Slashdot Mirror
A New Study Says Services Like UberPool Are Making Traffic Worse (washingtonpost.com)
The explosive growth of Uber and Lyft has created a new traffic problem for major U.S. cities and ride-sharing options such as UberPool and Lyft Line are exacerbating the issue by appealing directly to customers who would otherwise have taken transit, walked, biked or not used a ride-hail service at all, according to a new study. From a report: The report by Bruce Schaller, author of the influential study, "Unsustainable?", which found ride-hail services were making traffic congestion in New York City worse, constructs a detailed profile of the typical ride-hail user and issues a stark warning to cities: make efforts to counter the growth of ride-hail services, or surrender city streets to fleets of private cars, creating a more hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists and ultimately make urban cores less desirable places to live. Schaller concludes that where private ride options such as UberX and Lyft have failed on promises to cut down on personal driving and car ownership -- both of which are trending up -- pooled ride services have lured a different market that directly competes with subway and bus systems, while failing to achieve significantly better efficiency than their solo alternatives. The result: more driving overall. Ride sharing has added 5.7 billion vehicle miles to nine major urban areas over six years, the report says, and the trend is "likely to intensify" as the popularity of the services surges.
As the transit system collapses from maintenance issues, and walk/ride options become more dangerous due to crime, that people are turning to alternatives?
make efforts to counter the growth of ride-hail services, or surrender city streets to fleets of private cars
That is the most close the barn door the horse has bolted of comments since horses started bolting from open barn doors.
UberPool/Lyft Line is often close in price to a subway trip and you go door to door. Even with the shared ride (which anecdotally seems to happen 40 to 50% of the time), it is also competitive with the time it takes once you factor in the walk, wait time and actual travel time. My mapping app shows the Lyft and Uber fares as well as travel times for public transit so it's easy to pick the cheapest or fastest depending on what I want.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Uber all the way!
This just goes to show how horrible public transit options are. They're an option of last resort. If you truly want to engineer people to use nothing but public transit, you need to re-invent public transit to be something convenient, safe and efficient. Currently it is none of those three.
...perhaps if city planners paid more attention to mass transit this wouldn't be an issue. In most cities I've visited, mass transit charges quite the time premium if you want to get anywhere.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Free market will fill provide the goods and services demanded by the consumers.
Blame the lazy people not Uber.
Solution: use the same free market principles. The cities are selling access to the public roads at throwaway prices. For free, almost. Introduce surge pricing for road access. 90% of the capacity or a road or an intersection will be sold for free, paid by general tax on fuel, tires, registration etc.
Next 5% will have some basic price, X $.
Cars coming into roads that are already 95% full will pay 2X.
Coming in at 97%? Pay 4X
Coming in at 98% full roads? Pay 8X
Coming in at 99% full roads? Pay 16X
Coming in at 99.5% full roads? Pay 32X
Access cost will be based on footprint of the vehicle, not the passenger capacity.
Buses and uber will pay the same access cost per square foot of road occupied.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No, I would not have "taken transit", when the nearest bus line is half a mile from my house, and only runs once every 30 minutes.
No, I would not have walked two miles in bad weather, especially carrying heavy or fragile items.
No, I would not have ridden a bike in an area without dedicated bike lanes, or dealt with the hassle of locking it up and hoping it wouldn't be stolen.
Yes, I absolutely would use a ride-hail service when the more expensive alternative is to drive and park my own car.
What is it with the proponents of mass transit who can't stand the idea of people making their own decisions about transportation? So if you can't make mass transit affordable and desirable, the only alternative is to outlaw the competition?
"Modern" mass transit can't die quickly enough.
For the most part in my city it seems drivers from uber/lyft/whatever just park wherever the hell they want to to pick up/drop off riders, even if they're blocking whole lanes of traffic. That or they'll drive around really slowly and block traffic and/or run into other cars or pedestrians because they don't know what the hell they're doing. Trying to do anything downtown in the evening/night is a nightmare with all of them.
It may have promised to cut down on car ownership, but that's simply because of a more efficient allocation of cars to rides. The number of rides, on the other hand, was never promised to go down, and in fact easy availability has only made it go up. I'm not quite sure why nobody was expecting that, it seems a basic economic principle...
it's worth it. On to impeach Rodenstene and end the sharaid now and for ever.
