Frank Krygowski <
frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
On 12/21/2024 4:05 PM, Roger Merriman wrote:
Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@gXXmail.com> wrote:
... Many people are afraid to ride on normal streets.
They believe or pretend there's no way to be safe if motor vehicles
share their pavement.
You get what you design for, build wide road with slip roads or bell
junctions so motorists don’t need to slow then unsurprisingly that’s what
you get, ie motor traffic.
I agree, that is a problem; and from what I've seen, it's much more a
problem in the U.S. than east of the Atlantic - as usual, I think the
root cause is our tendency toward sprawl and the greater average travel distances that result.
Narrow roads aka road diets which seems to be an America thing the phrase
that is, make junctions so motor traffic has to slow and the distance to
cross is less, add in filters etc to prevent though traffic etc aka rat
runs and places become more walkable and attractive to cyclists.
And I agree with that as well. But convincing the voters is a formidable problem. Officials that slow traffic won't last long in office.
Part of the problem is psychological. For some reason, for most people a
30 second delay while driving feels like roughly a two minute delay; and
an actual two minute delay feels like forever.
That’s one reason why transit ie bus/trains need to be frequent and regular ie on time. As waiting at a bus stop even for few minutes can feel like
days etc!
True story: A particular street that I have to drive every day got a
"road diet" maybe a year to 18 months ago. Four lanes were reduced to
two, one in each direction (plus bike lanes, almost totally unused).
Anyway, at a couple intersections with larger roads, there have been
times the queue waiting for a green light has been so long that I've
missed the green and had to sit through another cycle of the lights.
Was it critical? No, and I realize that extra minute or two makes no practical difference. But despite my "It doesn't matter; it doesn't
matter" mantra, it felt very irritating.
I think very few motorists use that mantra.
As ever the devil is in the detail, to be honest with a large town/small
city like Youngstown I think most folks would expect some traffic if they
drove into the centre.
Are number of things could be done, some good some imperfect such as bus lane/routes down the freeway that criss cross it, since there is huge
freeways close to most folks homes, and the tow will be paying for them ie maintenance etc.
I’d note that America is rather different situation ie not as simple as “just go Dutch” who planned similar car centric highways through cities as did lots of places, but American built them! In other places only a few got built my commute is along the track of one of the intended motorway rings
of london never built.
Ie this is simple = wrong situation, I think the planning laws ie zoning
might be the easiest thing to slowly change away from being so car centric.
But either way for America it’s a much more challenging situation than it
was in Europe.
Roger Merriman
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)