403
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
403 points (95.5% liked)
News
21865 readers
5278 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I live in one of these cities (Denver) and in my city’s case this push is part of a ton of other provisions including a push to set a maximum speed limit citywide of 25 mph.
About 80% of my trips out of the house are walking or on a bike, but it seems clear to me that policies like this don’t improve safety. It’s just lazy policy making. For example, if you set a 25 mph speed limit on a road designed to support 45 mph traffic, most drivers will still drive 45+ mph and you instead get a wild mismatch of driving speeds. This just slows traffic with an arguably negative benefit to safety. Similarly, if you ban turn on red in the city many drivers will still turn on red, but now whether or not a car will turn on red becomes unpredictable.
What our cities need is more dedicated bike and pedestrian infrastructure that is separated altogether from the roads, as well as greatly improved public transit.
I agree for the most part. It’s better to design streets so that drivers feel uncomfortable at higher speeds. Street narrowing, bollards, trees, smaller set backs can all slow cars down.
That said, as a counterpoint, despite similar street design, the speed limit in most of Canada is 50kmh (30 mph) and many urban residential streets are down to 30km (18.6 mph). Some people speed, but driving 45 mph (72 km/h!) down most city streets is pretty rare. Pedestrian and cycling accidents involving cars in Canada are close to half the rate of the US. Which is to say, I don’t think the Denver mayor’s proposal is crazy. It works in Canada, but it will take time for the culture to change.
I think the focus here really needs to be on supporting alternative forms of transport.
We have a city that’s already filled with gridlock almost 24/7, even at 2am in the evening. The city planning is such that it’s hard to go significant distances without a car without spending hours in transit. If the primary lever for change is to institute slower speed limits and traffic calming measures, it simply makes things miserable for everyone involved.
IMO the root of the issue is we have way too many cars and not enough alternative infrastructure to make going without a car especially practical.
Denverites love to walk and bike when it’s convenient and they feel safe. I firmly believe that dedicated infrastructure would dramatically reduce the number of car trips as well as give structural safety measures walkers and cyclists. This would reduce deaths while making the city a more pleasant and healthy place to be. Thats why it should be the primary focus in terms of change.
More infrastructure for cars = even more cars on the road, as simple as that.
You want to fix a gridlocked city with awful traffic? You start taking lanes out and making them exclusive for public transport, and you build big sidewalks and a cycling lane. Now you can get where you want to go in 10 minutes using public transport or bike, or you can sat in traffic for an hour - magically, you'll see traffic getting better and less cars on the road.
It's not as if this is some mistery - it has been done in many cities around the world and it works. The alternative is the american way, "just add one more lane", and you guys live with the results.
I think there's a lack of understanding on just how differently American and European cities are structured. Unless you're in the Northeast, cities aren't densely packed. They're broad and sprawling. This is especially true of mid sized cities. Housing is typically far from businesses. A 10 minute bike ride would barely get me out of the neighborhood, and I'd still have aways to go before a major road.
On the other hand, I biked around campus in college and took the bus system all the time. I didn't need a car for my day to day.
Public transit is a real challenge for us. There's no easy answer. Our cities just aren't structured for it. And I don't think there's a public transit model yet that could totally replace cars for us.