[trymas]

How we can reduce traffic congestion?

1. Extensive support of public transport: metro, tram, dedicated bus routes (separate from car traffic), dedicated paths for bicycles.

2. ... maybe whatever is this ...

UPDATE: here's a good graph - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport#/media/File:P... , i.e. car traffic is often congested because of inherent low passenger bandwith. If google wants to manage traffic as internet routing - why then stick with outdated low bandwith ethernet cable?

[simondotau]

People will generally choose whichever mode of transport is most convenient and cost-effective, based on how they rationally (or irrationally) weigh various factors. If every road were free of traffic, every destination had unlimited parking at the door, everyone already owned a car, and driving carried no direct or indirect costs, almost everyone would drive everywhere.

The only way to shift people onto public transport is to make it more attractive than driving. That can be done by making driving less convenient or more expensive—through higher ownership, fuel, and parking costs, and by resisting attempts to eliminate congestion. And by making public transport better through greater frequency, reliability, coverage, and convenience.

[quietbritishjim]

> If every road were free of traffic, every destination had unlimited parking at the door, everyone already owned a car, and driving carried no direct or indirect costs, almost everyone would drive everywhere.

Even with that unrealistically idealised scenario, if you had similarly idealised public transport (station within 5 minutes walk either end, trains every 5 minutes) I'd still choose the train much of the time. I could actually get something done on my laptop instead of having to concentrate on the road, plus I could get up for a stretch mid journey (without stopping). It would be different if I had a lot of luggage or was bringing the kids, though.

My point is that driving is not always inherently more attractive than public transport.

[inigyou]

> station within 5 minutes walk either end, trains every 5 minutes

Describes large parts of London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, etc

[thaumasiotes]

Sure. Also Shanghai.

But that isn't an ideal scenario for public transit regardless of whether somebody tries to describe it that way. Very frequent stops ("station within 5 minutes walk") mean that your journey through the subway system will take a very, very long time. Driving can easily cut that time in half.

[queenkjuul]

Conversely, traffic is so bad at peak hours that taking the train is faster than driving when it comes to getting home from downtown here in Chicago, even with frequent stops (and my line stops more often than most). Biking is basically always faster than driving+parking here unless you have reserved private parking on both ends or are going clear across town (8+ miles)

[inigyou]

And now we return to the idea of big tall buildings so that things are close together.

[thaumasiotes]

You're right; if only someone in Shanghai had thought of building skyscrapers.

Wait.

[simondotau]

After writing that post, I started drafting an edit to acknowledge that clever marketing is another way to encourage greater use of public transport. In my mind I imagined a campaign highlighting the time people get back not having to drive through heavy traffic. The advertisement could say, "Give yourself more time to do the things you love," accompanied by a wholesome image of a smiling person reading a book on the train.

Then it occurred to me that nobody would actually be reading a book. They would be doom-scrolling Instagram or watching wingnut political propaganda on YouTube. I'm starting to wonder if people might be mentally better off behind the wheel...

[pibaker]

Shortwave radio had a reputation for hosting political nut jobs before the internet existed. So are podcasts.

At least transit users don't get road rage.

[queenkjuul]

I may be doomscrolling on the train but i see plenty of other people read books

[nicbou]

That's the reason I prefer public transit. I normally bike everywhere, because I get to exercise, see the scenery and yell at people, but sometimes I like to just sit down and read a book.

Another benefit is being able to have a drink or go to multiple locations without worrying about bringing the car back somehow.

[philipallstar]

Making driving worse instead of making public transport better is such a public sector-brained take.

[creaturemachine]

Driving has been subsidized and "made better" for so long that it feels natural. Forcing your private steel box through public spaces should be the most impractical and expensive thing to do, yet it's not.

[philipallstar]

Cars replaced the horse and cart. There were roads before cars, and roads carry a lot more than cars. Try getting a fire engine to your house without roads.

[simondotau]

You misunderstood my comment. Driving is made worse by the presence of other people driving. Government can partially mitigate it by spending taxpayer money on building more road infrastructure. Or for a fraction of the cost, making public transit better.