Can confirm. A bus ride of ~3 miles (5.5km to be more precise) would cost me about $5 and take an hour. In 55 minutes, I can easily walk that same distance for free.
The problem with the idea of "city planning" is that most cities aren't planned. They're grown. There have been planned communities, and they have tended to work OK. But public transit systems have mostly been grafted onto existing towns, rather than planned in, because the town wasn't planned.
The other problem with the idea of city planning for public transport is that the auto companies attacked public transport, and it never recovered. The ideal system would involve elevated PRT in cities, and ordinary rail between them. The good news is that once we pry people out of their cars, PRT will actually be realistic. It isn't now because people would rather drive, and you need ridership to make a system of any kind viable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Status.
Personal driving and car ownership in the USA as its fun. People can buy their own car in the USA and enjoy it. No big gov to tax a new car like in the EU.
Re "desirable places"
Clean up the city streets. Stop the crime. Return to services that citizens want in a city.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
We need more of them. If one wants to improve healthcare in their nation, they ought to become a politician instead of a doctor, because politicians accomplish so much, healthcare wise than doctors.
I'm a big fan of the promise of self-driving vehicles... so much human time and effort is wasted on manual driving, and the death toll is horrific. Not to mention the incredible amount of labor and natural resources that are invested in vehicles that are parked most of the time, and all of the space we waste on parking lots. And self-driving vehicles promise of mobility to populations that don't currently have it, especially youth and the elderly. It's a good thing in so many ways.
But, I predict that commercial self-driving taxi fleets, like the system Waymo is about to launch in Phoenix, are going to create a large increase in traffic. Not so much in Phoenix and similar cities that don't really have effective mass transit systems anyway. They'll see a slight increase in traffic.
In cities that do have functional mass transit systems, though, the cost of a self-driving cab is going to be so low that it will attract lots of people away from mass transit. If you can pay 3X as much to have a quiet, private car that takes you right to your destination rather than a noisy, crowded subway train, or bus that doesn't... lots of people will do that. I think it's going to get very bad if cities don't do something.
The solution seems obvious to me, though: Make surface transportation more expensive. One hackneyed way to do that is through a medallion-type system that caps the number of vehicles that are allowed to operate there. A better solution is for cities to charge for usage of the streets. Making everything a toll road would be the fairest approach, but would require some mechanism for tracking all vehicles. It might be easier just to charge a fee for any vehicle owner who wishes to drive in the city, on a yearly, monthly, daily or even hourly basis, with steep fines for violation. Then, whenever congestion gets too high you just increase the fees until it gets back to a manageable level. If some vehicles cause more congestion than others, because they're bigger or stop a lot, charge them higher rates. If pollution is a problem, charge higher rates for vehicles that pollute more. Assuming you can effectively distribute real-time pricing information so drivers aren't hit with unexpectedly large bills the rates could even fluctuate in real time, driven by an algorithm that optimizes for maximally-effective use of the streets. Internalize the externalities and let the market sort it out. Markets are very good at that, as long as all relevant costs are factored in.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The other problem with the idea of city planning for public transport is that the auto companies attacked public transport, and it never recovered.
In Tampa...
A major bridge is old and needing to be replaced. I expected $100-$200 million to be the cost. Its $600 million BUT they want to add a light rail to it raising its cost to $1 BILLION. Yep $400 million for a light rail on a bridge that has no other light rail on either side to connect to.
All freeways have just been rebuilt, brand new. TBX project, before that construction was even complete, had a plan to AGAIN redo the freeways adding a toll lane. Cost? $9 BILLION. To add a single lane, that is variable toll lane. Cost per worker in Tampa.. about $30,000 each. Yep, they want us workers to pay $30,000 for a toll lane that the can charge us for using.
Its not auto companies that turned people against public transit. Its blatent corrupt city officials that did it. There is no way either project should cost even HALF of what they propose, and everyone knows it. They stopped taking comments from public because each meeting was packed with a thousand outside, all against them. They instead decided the public wanted it and went ahead until our DC representative (not sure why they got involved) put a stop to it.
