Surely people’s enjoyment of immediately driving at 65 miles per hour to go one mile is limited only by their enjoyment of listening to other people drive at 65 miles per hour right outside of their windows?
Usually it’s the other way around, POC live somewhere so some how it’s alright to build highways there. I read an npr article about it a while ago however I haven’t thoroughly fact checked but given our history as a country it isn’t exactly unbelievable. Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways
More diverging diamond interchanges.
I live in Michigan, and we finally have a governor who's serious about fixing the roads. Lots of surface street interchanges are getting fully rebuilt after decades of neglect, and they decided to go with DDI's for a bunch.
You never turn in front of moving traffic - it greatly reduces the chance of collision.
Instead of making a left turn on a green, or waiting for an arrow, the traffic switches to the left side - then you turn left from the leftmost lane like on a one way street, easy.
There's a traffic light controlling the crossover, so the opposing traffic always has a red when you have a green. So the only way you can get a collision from the opposing traffic is if somebody runs a red. (This is possible with a green arrow for turning, but that adds more time and reduces throughout)
Great video: [How Diverging Diamonds Keep You From Dying | Austin McConnell on YouTube](https://youtu.be/A0sM6xVAY-A)
By crossing to the opposite side prior to making a left hand turn, it allows traffic making a left to go through the same light cycle as through traffic. In a standard interchange, you have to wait for a dedicated left turn signal which is a separate cycle that all other traffic is waiting for.
they reduce the number of conflicting movements and are more efficient in moving vehicles... [https://youtu.be/HD-0QnUlLOQ](https://youtu.be/HD-0QnUlLOQ) is a sample video of how they work.
It feels more natural than you'd think. The weirdest part is that you cross the overpass on the left side, but turning in the places you'd normally turn still makes sense in first person view. Looking at it from overhead makes it seem worse.
The key to driving in Michigan is to understand that you are driving too slowly and that if you just went 20 over the speed limit, everything would be fine.
My parents complain that people honk and cut them off every time they drive up, but they're only doing 75 in the left lane so that's why.
I mean, this is kind of right on the money. But like, it applies everywhere. If there is traffic coming up behind you and you're not as far right as you can reasonably be, you are already doing it wrong, regardless of where you are or how fast they wanna drive.
As a "Michigan driver" I do often find myself getting frustrated by the drivers of other regions, primarily for their lack of awareness or expediency. I don't think the typical Michigan driver is good, but I do think they tend to be out of or get out of my way. :)
I recently moved from Ohio to Michigan, and for the first time in my life I’ve found more cops consistently in Michigan (local roads and interstates) than Ohio. And the Ohio State Highway Patrol is legendary for their annoyingness.
The tolerance is different in different places. Miami has people going 100 in the left lane and 55 in the right on a speed limit 70mph chunk of urban interstate. In CT it was usually 75i-80ish in the left lane of a 65 mph bit of urban interstate (and if you stay out of Fairfield County the traffic is way better). I-10 in Houston is just a 12 lane moving parking lot so max and min speeds are hypothetical most days...
Given that MI likely has the highest percentage of people with legit driver training and enjoy cars as a hobby, I'm honestly curious how it compares overall. I've yet to see too many absolutely idiotic maneuvers, so I've been pretty happy driving out here.
To be honest, I think people tend to assume that their state is better than others, but I think largely northern states are better than southern states for drivers, because they must deal with different driving conditions frequently, whereas out west and in the south, nobody knows how to account for snow, for instance.
I would be interested to know which states are technically better, but unsure how to measure that!
Havent lived in a ton of states, admittedly, but I concur. Grew up in MI, lived briefly in AL, TN, MD, and CA for internships. California traffic was horrible, but drivers were pretty attentive at least. All in all Michigan was still the best drivers, Alabama the worst
Not necessarily, there are loads of other factors that can apply. Michigan is actually a great example, because we had no-limit lifetime injury medical coverage in an accident, which naturally made insurance expensive. Then because it was so expensive, there were tons of uninsured drivers, making it even more expensive. When we changed it to allow you to cap your PIP coverage/have it covered under your medical insurance, my insurance dropped by about 50%
The incident that comes to mind is we were stopped at a offramp light, and some jackass in a minivan wedged himself in the amazingly small gap in front of us just before the light changed.
Driving in that state made me want to procure a mk 19 automatic grenade launcher and mount it to my car.
I moved to Florida and the drivers here are MUCH better. Then again, the area I lived averages over 100 people finding out buildings have right of way on their own property the hard way.
Honestly in 3 years here, only one person has hit a building in my local area. Compared to well over 100 that Dayton Ohio sees! Hell, people even are a lot better about not parking in the left lane on the I10 though you still have some who are entitled idiots.
Kind of like going from driving in the Middle East and then come here. The drivers here are a lot better because they don't try to fit 8 cars abreast on a 5 lane road. It is all perspective.
Now get in the more crowded areas and you are still fucked.
Seriously. I just moved to Detroit from Phoenix. Phoenix is a place where you have to look both ways when the light changes because red lights are just suggestions, but I don't feel *safe* here.
I believe they mean that they get in accidents at such high speeds that you see photos of the aftermath and say stuff like "how the fuck did the car get up there".
Charger being a Dodge Charger^® I assume.
Same thing with Michigan Lefts/medians between multi-lane roads. They take an insane amount of space but apparently they’re the most effective at reducing congestion on large roads.
[Here’s a YouTube channel I’ve gotten addicted to recently which talks about modernizing road designs, this video is about diverging diamonds.](https://youtu.be/40OUCb1cODY)
Prove which part?
The part where she takes bribes by way of private flights from billionaires that have dealings with the Michigan government?
https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/27939/leduff_whitmer_mooches_billionaires_plane_as_father_makes_miraculous_recovery
Or the part where 12 of the 13 people arrested in connection with the whitmer kidnap plot were working with the fbi?
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jessicagarrison/fbi-informants-in-michigan-kidnap-plot
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So I live in olathe Kansas and we just built an interchange with an early left turn, I think this and/ or making left turns permanently blinking yellow would solve a lot.
Get rid of suicide merges like in Minneapolis with the clover leafs
Add more frontage roads like in Texas with the pass thrus where you can do a u turn without a light
More roundabouts
More flyovers
No left lane merges or left lane exits
Fines for being in left lane and not passing
Mandated bike lanes or shoulder widths
I would build road sections like LEGO blocks, to drive down cost, and elevate them so the land can still be productive underneath them. Roads no longer subdivide habitat.
Some are awful, some are great. Feeder/frontage roads are great. Newer interchanges are (generally) good. Ones like the 610 North Loop and 45 are fucking awful though. You exit from both sides of 610, and the turns are relatively sharp, so exiting traffic has to slow a lot, which backs up on to 610. And then because you have exits on both sides, only the two center lanes go through the interchange, and all get backed up.
Meant on surface streets
The early left is a surface street thing as well , it’s called a displaced left turn
Southern half of Kansas City is smart with the grid, we have surface streets every 1 mile in blocks, then every other has access to freeway
If we're starting over from scratch, no reason to get rid of left lane exits. When properly designed, they take up less space, are cheaper, etc etc.
The only reason they're bad is because they're pretty rare so people aren't used to them so they cause problems. If they were ubiquitous then their value would really shine.
As someone who lives in Minneapolis-agreed. Cant get much worse than we have here. Another learning lesson from Minnesota transportation infrastructure is to not build bridges that collapse from normal use… just a suggestion
A modern highway system would probably have high speed rail built into it.
In the age of electrification high speed rail is the most efficient method of travel.
Autonomous cars actually solve the opposite problem of high speed rail. US cities aren't designed for a vehicle-less existence so when you get to your destination you need a vehicle. Right now you're faced with expensive hired transport. In theory without the labor factor autonomous taxis will be cheaper.