[thunderfork]

Sometimes you have to nerf something because it's been buffed too many times, beyond what's sustainable or reasonable

[philipallstar]

It's only really been buffed by the facts you don't have to pay for massive custom vehicles or drivers, and market dynamics (and the corresponding incredible features and amazing factory and transportation efficiencies) mean cars are extremely good value for money for a lot of people.

In other words: there's a profit motive, so people get something really good for their money.

Public transport is frequently a monopoly or semi-monopoly, and there is power available (the people running the public transport also get to set rules for drivers), and exercising power is much, much easier than competing in a market.

[creaturemachine]

So you bought a car for a good price full of features, good for you. Now where are you going to drive the thing? Can you build your own road wherever you want to go? No, only the state can build roads? How could we allow such a monopoly over our lives.

Now you say there are rules to follow on these roads, with enforcement, meaning someone has power over you the entire time? Yikes.

[philipallstar]

Sorry, I'm not sure what point you're arguing against.

[thunderfork]

Going over the patch notes, here's some buffs you might have missed:

Mandatory parking minimums, high speed limits, car lanes without bus lanes or bike lanes, tearing down neighborhoods to build interchanges and highways...

[mrgoldenbrown]

Driving is currently subsidized in a variety of ways that hide it's true costs. Almost any effort to make driving's perceived cost closer to the real cost, including externalities, is a good thing.

[alistairSH]

IMO, it's not so much "make driving worse" (ie actively make roads worse, etc).

Instead, it's actively make transit better be reallocating road funds... Add buses or light rail or dedicated/separated bike lanes instead of brainlessly adding traffic lanes. Every bike added to that bike lane is one less car (very roughly).

Additionally, tax car infrastructure appropriately. Free road-side parking is not an entitlement. Reduce parking minimums in redevelopment/new development and let the market determine the supply of spaces. A good example - it's increasingly common for apartments in DC to charge extra for a parking space.

Most of the above applies to urban areas as well as moderately dense suburban zones.

Large cities can take additional steps - no car zones (common in Italian towns), congestion pricing (London, NYC, and others already do this), and changes to road design to better accommodate pedestrians (plenty of YT videos about various plans to do this).

[ryandrake]

You said it's not to make driving worse, but then listed multiple examples of making driving worse:

- reallocating road funds (away from driving and toward busses/rail/bikes)

- tax car infrastructure appropriately, presumably higher

- reduce parking minimums

Not that I'm against these, but they will surely make driving worse.

[simondotau]

That is wrong on multiple dimensions.

What makes driving worse is the presence of more cars. This can be partially mitigated by piling money into road infrastructure, but infrastructure is a band-aid on a problem created by more people choosing to drive.

What makes driving better is the presence of fewer cars. There's really only one way to reduce the number of cars on the road: build good alternatives to driving. If you love driving, you should be the strongest champion of public transport investment.

[queenkjuul]

They keep driving how it is, and make other things better relatively. Reducing parking minimums doesn't remove existing parking, it prevents building more. Building bike lanes doesn't usually mean reducing car capacity. Adding more lanes to already huge highways doesn't actually improve driving, so redirecting that money to rail does not make driving worse, in fact it stands to make it better by getting more people off the road

[alistairSH]

Removing parking minimums doesn't even prevent more parking - it only lets the market balance supply/demand for parking. The current system in most of the US requires worst-case/max-demand parking lots, so the only time a shopping center's lot is full is a few peak hours on the weekend and Christmas season. The rest of the year, it's mostly empty.

Here's a good summary of one case of a small town dealing with absurd parking regulations... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017-11-22-how-parking-m...

And just to add my own recent anecdote... we visited southern Italy (Puglia) last month. Most of the towns have zero traffic* zones (ZTL zones) in the historic centers. In all of them, there were either ample metered street spots just outside the ZTL or small pay lots a short walk away. As far as I could tell, as a tourist, it worked well - the downtowns were vibrant with lots of foot traffic.

* ZTLs allow local traffic and handicapped transport within certain guidelines.