Corrupt government = citizens don't like it, not something from auto companies.
The left's answer to corrupt government is to call those pointing it out racists. Keep it up!
No. Mass Transit simply sucks. There is no getting around it. Private transport sucks far less. One is trying to be a generic one size-fits-all solution and the other is tailored to a particular person. There is simply no way that one can compete with the other if you care about the quality of the experience.
You can have an ideal set of circumstances for mass transit and the private option will always be better. The only advantage mass transit has is cost. If your population isn't dirt poor and struggling just to get by, that bargain might not be viewed worthwhile.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The idea that the likes of Uber are making New York more pedestrian hostile than it already is is just absurd.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Uber and Lyft are creating a beloved service that is continuing to grow in popularity for some reason! We must kill it!
If your government is corrupt, why don't you elect a different one?
Or is someone buying all of your politicians?
I have seen a couple of large cities. Oddly, it seems the only places that ever get it right were in Europe. Especially Germany and Austria, they know how to run public transport. It's fast, efficient, clean, on time (ok, the local public transport inside the towns are, forget trains between towns, they come and go whenever, like everywhere else) and most of all they're fairly inexpensive.
Maybe that's a reason Uber can't gain traction in those areas.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Who would have thought adding more taxis to city roads would increase traffic? It's almost as if adding more vehicles to a finite space has never been done before.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Working on it.
Started at the top with Trump.
You can hear all the corrupt ones screaming every day about it.
A shame then that Trump has no drive to do anything other than line his own pockets. A nice dream about the swamp and everything, maybe next time eh?
It's a constant source of stress and problems. I don't own a car for fun. I own it because I need it to get to work, and nobody will hire me if I can't get to work.
I didn't ask for my cities and transportation network to be built around cars. These decisions were made in the 30s, 40 and 50s before I was even born. Now that they've been made changing over to a system of public transportation is virtually impossible. A situation that was not lost on the car manufacturers and oil and gas producers.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Market forces at work here. Average Canadian income is around $50K. Transit operators in my town make above $60K+. Barrier to entry to become a bus or subway driver is low if the market was open, que unions artificially creating a high barrier to entry. Almost anyone can drive a bus, however unions protect their turf by design. No wonder anyone with a car is now jumping on this bandwagon. They complain and complain like milk or ice men of era forgone.
No. Mass Transit simply sucks. There is no getting around it. Private transport sucks far less.
True in the abstract, but commute times can change the equation. Anything that gives people the choice of a reasonable commute time and door-to-door transport is obviously a net win.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Public transport in cities like Seoul and Tokyo (which are definitely grown and not planned) is incredible. Yes I know the population density argument, but even in Vancouver BC, public transport is approaching something like the convenience of public transport in the aforementioned cities.
It can be done, just needs some political willpower, decent policy, and then some planning.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/q... "Predicting the future in the middle of multiple ongoing disruptions in urban car 0wnership is difficult. But itâ(TM)s also a question with great timing as Tony Seba, a Stanford economist among other things, just released a co-authored study which made the following claims: Private car ownership will drop 80% by 2030 in the US. The number of passenger vehicles on American roads will go from 247 million in 2020 to 44 million in 2030. Using electric ride-shares will be four to ten times cheaper per mile than buying a new car by 2021 (and each family could save up to $5,600 per year, compared to purchasing and maintaining a traditional vehicle). Those are compelling numbers, but Iâ(TM)m not buying them. I think the underlying model of human behavior and transportation is too simplistic. To be clear, I think that this future or something close to it will transpire, just not in thirteen years." https://www.planetizen.com/nod... "According to an article by Gene Balk, peak car is still alive and well in Seattle. "Census data show that from 2010 to 2015, the percentage of Seattle households that own a vehicle declined â" thatâ(TM)s noteworthy because itâ(TM)s something that hasnâ(TM)t happened in decades," writes Balk. According to Balk's analysis, the reason for the decline is the generational change brought about by Millennials. "At the start of this decade, someone under the age of 35 was just as likely to own a car as anyone else in Seattle. Five years later, car ownership among the cityâ(TM)s young had declined by about 3 percentage points," explains Balk." Its an expense that a lot of people just don't want to deal with. Need to take a trip, and not wanting to fly or take a train. Rent a car, you don't have to own one. I call the original article bull shit.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
If your government is corrupt, why don't you elect a different one?
