[azylman]

> Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people...So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course. Speedbumps everywhere. Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes. Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make through streets dead ends.

This is obviously not the solution that anyone is proposing. You're arguing in bad faith against a strawman. The solution to bad public transit is to make public transit better.

[smegsicle]

You mentioned that induced demand is bad; someone pointed out that induced demand is not bad, but actually evidence of increased efficiency; someone else elaborated that the contrapositive is equally insane- if induced demand through efficiency is bad, then reduced demand through inefficiency is good- along with an example of the implementation of what you are asserting noone is proposing.

Caution against the short-sighted pursuit of easily-quantifiable goals at the expense of actual value is not 'arguing in bad faith'.

[ufmace]

How is he arguing against a strawman? He's saying that's exactly what they actually did in his city.

[azylman]

> Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people...So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course. Speedbumps everywhere...Transit still mostly sucks, but now driving sucks too...the transit folks realized it's hard to compete with driving, so they've just given up entirely on making transit great. It's easier to ruin driving.

The claim was that they put up speed bumps (and other measures) _with the intent of_ making driving worse to encourage public transit. That's obviously false. Speed bumps get put up to discourage unsafe driving.

If, when forced to drive safely, people would rather take public transit, that's kind of scary, but also a good thing I guess to get unsafe drivers off the road? However, that's not what the claim was (and in reality is unlikely to be true, though I have no data to back that up).

[onecommentman]

Not precisely to discourage unsafe driving. Simply to slow vehicles for any one of several reasons, safety often being an important one. Traffic calming has other benefits, such as more livable residential neighborhoods, and less congested residential side streets, especially during rush hours.

That does have the result of increasing trip times by cars, and thus motivating use of public transit.

Guessing intent is a fool’s game, and can’t really be true or false per se. It does antagonize automobile drivers and, from their valid but particular perspective, makes their life worse in (what would seem to them) a gratuitous fashion. Americans don’t like arbitrary and capricious as a whole.

[asdff]

Go to /r/urbanplanning and you will find this creed of road dieting written in stone tablets by a thundering voice