[tom_vidal]

The YouTuber Not Just Bikes made a great point in one of his videos: why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate? If people keep falling off a walkway, we don’t hold town hall meetings to debate the merits of pedestrian safety, we don’t do studies on the impact to traffic flow, we just put up a railing.

Here in Philadelphia, advocacy groups spent years fighting to have a wide, lethal stroad that runs through the middle of the city put on a road diet. Residents were polled, and something like 70% of people in the surrounding neighborhoods were in favor of it. The city spent millions in planning and engineering, and then right before paving was about to start, a local councilmember blocked it and canceled the whole project on the half of the road that runs through their neighborhood. So half of the road was narrowed to two lanes and has no speeding, no fatalities, and generally sane driver behavior. The other half is a reckless free-for-all that’s exhausting to drive on and terrifying for pedestrians and cyclists.

Millions in taxpayer dollars and the political will of a majority of citizens were wasted because our system allows one NIMBY to stop everything. A year later, there has already been a cyclist fatality on the road.

[constantcrying]

>why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate?

Because, as every engineer knows, everything is a tradeoff and good intentions can lead to bad outcomes.

I can't comment on your specific case, but obviously any measure that wants to improve safety needs to be evaluated based on whether it is actually effective, whether it is cost effective and whether there are negative consequences.

[mlinhares]

Mind saying which one it was?

There are so many I can't even say I have a good candidate for it :(

[mdmoll]

Sounds like Washington Ave

[mlinhares]

That tracks, south broad at that height is also pretty bad and only gets worse the more south you go and the same way north as you get further away from center city.

Could be Girard as well.

[blackeyeblitzar]

> The YouTuber Not Just Bikes made a great point in one of his videos: why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate? If people keep falling off a walkway, we don’t hold town hall meetings to debate the merits of pedestrian safety, we don’t do studies on the impact to traffic flow, we just put up a railing.

In my opinion, this isn't a great point, but a naive one. Literally anything can be argued for or against on the grounds of safety, and the fact that a safety-based argument exists isn't grounds to remove it from public debate. Also, blindly putting safety above all other concerns is just "safetyism", rather than a balanced argument. In the case of the railing, apart from a minor expense, there isn't impact to others. In the case of anti-car road diets, an attempt to create more safety will cause most users of that road to lose lots of time (to reduced speed limits, increased traffic). To most people, a few road fatalities a year simply does not matter in the grand scheme of things - it's a minor cost compared to the huge time savings of fast and convenient driving infrastructure.

> Here in Philadelphia, advocacy groups spent years fighting to have a wide, lethal stroad that runs through the middle of the city put on a road diet. Residents were polled, and something like 70% of people in the surrounding neighborhoods were in favor of it.

Mind linking to the poll? I find it hard to believe since the reality is that most people favor roads that are wide and have high speed limits, so they can get around quickly. A small but loud minority tends to argue, often successfully, for road diets. But most people aren't in favor of a war on cars because they get a lot of use from cars.

Additionally, what you're claiming about the poll being ignored is the opposite of what I've seen in west coast cities. Here, anti-car activists get into the transportation department positions and then try to implement their ideological plan regardless of polls or studies. Usually, they run dishonest polls that provide justification to whatever view they already have - for example, an online poll that only activist groups are aware of, which lets them get whatever numbers they want. If a poll disagrees, they don't talk about it or act against it anyways (example: https://crosscut.com/2018/04/seattle-city-hall-listen-consti...).

[bobthepanda]

i think safetyism would be one thing if there was no safety problem to speak of, but road fatalities in the US are increasing again, and that is being driven by a 68% increase in pedestrian and cycling fatalities since 2011. https://smartgrowthamerica.org/pedestrian-fatalities-at-hist...

[cwillu]

The original argument is that there shouldn't be debate about safety improvements, not that there shouldn't be safety improvements.

[oblio]

> To most people, a few road fatalities a year simply does not matter in the grand scheme of things - it's a minor cost compared to the huge time savings of fast and convenient driving infrastructure.