Gerrymandering plus presidents being selected and not elected means that we have an oligarchy, not a democracy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you can pay 3X as much to have a quiet, private car that takes you right to your destination rather than a noisy, crowded subway train, or bus that doesn't... lots of people will do that. I think it's going to get very bad if cities don't do something.
Translation: people will have a higher standard of living. Government must stop that!
he solution seems obvious to me, though: Make surface transportation more expensive.
Translation: the solution is obvious: the government should just arbitrarily lower the standard of living of enough people, though imposed costs, to prevent the above-mentioned horror.
I am not a fan of your ideas, and do not wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> Yep $400 million for a light rail on a bridge that has no other light rail on either side to connect to.
People complained about the lone blue line on the Portland MAX light rail.
Then they continued adding and several years later it's excellent and goes plenty of places. It takes me from a short walk from my front door to the airport on the other side of town. You have to start somewhere. Getting the difficult bridge bit out of the way first is not a bad plan.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You've never driven in real congestion then.
That is the most close the barn door the horse has bolted of comments since horses started bolting from open barn doors.
No point of taxing taxis before there are taxis to tax.
Slap a tax on it and watch the invisible hand solve the problem. Magically.
While filling the city's coffers.
Two birds - one stone.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That may be true in much of the U.S., Canada, and Australia. However, sufficiently high population densities, such as in NYC, change that equation. Way easier/faster/cheaper to get to Manhattan from the boroughs or even sufficiently far uptown by subway, rather than car. Dense urban cores are only possible or useful if there is good mass transit at least to and from those cores, and vice versa. Also, some cities, such as Hong Kong (IIRC), recover 100% of operating costs from the farebox; thus, it is possible, at least in concept, to operate transit profitably. But, again, only given sufficient population and job density.
Nonaggression works!
We have never been a democracy (mob rule). We have always been a republic.
We do not ever want to be an actual democracy. We have checks and balances in place that would be totally destroyed if we went from a republic to a democracy.
This space unintentionally left blank.
You want excellent transit that is on time and clean and safe, you have to pay with it through taxes. Business and people always resist it. You would rather pay a trashy company every day of your life to monitor your movements than have your taxes a percent.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The good news is that once we pry people out of their cars, PRT will actually be realistic. It isn't now because people would rather drive, and you need ridership to make a system of any kind viable.
And there it is.
"City planning" is all about forcing people to do what they don't want to do.
The solution seems obvious to me, though: Make surface transportation more expensive. One hackneyed way to do that is through a medallion-type system that caps the number of vehicles that are allowed to operate there. A better solution is for cities to charge for usage of the streets. Making everything a toll road would be the fairest approach, but would require some mechanism for tracking all vehicles.
Many highways on the East Coast at least have incorporated EZPass systems which can have overhead sensors and cameras to track vehicle movements and charge accordingly. Many many people have proposed extending these into Urban congestion zones like London.
The problem really is that cities want more traffic at certain times and less traffic during rush hour. Traffic means economic activity and raising transportation costs will decrease traffic AND decrease economic activity. Many areas of the major cities suffer from real slow periods during the day, the late evening and during the weekends where it is better to have more traffic than to dissuade people from moving around the city. And if you have congestion charges you introduce price uncertainty which is going to reduce demand during these off peak hours since people won't know what the charge is going to be when setting out on a trip. Fixed hours of congestion pricing are also problematic as they will encourage rush hours to extend out just past whatever the set window is.
Except for a very limited set of downtown areas that can afford to have fewer people coming in and out I don't see congestion pricing or downtown pricing working out economically. No matter how you do it, it amounts as a disincentive for people to make trips which is the point of doing it. Unless you can somehow replace those car trips with cheaper, faster and more convenient service but for the most part that seems unlikely.
Bet you feel silly after screwing that one up huh.
And the reason we don't plan cities is because it's often a waste of resources. There's no way to accurately predict the future use of the city. The best you can do is be continuously planning for various contingencies, but that becomes complex and expensive.
The problem isn't the light rail -- it's corruption. Someone is pocketing a hell of a lot of money from the entire project, light rail or not.