[newguy1000]

Let's make everything harder to use and cost more. It's for their own good!

[rwyinuse]

Increasing ownership and fuel costs is wrong, as it makes life more difficult also for people living in areas where public transport is not feasible.

[queenkjuul]

Then surely you have no issue with increasing municipal taxes on drivers where there is public transit?

[chriswarbo]

> If every road were free of traffic, every destination had unlimited parking at the door, everyone already owned a car, and driving carried no direct or indirect costs, almost everyone would drive everywhere.

Cars don't even have tables; let alone toilets, dining areas, sleeping cabins, etc. Even those which do (e.g. RVs) would require a solo traveller to stop in order to use them.

No thanks, I'll stick to the train.

[tmp10423288442]

How long do you spend on transit that most of those are necessary?

As for toilets, the new Caltrain cars, built by Stadler (from Switzerland, which has the best non-high speed rail train infrastructure in the world) were not going to include toilets at are - I don't believe they do in Switzerland - but were forced to add one by ADA regulations in the USA.

[chriswarbo]

> How long do you spend on transit that most of those are necessary?

Toilets are useful immediately (speaking from experience!)

Tables are useful even on short trips of a few minutes; e.g. I usually have a notebook and pen in my pocket, and writing much easier on a table (even the little fold-out ones, if I can't get a seat at the proper tables).

I often eat on trains; though I admittedly tend to avoid the dining options, since it's much cheaper to bring my own food and eat my seat's table (fold-out or otherwise). If I'm with others, we can also drink alcohol together, without a "designated driver" having to abstain.

[mistrial9]

> People will generally choose whichever mode of transport is most convenient

ok that is one fourth of the conversation, or less.. sure, marketing and economic signals.. got it.

The historic rise of the personal auto versus all else was partly fueled by a social dynamic where "privelage is defined by the ability to remove yourself from the dirty and dangerous crowds of non-privelaged humans".. Autos have dramatically filled the transportation sector because clean and intelligent ME can ride next to foul dangerous person YOU without contact reliably.

Notice the profound growth of personal aircraft for the newly wealthy. Google upper-levels are famous for this. Personal aircraft are some of the most anti-ecological and anti-efficient modes of transport ever.. check out the stocks and sales figures.. huge growth in the last years.

America and others have successfully made ugly reality of social constructs into marketing talk and "rational decisions" but the reality is not fully described by those IMHO

[newguy1000]

yes, lets make things harder for people in certain situations cause we know what's best for them.

[zarzavat]

> If every road were free of traffic, every destination had unlimited parking at the door, everyone already owned a car, and driving carried no direct or indirect costs, almost everyone would drive everywhere.

What kind of nonsense is this? People take public transport it's better than driving. You don't need to expend mental cycles focusing on the road, you can do something else while you're on the go: chat to friends, browse the internet, read a book, sleep, etc. Driving is dead time.

[philipallstar]

> People take public transport it's better than driving

Public transport is also much more expensive, particularly when you have more than one person in the vehicle, even with loads of tax added to car fuel, doesn't depart from your house or arrive at your destination, and means you can't take much stuff with you.

[zarzavat]

Driving is more expensive than public transport when you factor in the cost of the vehicle, maintenance, fuel, insurance, taxes, parking, etc.

If driving were more cheaper than public transport then nobody would use it. Yet, almost wherever you go in the world if you go to a station at 8am on a weekday it will be full of people.

[philipallstar]

> If driving were more cheaper than public transport then nobody would use it. Yet, almost wherever you go in the world if you go to a station at 8am on a weekday it will be full of people.

This logic is devastatingly simplistic. Think about the most obvious counter-example: people who have car sometimes take the train. Even after they've paid all those car fees, they'll take the train for £50 rather than drive for £8 in car fuel. Why?

It's because there isn't an objective tier list for vehicles. E.g. if I'm going through central London I'll use the Underground because London is so densely populated going by car isn't always feasible. But if you're going somewhere in London with a baby then you might well take the hit and drive, because you have a lot of stuff to bring with you, and the Underground is unpleasant and hot, which the baby will not appreciate.

