this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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Fuck Cars

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

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I recognize the first two, but what’s the right most image of?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Looks like a jersey jughandle. Searched for an article explainer and found the source image.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/07032/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Don't ask me, i only crossposted.

But they could move both arcs together, to make it more compact.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

This, but unironically

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Working from home is the solution to all infrastructure problems and I'm sick of pretending it isn't.

Fuck your cars, buses, trains, the lot. Housing too expensive where you work? Live in a small cheap town. Roads too busy? Don't use them.

Are we all supposed to pretend the covid years didn't exist now?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Even if we assume everyone can work from home, people still need to go places for other reasons.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but not all at the same time.

Where the roads are busiest is 8-9am and 5-6pm. That ain't shoppers or people going to the park.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

So we can build things to a somewhat lower capacity sure. That helps, but what exactly does it solve?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I agree, but there are plenty of jobs that cannot be done in home office. During covid years I commuted like crazy (by train though) because I worked in a lab developing antiretrovirals. Even the project managers in biotech/pharma need to be on site especially in intense times (like covid) to be able to be in the lab. There are tons of jobs (isn't it 50%?) that cannot be done from home office. We need a strong public transport either way.

As a side note: The stupidest form of work is hybrid. So you still have to live relatively close to work to be able to commute, i.e. likely in an expensive metropolitan area, and pay higher rent prices because you need a working room, and the room is not fully tax deductible because you theoretically could be in the office (at least in Germany they deduct 6€/day for voluntary home office). It's a shame we don't have much more and much cheaper coworking spaces. They should be literally everywhere so you don't need to go further than 15 minutes.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago (2 children)

These are supposed to be satirical, but this one is literally true.

Source: I'm a former traffic engineer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We have the middle design at my closest freeway on-ramp. The lights on both sides aren’t synced so it causes traffic to back up for a mile at any time more people are on the road. It is insane.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

When you say the lights "aren't synced," I assume you mean that they're exactly out of phase such that traffic going straight can never get all the way across on one green. FYI that's on purpose, because the whole point of that design is to prioritize the left turns to and from the ramps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Crossing both lights isn’t a problem. It’s the left turn onto the freeway that gets backed up.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

They are supposed to be satirical

My life has been a lie

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

As tired as I am of this meme format, I have to agree. Traffic engineering is bunk.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I dislike cars generally but how is engineering traffic to be safer for all parties like the designs pictured a bad idea?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

safer for all parties

If you were a pedestrian who had to walk through one of those designs, I guarantee you would not feel very safe.

The problem with traffic engineering is that it's solely concerned with vehicle traffic. Making roads safer and easier to drive on for cars actively makes them worse for everyone outside a car.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The more people drive, the more we all die. Even if you manage to engineer an intersection where no one gets run over, it still causes hurricanes, droughts, flooding, etc. It's all still enabling yet more bad behaviour.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

This is a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

the idea that you can design safer traffic patterns isn't a bad idea. the idea that you can come up with some super efficient method to solve traffic in cities is. cities in asia literally were like "if your license plate starts with [x] you can't drive in rush hour on this day of the week". it led to car manufacturers selling more cars so that people could keep driving in rush hour, instead of any semblance of less traffic on the road

https://www.vice.com/en/article/odd-even-scheme-coding-traffic-worse-asia-philippines-indonesia/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

... That's not an example of bad road design.

Incrementally making better intersections is still a good idea.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The graphic designer has a misinformed idea about engineering.

Cars are not meant to travel fast through cities.

This is true. City traffic planning was designed to maximize efficiency, not speed. This is no longer the case of many cities which now engineer congestion into design.

Rush hour traffic still goes to a crawl

People assume traffic represents failure, but the road still holds capacity, even if flowing slowly. Government data collection on infrastructure utilization and traffic recovery is prohibited in my area by vocal minorities to obstruct studies countering their goal objectives.

... Something something Trains

Trains are fun!

Just one more lane will fix it

I agree adding one lane won't "fix" traffic. Cities are organic and traffic balances out with infrastructure pressure and necessary.

On the other hand, many lanes around my area have converted to dynamically priced toll lanes; the resulting increase in congestion for remaining lanes drives up the cost of tolls. This has been very profitable for the government and flies in the face of this argument; if it were true, it wouldn't be so lucrative.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

People assume traffic represents failure, but the road still holds capacity, even if flowing slowly

I mean... They still hold the same STATIC capacity, but when congested, their capacity to actually move people to their destination drops significantly, further aggravating congestion. But yes, the same number of people are still able to occupy the road at the same time. More, in fact.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The thing is that two more lanes will fix a lot of traffic.

They have to be a special kind of lane though, made put of metal, with metal above, and require a special car, with metal wheels and a weird antenna on the roof

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

You had me there at the first half, not gonna lie. 🤣

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, though my experiences with rail cars are more of the Volvo PV801 kind....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

That is a narrow gauge railroad at 891mm, it used to be part of the Roslagsbanan network, but it got cut down and this part is a herritage railroad.

A decent part of Roslagsbanan is still active with commuter traffic

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Except actually tho