much" to make his turn, or is in "the wrong lane", even though the reality is that he's ultimately getting there about as fast as we are. Seconds difference, maybe a minute if he "makes us" catch an extra light, in which case we promote the idiot to "moron".

But the bottom line is that we'll make more pollution by burning more fuel, no matter how we might rationalize. Possibly that much again in the manufacturing of the car, so you can more or less double the per-mile pollution if you think of the car as having a certain number of miles in it.

The topic asks for philosophy, and to that my perspective is: take care of our own pollution from our own actions, as much as seems feasible, and don't even be concerned if that "makes" the bus drive with fewer people, or "forces" a driver to be on the road longer, or whatever the rationalization is, because the bottom line is that all of that depends on someone else's decisions. Social reform comes from politics, laws and economics, and fine and laudable if someone wants to go into all that, but it's best to realize that riding our bike is not that. It's just a bike ride. When that does reduce our energy use and emissions, that little bit is in reality about the best we can do and I say, philosophically, that's enough.

cooker

For sure the location beats out the Netherlands in beaches and climate, but not in walkability, bikeability, or public transit access, and probably not in child MVA deaths.How is it less nice?

McBTC

I think you mean, Newport Beach? Balboa Island is a trip... million dollar houses built on the sand-- the history of the island is fun to read (they're just now finishing an update of the wall around the island before getting back to the endless debate about burying the electrical and phone lines). Like the harbor itself... totally unnatural, i.e., totally man-made. An interesting fact about many of the now, fantastically expensive places to live along the Southern California coast is that a third of the residents couldn't afford to live there if not for inheriting the property and the property tax rates courtesy of Proposition 13 dating back (1978) to when Ronald Reagan was governor.

tandempower

I think you could have highways with higher speeds, but those should maybe be raised and not involve starting and stopping. Cruising at a constant 40, 50, 60, 70 mph is not rough on pavement, but accelerating and braking at those kinds of speeds is. Developed areas should probably all have 20mph speed limits and roundabouts, though, so MVs can drive at more-or-less consistent speed without braking and accelerating. What's more, people should bike, walk, and take transit more; which they probably will as automated vehicles take over the driving. You don't like density, but you don't have to have that much density to make 20mph speed limits function well. University campuses limit speeds and have less lanes, for example, and they function fine, are pleasant, treed/green, etc.Really, what is it then?

tandempower

If you figure out that transportation biking is a good alternative to driving, that means others can grasp the concept as well. The fact that most people aren't stupid means that biking for transportation isn't some unimaginable secret; it's just that many little reasons deter people from trying it and/or sticking with it. So the more people do it, the more it becomes a reasonable option from a social-cultural standpoint.

Think of it this way: SUVs and big trucks are a waste in many ways, but people can justify spending more money, enduring more difficulty navigating lanes, parking lots, etc. when there are more people doing it. Try driving such a big vehicle for personal use on European roads and you will quickly find out how socially unwelcome it is to do so. Idk if it's more or less unwelcome than transportation biking seems to be in certain areas/roads of the US, but that could be an interesting question for someone who's good at research while traveling.

So if hordes of people can switch from small efficient cars to huge, cumbersome, inefficient trucks and SUVs for personal transportation, then it is just as feasible for hordes of people to switch to biking and/or transit. It's just a question of choosing the right sacrifice instead of the wrong one. So many people choose to make the wrong sacrifices because of marketing and other cultural information that promotes things that benefit others financially by rendering relatively worthless value advantages at the expense of massive waste.

SJM205

Mobile 155

Mobile 155

You seem to ignore studies in traffic flow and logistics. Lets us assume a small city with a grid pattern for their streets. 100 streets running north and south. 100 streets running east and west. 100 times 100 makes 1000 intersections crossing at a 90 degree angle. If cars aren't stopping going north and south and they aren't stopping going east and west what happens when both steady flows of traffic come the the same intersection at the same time? What about turns from north and south to east and west? Without a stop sign or traffic light just how long might one be expected to wait for a opening to turn? And on such a narrow street there can be no turn lane. How would delivery truck make deliveries to homes next to the street? What would such deliveries do to traffic flow? And if you make turn out large enough for buses can the street still be the same design? The wide buses we have today stick out in the lane despite turnouts at bus stops on 4 lane roads. Now add you vaunted dense population and you have more people using the road all day long. You can have dense living and Buses running every 15 minutes all over town or you can have narrow traffic free roads without buses, trucks and cars but you can't have both.