Especially if they get to kill poor people in bad neighborhoods on their way from suburbs to CBDs.

[hypeatei]

> why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate

Because of political culture and human nature; everything is driven by FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) so you can basically spin anything to scare people or to line your own pockets, living standards be damned.

[eddd-ddde]

Pride, selfishness and stubbornness are there as well.

1. "why should I care about pedestrians? they should get a car!" 2. "there's no way I'm driving without 4 lanes... that's gonna be slow!" (it isn't)

[throwaway22032]

Putting up a railing has no cost other than financial.

Narrowing a road makes it worse for its' primary purpose.

You would definitely not just narrow a footpath on a busy high street without considering the impact.

[Johnny555]

>Narrowing a road makes it worse for its' primary purpose

That's kind of the problem with urban planning in many cities in the USA -- the "primary purpose" of roads is assumed to be to serve cars, rather than to serve people.

>You would definitely not just narrow a footpath on a busy high street without considering the impact.

Happens all the time in my city for construction projects - an entire sidewalk will be shut down for years for construction, forcing pedestrians to the other side of the street (which means 2 extra waits for stop lights). Often the closed sidewalk is used for nothing at all except to hold a construction fence.. a more pedestrian friendly solution would require a covered walkway.

[blackeyeblitzar]

> That's kind of the problem with urban planning in many cities in the USA -- the "primary purpose" of roads is assumed to be to serve cars, rather than to serve people.

Serving cars is serving people. Who do you think is driving the cars or being driven in them?

As an aside, I am surprised that this exceedingly shallow point is still being made in 2024. Let's be honest - it never made sense, and was only ever brought up as an empty slogan to dishonestly dismiss those who depend on and benefit from cars (which is most of the public in most cities).

[throw0101b]

> Serving cars is serving people. Who do you think is driving the cars or being driven in them?

From a strictly utilitarian perspective, you can serve more people in the same land space by other forms of transportation:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

If you have a budget of $x, do you want to move more or fewer people? Because private auto transportation ("cars") moves the lowest volume.

Further, cars interfere with things that may not have alternatives, like trucks that make deliveries. There tend to all sorts of options for individuals (and the average occupancy of a car is like 1.0) to move hither and thither and yon, but if you want to deliver a refrigerator or a sofa, that's a lot harder to do on public transit—though not unheard of:

* https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/01/couch-toronto-subway/

* https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/5erltx/apparently_...

[Johnny555]

>Serving cars is serving people

So is better transit, and biking, and even shutting off entire streets to cars and making them into pedestrian-only districts - and those can often serve more people than when it was just a road for cars.

[immibis]

Insane argument. Serving giant death mechas is serving people. Serving Houthi raiders is serving people. Serving Adolf Hitler is serving people - he's a person, right?

[throwaway22032]

People are in cars.

I get it, we like public transport. It's just daft to go all in the other direction and pretend that cars aren't useful or don't count or something, though.

[mlyle]

Cars are great. I like cars. I like driving as a mode of transport.

But there's a lot of potential ways to use space other than cars. The problem is, in seeking to accommodate cars at the expense of all else, we've made all other forms of transport -- like walking through a cute downtown on a spring day -- less practicable and common. In turn we drive more, spread businesses out for more parking, and created a never-ending feedback loop for more driving infrastructure.

In turn, the infrastructure has grown to a point that we can't really afford it from tax revenues, and where the mixed use of a thoroughfare for accessing businesses and going long distances does well at neither.

Unfortunately, getting us out of this loop is going to make things less convenient for some people for awhile before we can get to something better. There's no avoiding that, but continuing to make the same decision and hope it gets to a better outcome would be nuts.

[throw0101b]

> It's just daft to go all in the other direction and pretend that cars aren't useful or don't count or something, though.

Useful for what? More useful than what? Less useful than what?

How many people does private car transportation move? How much can a car lane move per hour? How about a bicycle lane? Bus lane? [0] What do private cars interfere with? Goods transportation / delivery perhaps? People's health (through pollution and/or lack of active mobility)?

