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Javid posted:If you expect people to use transit for everything you need to account for everything that people routinely travel to do, regardless of how convenient it is to have on a bus. I don’t know who you’re replying to here but I get a feeling you’re arguing with a straw man. I started with a post about the German 9€ tickets so I’ll respond anyway. The point is not to reduce car ownership. The point is to reduce number of miles driven, and thus the petrol consumed. Nobody is telling you (or, rather, the German public) to take a bus to your vet visits. The initiative is temporary, over summer, and aims to get people to take public transit for their holiday travel. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Jul 17, 2022 |
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Jul 17, 2022 07:39
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devicenull posted:They spent a poo poo ton of money putting in belgian block curbs everywhere... they claimed so it's easier to repair later??? OK so for a Scandigoon, what would the expected material be? Concrete curb? Concrete just doesn't work here due to snowplows. A couple of seasons and you'd have to re-do the whole curb. They'd get sliced like cheese. I think stone looks more up-scale, too. I would imagine if you get cheap Chinese granite you'd probably save money just on the repairs you don't have to do when the paving project is over and all the construction vehicles have run all over the place.
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Sep 16, 2022 21:58
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Cat Hatter posted:Yeah, I didn't really want to throw shade at the Scandinavian snowplow drivers, but they really shouldn't be hitting the curbs in the first place. That said, if the local guys are only removing 2 inches of snow or whatever they don't even have the big plow attached to the front of the truck, just a smaller one centered underneath. So if they're keeping up with the snowfall they don't even get the opportunity to beat up the curbs. By the time the trucks get out on the road there can be a foot of snow or more, so good luck finding the curb except by touch. It’s a sparsely populated country with many many miles of roads, and snowstorms here get pretty intense, so it’s just not feasible to “keep up” with the snowfall all the time. There are rust marks all over the stone curbs in my town and I suspect they’d be a lot worse for wear if they were not massive granite.
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Sep 17, 2022 19:55
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Could anyone point me towards research/examples of eliminating transit fares? It's always seemed backwards to create barriers to systems that are more efficient at capacity, and fares recoup a fraction of costs at best. Is it just a political question, or are there reasons traffic engineers would recommend implementing fares for transit since that seems to be the default state in most places. It seems to be mostly because of a moral/ideological standpoint: “those who use the system should pay a larger part of the cost than those who don’t use it”. See also US gas taxes (usually earmarked for road maintenance iiuc) and health insurance deductibles. This ideological view seems to mostly ignore the fact that a larger usage of transit is better for *everyone*, not just those who ride transit, since it gets cars off the road, leads to safer and more walkable cities, and oh by the way it also helps save the world from climate hell. So IMO it’s a fairly irrational argument. I think places that implemented free public transit have mostly been run by socialists of some color, so far.
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Sep 24, 2022 15:11
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think the idea of some tolls is to even introduce an economic cost to people using the thing to try to encourage them using alternate routes and means? Which seems...dubious as a goal for most forms of transit. Tell me about "congestion taxes" in London, Stockholm, Gothenburg etc... (Actually, don't.) Congestion fees in cities would probably work well if they were used to finance/subsidize public transit. I believe London does use about half of the income for that. But when you use the money to finance more freeways, you will induce more demand by the increased capacity, while also penalizing low-income families. So you get rich people still on the road, still stuck in queues, while poor people are stuck on under-financed transit just like before. Nobody wins. Well, at least the politicians get to say they managed to upgrade the roads without raising income taxes. Edit: To get back to the topic, I don't think it's much to do with traffic engineering except as it relates to things like induced demand. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 24, 2022 |
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Sep 24, 2022 21:37
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Entropist posted:I'm pretty sure that experiment also showed a lot of issues with overcrowding. The sudden increase in ridership without any additional trains caused all the trains to be crammed full, and further delays. At least in the more populated areas. This is true, but also trivially predictable. Nobody was surprised and so it is not really an interesting outcome of the experiment…
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Sep 28, 2022 15:28
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Oooh, I live by one of those! Never gave a thought to what it's called, thanks for posting that!
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Sep 30, 2022 13:00
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Due what is up the color choices of the first chart? Could you, like, put a big fat arrow pointing at the Dutch line?
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Oct 2, 2022 16:13
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mobby_6kl posted:So NL isn't significantly different from even Germany or France in terms of annual distance driven, or number of trips. All the bikes seemed to eliminate public transport usage lol. You say that like it's a bad thing? Public transit is very expensive while bike infra is cheap, both in terms of installation and upkeep. Biking also improves public health compared to other options. In a country like the Netherlands where all three infrastructures are in place, you can see how people naturally prefer bikes for short trips, public transit for medium to longer trips, and cars for when the other two are not practical. In most places in the world, people will e.g. be using cars despite not really affording them, because the other 2 infras don't exist (the U.S). Or, taking public transit for short trips because bike infra is terrible (parts of Europe).