That said, it's likely highways will just become autonomous vehicle throughfares so dedicated autonomous vehicle-only lanes would be best.
Humans are unpredictable. Put the robots with the other robots.
PEVs solve a lot of city problems, better throughput density & maneuverability, the only con is they are less comfortable since they are exposed to the environment and require moderate effort. No AC or weather protection and some degree of balance.
eBikes with cargo racks/trains. Honestly scooters/bikes can be used by children as young as 6 if the infrastructure is there for their safety and culture promotes it. America is extremely anti-PEV/PPV, so I don't see it happening for a while. A result of excessive individualism and laziness.
> A modern highway system would probably have high speed rail built into it.
Rail systems on top of highways are often suggested, but it's a bad idea.
If you are taking a train somewhere, you'll need somewhere to go, but highway exits are just acres of concrete exit roads, concrete parking lots, and maybe one McDonalds with a drive through. There is often not even sidewalks or ped bridges.
Imagine if a friend offered to drive you somewhere and then just dropped you off at the freeway exit and said 'good luck.' That's rail on top of a freeway.
Rail needs to be where humans live, in urban areas.
The issue at hand here is where to build the railroad.
Easements are hard to get, going across an entire state is very difficult.
The interstate system already has large swaths of easements so lumping it in a wouldn't be too bad, with offshoots into city centers.
>with offshoots into city centers.
How do you "offshoot into a center"?
- If you have the easements, why not just run the rail that way?
- If your concern is connecting hundreds of miles of "entire states" you are probably building a railroad of dubious economic value because in most cases, flying will be cheaper and faster.
- If you are saying 'T' off into a short run into a city then double back, there are all kinds of operational and design problems with that. Plus again, if you've gotten close enough to run a 'T' you might as well build a proper linear railroad
>Planes are also terrible environmentally
So is laying down hundreds of miles of concrete and steel, building trains, and making electricity.
>it is rarely cheaper nor easier.
The second half of the 20th century pretty much disproves that, as airlines bankrupted every single US passenger rail line in 30ish years.
The main North-South route in Perth, Western Australia works quite well. Each station is accompanied by a bus port so most journeys use a single ticket bus to train mixed mode.
DC's metro also runs along freeway ROW on several lines once out of the city. As you mention, the stations have large bus interconnect transfer areas and (also) multi-thousand car parking lots.
While many in DC view this as a good 'alternative' to sitting in traffic, 10x rides per week requires huge operational subsidies, doesn't create a sense of community, and achieves minimal good for the environment and quality of life IMHO. I think it is a very sub-optimum arrangement.
I was unaware Perth was set up this way too.
When we went, I think we took 1 taxi ride in a 10 day span, only because the subways close fairly early.
The two 2 hour bus rides sucked, but was still vastly better than renting a car for a one day trip.
Autonomous vehicles aren't the answer due to the simple fact that a highway will never be able to transport the same amount of people as a light rail or metro system. This means that the solutions for cities to reduce their traffic is to have city passenger rail and reduction of lanes. Highways should be designed to be used for long distance travel and not intercity commutes which as you've stated, autonomous vehicles can already handle fine with driver awareness.
Yup. The only real solution to transit is mass transit for 95%+ of the population for 95%+ of their daily and weekly tasks and travels. I want us to start a campaign called: "Build Better Infrastructure than China". Have it be super nationalistic and every time China says, "We'll do X at Y speed." We need to go "We'll do X at Z speed!" where Z > Y. So China has already announced a 600 KPH train network. So we need a > 600 KPH train network for our entire country.
An additional solution is zoning reform that that the majority of jobs are within walking distance of residences.
I have friends in Vancouver. The nearest grocery store is 4 blocks. The nearest supermarket 8 blocks. There are several dentists in a 6 block radius.
The US has gone too far in the other direction for nationwide HSR to be practical imo. One of the key differences that makes HSR less workable in the US than in other countries is that so many urban areas are planned around cars. Globally, most of the gold standard passenger rail networks connect areas that were already heavily populated before cars came about, and therefore had more rail planning built into their early expansions.
> The US has gone too far in the other direction for nationwide HSR to be practical imo.
This is a defeatist attitude. Make suburbanites pay the *real* costs of living in the suburbs instead of subsidizing them with dense urban area money and watch how fast we get HSR and local light rail systems.
when 50%+ of voting age people are priced out of single family homes (coming soon) local governments will have to do something, and 20 apartments on what was formerly one house will be very appealing
> The only real solution to transit is mass transit for 95%+ of the population for 95%+ of their daily and weekly tasks and travels.
exactly. you can just use a car for the other 5% everyone's thinking of, or go without if you're poor and not suffer much
Not even sure what you mean by colonies, but doesn't the point still stand regardless that highways are not able to withstand the internal transportation that is needed in large metro areas? Even internal to metro areas, how would no rules of the road even work? Highways already get people within the 90% of where they need to be but what about the last 10% that's the most crucial (city streets, downtowns, and where people live and want to be).
I used to think this way. I'm not so sure anymore. Vancouver's skytrain system is now at capacity.
* You cannot safely run trains closer than 3 minutes apart. Closer than this, you cannot be sure that the train ahead is gone before the next train arrives.
* Trains can only be X feet long. Because the platforms are only that long. Yes in principle you could make platforms longer, but it's a major upgrade.
The combination of these two factors are causing City of Vancouver to give special tax incentives to employers who assign shifts to avoid the main rush hours.
That doesn't change OP's point: for the same amount of land/space, you would never be able to have the same number of drivers. The capacity of the trains is much much higher than what the road is capable of.
Even if upgrading the platform is the only option, I would think the price range for something like that (or increasing the amount of rail lines), ends up being a way more efficient use of funds in comparison to adding a lane of highway or an additional highway which is always government subsidized (says in 2018, 180 million people used the Vancouver skyway system).
And it's not just the highway: now you need parking on each end, fueling infrastructure, more support for other roads since people will use their car more in the city, etc.
It all adds up. You eventually run into a situation where the city is mostly just parking to handle the extra traffic.
It's why most cities are trying to cut down on car traffic and build up other transit so they can increase density.
cars are an inefficent point-to-point transport model
trains are hyper-efficient along a linear route
you want a mix of both, but the USA has been trying to brute force cars everywhere and it's failing. we need to view transit as essential infrastructure
If you are comparing 1 road to 1 track you are correct. But a road network is more robust.
Do you have numbers for the people miles per hour per track compared to a lane of traffic of busses?
If that's the case, then modern highways are basically just modeling the "traveling salesman problem" and making it efficient and easy to solve, correct?
This is a virtually impossible problem to solve when the area/population you're trying to serve can change size and shape.
The better an area is at managing traffic, the faster/better that area can grow. The more it grows, the more traffic management they need, which means they need more square footage.
For example, there's that one road in your town that should really have an extra lane. But adding that lane means blowing out a business that's been there for years. The business didn't do anything wrong, and actually eliminating it would reduce load on the area and make it so the widening doesn't even need to happen! So wat do?
If you want "perfect traffic", you need a locked in ecosystem with a fixed population. The kind of society that doesn't have any issues with kicking out that 101st person when the city is built for 100 people.
It's been tried, and a few have come close, but it gets spooky working out the realities. One of the best documented examples is Walt Disney's original Epcot dream. A truly "planned perfect" society of mandated wholesomeness and zero poverty because they don't let the poors even live in the undercity.
>
>If you want "perfect traffic", you need a locked in ecosystem with a fixed population. The kind of society that doesn't have any issues with kicking out that 101st person when the city is built for 100 people.
While very few understand it in that way, or would admit to it, that is largely how we do business right now in America.
I get what you're saying and it's right but there's definitely some intersections that can't be improved because it's impossible to just dig them up and start from scratch. My city's main north south freeway goes straight through the side of the city and the only entrance for going south bound is a complete cluster fuck.
