r/fuckcars / Not Just Bikes / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

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quaawaa said:
Someone wrote a good article debunking Strong Towns:
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Didn't go far enough; his whole methodology (what a suburb is, his "example article" in Ferguson which is accidentally or deliberately wrong) is flat-out and fundamentally wrong.

quaawaa said:
Jason is visiting New York City:
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Gosh, what will "I hate America and I don't talk about America" have to say about America's biggest city?
 
Maurice Maine said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=we58Yl2WU5kDecent explanation as to why vehicle fatalities are on the up, TLDR it's all the EPA's fault.
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Good vid, I’d say the tldr is that cars are bigger and heavier now. The US also has flawed road-design philosophies that would be hard for them to correct now due to population size and cost, namely the favouring of intersections over roundabouts.
 
Meriasek said:
As for the Eurostar, I'd like to see how they'd "add one more rail" there. They're aware it's a 50 km tunnel under the English Channel, right? They're not just gonna add a few more lines through there, and there's an upper limit to the frequency.
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a tunnel that took nearly 100 years to dig, no less
(the first works began in the 1890s, then got blocked by parliament on national security grounds, and were eventually resumed in the 1970s)
 
When we treat infrastructure spending like it's consumption spending, something like having a police department or maintaining a park, we tend to make stupid infrastructure decisions.
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keke said:
The US also has flawed road-design philosophies that would be hard for them to correct now due to population size and cost, namely the favouring of intersections over roundabouts.
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Someone said this in an analysis of the movie "Falling Down". The main character at the start of the movie gets initially set off his rampage because he was stuck in traffic. The reason for it is road work due to trying to expand infrastructure for a growing population past what it was originally intended to handle.

Xarpho's Return said:
Gosh, what will "I hate America and I don't talk about America" have to say about America's biggest city?
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I don't know why fuckcars thinks if people were allowed to walk in the roads people will suddenly start socializing more. I guess they think it will be like a giant college campus like when they were growing up, but in reality it will be more like New York or Chicago. Have you ever walked around New York before? If you have you know it's weird to randomly approach people and impossible to make friends from these interactions. Everyone is physically close but still locked into their own worlds.

You know that episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes to New York with his family and they can't understand where his hatred of New York comes from. As a kid I didn't really understand it until I actually went there. Maybe a story for another time.
 
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keke said:
Good vid, I’d say the tldr is that cars are bigger and heavier now. The US also has flawed road-design philosophies that would be hard for them to correct now due to population size and cost, namely the favouring of intersections over roundabouts.
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Roundabouts have advantages and disadvantages. I've used roundabouts in a few residential areas and they're great because most of the time you don't have to stop, just go clockwise and you're there. When you put them in busier roads and/or have multiple lanes trying to merge onto the roundabout they start becoming problems. If you have to wait behind cars regularly trying to enter the roundabout with stop 'n' go traffic it becomes about as useless as a four-way stop, and stopping and starting is really bad for efficiency/congestion reasons. (They're also not that great for pedestrians either).

If a few (many?) pages on this thread is correct roundabouts are falling out of favor with urbanists because cyclists can't just blast through them like intersections. Still, they have their uses and can make for some interesting road infrastructure (luckily, it does not appear to be a frequently-used mainline...but then; why build it in the first place?) when applied in the right places.

Yamamura said:
I don't know why fuckcars thinks if people were allowed to walk in the roads people will suddenly start socializing more.
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The funny thing is that you could argue that a street that receives so little traffic, like a suburban cul-de-sac, has neighbors that socialize and interact more, but that undermines most of their arguments about suburbia.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
The funny thing is that you could argue that a street that receives so little traffic, like a suburban cul-de-sac, has neighbors that socialize and interact more, but that undermines most of their arguments about suburbia.
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The suburbs foster a friendlier environment for socialization as well. People are generally friendlier and less on edge than in the city, for the most part.

I was watching a random video (not about urbanism or anti-urbanism mind you) about the prices of new and used cars when this came up

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Glad to see people are starting to recognize the end goal of all this for what it is. Of course in the comment chain you still get a lot of the usual motte and bailey arguments that fuckcars would spout, but I'm happy there's finally more discourse on it.
 