The limited resource which is addressed by Uber is not traffic congestion, it's parking. Cities have used limited parking as a stick to make driving unbearable in cities. The market found a way around the bad planning.
A point that I rarely see made is that places with good mass transit are usually older and the cities "grew" as pedestrian cities and mass transit was added on top. I lived in Japan a few years and loved the mass transit, but in Japan you can walk almost everywhere you need to go once you get to the general location. Industrial, commercial, residential are all jumbled together, and the cities tend to be pretty compact. Doing it backwards, after the city already exists, is difficult, particularly if you don't start with the zoning.
The whole "rail line" talk is just so he could troll about karupt gubermint.
For one - it won't cost a billion dollars, OP made that shit up. The cost will be $750 million.
For two - there won't be a light rail line.
The Florida Department of Transportation announced a new plan Monday for the Howard Frankland Bridge.
Starting in 2020, the state will build an 8-lane bridge that will include toll lanes and a bike and pedestrian path.
The toll lanes could accomodate buses, driverless vehicles or even a light rail system.
There will be eight lanes, plus a bike lane and a pedestrian lane.
Four of those lanes will be toll lanes - with AN OPTION of later converting two toll lanes to light rail.
On top of it all, original bridge replacement plan was supposed to just replace a 4-lane bridge with a new 4-lane bridge... and then later add ANOTHER bridge.
So instead of two existing bridges, there'd be three bridges, at a combined price of $1.2 billion.
Basically, everything OP said is bullshit.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Translation: *we* bicycle or live near major bus routes, so you should too. City planners never seem to think outside the healthy commuter.
Uberpool may increase cars on the streets, but it also makes travel faster (for people who would otherwise take the bus) and cheaper (for people who would otherwise need to use uber). That's a net win for the economy and the city.
Removing it as an option discriminates against poor and near-poor people (who can't afford to pay 2-3x for a private car), making it harder for them to do *everything*. It also removes the uberpool *jobs* that uberpool creates. It also discriminates against the disabled and the elderly and people who can't use public transit or have serious problems with it for medical reasons, for example.
Having been to both Germany and Austria, my experience was that I had to walk much more than was reasonable to get to bus or tram stops, and spend a lot of time waiting for them to show up. Even when I was lucky, I end up spending about 3 minutes walking on both ends and 3-5 minutes waiting. That time alone is enough for me to get to the grocery store or a local restaurant in the US using my car. I think the locals have just gotten used to long travel times.
Besides, I still see private cars in those cities. If the public transportation was all people needed, there would be no resistance against completely banning private cars.
Keep in mind that we're talking about public roads that are built and maintained by the city. Why should they not charge for them? A truly libertarian, small government solution would be to privatize all of the roads and let the new owners charge what the market will bear for their use. I'd be okay with that. How about you?
Also, I find it interesting that you think that more congestion equals a higher standard of living. I think the opposite. Yes, government could do nothing and then congestion would increase to the point that taking the subway is faster. This would have the side effect of making it impossible for emergency services to move around. Do you truly believe that would be better? Seriously?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The ONLY rigged election was the DNC primary putting Clinton on the ticket.
Not a SINGLE DNC supporter has an issue with that. It appears it is the left promoting this type of corruption.
Ask what you would build if money were NOT part of the equation.
For longer hauls in the middle of nowhere the surface might be best simply for expediency.
For medium (in suburban area) transit a subway approach offers an enclosed controlled environment and removes noise pollution above ground.
For short (core city) trips people mover belts caves of steel style are best.
Three minutes' walk.... that's like 1/5 or 1/6 of a mile. So you might have to do that a few times a day and burn a hundred to two hundred extra calories. Look at obesity rates in Germany and Austria vs the US and weep... I tend to walk at least 4-5 mi a day since I commute on foot most of the time.
Study From 2014. I was wrong, page 5 lists it as $1.4 BILLION. I listed a government doc, you listed a news article.
You are the problem with corruption in this country. When pointed blatently out, you find a news story that is probably fake and announce you won the debate. I list ACTUAL plans from government, page 5 has it, and you will probably scream that it is not valid.
I am literally so sick of even listening to leftists who constantly lie because the truth doesn't fit their narrative.