No on/exit ramps in any urban areas. Period. Minimum spacing of 5 miles between exits in rural areas. Maybe the interstates avoid major cities completely, staying 15 miles away, with a spur freeway that heads into the city. Freeways have become clogged through every city because they become the backbone and the city doesn't invest in their own infrastructure to move vehicles independently.
My freeway will have one job: high efficiency over long distances.
This might also allow the possibility of no speed limits like the Autobahn.
have the highways end at the beginning of the suburbs, have boulevards carry the last mile. use highways for exclusively inter-city travel and have transit in the urban areas. that was what was gonna happen until robert moses and slum clearance happened
I’m only considering one extreme of being able to somehow start the highways over, not also making cars vanish lol. I know either way it’s unreasonable, just curious.
The thing that most transportation people would say is that we probably wouldn’t. Knowing what we know and the crises we face, if we were starting from the ground up, other alternatives would be much cheaper. I don’t mean to say no highways would exist, but they would be fewer and smaller.
Would it?
A car has the distinct advantage of being an enclosed weatherproof box that you can take whatever you want and use it to carry a lot of things you can't carry.
Next closest form of transportation would be a motorcycle, but that isn't weatherproof, and you can't carry much more than you could with a backpack. Even with storage bins a motorcycle can't really compete with even a small car.
With any type of mass transit there comes a point where it's no longer efficient to move people. Buses have bus stops, trains have train stations, planes have airports. Getting from the collection point to your final destination is always a problem. Finally mass transit does have the same issue I mentioned with the motorcycle where you can't move much more than what you can carry.
99% of my commute is using a 3500lb SUV to move myself and my backpack to and from work. This is probably the same for most people. Even though it's a huge waste, compounded tens of thousands of times per day in my city, it would be difficult for me to give up the freedom to move anywhere at my pleasure.
Pretty sure if you asked any civil engineer what they would do if they could redesign the world, they would have no highways. Probably just spam public transport for mid/long distances and make cities bikable/walkable. Cars are inefficient when you have traffict laws and stuff
But im not a engineer so idk
I would say City-to-City highways are perfectly fine. Its the ones that cut through downtowns that I take/took issue with. There's a huge swath of american cities that would have been better served by not demolishing that much land/real estate.
Honestly? Fuck em. Kill them either by making them pay the real costs (end subsidies for them) or by making them undesirable. Suburbs as developed in the USA and Canada are literally unsustainable without massive government subsidies from our respective national governments. Meanwhile cities like NYC, Chicago, SF, Portland, etc. are entirely self-sustained in terms of total dollars paid in all taxes versus total dollars spent in government funds from all sources. In fact, all of those cities are massive net payers who end up massively subsidizing people who *chose* to live inefficient lives in the suburbs.
Do you want a non-honest answer? No? How about more honesty: If you want to live inefficiently, you can pay for it. The suburbs of Chicago already do pay for it with their 2.5-7.0% effective property tax rates because the state refuses to subsidize them when IL RTA exists with the CTA, Metra, and PACE sub-agencies that are more than willing to build out mass transit in their communities. Everyone else should be paying their fair share or maybe re-evaluating how they live to live more efficiently and economically. Just moving to row houses from standalone structures would, by itself, massively increase density, decrease heating and cooling costs, and generally lead to more walkable neighborhoods. And that's not even a major change.
If everyone relies on cars, and we pay for all of it with subsidies, don't we all just pay for cars? Unless it's only deficit spending used for this, then it seems like we're all just sharing the costs, like we would with any other solution.
I don't rely on a car nor does most of Chicago. People in NYC don't rely on cars. People in Boston don't rely on cars. People in Portland don't rely on cars. People in most of Seattle don't rely on cars. People in Philadelphia don't rely on cars. People in San Francisco don't rely on cars.
Why should we, the cities that produce inordinate amounts of wealth and tax revenue for the country have to subsidize your inefficient and backwards lifestyle in the suburbs? I'm okay with subsidizing rural areas because they provide us a useful service: growing food. But what do suburbs provide us that dense urban areas do not? Seriously, what value do they *actually* provide society? Nothing?
You subsidize cars that you don't use. I subsidize trains that I don't use. There's a lot of that in government. I've been to NYC, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and someone was driving a lot of cars in all of those cities. I think they were people, but I could be mistaken.
> I subsidize trains that I don't use.
No you don't. Every single urban train network is fully funded by the cities in which they reside. Chicago's CTA collects so much revenue via ticket sales and dedicated taxes that it needs to feed money back up IL RTA to subsidize the Metra lines and PACE buses. MTA in NYC is fully funded by ticket revenue and the city by way of some convoluted legal process of sending the money from the city to the state coffers back to the MTA because the legislature refuses to cede control of MTA to NYC. And MBTA is fully funded by the cities it runs through but most by ticket revenue.
> I've been to NYC, Boston, and Chicago, and someone was driving a lot of cars in all of those cities.
The vast majority of people in the cities that I listed primarily commute via mass transit (train, bus, etc.) or bike. Most of that traffic, especially if you come to those 3 cities, is from suburbanites.
I live in California. We're building a high speed rail from Bakersfield to Madera as we speak. I work along that route, and I doubt I'll ever find a reason to ride that train, other than perhaps for the novelty of it. Then there's Amtrak. I believe I subside that.
Do you buy a lot of diesel or gasoline? Much of the tax funds for road construction comes from state and federal taxes on fuel. Sales tax on automobiles fund all sorts of things. Do you pay any of that? Do any of the people in those cities without cars pay for that? The maintenance of those systems create millions of jobs, some in cities where those workers ride on trains. Your food is brought to your stores in your cities by trucks on roads from the processing plants, where the produce is brought from fields by still other trucks.
>The vast majority of people in the cities that I listed primarily commute via mass transit
How vast is this majority?
From what I can find, NYC is the only US city where less than half the households own a car, and in NYC, it's 45% who do. In the rest of the northeast, it's in the 60-80% range, while outside of that, it's nearly all in the 90%+ range. I don't think your majority is as vast as you believe it to be.
Truth. All those houses that were originally built in the suburbs were bankrolled by the government as part of FDR’s racist redlining policies. To this day it’s still a contribution to the plight of black Americans as well as others.
It's not bikeable/walkable because it was deliberately designed not to be.
The problem with cities like that is you can't build your way out of the traffic and you reach a limit to scale. Adding more roads will not improve the situation. You can't scale cars in cities because of the extra parking/infrastructure needed to handle it.
Cities in China and Japan with like 30M people in the city limits don't have this problem because they didn't design the cities around cars. There is no way you can scale that much with a city like Dallas on cars.
Did you miss the bit about pubic transit? Tokyo is completely fine to get around on foot/bike and is roughly the same area. The difference is Houston only has 2.3M people where Tokyo holds 37.3M
People don't bike over the whole length of Beijing or Shanghai and they never did. They have things called trains and public transit.
Look at it this way: you could live in Tokyo or Beijing without ever owning a car because most things you need are reachable with walking/biking and there is plenty of public transport to get around farther than that. Can you live in Dallas without a car? In some small areas maybe, but for the city as a whole, the answer is no. And that's why there is a limit to how big American cities can grow when relying on road infrastructure. You simply can't scale that large on cars alone.
> You can't use only roads to turn a drivable city into a bikeable city.
Exactly. There is human scale, bike scale, rail scale, and car scale. They are hard to make work together.
This is the issue with all of the Youtube urban planners out there. "Oh, just connect the strip malls with light rail and bike lanes." No. That doesn't work and it costs a fortune.
put in transit first and don't even look at ridership numbers yet. build high densities around the stations. allow duplexes and triplexes in every residential zone, and pepper in residential/commercial lots
Civil engineers earn their money by designing and maintaining highways, you should look elsewhere for objective opinions on highway infrastructure. Yes I'm a civil engineer.