Yamamura said:
I was watching a random video (not about urbanism or anti-urbanism mind you) about the prices of new and used cars when this came up

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Glad to see people are starting to recognize the end goal of all this for what it is. Of course in the comment chain you still get a lot of the usual motte and bailey arguments that fuckcars would spout, but I'm happy there's finally more discourse on it.
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Speaking of based comments in surprising places, I saw this comment in /r/urbanplanning:
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Source (Archive)

The point that the comment makes that for a given amount of time, one can drive to more people in a sprawling city than they can walk to in a dense city appears to be true.

To demonstrate, here's a comparison between how far you can walk in 15 minutes in NYC (one of the densest cities in the first world) and how far you can drive in 15 minutes in Houston (the city urbanists always pick as an example of evil suburban sprawl):
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The starting point for New York is Grand Central Station, which is located in Midtown Manhattan, one of the densest parts of NYC. I would guess that ~70k people live in the blue area as it makes up approximately half of Manhattan Community Districts 5 and 6, which combined have a population of ~135k. The density of Community District 6 is 100,000 people per square mile.
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The starting point is the geographic center of Houston. Loop 610 has a population of ~450k (source), and the blue area also covers a significant portion of Loop 8. Loop 610 has a density of 4600 people per square mile.

Also, in my experience traveling, what businesses/services are available is more closely correlated with total population and wealth than with density.

Now, Midtown has a large daytime population and therefore has more businesses than one would expect based off of its number of residents Nevermind, that's impossible because the suburbs are a drain on the city.
 
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Yamamura said:
The suburbs foster a friendlier environment for socialization as well. People are generally friendlier and less on edge than in the city, for the most part.
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You also see your neighbors more often. I currently live in a high-rise and despite living in building with hundreds of people I don't really know anyone. Meanwhile in suburbia I know most of my neighbors because I see them constantly when they are:
  • Leaving for work/school
  • Arriving from work/school
  • passing them in the exit intersection
  • mowing their lawns
  • hanging out in the garage
  • Watching their kids play in the street
  • Holding a block party
  • Needing to borrow shit
just to name a few.
 
FILTH Tourist said:
You also see your neighbors more often. I currently live in a high-rise and despite living in building with hundreds of people I don't really know anyone.
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I used to live in a house with like 9 or so apartments. Moved there for a new job, and it took several months to notice from the doorbells that a coworker was also living there. Never actually saw her. In a big high rise you probably just know the really notorious people.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
When you put them in busier roads and/or have multiple lanes trying to merge onto the roundabout they start becoming problems.
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Fair enough. The problems are because people aren’t used to them. Busier intersections are more dangerous than a busy roundabout, their design means when accidents do happen the impact is less severe, and with larger cars being normalised that’s quite necessary. I drive them almost everyday so I’m biased by being familiar.
 
quaawaa said:
Not entirely related to the thread but the cope was so intense I had to share it:
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Tourist-oriented sections are always going to be better than the main city. They design it that way so that people feel safe and want to come and spend money.

Take a recent experience I had on vacation; I entered New Orleans from the east. After you cross the bridge from Slidell you enter into the
"coastal areas" (Lake Pontchartrain is a popular spot for fishing and boating), you enter what appears what to be a war-torn third world country and I'm thinking, "holy shit, this might've been a mistake", especially seeing how any city from the Interstate is usually the best it has to offer at that point; you definitely don't want to wander further inside.

But then when I actually got to the French Quarter historic/tourist district, it was actually kind of nice. Well, not NICE per se, but a lot better than the surrounding run-down city would have me believe. It doesn't fool me, though. I'm afraid I'm not as socially aware as other people, but it's like visiting someone's house and they try to make you feel comfortable with the house in a relatively clean state, but you can tell that the people in the household hate each other and will probably start screaming at each other as soon as the last guest drives off.

That's what cities are like.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
Tourist-oriented sections are always going to be better than the main city. They design it that way so that people feel safe and want to come and spend money.
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The other thing you'll find is that as a tourist, you take tourist paths; as a resident you quickly start taking the fastest path, e'en if it takes you right through niggertown. Because ain't nobody got time for waiting for nothing.

Like this intersection in LA - tourists will come off the freeway and hang a right and go to the convention center or the hotel or whatever.


Residents? Residents will go under that hobobridge.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
Tourist-oriented sections are always going to be better than the main city. They design it that way so that people feel safe and want to come and spend money.
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Las Vegas is a great example of this. LV Strip and a bit of downtown, nice, clean(ish), walkable if you like 110F, etc.
Rest of city, giant shithole.
 
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