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Oct 3, 2022 10:11
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mobby_6kl posted:No, it's not a bad thing, though usually bikes are sold as being great because they're replacing car trips. And I assume they still have to run the buses and trams and for people who can't bike or those medium-length trip, so how much is actually saved. 1. I'm sure they still do replace car trips, but you probably can't draw firm conclusions about how much so from those statistics. They are not A/B experiments. You can only guess about causality. I still think "cars for when the other two are not practical" holds, and it implies that people who are able to bike will prefer that mode. Of course such a statement is not true for everyone, but the experience of the Netherlands seems to support making the assumption that there is a significant enough portion of the population where this holds. 2. You can probably guess what increased or reduced ridership on a bus or tram line means. That's right, you alter the timetable to accommodate the changed needs. (Also, for buses, the routes.) If, as a thought experiment, we open a new bike thoroughfare from suburb A to downtown, and the distance is "bikeable", you could consider having fewer services per hour on the tram if ridership declines. And guess what, you've just saved a lot on operating expenses!
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Oct 3, 2022 11:37
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devicenull posted:* When they've issued tickets it's the people in the neighborhood that get caught How would they even know this? Are the police sharing a dataset of all the tickets issued in a particular neighborhood to the council, which the council cross-references with residence data? I doubt they have time for that. More likely, they have an anecdote to back this up, such as a police officer made this claim once and nobody feels like checking. I mean, I don't really doubt it, because: On any street, traffic will consist of (visitors + residents + through traffic). In a residential neighborhood, through traffic will be close to 0. Residents will outnumber visitors, probably by a factor of 10 or more, just from the commuting traffic. (Someone back me up on this with actual data...) And based on that alone, most speeders will be residents, even in the relative frequency of speeding in each group might be a bit lower for residents. It doesn't really matter who is speeding though. That's the really stupid part of this statement. What matters is to calm traffic down, and traffic calming measures work equally on all categories of motorists. You're right, they just don't know what they are doing and should be replaced by competent traffic engineers.
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Oct 7, 2022 11:54
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Well if they want to be inhumane about it and just prioritize either throughput or speed, then the least they could do is to pay lip service and spend the money for a pedestrian bridge that nobody will use. (Because nobody uses those, even in Tokyo.) Well, if there's an actual crossing guard at school opening and closing, a lot of kids might actually use the bridge to avoid getting yelled at. Hm, I guess there might be a solution after all? Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Oct 22, 2022 |
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Oct 22, 2022 21:12
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Today's XKCD:https://xkcd.com/2728
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Jan 24, 2023 08:38
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Lead out in cuffs posted:And could it allow people to do things like take the train to the coast, then take a ferry to Sweden/Germany/Poland/Denmark etc instead of flying there? TBF the per-passenger-mile carbon emissions are higher on those ferries than for flying commercial. In theory, passenger shipping could be better, but in practice those boats take mostly vehicles and cargo (and a floating disco and three restaurants etc etc) so they're extremely inefficient.
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Feb 7, 2023 22:19
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Lead out in cuffs posted:For sure -- as you say, you're not taking your car with you on the commercial flight. But somebody taking the train to the ferry isn't carrying the extra ton or two of weight with them. Oh, those ferries leave from major towns and cities, with plenty of public transport. Lack of train access is not why people take their car on a ferry across the Baltic - it's because they're going somewhere on the other side that does not have public transport, or because they're hauling more stuff than they can carry. These ferry routes take 16h+. If we look outside of peak vacation periods, I think about 60-80% of the vehicles on board are freight. Taking freight and cars on board a ferry is just too profitable to pass up, so I don't think you're going to see passenger-only ferries across the sea any time soon. Edit: Well, I also would like to see a more systemic approach, where national cross-country trains continue past Stockholm Central Station out to the harbor, to drop people off for the ferry to Finland or Estonia. But this country can't even decide to invest in high speed rail between the capital and the second and third largest city, so at present I don't think that's politically/financially feasible. So, for now, people have to get off the train and board the subway out to the harbor, adding another 20 minute leg to the journey. Since the combined train+subway+boat fare is more expensive than a flight, even directly from Stockholm to Helsinki, I think we're stuck with the status quo at least until jet fuel stops being subsidized according to EU regulations. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Feb 8, 2023 |
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Feb 8, 2023 20:23
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SlothfulCobra posted:Ferries I think also tend to be fuel-innefficient because unlike freight, humans want to go fast. On the upside, at least it gives a use for neat, unique, but fuel-innefficient technologies like hovercrafts, ekranoplans*, and hydrofoils. The ferries across the Baltic are all low-speed, because of the said wish to bring tons of trailers on board. Plus, high-speed ferries turn out to be even less fuel efficient per passenger mile than regular mixed-use ferries. Even "efficient" designs like catamaran or hydrofoil are normally not economical to operate over long distances because of the huge amounts of fuel they consume.
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Feb 9, 2023 09:18
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OK so by "across the Baltic" I meant crossing it from east to west or vice versa. But sure, short trip ferries are often passenger-only and then a speed boat make sense. They can be reasonably efficient in terms of CO2 per passenger mile, as well. For Macau to Hong Kong, that's just across the harbor basin, isn't it? You don't take that kind of boat across open seas. And of we're taking a ship on a 6-12 hour trip, passengers will want a cabin and beds, and then we're suddenly talking about transporting a whole hotel and parking garage across the sea.