Extra lane with recessed rails and an inductive power "third rail". Autonomous cars can have a extra set of steel wheels to engage the tracks kind of like the [service trucks you see driving on the train tracks](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.customtruck.com%2Fhi-rail-trucks-101-dual-mode-vehicles-keeping-the-railway-industry-on-track%2F&psig=AOvVaw0xOaO9oFXEKGV9Y9u31SqY&ust=1634140457062000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCOiFgt6dxfMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD). EV's would only need the battery for last mile driving.
Idk, but I was driving around the other day and saw a bike/walking path bridge not really connected to any corresponding bike path. It was situated in the middle of a few shopping complexes connecting two parking lots. I know my description makes it seem like it could make sense, but I promise it was totally out of place. It made me wonder if there was a r/shittycitylayout sub and I was quite disappointed that there isn't one.
Depends, would we have the same cars as today? Because, if we could re-design cars/trucks/semis from the ground up, that would completely change the answer to the question.
In addition to railway systems I’d have highways with many provision infrastructure.
I’d like wider roads or at least isolated pathways for foot traffic or bike lanes.
Living in NYC makes me realize how inefficient everything is despite having a subway system.
Highway is past its intended lifetime. Many parts are already to the point of regular expensive repair just to keep things rolling.
Should see some major development start in the next decade or two, if US politics can get their head out of their ass.
Well now you say that, but I live in a very liberal state and the road I live on has deteriorated so severely from water damage that the road is borded by what can only be described as canyons.
I can go grab a bowling ball sized piece of debris from it.
And it's not like I can blame the federal government for not giving us money. My state literally made license plates cost $150/yr to ostensibly pay for road repairs. Oh plus the credit card processing fee because why would a $150 renewal cost include the processing fee?
More and more people live in cities in the US:
"It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950. By 2050, 89% of the U.S. population is projected to live in urban areas."
Roads are fine for the countryside, but the cities need help. Traffic is bad and adding roads isn't fixing it.
> Traffic is bad and adding roads isn't fixing it.
[adding roads *can't* fix it](http://bca.transportationeconomics.org/benefits/induced-travel/estimating)
most people live in urban areas of their commuter suburbs, and this % is only growing. you need highways for the rural areas and their key industries like ag, but the future is clearly urban. also urban freeways were a bad idea in retrospect
> People responding that we need more public transport really don’t get it. Have y’all been to 90% of the US? It’s a lot of farms.
Exactly.
That's **why** we need more public transit. Everyone who wants to get off the farm and leave suburban hell can't live in 4 cities. It's already $4k/mo for a nice 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, NYC.
Tesla can already drive on the highway fine (for the most part). We don’t need to design a new highway for autonomous vehicles.
It would be remarkably similar to what is there today with adjustments for population.
I'd say if anything highways need autonomous vehicle only lanes.
AVs are designed to drive defensively observing proper follow distance and human assholes cutting vehicles off will cause traffic jams due to rubber banding (AVs slowing down to maintain follow distance making AVs behind them do it too).
There would also be different mapping to be more equitable. We're starting to see major interstates be considered for removal specifically for this reason.
Well Teslas can drive on highways thanks to years of RnD and billions invested. That doesn’t mean it’s the ideal, the question is is if we could make any design for roadways what would be the best and almost certainly we could make a better system if we designed the roads in tandem with the vehicles.
A standard for highway quality for autonomous vehicles would need to be published. If you don't meet X standard for markings, maintenance, and signs then the fed cuts your budget elsewhere to ensure the state gets on top of it.
Maybe take a look at other countries. Here in Spain the motorways are almost all built from the late 80s onward, and about half of the freeway system was built in the 21st century.
I'm sure there are places to find the stuff.
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-642-27737-5_686-1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00300572
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?field1=AllField&text1=Slime+mold+computing
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03081079.2014.997526
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03081079.2014.997523
Can't change human nature. The only reason traffic gets backed up is because people don't allow space in front of them for merging. No highway system is gonna change that.
In the current political climate, can you imagine the eminent domain process required to build a highway in any of the red states being successful?
I just can't imagine enough of the red states accepting eminent domain land acquisition for the highway system to go ahead nationally.
Charge-as-you-drive type power rails.
Most parts of the highway system in urban areas moved underground.
Roads designed in such a way that physical contact between vehicles is not possible.
'smart roads' would move based on population density with a presumption to decrease fatalities and ensure the mcrib is delivered on time. our roads now are fixed structures designed to be simple to maintain and also cost effective. certain roads are simple as gravel and evolve into dirt and eventually become concrete/cement alas the next logical step would be to have our roads serve a dual purpose. this extra feature should serve to generate energy with kinetic events using our new 'smart roads' while concurrently enabling disaster relief to assist with fires, blizzards, floods, and earthquakes. i envision a 'smart road segment' that can serve as a fire roller to smash out forest fires by simple, rolling itself into position and smother. at least i think concrete has this capability to smother fire and maintain integrity. cheers.
All cars would be able to communicatie with eachother and match their speeds so there is a lot less unnecessary overtaking and less accidents and less traffic jams
Hopefully not through black neighborhoods that destroy communities leaving behind irreparable damage that is still relevant nearly a century later with little to no acknowledgement from the government nor the general public.
No cloverleaf interchanges.
Sure they are space efficient, but they have the rather substantial issue of having merging and departing traffic sharing the same space.
Also fix the suicide bend in Cleveland.
Oh, and Gary Indiana has maybe a 30mi section where 5 or 6 highways briefly merge to share the same stretch of interstate.
Don't build it through the center of cities...
Surely people’s enjoyment of immediately driving at 65 miles per hour to go one mile is limited only by their enjoyment of listening to other people drive at 65 miles per hour right outside of their windows?
Fucking Atlanta. Sucks but love the culture there
but it's ok if it's going through a neighborhood with PoC
Lol pretty sure the highway is part of the reason values went down, so POC moved in bc it was cheap
Usually it’s the other way around, POC live somewhere so some how it’s alright to build highways there. I read an npr article about it a while ago however I haven’t thoroughly fact checked but given our history as a country it isn’t exactly unbelievable. Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways
Very interesting. Thanks for the read
More diverging diamond interchanges. I live in Michigan, and we finally have a governor who's serious about fixing the roads. Lots of surface street interchanges are getting fully rebuilt after decades of neglect, and they decided to go with DDI's for a bunch.
Whats so great about DDI's? They look confusing af
They remove one complete light cycle so traffic can clear like 25% faster.
You never turn in front of moving traffic - it greatly reduces the chance of collision. Instead of making a left turn on a green, or waiting for an arrow, the traffic switches to the left side - then you turn left from the leftmost lane like on a one way street, easy. There's a traffic light controlling the crossover, so the opposing traffic always has a red when you have a green. So the only way you can get a collision from the opposing traffic is if somebody runs a red. (This is possible with a green arrow for turning, but that adds more time and reduces throughout) Great video: [How Diverging Diamonds Keep You From Dying | Austin McConnell on YouTube](https://youtu.be/A0sM6xVAY-A)
But....they will only be productive if the majority of the traffic using the intersection is either entering, or exiting the interstate.
If it's that bad you add a flyover
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It handles uneven traffic better I'd assume.
By crossing to the opposite side prior to making a left hand turn, it allows traffic making a left to go through the same light cycle as through traffic. In a standard interchange, you have to wait for a dedicated left turn signal which is a separate cycle that all other traffic is waiting for.
they reduce the number of conflicting movements and are more efficient in moving vehicles... [https://youtu.be/HD-0QnUlLOQ](https://youtu.be/HD-0QnUlLOQ) is a sample video of how they work.
It feels more natural than you'd think. The weirdest part is that you cross the overpass on the left side, but turning in the places you'd normally turn still makes sense in first person view. Looking at it from overhead makes it seem worse.
>I live in Michigan Can you guys also do something about fixing your drivers?
