City planning / transportation thread - Autists welcome

[Xarpho]

I've been wanting to make this thread for a while, initially envisioned as a Community Watch thread for a certain group of websites that talk about "city planning" but talk mostly in terms of railroads and bicycles, ranging from wanting to adapt Eurocentric planning to full on "live in the pod, eat the bugs" type thinking. (Many of the articles are anti-car and cite flawed studies, and often have absurd logic leaps). But Kiwis (this forum, not New Zealanders) have an interest in this type of thing, so I'd thought I'd make a thread here for general city planning discussion / transportation talk / laugh at spergs/autists who think they're waging a holy war against suburban-style living.

 

[GHTD]

IndyGo (the public transit in my city) just constructed an electric BRT line two years ago that runs from the north side down to the southern city line. Lesson learned, do not buy BYD buses. They will fail and break down on you constantly, and BYD also lies about the mile range on their electric batteries. They do not go 200 miles like they claim.

 

[NigKid]

My city started a mini bus service like 2 years ago, they're small modern busses with a capacity of around 20 that drive a certain route but you can get off or on at any point. They're pretty bloody awesome and I wish they'd extend them to the entire city, not Just the test area where they're running now.

 

[Beautiful Border]

Not Just Bikes, Ecko Gecko, and City Beautiful are all pretty good channels if you're into urban planning.

 

[Poppavalyim Andropoff]

 

[Sped Xing]

I hate Houston, but I also love it for being garlic to these vampires.

 

[Dialtone]

If you ride a bike on a thoroughfare and can't keep up with traffic you deserve a wedgie in those awful bike shorts.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

Seattle keeps trying to make cycling a thing, despite the city being historically planned around the automobile, filled with steep hills, rainy for 8 months out of the year, dark by evening rush hour in the winter, and having a high rate of bicycle theft thanks to all the feral tweakers. This leads to the city doing things like removing an entire lane of traffic from 2nd Ave, a major thoroughfare out of downtown, to replace it with a bike lane. This lane has its own traffic lights, which doesn't work well since a lot of cyclists are idiots who don't think they need to follow traffic lights. And on top of that, most drivers are idiots who don't read the signs that say "NO TURN ON RED". As a result even the city's cycling lobbies don't like the lanes and just tell cyclists to ride on the sidewalk or in traffic instead.

Oh, and the Seattle Department of Transportation is led by a guy named Sam Zimbabwe. No, he's not black, he's Jewish.

 

[Chongqing]

having a high rate of bicycle theft thanks to all the feral tweakers

If you think about it, this is is the biggest obstacle to their designs ever coming to fruition. Imagine if every 10th time you parked your car outside of a locked garage, it was stolen. Let's say it happened that often. And then, what if the police didn't care, because it's legally the same as stealing a sweatshirt? Pretty much anyone wouldn't want to rely on cycling alone after that. All of these city governments want to be NYC, with a fully functioning subway system and free van rides for the disabled. When it comes to planning bike lanes, it's all pandering to the climate change mob.

In my city, the biggest problem is housing. For some reason, the people here seem culturally averse to building apartment buildings that are over 2 stories tall. So what they do is they build out, further and further from the city center. Little two story hovels for renters and their dogs. I hate it.

I don't know if this goes into city design per se, but the amount of dog shit where I live has reached unbelievable levels. Every public space is a dog's bathroom, and the distance between poop bags and bins always seems to be impossibly far.

Not to mention, the amount of dogs in small apartments is just...too much. Overwhelming.

 

[goodbudweiser]

Not Just Bikes, Ecko Gecko, and City Beautiful are all pretty good channels if you're into urban planning.

I personally don't see much variety with just these three. I kind of expected more train content vs 'some planning bad actually'
One video felt like a life hack.

 

[Xarpho]

Seattle keeps trying to make cycling a thing, despite the city being historically planned around the automobile, filled with steep hills, rainy for 8 months out of the year, dark by evening rush hour in the winter, and having a high rate of bicycle theft thanks to all the feral tweakers. This leads to the city doing things like removing an entire lane of traffic from 2nd Ave, a major thoroughfare out of downtown, to replace it with a bike lane. This lane has its own traffic lights, which doesn't work well since a lot of cyclists are idiots who don't think they need to follow traffic lights. And on top of that, most drivers are idiots who don't read the signs that say "NO TURN ON RED". As a result even the city's cycling lobbies don't like the lanes and just tell cyclists to ride on the sidewalk or in traffic instead.