[nicbou]

I pay €63 per month for unlimited train rides across Germany. My car insurance used to cost more than that. Keeping my old Kangoo running cost me about €150 per month before fuel.

[nxm]

It's better in some use cases, but not all (e.g. traveling to the country)

[abc123abc123]

Yep. In the future, only billionaires and politicians shall be allowed private travel. The common man shall be crammed into public transport where he can sweat, sneeze, touch, grab etc. the rest of the common man.

Forcing the public to abandon the comfort of private travel seems right out of the WEF playbook.

[inigyou]

Comfort? The hassle of parking a car makes the train the nicer option, all by itself!

[nradov]

What hassle? Most of the places where I drive my cars have abundant free parking.

[trymas]

waat?

Current situation with prevalent "private travel", i.e. cars in USA (and probably "the west" overall??) IS due to corporate and political interests.

Car manufacturers, "big oil", road construction companies, politicians collecting taxes from cars (fuel sales, road use, cars themselves[0] and car parking), banks leasing money to buy and maintain cars, insurance, landlords owning car parks, etc.

They are very very interested that private car ownership wouldn't go away and are fighting it tooth and nail. You need to own multiple cars per household spend thousands on leasing, hundreds on parking, to just go to work and of course there's fuel.

Though somewhere like London, Paris or Tokyo - why would you want to do daily commute in a car? If you are a billionaire, driven by personal driver in your Bentley or Land Rover - sure, but otherwise metro is cheaper by an order of magnitude and I'd bet often times much faster too. In those places rich and heads of state take trams and metros.

I probably not need to remind you that "richest man" lobbied some failing projects to upsell his car sales, instead of allowing high speed rail to be developed.

[0] this of course depends from country to country and from state to state.

[AlexandrB]

I think you vastly underestimate how much people like their cars. Sure there are corporate interests who benefit, but they don't force folks to change cars every 3 years or make big "crossovers" and SUVs the most popular car type in the US and, now, Europe[1].

Cars are just really convenient to have when you need them and folks will put up with all kind of costs and other inconveniences to own one.

I think it's really important to have robust and safe public transit so car use can be minimized when it's unnecessary, but I don't have illusions that this will lead to some kind of car-free utopia.

[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/707655/suvs-more-popular-europe-...

[criddell]

I think you underestimate just how much many people like their cars and enjoy driving. People generally spend far more on their vehicle than they really need to.

If I lived in London or Paris I wouldn't commute by car. But I don't live in a big city and, at this point in my life, I don't want to (although I'd love to have a little pied-a-terre for part time use). Instead, I live in the 'burbs of a pretty car-friendly city and life is good.

[wwind123]

Also...allow people to work from home more. During the Covid pandemic, most white-collar employees work from home, and the commute and the traffic is usually not a big problem. But now more and more companies ask employees to go back to office, and traffic jam is becoming a headache again.

[rob74]

Yup... hours of commuting time just to sit in Zoom/Teams/Slack/whatever calls while in the office instead of at home makes no sense at all, and is bad for the environment (even if you use public transportation, not going to the office still emits less CO2 than going there). But because RTO is just a way of trying to get rid of employees without severance costs, these and other points will invariably fall on deaf ears...

[gampleman]

I wonder if a very small tax for RTO (perhaps with exemptions for manual jobs) would do the trick?

I think it would help with making companies handle that externality.

[Ntrails]

> I think it would help with making companies handle that externality.

This is backwards, companies do not choose where employees live. Employees do. That they choose to live with long and unpleasant commutes (typically in exchange for more space, cheaper housing etc) is in general terms on them not the company. I'll allow that the rowback of wfh from a previously fully remote job is on the company - but certainly outside of that I have little agreement.

[Cthulhu_]

While true, there's (often, not always) an inverse correlation between location of work and cost of living. Few people can afford to live close to the office.

What would work (at least in my country, and in my head / from my armchair) is sattelite offices. I live in a neat suburb with an industrial estate with some office buildings, if my job opened a sattelite office there I would be much more inclined to go to the office.