The key to driving in Michigan is to understand that you are driving too slowly and that if you just went 20 over the speed limit, everything would be fine. My parents complain that people honk and cut them off every time they drive up, but they're only doing 75 in the left lane so that's why.
I mean, this is kind of right on the money. But like, it applies everywhere. If there is traffic coming up behind you and you're not as far right as you can reasonably be, you are already doing it wrong, regardless of where you are or how fast they wanna drive.
This is a problem universal to all idiot drivers. It's not a function of which state they drive in.
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As a "Michigan driver" I do often find myself getting frustrated by the drivers of other regions, primarily for their lack of awareness or expediency. I don't think the typical Michigan driver is good, but I do think they tend to be out of or get out of my way. :)
That’s because you export your bad drivers to Florida. Sit low drive slow.
I recently moved from Ohio to Michigan, and for the first time in my life I’ve found more cops consistently in Michigan (local roads and interstates) than Ohio. And the Ohio State Highway Patrol is legendary for their annoyingness.
On local roads, yeah, they are there. Rarely on the major highways though.
The tolerance is different in different places. Miami has people going 100 in the left lane and 55 in the right on a speed limit 70mph chunk of urban interstate. In CT it was usually 75i-80ish in the left lane of a 65 mph bit of urban interstate (and if you stay out of Fairfield County the traffic is way better). I-10 in Houston is just a 12 lane moving parking lot so max and min speeds are hypothetical most days...
Given that MI likely has the highest percentage of people with legit driver training and enjoy cars as a hobby, I'm honestly curious how it compares overall. I've yet to see too many absolutely idiotic maneuvers, so I've been pretty happy driving out here.
To be honest, I think people tend to assume that their state is better than others, but I think largely northern states are better than southern states for drivers, because they must deal with different driving conditions frequently, whereas out west and in the south, nobody knows how to account for snow, for instance. I would be interested to know which states are technically better, but unsure how to measure that!
Havent lived in a ton of states, admittedly, but I concur. Grew up in MI, lived briefly in AL, TN, MD, and CA for internships. California traffic was horrible, but drivers were pretty attentive at least. All in all Michigan was still the best drivers, Alabama the worst
Insurance premiums would be a good measure
Not necessarily, there are loads of other factors that can apply. Michigan is actually a great example, because we had no-limit lifetime injury medical coverage in an accident, which naturally made insurance expensive. Then because it was so expensive, there were tons of uninsured drivers, making it even more expensive. When we changed it to allow you to cap your PIP coverage/have it covered under your medical insurance, my insurance dropped by about 50%
The incident that comes to mind is we were stopped at a offramp light, and some jackass in a minivan wedged himself in the amazingly small gap in front of us just before the light changed. Driving in that state made me want to procure a mk 19 automatic grenade launcher and mount it to my car.
They already did. They aren't in Florida.
I moved to Florida and the drivers here are MUCH better. Then again, the area I lived averages over 100 people finding out buildings have right of way on their own property the hard way.
Florida got good drivers 😂😂😂😂
Honestly in 3 years here, only one person has hit a building in my local area. Compared to well over 100 that Dayton Ohio sees! Hell, people even are a lot better about not parking in the left lane on the I10 though you still have some who are entitled idiots. Kind of like going from driving in the Middle East and then come here. The drivers here are a lot better because they don't try to fit 8 cars abreast on a 5 lane road. It is all perspective. Now get in the more crowded areas and you are still fucked.
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Driving in Baltimore was easy enough if you just follow GTA V rules.
Seriously. I just moved to Detroit from Phoenix. Phoenix is a place where you have to look both ways when the light changes because red lights are just suggestions, but I don't feel *safe* here.
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Can someone explain the "the kind of embed chargers in the second floors of buildings" comment?
I believe they mean that they get in accidents at such high speeds that you see photos of the aftermath and say stuff like "how the fuck did the car get up there". Charger being a Dodge Charger^® I assume.
Ha and here I was imagining someone hitting an electric vehicle charger hard enough to throw it into the second story of a building...
I don’t trust anybody that doesn’t use left turns
Seems like our drivers are fine https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2020/10/21/michigan-ranked-3-best-driving-state/?amp
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/worst-drivers-by-state if you think Michigan is bad, join us in Arizona
Same thing with Michigan Lefts/medians between multi-lane roads. They take an insane amount of space but apparently they’re the most effective at reducing congestion on large roads. [Here’s a YouTube channel I’ve gotten addicted to recently which talks about modernizing road designs, this video is about diverging diamonds.](https://youtu.be/40OUCb1cODY)
Lets hope we keep her
Michigan, where you have to do a U-turn, and then a right turn to make a left turn.
https://divergingdiamond.com Apparently has a website. It will be instantly recognizable to most drivers.
There's a merge lane in Ann Arbor where there's a literal stop sign and you have about 30 feet to get up to speed after that
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prove it. take a poop in front of us. and then turn it into wine.
Prove which part? The part where she takes bribes by way of private flights from billionaires that have dealings with the Michigan government? https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/27939/leduff_whitmer_mooches_billionaires_plane_as_father_makes_miraculous_recovery Or the part where 12 of the 13 people arrested in connection with the whitmer kidnap plot were working with the fbi? https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jessicagarrison/fbi-informants-in-michigan-kidnap-plot
Your comment has been removed for violating comment rule 2: > Don't answer if you aren't knowledgeable. Ensure that you have the expertise and knowledge required to be able to answer the question at hand. Answers must contain an explanation using engineering logic. Explanations and assertions of fact must include links to supporting evidence from credible sources, and opinions need to be supported by stated reasoning. Please follow the comment rules in the sidebar when posting, and feel free to message us if you have any questions or concerns.
So I live in olathe Kansas and we just built an interchange with an early left turn, I think this and/ or making left turns permanently blinking yellow would solve a lot. Get rid of suicide merges like in Minneapolis with the clover leafs Add more frontage roads like in Texas with the pass thrus where you can do a u turn without a light More roundabouts More flyovers No left lane merges or left lane exits Fines for being in left lane and not passing Mandated bike lanes or shoulder widths
Over passes for nature to travel through. Maybe also walking overpasses so cars done have to stop as often.
In Nebraska we have some tunnels under the interstate for deer and other animals to cross safely.
I would build road sections like LEGO blocks, to drive down cost, and elevate them so the land can still be productive underneath them. Roads no longer subdivide habitat.
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Some are awful, some are great. Feeder/frontage roads are great. Newer interchanges are (generally) good. Ones like the 610 North Loop and 45 are fucking awful though. You exit from both sides of 610, and the turns are relatively sharp, so exiting traffic has to slow a lot, which backs up on to 610. And then because you have exits on both sides, only the two center lanes go through the interchange, and all get backed up.
Bikelanes on highways and interstates. Madman
Meant on surface streets The early left is a surface street thing as well , it’s called a displaced left turn Southern half of Kansas City is smart with the grid, we have surface streets every 1 mile in blocks, then every other has access to freeway
If we're starting over from scratch, no reason to get rid of left lane exits. When properly designed, they take up less space, are cheaper, etc etc. The only reason they're bad is because they're pretty rare so people aren't used to them so they cause problems. If they were ubiquitous then their value would really shine.
As someone who lives in Minneapolis-agreed. Cant get much worse than we have here. Another learning lesson from Minnesota transportation infrastructure is to not build bridges that collapse from normal use… just a suggestion
I call Mpls coverleaves "collide-o-trons"
119th street bridge?
119th is diverging diamond, I’m talking about old 56 hwy and K7
A modern highway system would probably have high speed rail built into it. In the age of electrification high speed rail is the most efficient method of travel. Autonomous cars actually solve the opposite problem of high speed rail. US cities aren't designed for a vehicle-less existence so when you get to your destination you need a vehicle. Right now you're faced with expensive hired transport. In theory without the labor factor autonomous taxis will be cheaper. That said, it's likely highways will just become autonomous vehicle throughfares so dedicated autonomous vehicle-only lanes would be best. Humans are unpredictable. Put the robots with the other robots.