Beyond just Seattle being a failed state, I keep trying to tell people on /n/ that European-style bike infrastructure (which is what NJB and others argue for) is only going to work in a population where they follow rules, not a bunch of lyrca-clad idiots who think they're more or less above the law when it comes to road rules.

 

[Toolbox]

Here is how to design a city: 10 lane freeways instead of regular roads and every intersection is a roundabout.

 

[GHTD]

Here is how to design a city: 10 lane freeways instead of regular roads and every intersection is a roundabout.

There's a place in my state that's pretty much done the whole "every intersection is a roundabout" thing already.

Unusual design slashes injury crashes for Roundabout City

In Carmel, Indiana, double-teardrop roundabouts reduced injury crashes by 84 percent at the intersections where they were installed.

www.iihs.org

 

[Xarpho]

I want to debate @Mr. Skeltal about why "stroads" is just a buzzword in the non-car circles and actually meaningless.

 

[Sped Xing]

A stroad is a strong toad.

 

[Toolbox]

I want to debate @Mr. Skeltal about why "stroads" is just a buzzword in the non-car circles and actually meaningless.

The not bikes guy defined it as a freeway type street that is combined with attempts at regular "road' infrastructure, right? I haven't heard what the general roadless planners actually claim about that.

 

[Xarpho]

The not bikes guy defined it as a freeway type street that is combined with attempts at regular "road' infrastructure, right? I haven't heard what the general roadless planners actually claim about that.

The "planners" aren't all the same (again, the Eurocentric autism is different than the "live in the pods" radicalism) but their argument is that roads that have higher (35 or higher speed limits) and have driveways/commercial establishments are bad somehow. The problem is that there's too big of a hierarchy between streets (which are pretty limited) and highways, and on the other side of the coin, both of them should be curtailed. The reason it's all just interference is avenues (which they really are) have existed for decades. A wide Main Street is an avenue, and typical cities have a grid of avenues as their base transportation backbone.

Furthermore, even city planners further divide roads into "collectors" and "arterials", which this bizarre dichtonomy of just "streets" and "highways" has no real place in.

 

[ロボ﹏§¤r﹏h¶rœ]

US - The Land of Fatties - would do well by promoting bike infrastructure and walking in urban areas.

 

[Mr. Skeltal]

@Xarpho
I though it was an interesting concept that I can see in the towns around me and honestly hate driving through. The rural highways and interstates are fine for what they are, but going into town and having to tangle with an avenue wider than the interstate with an unsignalled turn lane every 100 yards is not okay.

Crossing such a street isn't fun and cycling on one couldn't be either. Not a pod-dwelling bugeater, but towns over a certain size should have more transit methods than car or go fuck yourself. (Busses don't count, they still eat road space like cars).

I'm not a learned man when it comes to urban planning but I know what I hate. If I'm wrong, so be it.

 

[Plumber's Kokoro Wish]

Lol, literally worked on 2nd Ave for over a year and half, barely saw many riding and watched the local junkies steal numerous bikes. Not to mention that during the pandemic most of the local buses were almost entirely empty with the exception of the Rapid Ride lines, even though the construction has been a botched, over budget past schedule shit show, I kind of like the light rail system.

Seattle keeps trying to make cycling a thing, despite the city being historically planned around the automobile, filled with steep hills, rainy for 8 months out of the year, dark by evening rush hour in the winter, and having a high rate of bicycle theft thanks to all the feral tweakers. This leads to the city doing things like removing an entire lane of traffic from 2nd Ave, a major thoroughfare out of downtown, to replace it with a bike lane. This lane has its own traffic lights, which doesn't work well since a lot of cyclists are idiots who don't think they need to follow traffic lights. And on top of that, most drivers are idiots who don't read the signs that say "NO TURN ON RED". As a result even the city's cycling lobbies don't like the lanes and just tell cyclists to ride on the sidewalk or in traffic instead.

Oh, and the Seattle Department of Transportation is led by a guy named Sam Zimbabwe. No, he's not black, he's Jewish.