Basically, everything denzacar said is bullshit.
I think the fact that you have a train station right outside your door might color your attitude on how useful the train system is. Not everyone is so lucky. In many countries, they price real estate on how near it is to the train station and living as close as you do is a real high dollar accommodation.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Of course the alternative in a city with low car ownership is walk or take mass transit. I am confident that you'll find very different results in mid-size cities with horrible mass transit. I promise you that the people in Columbus, Indianapolis, Austin, etc etc taking Uber to the bars or airport or whatever would NOT have walked 2.5 miles or taken an hour bus ride. They would have drove (maybe drunk) and parked, letting their car take up precious urban real estate. Uber/Lyft in cities without effective mass transit allows cities to design around people instead of cars which is a HUGE benefit. Its a lot easier to increase density and walkability when you don't have to have a massive parking lot in front of every establishment.
I think the fact that you have a train station right outside your door might color your attitude on how useful the train system is. Not everyone is so lucky. In many countries, they price real estate on how near it is to the train station and living as close as you do is a real high dollar accommodation.
Yup. I've lived near a station in two places and far from a station in one other house.
Living near a station certainly increases the utility because you don't need a car to get to it.
However it is still worthwhile driving to a nearby station and getting on the train to the airport - which is on the other side of town. Parking at the station is free compared to $50 a day at the airport.
The proximity to the train station was a factor in purchasing the house we currently live in.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
If we don't want rideshare to cannibalize public transit, expand rideshare apps to include transit in rideshare route alternatives. When booking an Uber (for example) in the usual manner, such an app would, besides offering you the Uber cost and timing, show any plausible variations of the route that include a transit ride. You would be able to choose between an all-Uber route and a cheaper but more complicated option of something like Uber-train-Uber. For single rides, few people will choose the transit-included option, but if you Uber to the medical center twice a week, you're going to consider the transit-included option. You have become aware if a placxe where transit might fir into your life.
To make this really work well, payment for transit segments booked this way should be transparently included in-app, deducted automatically from the user's Uber account. A major reason people don't use transit is having to dig for exact change or fiddle with unfamiliar ticketing systems.
Who is going to pay for a scheme like this? For rideshare companies, this extension to their service will tempt more city dwellers to become 'car cutters' in the same way that streaming is replacing TV cable. For cities, paying to have this new software added could be a cheaper way of enticing more transit riders than making the next increment of change to their physical transit system.
...So you don't see how it sucks for the rest of us? You've got a cherry picked example.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
...So you don't see how it sucks for the rest of us? You've got a cherry picked example.
Cherry picked in what way?
I've lived in places with no effective public transport. It sucked.
I've lived in places with good public transport. It didn't suck.
I've lived in different places in a city with good public transport and the suckiness varied.
So I do see the difference and I've noted the differences here.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You're referring to direct democracy which, like representative democracy, is one form of the larger category of democracy.
That's idiotic. City planning is about avoiding tragedies of the commons which inevitably occur when you don't plan. It's about making a city the best possible place to live for its residents, which you will note is the exact opposite of forcing people to do what they don't want to do.
You are witnessing Jevon's Paradox in action: When you make a resource (in this case, personal transportation) easier/more efficient to consume due to technology, you tend to get greater demand and increased consumption.
Expect this to get even worse with autonomous cars and without improvements in infrastructure.
playmoney.me - The free alternative to paper board game play money
I have a better idea - make a competitive transit system before you complain about ride sharing apps. When I lived back in Sweden the transit always won with Uber on price/performance. Buses and trams arrive every few minutes at peak, every 10-15 minutes outside peak on less frequented routes and given the price Uber was never a competition. Every time I checked the app I thought that paying extra for the total saving of 10 minutes on a 30 minutes trip didn't make any financial sense. I guess this is why Uber started where it did - transit in the Silicon Valley is pretty much useless for anyone who doesn't have ample amounts of time to waste. Uber makes great sense in the Silicon Valley in the absence of reasonable transit.
