this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
157 points (98.2% liked)

Fuck Cars

9639 readers
297 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] spidermanchild@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The problem is the roads are already there. Like sure we could redevelop the entire area over decades but we could also add some speed bumps like next week while we get around to the hard work.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

The Netherlands did it over the course of a few decades, probably less than 20 years. You'd be surprised how fast things go since bicycle infrastructure is so dirt cheap in comparison to car infrastructure.

The next point is that what you're saying is what you've been doing for decades, but nobody goes and actually fixes the issues at hand. I think it's a cultural difference there too; in the Netherlands they constantly upgrade and change their infrastructure to make it all better whereas in the US, well, once a road is there it'll better stay there for the next 50 years or so or maybe we'll patch a little.

They continously monitor all roads as well. If an intersection has more accidents than normal, it gets scrapped, redesigned and rebuilt safer. Usually it gets upgraded to much safer roundabout. Speeds get lowered. In Canada or the US you'll be lucky if a stop sign is placed, wow!

In my town in the Netherlands they lowered speeds throughout the city to from 50 to 30 kph, about 20mph. With most interactions now being roundabouts though, I can move faster there by car than I can here at home in Vancouver where speeds vary between 50 and 80 and mostly stopping at stop signs and traffic lights. Hell, anything under 5 miles, 8 kilometers, I can do faster by bike in the Netherlands than by car here in Canada. The Netherlands does what works.

If you keep placing speed bumps, you'll never get anywhere.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ok, the road is too straight and wide: difficult to for pedestrians and an invitation to speeding.

It’s interesting there is at least some parking on the side plus a center turn lane. So ….

  1. bump outs at each intersection to narrow the road and setting aside a parking lane. Traffic will slow because the bottleneck and pedestrians will be more visible and have a shorter crossing.
  2. The idiots called the center turn lane a median so make it so, partway. Instead of one continuous wide open turn lane, a raised median with cutouts for turn lanes. Now no one can drive there so you’re cutting dangerous driving, but you still have turn lanes. You constricted the road more so cars go slower. At this point you only have one driving lane in each direction.

Seems easy enough to make a noticeable difference with less effort. However, if you wanted to redevelop, there’s room to go for protected bike lanes and roundabouts (actual roundabouts with signs and painted lines, not just obstacles in the street.

And yes, speed bumps are the worst choice.