Rollfast

Or you just have a lot of cyclists with Chevy imprinted on their foreheads.

tandempower

Think about what a highway does. It provides a constant flow of traffic without people having to slow and stop at intersections, for turns, etc. Many areas have taken to building raised highways in addition to the highways that cut through grids because there is so much traffic in every direction to all sorts of destinations. The challenge is getting people to take other modes between local destinations and only using MVs for longer-distance trips, but that is all but impossible when everyone has to tote their own car around with them everywhere they go.

If traffic is reduced and people share rides instead of driving and parking everywhere they go, then you have less vehicles on the roads. If they go slower, the flow of traffic into roundabouts at intersections goes slow enough that people don't have to stop. Congestion and other causes for stopping waste time. It's better to slow everyone down to prevent congestion than to stop them at intersections and when others slow down to turn in front of them. With ride-sharing, you can replace turn-lanes with loading/unloading zones. With autonomous vehicles, the ability for cars to integrate back into traffic flows after unloading or loading would be improved because, unlike humans, cars don't mind slowing down to make room for vehicles to enter the flow of traffic.

Mobile 155

tandempower

You start really showing your bias when you resort to uncritically comparing thoughts with fiction. Do you not see that change and progress are always happening in some way or another? Technologies advance and infrastructure adapts to accommodate the changes they facilitate. If people use intelligence and wisdom, they manage to achieve more good than bad as a result of technological changes. You are cynical when you predict only more waste. I have given examples of elevator-sharing and cell-phones freeing people from sitting next to land-lines waiting on calls. Yes, more people have cell-phones now, but they are small devices and they are able to spend less time on the phone because of text options that come with smart-phone hand-held computing capabilities.Ride-sharing has yet to fully mature as a technology because it is still operating within a paradigm where personal MV ownership/driving is the norm. If/when ride-sharing becomes the norm, the culture of riding will shift from how to closely replicate the parameters of traveling in a personal vehicle to how to efficiently share rides and reduce congestion. People are sick of congestion but they just don't know how to deal with it except building more and wider roads; but they're not really happy with that solution because they understand it is not a sustainable solution.The cost of camping and everything else is determined by what people expect to earn in order to afford the cost of living. That's why it's called a 'rat race.' The more people charge to keep up with the race, the higher the cost of living rises.It is my hope that the option to share rides instead of driving and parking a personal vehicle everywhere will expand. Once autonomous vehicles eliminate the need for parking, it will drastically liberate people in the way that they get around and do things, as well as the way infrastructure and architecture are designed. Imagine if everyone had to bring their own shopping cart with them to the store to go shopping. Shared vehicles open up so many avenues for convenience and efficiency that would be out of reach if everyone had to tote around their own vehicle with them everywhere they goIt is an interesting comparison, but it's different because you don't have to eat at restaurants for every meal the way you have to use (sprawling) infrastructure to go anywhere.The campaigns fail because there are other campaigns to sell cars and expand infrastructure in the interest of making money. When people start to claim their freedom, others find a way to take it away and sell it back to them. How do you stop this? By evolving the vehicles and infrastructure that usurp freedom into a form that facilitates freedom. Surely you're not in favor of sprawl and personal MV dependency only for the sake of limiting the freedom to get around without driving, are you?

Mobile 155

tandempower

What exactly are you debating now? I said that people used to wait by a land-line on phone calls instead of just leaving the house and taking the call when it came. I also said they can text more to exchange small bits of information instead of talking on the phone. Both those statements are true, are they not? If some or many people spend more time on the phone than before because they are addicted, that's a different issue. It doesn't mean they don't have the ability to communicate via text and go wherever without losing the ability to take calls when it's important to.

Mobile 155

I-Like-To-Bike

What else but more spacey concepts compounding previously posited bizarro schemes would you expect in a discussion with an LCF Philosopher™?

wphamilton

That's not really a safe assumption in general. People will just consider me an outlier, which in some ways I am. Sure, some will look to you as an example and I think that's about the best advocacy we can come up with. At best we just show that it's possible, and while that may influence someone here and there it's not social change. It really is, just a bike ride.

Mobile 155