It's not that cars cannot be useful, but are they more or less useful than other options? What does leaning towards cars inhibit?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

[Johnny555]

Is there any city that's done that and has completely banned cars to replace with transit? I haven't seen any except in very small pedestrian-only districts.

But I've seen a lot of fighting in my city anytime any transit or biking project reduces road space dedicated to cars, even if just removing on-street parking.

>People are in cars.

All too often, a "person" is in a car, which is a pretty poor use of space.

[oopsallmagic]

The entirety of the Netherlands used to look like the US in the '60s and '70s, albeit not at Super Sized(TM) scale. Look up their urban design in 2024, it's quite pleasant and human-friendly.

[dredmorbius]

Private automobiles and in some cases other motorised vehicles are banned in Mackinac Island, MI, and Halibut Cove, AK, in the US, Giethoorn, Netherlands, and Lamu, Kenya (possibly old town only). And a number of others. Several seem to be vacation spots or resorts, so have unusual usage and aesthetic patterns.

<https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/16-places-around-the-world...>

[immibis]

People don't have to be in cars, and most cities have way more people in cars than necessary.

[audunw]

> Narrowing a road makes it worse for its' primary purpose.

The worst thing is, this isn’t always true. A good two lane street can have similar or better average speed than a bad four lane stroad.

[blackeyeblitzar]

> A good two lane street can have similar or better average speed than a bad four lane stroad.

Can you provide a more specific argument or evidence? To me, it seems obvious that two lanes has less capacity than four lanes. Therefore, a two lane road will have worse traffic, all other things held equal.

It also doesn't matter that the other two lanes might be repurposed for something else like bike lanes. In my experience, when bike lane projects are forced onto a city by activists, without authentic support from the general public, it ends up just creating a lot of underutilized infrastructure. In many west coast cities it is common to see clogged up car lanes next to permanently empty bike lanes. So even if in theory you could pack those bike lanes with more people (although moving at low speeds), it's never true in practice. The real throughput only gets worse.

[Timon3]

> Can you provide a more specific argument or evidence? To me, it seems obvious that two lanes has less capacity than four lanes. Therefore, a two lane road will have worse traffic, all other things held equal.

While it's true that two lanes have less capacity than four, it's also measuring the wrong value - throughput is what you want to optimize for. This means you have to take a bunch of additional factors into account, for example:

- How many lanes do the connections to other roads have? Any time you're reducing the number of lanes, you're creating potential bottlenecks. If you have one lane, then widen up to four, and narrow back to one, you'll most likely have worse throughput than if you'd just kept one lane.

- How much space do you have for switching lanes? The more lanes, the more time people need to get into the correct one for their destination. You need to telegraph exits etc. much earlier.

- Do surrounding roads have space for the additional induced traffic? Time and time again, extra lanes have made traffic problems worse instead of better.

There are of course also disadvantages, e.g. the impact of any single lane being blocked. It's a complex and fascinating topic, especially considering the similarity to other networks (e.g. computer, biological).

[bobthepanda]

the common diet is from four to three (a left turn lane), which is actually better for traffic flow, since left turners now have a dedicated pocket and don't block traffic, fewer people get rear ended, etc.

the problem with how the US does bike planning is that the payoff doesn't happen unless you have a bike network; biking is so unsafe on regular roads that a partial journey on bike lanes doesn't cut it. so often bike lanes get poor usage than they would otherwise get due to lack of connectivity.

[Mawr]

Even if we make the tenuous assumption that the bike lanes are implemented correctly, you cannot expect that people that have lived with car-only infrastructure their whole lives will change their habits overnight. It's going to take some time to reach cycling volumes of even the less developed european cities.

[throwaway22032]

Which has higher throughput?

[oblio]

For moving people? It's laughably easy: the one with bike lanes, sidewalks, public transport.

Cars are the least efficient form of transportation if you REALLY care about throughput.

[throw0101b]

> Which has higher throughput?