But then, they would need to make sure that only people that live nearby go to that office. Given that a lot of teams are multidisciplinary, that would be difficult. Plus, the job would need to offer long-term stability, and only few jobs in software can promise stability for more than a year. If they want people to move close to work, it has to be both affordable and guaranteed stable for at least 5-10 years.

I looked into it once, there was an office for a software company across the street and I applied there. But the two offers they made were both lower than what I was earning at the time, to the point where I wouldn't be able to live there. And second, after the pandemic they closed the office and became a remote-first company.

[inigyou]

Companies as a collective also choose the geographical distributions of offices and housing and the price of each.

[ChadNauseam]

We definitely need more metro, trams, bus routes, and bike paths. I especially want the latter because I bike to and from work every day. However, I have to wonder about the cost of these projects. In SF, we recently spent $346 million on the Van Ness Improvement Project, which added 2 miles of bus lanes. I just can't see how that's a good use of funds. If someone gave me $346 million and told me to improve society, I could think of many better options than adding two miles of bus lane. So a prerequisite to the whole idea seems to involve solving whatever is making these projects so expensive.

[trymas]

One of the problems indeed.

Though IMHO it's just lack of political will.

Highways are built at (relative) ease, no matter the cost. Data centers are infamously now being built at society expense (electricity and water capacity), sometimes literally in peoples backyards.

At the moment I don't have the receipts, but from anecdotes - it's all just political will.

There's a highway extension? Some properties are taken by eminent domain, some other NIMBYs are told to just suck it up.

Data center? Forget about it - foundations are being laid this moment (sometimes no matter the law)!

High speed rail? We must listen to every NIMBY on the proposed path, hence it will take 200 years to listen to all complaints and align opinions of the people impacted. Millions speant on "research, enviornmental impact and public opinion" - project stalls and is closed after 5 years.

NB: I am not from USA, I think this pattern fits many (especially western) countries. Successful projects (I repeat myself) are always based on political will, when rule/law framework is designed to make such projects easier and much cheaper.

NB2: Also as with anything - when you start building you get experience and expertese - the more you build the cheaper it gets. A lot of places havent built new train/metro/tram line in decades - hence all expertese must be built from scratch (from policies, to government clerks knowing how to deal with such projects, to construction businesses who never built rail in 50 years, etc.).

[Tade0]

> Highways are built at (relative) ease, no matter the cost.

It's like that because it's a misconception that highways are built for passenger cars. They're built for freight and all kinds of business activities - regular people using them are just a bonus.

The majority of petroleum-based fuel, wear and tear on the highways and toll revenue comes from everything but passenger cars on highways.

[jcranmer]

Almost all of the new highway construction is for passenger cars. Yes, the interstate highways were built in part to facilitate intercity truck traffic, but the reason for building yet another beltway around, say, Houston isn't for trucks but for all of the passenger cars in the region that are congesting the roads.

[Cthulhu_]

The challenge that "developed" countries / cities have is that there's already a lot of existing (and aging) infrastructure around.

Meanwhile in other countries they build new cities from scratch, including infrastructure based on current-day knowledge of how these things pan out long term.

I think the US has the space and funds to do so. If they were to build a new city from scratch for the next 250 years, what would it look like?

[gsliepen]

> However, I have to wonder about the cost of these projects.

A very good way to deal with this is to recognize that all infrastructure needs maintenance and periodic replacement. Once it is time to replace a road, that is when you change it to include bike paths, bus lanes and so on.

You need some foresight, planning, make new road designs part of law, and political will. Some countries have made this work very well.

[inigyou]

This feels like an instance of America being unable to build things due to corruption.

Two miles of any lane shouldn't cost over a hundred million dollars per mile. Repainting a lane should be vastly less and even if they're building a new flyover just for buses it shouldn't cost that much. Something is happening there. It is not getting built in an effective way.

[queenkjuul]

Can almost guarantee that project involved much more that just bus lanes. I don't believe even California can spend that much on paint.