People tent to want to do tomorrow, what they did yesterday. People definitely would like 50% faster commute times, less noise, less pollution, more things to do and see near their home. However people don't want the disruption and are skeptical that the local government is effective and fair enough to actually affect significant change. People benefited from increasing home value or buying in at the peak don't want a lot of infill development because their home will lose value from increased number of available living units.
doesn't like being stuck in traffic, he should take the subway.
The solution is already there, right in front of him.
or is it that he doesn't feel that "he" should be the one who has to suffer poor public transit?
It's actually quite common when choosing a place to live, for one to consider transport. Is this property close to a railway station/bus stop etc. Yes, one may have to forgo other benefits like fancy stone benchtops, or a double garage, or a big yard. You pay your money, you make your choice. Or did someone put a gun to your head and _force_ you to live somewhere with shit public transport?
Max is underutilized. All the money poured in to it has yet to make any significant dent in congestion. For 95% of the population, it does not meet point to point transportation needs. It's nothing but a feel good project that sucks tax payer money in year after year.
Has anybody considered that a city without congestion isn't much of a city? No congestion means nobody wants to go there to do things with (or to) other people. The trick is managing things so you get the benefits for business and people without the disbenefits of too much congestion. Ergo transit, which can haul a lot more people per lane/track than cars. The problem in the US is that few places have *enough* transit - in which case it's not competitive for random trips but rather only for social service purposes, like heavy commutes or use by people who have no alternative (a relatively small portion of the US population, where a car of some kind is available to nearly anybody with a bit of regular income.
Good job electing THE most corrupt person
"He's rich, he won't have a stake in lining his own pockets" was actually something his supporters claimed.
Unlike you, I voluntarily go on walks and hikes instead of being forced to by my environment. The difference is, I'm under no time pressure to get to where I'm going and I get a much better view.
On an unrelated note, I notice that Europeans have a very narrow view of how people should live their lives. So I have to ask, since you already live the way you want, why do you want to force others to do the same?
There's no way to accurately predict the future use of the city.
False. You can predict it with a fairly high level of confidence.
The best you can do is be continuously planning for various contingencies, but that becomes complex and expensive.
False. You can plan for expansion, for example make streets wider than they "need" to be, plot out where additional roads might be needed and keep them as greenways, etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"City planning" is all about forcing people to do what they don't want to do.
Society is in large part all about forcing people to do things or not do things, so that the most people can derive the most benefit. Societies which don't do this fail. We have this thing called "law" which is all about that, to the extent that the word for making someone follow it is enforce. Please remember that utopia means "nowhere" (based on Greek ou ânotâ(TM) + topos âplace.â(TM))
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its not auto companies that turned people against public transit. Its blatent corrupt city officials that did it.
Oh, my sweet, summer child.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We do not ever want to be an actual democracy. We have checks and balances in place that would be totally destroyed if we went from a republic to a democracy.
The popular vote has disagreed with the electoral college only a few times in history. One of those times gave us Trump and one of those times gave us a Bush. Give me a fucking break, please.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't see what any of that has to do with municipal politics.
Not a SINGLE DNC supporter has an issue with that.
Are you sure about that?
There seem to be A LOT of salty Sanders supporters on the interwebs.
You left yourself a weasel-sized exit there in the phrase "DNC supporter". However, I know a number of Democrats who are in fact quite upset that the DNC chose to run Clinton and not Sanders. Sure, many Democrats are sufficiently deluded to continue to register Democrat in spite of the DNC's lack of commitment to Democratic ideals, but that level of hypocrisy pales when compared to supposed conservatives supporting Trump's behavior, which flies in the face of everything they claim they believe.
I, for one, am an independent. I, for one, have complained consistently about the behavior of the DNC. I am relevant to this conversation because I registered as Democrat long enough to vote for Sanders in the primary. I switched back to independent when they chose to run Clinton. Am I a DNC supporter in your parlance?
In any case, no election involving gerrymandered districts can reasonably be claimed to not be rigged. And gerrymandering is overwhelmingly a Republican pastime.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I know that I'd take public transit more often if it were more convenient.
i.e. More frequent, cheaper, and closer.
Just seems to make sense to put more focus on improving these infrastructure items along with fixing roads/bridges/tunnels.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
The evangelism of the left. They always know what's best for you. You're just too stupid to realize it. Just learn to conform and do what they say and we'll all be one big happy family.