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Feb 9, 2023 12:43
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Why do I get the feeling that the solution to this "problem" will be SUVs with the ground clearance of monster trucks?
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Mar 30, 2023 18:09
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Devor posted:They aren’t well marked and people aren’t expecting them Eh, they're in hi-vis yellow, that should be plenty in terms of marking. Maybe add reflectors? But yeah, people aren't expecting them, for sure. The design also doesn't make it clear to a driver that "this is an intentional narrowing of the street". I'm sure alternative designs, like narrowing by extending the curb, are more costly. This was probably plopped down in 10 minutes. There is something to be said for using familiar design elements, following construction manuals, etc. Haifisch posted:I also found people theorizing that the car in this specific pic reversed onto it, which makes it an even dumber move than I expected. Yeah, I bet they were reversing around the corner and being a driver of a big stupid SUV, they have 0 visibility of low objects behind them. And having never seen something like this (basically a hi-vis Jersey barrier in the middle of the road), even if they were watching their rear-view camera, they will have failed to recognize what it is, how tall it is, etc. The way they're stuck also points toward a medium-speed reversal. If they were going forward, they would have to have travel at quite some speed in order to grind the rail that far, and then the driver would have had to be very distracted or quite blind. Edit: https://www.kidsandcars.org/how-kids-get-hurt/backovers/ posted:
Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Mar 31, 2023 |
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Mar 31, 2023 09:58
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Not Wolverine posted:bikers shouting "On your left!" What? People do that? Bells are a legal requirement where I’m at. Get a big phat one. And when they ignore the bell, pass really really close and smack them lightly on the back of their head. That last part is just customary, not a requirement.
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Dec 8, 2023 18:14
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I hate in-ears. At least with big rear end headphones, you could have the satisfaction of smacking them off their head.
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Dec 8, 2023 18:38
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I forgot this is the boring answers thread. Sorry.
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Dec 8, 2023 19:02
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Devor posted:The problem in the US is that a ringing bell just startles a pedestrian, and can cause them to react unpredictably, rather than just moving to the right as they would in a bike-friendly society. Seems to me like you're actually making a case for bells with that anecdote. Presumably in that guy's home country, he learned to listen for bells and not random yelling. Seriously though, I thought bells on bikes were a universal thing. I wonder which countries actually use them? It's not such an easy thing to google for. The UK, obviously, because Queen's Bicycle Race has them. The Netherlands and Denmark, because I've heard bells in all those videos explaining how bike infrastructure is Actually A Good Thing. New Jersey seems to mandate "a bell or other audible device that can be heard at least 100 feet away, but not a siren or whistle." Also, Western Australia, according to Wikipedia. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 21:48
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NGL I appreciate the new term I just learned, acoustic bike. That's a keeper.
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Mar 19, 2024 11:18
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Carbon dioxide posted:Yes, this is important. That means allowing 35 km/h on bicycle paths means you're allowing a 20 km/h speed difference, maybe more in some cases. Which is quite dangerous, and would scare away casual cyclists, kids going to school, people going about their business, in favour of race cyclists. I would like to see an actual problem with bike speed differentials before I start planning infrastructure around that problem. I.e. build these cycle paths first. Then, if you really get a lot of accidents with speeding cyclists vs normal commuters, start taking some action. Because I think it's a mostly hypothetical problem. At least, quite unlikely to be bad enough to stop regular people from using these new cycle superhighways. (Anecdote time: I live in a Scandinavian city with somewhat decent amounts of segregated cycling paths, and I've never seen this problem surface, even with mopeds doing 30 km/h. Riders adjust their speeds when overtaking. A mitigating effort might be to disallow E-bikes and mopeds from going faster than 25-30 km/h, because I honestly think that's in the neighborhood of where bike helmets stop being sufficient protection for the rider, and you should start requiring motorbike-like safety standards. Probably, the EU's requirement, where a bike cannot provide assist past 25, and no assist unless pedalling, is a good idea. Whether Australian law would allow a local authority to limit speeds on bike paths, I don't know, so probably this would have to be solved on a national level. But my point is, you can pass that hurdle when you get to it. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 23:18
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vanity slug posted:yes, cars are bad, thanks for letting us know Yeah I don’t doubt that that’s a good measure for Amsterdam to take. I don’t think the same is true everywhere; notably, my city. Sidney doesn’t even (yet) have the bike paths to have a problem on. It’s not a given that their cycling superhighways will attract a problematic amount of mopedists.
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Mar 21, 2024 11:02
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I guess traffic engineering is not very concerned with road resurfacing normally, perhaps. But I found this pretty interesting: repave a lane without closing it, while traffic is rerouted on top of the work crew. https://youtu.be/ymyIEGRw4-U?feature=shared
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May 10, 2024 20:14
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