(And it did, the entire roadway, sewer, and water mains were replaced, traffic signals were replaced, etc: https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project)

[fragmede]

Okay, how would you spend $346 million?

[taneq]

Where I live, I’d spend it on increasing parking availability at train stations, and/or run a lot more local buses that do a small (few kilometres) circuit around the station and ferry passengers to/from the station. Taking a bus to the station currently adds an unreasonable amount of time to the journey. It doesn’t matter how good trains are if I don’t live near a station and I can’t get there.

[ChadNauseam]

If we had to stick to transportation-specific improvements, I would use the money to eliminate bus fare for a year. (muni generates about $100M in fare, so really it would be enough money to eliminate fare for ~3 years.)

Unlike subway fare, bus fare doesn't prevent n'er-do-wells from getting on the bus (they just ignore the fare and get on anyway), and it probably increases ridership and gets some people out of their cars, which reduces congestion (public benefit and therefore deserving of government subsidy).

[bluGill]

Why not use the money to make bus service better? There is no city that can't effectively use many more buses. Bus riders all put service as their biggest problem over the cost.

[ChadNauseam]

Improving service is much better, but the relative scales here are crazy. She options are "completely eliminate cost" or "slightly improve service in one two-mile stretch". Granted, 10 million trips a year go through that two-mile stretch that was improved, but that's just a small fraction of all bus trips in SF.

[bluGill]

It is more than that, but even still we should as that would help the people who ride their routes. In almost all cases this would bring in more riders who find the new service good enough that they can stop driving.

[spacemanspiffii]

I would add to the top of that list - reducing the distance people travel. Less kilometers would be very effective. Don't spend hours a day in your car. If people wouldn't be traveling so much, especially for work, this whole problem would disappear.

[bluGill]

The whole point of a city is all the destinations you can teach. Less km means you can go less places. No density isn't an answer, because some destinations are not dense, and even if they are we can cram more places in.

[mcbobgorge]

Air travel is the best way to go long distances, but some small islands are not easily accessible by plane. For those places, we have ferries.

In a similar vein, most places in a city can be accessed via density + transit. But cars are great for those non-dense destinations you describe, like wilderness areas or farms or whatever else.

[bluGill]

There is a large gap between distances where flying makes S and and what you can walk. Even with an ebike the distance you can reach in a reasonable time is vastly less that a car for most trips.

[AnthonyMouse]

> here's a good graph

The trouble with this graph is that it assumes the buses/trains are full. It obviously doesn't apply to a bus with one passenger on it, which takes up even more space than a car.

From which we can observe the problem. Alice is at home and wants to go to work. She travels along a low density street for a few miles, enters a congested thoroughfare for a few more miles, then travels along another low density street to her destination.

She can't take a bus at the endpoints because she would be the only one on it, but if she took a bus only on the congested thoroughfare then she'd end up on the far side of it without a vehicle to get the rest of the way to her destination.

To fix this the thing you need before mass transit (by several years) is zoning rules that allow higher density construction in a higher percentage of the land area where people live and work.

[jcranmer]

I've been traveling around in Europe without a car for several days now, including several fairly rural areas.

There's a distinctly American trope in play, that if the bus or train doesn't stop more or less exactly at your destination, then it's going to be totally useless. Except, you look at the rural European countryside, and there is still a fairly reliable--and well-used, certainly not "only one rider on the bus"--bus system. And this is in the countryside that is less densely populated than most American suburbs or exurbs. It is totally possible to make mass transit work, even in the car-oriented hellscape of most American cities.

The main thing that American public transit systems seem to be really allergic to is the concept of frequency--a high frequency transit system is generally necessary for usability, but your typical American transit system responds to a perennial funding crisis by cutting frequency, which tends to lead into a ridership death spiral--cutting frequency cuts ridership, loss of ridership leads to loss of funding, which they respond to by cutting frequency.

[AnthonyMouse]

It's not a matter of stopping exactly at your destination. If people had to walk two blocks it would do them some good.