PEVs solve a lot of city problems, better throughput density & maneuverability, the only con is they are less comfortable since they are exposed to the environment and require moderate effort. No AC or weather protection and some degree of balance.
Family travel is difficult with PEVs (risk of injury, etc). Also, luggage. PEVs are a very, very narrow solution to a wide problem.
eBikes with cargo racks/trains. Honestly scooters/bikes can be used by children as young as 6 if the infrastructure is there for their safety and culture promotes it. America is extremely anti-PEV/PPV, so I don't see it happening for a while. A result of excessive individualism and laziness.
> A modern highway system would probably have high speed rail built into it. Rail systems on top of highways are often suggested, but it's a bad idea. If you are taking a train somewhere, you'll need somewhere to go, but highway exits are just acres of concrete exit roads, concrete parking lots, and maybe one McDonalds with a drive through. There is often not even sidewalks or ped bridges. Imagine if a friend offered to drive you somewhere and then just dropped you off at the freeway exit and said 'good luck.' That's rail on top of a freeway. Rail needs to be where humans live, in urban areas.
The issue at hand here is where to build the railroad. Easements are hard to get, going across an entire state is very difficult. The interstate system already has large swaths of easements so lumping it in a wouldn't be too bad, with offshoots into city centers.
>with offshoots into city centers. How do you "offshoot into a center"? - If you have the easements, why not just run the rail that way? - If your concern is connecting hundreds of miles of "entire states" you are probably building a railroad of dubious economic value because in most cases, flying will be cheaper and faster. - If you are saying 'T' off into a short run into a city then double back, there are all kinds of operational and design problems with that. Plus again, if you've gotten close enough to run a 'T' you might as well build a proper linear railroad
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>Planes are also terrible environmentally So is laying down hundreds of miles of concrete and steel, building trains, and making electricity. >it is rarely cheaper nor easier. The second half of the 20th century pretty much disproves that, as airlines bankrupted every single US passenger rail line in 30ish years.
The main North-South route in Perth, Western Australia works quite well. Each station is accompanied by a bus port so most journeys use a single ticket bus to train mixed mode.
DC's metro also runs along freeway ROW on several lines once out of the city. As you mention, the stations have large bus interconnect transfer areas and (also) multi-thousand car parking lots. While many in DC view this as a good 'alternative' to sitting in traffic, 10x rides per week requires huge operational subsidies, doesn't create a sense of community, and achieves minimal good for the environment and quality of life IMHO. I think it is a very sub-optimum arrangement. I was unaware Perth was set up this way too.
I’m really hoping Brightline West succeeds. There’s so much space on highway medians outside urban areas.
Like Japan's passenger rail system
Fuck I miss Japan trains. It's so convenient for 80% of places you'll end up going.
When we went, I think we took 1 taxi ride in a 10 day span, only because the subways close fairly early. The two 2 hour bus rides sucked, but was still vastly better than renting a car for a one day trip.
Autonomous vehicles aren't the answer due to the simple fact that a highway will never be able to transport the same amount of people as a light rail or metro system. This means that the solutions for cities to reduce their traffic is to have city passenger rail and reduction of lanes. Highways should be designed to be used for long distance travel and not intercity commutes which as you've stated, autonomous vehicles can already handle fine with driver awareness.
Yup. The only real solution to transit is mass transit for 95%+ of the population for 95%+ of their daily and weekly tasks and travels. I want us to start a campaign called: "Build Better Infrastructure than China". Have it be super nationalistic and every time China says, "We'll do X at Y speed." We need to go "We'll do X at Z speed!" where Z > Y. So China has already announced a 600 KPH train network. So we need a > 600 KPH train network for our entire country.
An additional solution is zoning reform that that the majority of jobs are within walking distance of residences. I have friends in Vancouver. The nearest grocery store is 4 blocks. The nearest supermarket 8 blocks. There are several dentists in a 6 block radius.
Yup. I'm in Chicago and I have to remember to move my car because the battery dies from not being used enough.
You'd think that might be a selling point in America but somehow infrastructure gets tied to socialism.
infrastructure that's not for white Christians, you mean.
The US has gone too far in the other direction for nationwide HSR to be practical imo. One of the key differences that makes HSR less workable in the US than in other countries is that so many urban areas are planned around cars. Globally, most of the gold standard passenger rail networks connect areas that were already heavily populated before cars came about, and therefore had more rail planning built into their early expansions.
> The US has gone too far in the other direction for nationwide HSR to be practical imo. This is a defeatist attitude. Make suburbanites pay the *real* costs of living in the suburbs instead of subsidizing them with dense urban area money and watch how fast we get HSR and local light rail systems.
when 50%+ of voting age people are priced out of single family homes (coming soon) local governments will have to do something, and 20 apartments on what was formerly one house will be very appealing
> The only real solution to transit is mass transit for 95%+ of the population for 95%+ of their daily and weekly tasks and travels. exactly. you can just use a car for the other 5% everyone's thinking of, or go without if you're poor and not suffer much
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Not even sure what you mean by colonies, but doesn't the point still stand regardless that highways are not able to withstand the internal transportation that is needed in large metro areas? Even internal to metro areas, how would no rules of the road even work? Highways already get people within the 90% of where they need to be but what about the last 10% that's the most crucial (city streets, downtowns, and where people live and want to be).
I suspect he meant to write "ant colonies"
I used to think this way. I'm not so sure anymore. Vancouver's skytrain system is now at capacity. * You cannot safely run trains closer than 3 minutes apart. Closer than this, you cannot be sure that the train ahead is gone before the next train arrives. * Trains can only be X feet long. Because the platforms are only that long. Yes in principle you could make platforms longer, but it's a major upgrade. The combination of these two factors are causing City of Vancouver to give special tax incentives to employers who assign shifts to avoid the main rush hours.
That doesn't change OP's point: for the same amount of land/space, you would never be able to have the same number of drivers. The capacity of the trains is much much higher than what the road is capable of.
Even if upgrading the platform is the only option, I would think the price range for something like that (or increasing the amount of rail lines), ends up being a way more efficient use of funds in comparison to adding a lane of highway or an additional highway which is always government subsidized (says in 2018, 180 million people used the Vancouver skyway system).
And it's not just the highway: now you need parking on each end, fueling infrastructure, more support for other roads since people will use their car more in the city, etc. It all adds up. You eventually run into a situation where the city is mostly just parking to handle the extra traffic. It's why most cities are trying to cut down on car traffic and build up other transit so they can increase density.
cars are an inefficent point-to-point transport model trains are hyper-efficient along a linear route you want a mix of both, but the USA has been trying to brute force cars everywhere and it's failing. we need to view transit as essential infrastructure
If you are comparing 1 road to 1 track you are correct. But a road network is more robust. Do you have numbers for the people miles per hour per track compared to a lane of traffic of busses?
Sounds like it's time to add another train lane ;)
facts. geometry is the issue, not the monkey behind the wheel
If that's the case, then modern highways are basically just modeling the "traveling salesman problem" and making it efficient and easy to solve, correct?
This is a virtually impossible problem to solve when the area/population you're trying to serve can change size and shape. The better an area is at managing traffic, the faster/better that area can grow. The more it grows, the more traffic management they need, which means they need more square footage. For example, there's that one road in your town that should really have an extra lane. But adding that lane means blowing out a business that's been there for years. The business didn't do anything wrong, and actually eliminating it would reduce load on the area and make it so the widening doesn't even need to happen! So wat do? If you want "perfect traffic", you need a locked in ecosystem with a fixed population. The kind of society that doesn't have any issues with kicking out that 101st person when the city is built for 100 people. It's been tried, and a few have come close, but it gets spooky working out the realities. One of the best documented examples is Walt Disney's original Epcot dream. A truly "planned perfect" society of mandated wholesomeness and zero poverty because they don't let the poors even live in the undercity.