For a 3.5m / 12' lane, you can move 6-8x more people via bicycle, and 7-10x more pedestrians, per hour, than via private motorized vehicles ("cars"):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

[oopsallmagic]

You can fit like 50 people on a bus, and maybe 10 in the equivalent space taken up by two SUVs. Seriously, how is this a question?

[erik_seaberg]

https://www.mikeontraffic.com/numbers-every-traffic-engineer... says one lane peaks around 1,900 vehicles per hour. Even if we assume each vehicle only carries one driver, we need 38 busses per hour (one every 95 seconds!) to match that capacity. In practice we're lucky to see two busses per hour scheduled.

[anamax]

> A good two lane street can have similar or better average speed than a bad four lane stroad.

Average speed isn't the goal. Bandwidth is.

And, in case you're thinking about talking about "induced demand", that's fallacy.

The demand is/was there. More bandwidth means that more people try to satisfy it.

[SkyPuncher]

Putting up a railing is the equivalent to putting up a guardrail next to a road.

The primary function is already in place. Adding a railing/guardrail should have absolutely no negative impact on the primary or secondary functions.

[mlinhares]

Drivers need the freedom of plowing through pedestrians without consequences to their lives or their cars. It still puzzles me my whole neighborhood is full of stroads with large interesections and bollars are nowhere to be seen. Every single one of these intersections should be fully surrounded by bollards to provide safety to pedestrians but who cares about pedestrians, right?

[throw0101b]

> Putting up a railing is the equivalent to putting up a guardrail next to a road.

Which people do object to:

> In a twist that could only happen in the world of cycling politics, a city councillor in the New Zealand town of New Plymouth is making headlines for an eyebrow-raising reason — he’s worried about his beloved sports car. Murray Chong, owner of a Chevrolet Corvette just 160mm off the ground, has raised concerns that a proposed $14 million protected cycle lane might wreak havoc on his precious ride.

> Chong’s main gripe? The 100mm-high concrete separation barriers, meant to keep cyclists safe, apparently pose a dire threat to the underbelly of his sleek sports car. In an extraordinary meeting, despite Chong’s objections, the council voted in favor of the cycle lane plan, sending shockwaves through the world of low-riding vehicle enthusiasts.

* https://momentummag.com/a-new-zealand-councillor-objected-to...

"Won't someone please think of the safety of the cars!" /clutches-pearls

[newZWhoDis]

If you actually cared about safety you’d require airbags, crumple zones, licensing, insurance, and crash testing for cyclists. You’d also ban them on roadways with speed limits far above what a human can reasonably propel a bike to, since dV is a major driver of accidents and lethality.

Expecting a 15MPH ~250lb bike with none of those features to interface safely with 55MPH 5,000+lb traffic is moronic. You’re better off building parallel infrastructure and taxing cyclists to pay for it via licensing.

[throw0101b]

> If you actually cared about safety you’d require airbags, crumple zones, licensing, insurance, and crash testing for cyclists.

I've crashed on a bicycle, more than once. I've crashed even on a motorcycle (on a racetrack). The damage that is caused to myself, to my machine, and the surrounds, is tiny compared to the damage that is caused by an automobile with (at least) an order of magnitude more mass: a friend of mine had a car go through the front of his house, and the physical carnage was impressive (no person was injured thankfully).

And every time licensing has been looked at for cyclists, it has found to be a dumb idea:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj47qJ-UUno

> You’re better off building parallel infrastructure and taxing cyclists to pay for it via licensing.

Cars cause much more damage to roads than bicyclists, and they should pay proportionally:

* https://www.investopedia.com/gas-taxes-and-what-you-need-to-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

And bicyclists already pay for local roads through local property taxes:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjv8WQu92c0

The problem is that roads are now practically monopolized for private vehicle use to the exclusion of everyone else, and the costs are not fully paid for by drivers. Higher density areas subsidize lower density ones, and road infrastructure is a big part of that:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

[nix0n]

> You’re better off building parallel infrastructure and taxing cyclists to pay for it via licensing.