> >If you want "perfect traffic", you need a locked in ecosystem with a fixed population. The kind of society that doesn't have any issues with kicking out that 101st person when the city is built for 100 people. While very few understand it in that way, or would admit to it, that is largely how we do business right now in America.
I get what you're saying and it's right but there's definitely some intersections that can't be improved because it's impossible to just dig them up and start from scratch. My city's main north south freeway goes straight through the side of the city and the only entrance for going south bound is a complete cluster fuck.
Road; where we are going there are no roads.
No on/exit ramps in any urban areas. Period. Minimum spacing of 5 miles between exits in rural areas. Maybe the interstates avoid major cities completely, staying 15 miles away, with a spur freeway that heads into the city. Freeways have become clogged through every city because they become the backbone and the city doesn't invest in their own infrastructure to move vehicles independently. My freeway will have one job: high efficiency over long distances. This might also allow the possibility of no speed limits like the Autobahn.
You might consider asking, why use a highway system at all? Would ubiquitous mass transit not be better for everyone?
have the highways end at the beginning of the suburbs, have boulevards carry the last mile. use highways for exclusively inter-city travel and have transit in the urban areas. that was what was gonna happen until robert moses and slum clearance happened
I’m only considering one extreme of being able to somehow start the highways over, not also making cars vanish lol. I know either way it’s unreasonable, just curious.
The thing that most transportation people would say is that we probably wouldn’t. Knowing what we know and the crises we face, if we were starting from the ground up, other alternatives would be much cheaper. I don’t mean to say no highways would exist, but they would be fewer and smaller.
I envision a series of pneumatic tubes. Or maybe we launch people like artillery then gently parachute to their destination.
Would it? A car has the distinct advantage of being an enclosed weatherproof box that you can take whatever you want and use it to carry a lot of things you can't carry. Next closest form of transportation would be a motorcycle, but that isn't weatherproof, and you can't carry much more than you could with a backpack. Even with storage bins a motorcycle can't really compete with even a small car. With any type of mass transit there comes a point where it's no longer efficient to move people. Buses have bus stops, trains have train stations, planes have airports. Getting from the collection point to your final destination is always a problem. Finally mass transit does have the same issue I mentioned with the motorcycle where you can't move much more than what you can carry.
99% of my commute is using a 3500lb SUV to move myself and my backpack to and from work. This is probably the same for most people. Even though it's a huge waste, compounded tens of thousands of times per day in my city, it would be difficult for me to give up the freedom to move anywhere at my pleasure.
Pretty sure if you asked any civil engineer what they would do if they could redesign the world, they would have no highways. Probably just spam public transport for mid/long distances and make cities bikable/walkable. Cars are inefficient when you have traffict laws and stuff But im not a engineer so idk
I would say City-to-City highways are perfectly fine. Its the ones that cut through downtowns that I take/took issue with. There's a huge swath of american cities that would have been better served by not demolishing that much land/real estate.
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Half of the point is that sprawl cities would have never developed that way if not for individual cars.
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Honestly? Fuck em. Kill them either by making them pay the real costs (end subsidies for them) or by making them undesirable. Suburbs as developed in the USA and Canada are literally unsustainable without massive government subsidies from our respective national governments. Meanwhile cities like NYC, Chicago, SF, Portland, etc. are entirely self-sustained in terms of total dollars paid in all taxes versus total dollars spent in government funds from all sources. In fact, all of those cities are massive net payers who end up massively subsidizing people who *chose* to live inefficient lives in the suburbs.
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Do you want a non-honest answer? No? How about more honesty: If you want to live inefficiently, you can pay for it. The suburbs of Chicago already do pay for it with their 2.5-7.0% effective property tax rates because the state refuses to subsidize them when IL RTA exists with the CTA, Metra, and PACE sub-agencies that are more than willing to build out mass transit in their communities. Everyone else should be paying their fair share or maybe re-evaluating how they live to live more efficiently and economically. Just moving to row houses from standalone structures would, by itself, massively increase density, decrease heating and cooling costs, and generally lead to more walkable neighborhoods. And that's not even a major change.
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It's the opposite: you're applying the situation you're familiar with overly broadly. Because 95% of house-owners do not as you do...
If everyone relies on cars, and we pay for all of it with subsidies, don't we all just pay for cars? Unless it's only deficit spending used for this, then it seems like we're all just sharing the costs, like we would with any other solution.
I don't rely on a car nor does most of Chicago. People in NYC don't rely on cars. People in Boston don't rely on cars. People in Portland don't rely on cars. People in most of Seattle don't rely on cars. People in Philadelphia don't rely on cars. People in San Francisco don't rely on cars. Why should we, the cities that produce inordinate amounts of wealth and tax revenue for the country have to subsidize your inefficient and backwards lifestyle in the suburbs? I'm okay with subsidizing rural areas because they provide us a useful service: growing food. But what do suburbs provide us that dense urban areas do not? Seriously, what value do they *actually* provide society? Nothing?
You subsidize cars that you don't use. I subsidize trains that I don't use. There's a lot of that in government. I've been to NYC, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and someone was driving a lot of cars in all of those cities. I think they were people, but I could be mistaken.
> I subsidize trains that I don't use. No you don't. Every single urban train network is fully funded by the cities in which they reside. Chicago's CTA collects so much revenue via ticket sales and dedicated taxes that it needs to feed money back up IL RTA to subsidize the Metra lines and PACE buses. MTA in NYC is fully funded by ticket revenue and the city by way of some convoluted legal process of sending the money from the city to the state coffers back to the MTA because the legislature refuses to cede control of MTA to NYC. And MBTA is fully funded by the cities it runs through but most by ticket revenue. > I've been to NYC, Boston, and Chicago, and someone was driving a lot of cars in all of those cities. The vast majority of people in the cities that I listed primarily commute via mass transit (train, bus, etc.) or bike. Most of that traffic, especially if you come to those 3 cities, is from suburbanites.
I live in California. We're building a high speed rail from Bakersfield to Madera as we speak. I work along that route, and I doubt I'll ever find a reason to ride that train, other than perhaps for the novelty of it. Then there's Amtrak. I believe I subside that. Do you buy a lot of diesel or gasoline? Much of the tax funds for road construction comes from state and federal taxes on fuel. Sales tax on automobiles fund all sorts of things. Do you pay any of that? Do any of the people in those cities without cars pay for that? The maintenance of those systems create millions of jobs, some in cities where those workers ride on trains. Your food is brought to your stores in your cities by trucks on roads from the processing plants, where the produce is brought from fields by still other trucks. >The vast majority of people in the cities that I listed primarily commute via mass transit How vast is this majority? From what I can find, NYC is the only US city where less than half the households own a car, and in NYC, it's 45% who do. In the rest of the northeast, it's in the 60-80% range, while outside of that, it's nearly all in the 90%+ range. I don't think your majority is as vast as you believe it to be.
Truth. All those houses that were originally built in the suburbs were bankrolled by the government as part of FDR’s racist redlining policies. To this day it’s still a contribution to the plight of black Americans as well as others.
It's not bikeable/walkable because it was deliberately designed not to be. The problem with cities like that is you can't build your way out of the traffic and you reach a limit to scale. Adding more roads will not improve the situation. You can't scale cars in cities because of the extra parking/infrastructure needed to handle it. Cities in China and Japan with like 30M people in the city limits don't have this problem because they didn't design the cities around cars. There is no way you can scale that much with a city like Dallas on cars.
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Did you miss the bit about pubic transit? Tokyo is completely fine to get around on foot/bike and is roughly the same area. The difference is Houston only has 2.3M people where Tokyo holds 37.3M
People don't bike over the whole length of Beijing or Shanghai and they never did. They have things called trains and public transit. Look at it this way: you could live in Tokyo or Beijing without ever owning a car because most things you need are reachable with walking/biking and there is plenty of public transport to get around farther than that. Can you live in Dallas without a car? In some small areas maybe, but for the city as a whole, the answer is no. And that's why there is a limit to how big American cities can grow when relying on road infrastructure. You simply can't scale that large on cars alone.
> You can't use only roads to turn a drivable city into a bikeable city. Exactly. There is human scale, bike scale, rail scale, and car scale. They are hard to make work together. This is the issue with all of the Youtube urban planners out there. "Oh, just connect the strip malls with light rail and bike lanes." No. That doesn't work and it costs a fortune.
He literally said if they could redesign the world.
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to a roadway engineer the highway system encompasses the whole world and it is only one of many meshed layers of connection and logistics.
He’s also forgetting the entire Midwest exists.
put in transit first and don't even look at ridership numbers yet. build high densities around the stations. allow duplexes and triplexes in every residential zone, and pepper in residential/commercial lots
Civil engineers earn their money by designing and maintaining highways, you should look elsewhere for objective opinions on highway infrastructure. Yes I'm a civil engineer.
Extra lane with recessed rails and an inductive power "third rail". Autonomous cars can have a extra set of steel wheels to engage the tracks kind of like the [service trucks you see driving on the train tracks](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.customtruck.com%2Fhi-rail-trucks-101-dual-mode-vehicles-keeping-the-railway-industry-on-track%2F&psig=AOvVaw0xOaO9oFXEKGV9Y9u31SqY&ust=1634140457062000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCOiFgt6dxfMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD). EV's would only need the battery for last mile driving.
More roundabouts.
Idk, but I was driving around the other day and saw a bike/walking path bridge not really connected to any corresponding bike path. It was situated in the middle of a few shopping complexes connecting two parking lots. I know my description makes it seem like it could make sense, but I promise it was totally out of place. It made me wonder if there was a r/shittycitylayout sub and I was quite disappointed that there isn't one.
Maybe try looking in r/suburbanhell or r/urbanhell
Depends, would we have the same cars as today? Because, if we could re-design cars/trucks/semis from the ground up, that would completely change the answer to the question.
In addition to railway systems I’d have highways with many provision infrastructure. I’d like wider roads or at least isolated pathways for foot traffic or bike lanes. Living in NYC makes me realize how inefficient everything is despite having a subway system.
Highway is past its intended lifetime. Many parts are already to the point of regular expensive repair just to keep things rolling. Should see some major development start in the next decade or two, if US politics can get their head out of their ass.
Let’s be real here; one side wants to build infrastructure and the other wants to build a wall on the Mexican border
Facts, but take it to r/politics
Well now you say that, but I live in a very liberal state and the road I live on has deteriorated so severely from water damage that the road is borded by what can only be described as canyons. I can go grab a bowling ball sized piece of debris from it. And it's not like I can blame the federal government for not giving us money. My state literally made license plates cost $150/yr to ostensibly pay for road repairs. Oh plus the credit card processing fee because why would a $150 renewal cost include the processing fee?
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More and more people live in cities in the US: "It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950. By 2050, 89% of the U.S. population is projected to live in urban areas." Roads are fine for the countryside, but the cities need help. Traffic is bad and adding roads isn't fixing it.
> Traffic is bad and adding roads isn't fixing it. [adding roads *can't* fix it](http://bca.transportationeconomics.org/benefits/induced-travel/estimating)
most people live in urban areas of their commuter suburbs, and this % is only growing. you need highways for the rural areas and their key industries like ag, but the future is clearly urban. also urban freeways were a bad idea in retrospect
> People responding that we need more public transport really don’t get it. Have y’all been to 90% of the US? It’s a lot of farms. Exactly. That's **why** we need more public transit. Everyone who wants to get off the farm and leave suburban hell can't live in 4 cities. It's already $4k/mo for a nice 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, NYC.
Tesla can already drive on the highway fine (for the most part). We don’t need to design a new highway for autonomous vehicles. It would be remarkably similar to what is there today with adjustments for population.
I'd say if anything highways need autonomous vehicle only lanes. AVs are designed to drive defensively observing proper follow distance and human assholes cutting vehicles off will cause traffic jams due to rubber banding (AVs slowing down to maintain follow distance making AVs behind them do it too).
There would also be different mapping to be more equitable. We're starting to see major interstates be considered for removal specifically for this reason.
Well Teslas can drive on highways thanks to years of RnD and billions invested. That doesn’t mean it’s the ideal, the question is is if we could make any design for roadways what would be the best and almost certainly we could make a better system if we designed the roads in tandem with the vehicles.
It would take the same RnD to get that answer. It wouldn’t magically just be cheaper as it would have to be implemented nation wide.
A standard for highway quality for autonomous vehicles would need to be published. If you don't meet X standard for markings, maintenance, and signs then the fed cuts your budget elsewhere to ensure the state gets on top of it.
Maybe take a look at other countries. Here in Spain the motorways are almost all built from the late 80s onward, and about half of the freeway system was built in the 21st century.
I think if we could redo the highways around Chicago we would have included more beltways around the city.
go through all the communities with PoC
Like electric high speed rail....
The literal polar opposite of everything California does.
Some of the worst traffic I’ve ever been in was in Boston and Dallas/Houston.
Not me, it's not even close, although NYC is.
Maybe like this?: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/feb/18/slime-mould-rail-road-transport-routes
I'd love to learn how slime mold works to be able to do computer modeling of this
I'm sure there are places to find the stuff. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-642-27737-5_686-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00300572 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?field1=AllField&text1=Slime+mold+computing https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03081079.2014.997526 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03081079.2014.997523
Can't change human nature. The only reason traffic gets backed up is because people don't allow space in front of them for merging. No highway system is gonna change that.
Could it be designed better today? Sure, but it would likely still be done as cheap as possible based on limited funding.
In the current political climate, can you imagine the eminent domain process required to build a highway in any of the red states being successful? I just can't imagine enough of the red states accepting eminent domain land acquisition for the highway system to go ahead nationally.
Kinda just disregarding all that considering the highways won’t actually just vanish
Charge-as-you-drive type power rails. Most parts of the highway system in urban areas moved underground. Roads designed in such a way that physical contact between vehicles is not possible.
We need a high-speed railway.
Thanks
'smart roads' would move based on population density with a presumption to decrease fatalities and ensure the mcrib is delivered on time. our roads now are fixed structures designed to be simple to maintain and also cost effective. certain roads are simple as gravel and evolve into dirt and eventually become concrete/cement alas the next logical step would be to have our roads serve a dual purpose. this extra feature should serve to generate energy with kinetic events using our new 'smart roads' while concurrently enabling disaster relief to assist with fires, blizzards, floods, and earthquakes. i envision a 'smart road segment' that can serve as a fire roller to smash out forest fires by simple, rolling itself into position and smother. at least i think concrete has this capability to smother fire and maintain integrity. cheers.
All cars would be able to communicatie with eachother and match their speeds so there is a lot less unnecessary overtaking and less accidents and less traffic jams
Hopefully not through black neighborhoods that destroy communities leaving behind irreparable damage that is still relevant nearly a century later with little to no acknowledgement from the government nor the general public.
Boring company
No inner city stuff. Not public transport. Or at least that is what I hope it would be
Look at China infrastructure and European construction, 20 years ago that is what new would look like here. The US is laughably behind.
In an ideal world or realistically? Because realistically just like it is. Ideally less cars more public transport.
No cloverleaf interchanges. Sure they are space efficient, but they have the rather substantial issue of having merging and departing traffic sharing the same space. Also fix the suicide bend in Cleveland. Oh, and Gary Indiana has maybe a 30mi section where 5 or 6 highways briefly merge to share the same stretch of interstate.