I think it's worth talking about taxation here. Roads are generally in the top 3 costs for most municipalities along with police and firefighting.

Even when you add together tolls, gas tax, vehicle excise taxes, it doesn't cover the costs of road maintenance, and needs to be supplemented by sales tax, building property tax, etc.

If bike infrastructure reduces the number of cars, SUVs, and pickups that are on the road just to carry one person around, the reduction on road wear means it's a total cost savings.

(For what it's worth, I think the same argument applies also to buses.)

[coredog64]

My smallish town budgets less than $14M/year for streets and $300M/year for K-12 education. I would not be surprised to find that ratio generally repeated anywhere in the US.

[noahtallen]

250lb bike? Wtf are you talking about. The heaviest e-bikes are like 50lb. Bikes are so safe that they require none of these extra steps that cars require, because cars are much more dangerous. It’s simple physics. There have been dozens of pedestrians and cyclists killed by cars in my city this year, and none by bicycles ever, to my knowledge. More evidence that cars require more strict licensing and safety measures.

Not safely interfacing on existing roads — that’s 100% true. And cyclists would love parallel infrastructure. Problem is, in the US, it’s seen as anti-car (and therefore anti-american), and so is much less common than it should be. But in the Netherlands, this is how they make biking one of the primary transport modes.

[mindslight]

> You’d also ban them [bikes] on roadways with speed limits far above what a human can reasonably propel a bike to ... You’re better off building parallel infrastructure

They are and we do? You know those signs when you get on a highway that say things like pedestrians/bicycles/horses/etc prohibited? That's what those are for.

If you're proposing that the rest of the roads' speed limits be lowered to what's achievable by the average cyclist, then why not just advocate for that directly? Personally I don't appreciate the oversigning trend, generally preferring to drive at a decent clip as conditions permit most of the time, but also being content to follow the rare bicycle at that vehicle's speed until an opportunity to pass with a wide berth and clear oncoming visibility.

The real problem here is drivers who expect to be able to continue driving at whatever speed they want regardless of who else is using the road. Apart from when I was cycling myself, I used to experience this pretty harshly while shoveling snow. Half the drivers would treat me as a human being and slow and go mostly into the other lane. The other half would continue their speed right at me, ostensibly thinking it was acceptable to create close call danger for fun and spray me with shit from their tires (ie not just assault but outright battery). Similar situation with a dinky ride on lawnmower. It's funny how the ratio changed when I started doing the snow/grass along the road with a compact farm tractor - apparently the prospect of assholes' cars being significantly damaged effects their ability to see!

As far as taxes, municipal real estate taxes more than pay for the meager wear bicycles cause to the road. And as a general proponent of freedom I certainly wouldn't want to implement multiple new draconian papers please mandates just to assign taxes a few percent more accurately.

[isthatafact]

> "You’re better off building parallel infrastructure and taxing cyclists to pay for it via licensing."

yes, a parallel infrastructure would be welcomed by current cyclists and by many of those who now abstain from cycling because of persecution and threat of death on the roads.

If everyone can agree that a parallel infrastructure is needed, the funding question is trivial. The overall costs could even be negative due to the reduced need to subsidize car usage (also health benefits of cycling, etc.). If it makes you happy, we can let little kids slap a sticker on their bike to take of the "licensing".

[immibis]

Why is there 55mph 5,000+lb traffic?

[supertrope]

Because the solution to a housing shortage caused by overly restrictive zoning is urban sprawl. To support urban sprawl we have cars and long commutes. Cars create problems for other cars so we need bigger cars for crash worthiness. In response to traffic jams caused by too many cars we double down on cars. This effectively turns valuable urban land into de facto highways: 45 MPH 6-8 lane wide stroads that heavily deprioritize alternative traffic modes and safety. Don't worry citizen, we'll widen the road even if we have to bulldoze some homes that are in the way of our SUVs getting downtown 1 min faster. For a few months before more people drive.

[twixfel]

Bikes were here first.