The problem is that in a low density area, both frequent service and infrequent service result in a low number of riders. You have a neighborhood with three dozen people in it who go to work and back once a day. If you run a bus there every 15 minutes for 12 hours a day, the average bus carries less than one passenger in each direction. If you only run one bus in the morning and one in the evening then in theory it would be 75% full but in practice then nobody takes it at all because the bus comes at 7:30AM but they have to go to work at 7AM or 8:30 so they all just drive instead.

[jcranmer]

> You have a neighborhood with three dozen people in it

The average household size in the US is about 4. Three dozen people means 9 houses. That's not really a neighborhood, and most people don't live in that kind of low-density.

Picking a random cul-de-sac street somewhere in North Carolina (ended up being near Cary, NC), as representative of what a suburban/exurban density environment would look like, it has 22 houses on it by itself. Just guessing where I'd plop a bus stop on a collector road, there's 4 similarly-sized cul-de-sacs within walking distance, and a similar number of houses on the collector road. So that bus stop is going to have 100 houses it can service, or about 300-400-ish people.

One of the primary problems with transit discourse in the US is that people (on both sides!) tend to view transit as a Manhattan-or-Cimmaron-County density dichotomy, thinking that transit is unviable except in the highest density regions. But my point is that transit is absolutely viable at the density available in exurban, even a lot of "rural" regions (although that's rural more like Berkshires rural rather than Oklahoma rural). And because not a lot of people actually live in the lowest density regions where public transit is unviable... it doesn't actually matter: most people live some place where public transit is viable.

[trymas]

> The trouble with this graph is that it assumes the buses/trains are full. It obviously doesn't apply to a bus with one passenger on it, which takes up even more space than a car.

IMHO it's a bit moot to delve into extremes. Average car occupancy is around 1.5 passengers. I'd bet that such number is far from average for average bus/train/tram/metro. I also probably won't make a mistake stating that "Average car" in USA is either a very big SUV or even bigger "truck" (which probably has a footprint as half of a bus). You also need to park your car somewhere at the destination.

I also thought that there will be reply like yours, though you answered your own problem:

> To fix this the thing you need before mass transit (by several years) is zoning rules that allow higher density construction in a higher percentage of the land area where people live and work.

Of course you don't want to build trams and all in low density (and low population) areas and my comment didn't apply for such case. You must have density as well as mixed use zones. I am not from USA and seemingly prevalent single use zoning[1] is very foreign to me. It all comes down to efficient urbant planning.

[1] correct me if I am wrong on this.

[AnthonyMouse]

> You also need to park your car somewhere at the destination.

This is generally not the problem because most of the destinations aren't in the high-scarcity congestion area, people just have to go through it to get to their destination from their point of origin.

> Of course you don't want to build trams and all in low density (and low population) areas and my comment didn't apply for such case. You must have density as well as mixed use zones.

Which is the thing the US doesn't. Large percentages of land in the areas around many major cities -- some of them among the most congested -- is zoned exclusively for single family homes. There isn't enough density for mass transit to work and it's residential-only, so working within walking distance of those homes is essentially prohibited by law.

[aqme28]

I believe this is based on actual average usage, not by assuming the vehicles are full.

[AnthonyMouse]

Which would be even worse, since existing mass transit is naturally concentrated in the places where it can operate with high capacity, and it thereby has a higher existing average than passenger cars. Lots of mostly full commuter trains, not a lot of 8-passenger SUVs that actually have 8 passengers.

When the the proposal is to add more mass transit, it would then have to go in the places it currently isn't, i.e. the places where it would have to operate at lower capacity. Which leads to the problem described.

[elil17]

Well, you can actually do both.

This costs no money to cities and can be rolled out without any political barriers. It will have a small effect.

Public and active transit costs money and requires political buy-in. It will have a large effect but takes time.

[rob74]

Yes - when I read "both navigation users and non-users share the advantages of decongesting targeted segments", I wondered how long these advantages would last. It's widely accepted that less congestion will encourage people to travel by car more, which will soon eat up the gains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Definitions)

[AnthonyMouse]

> It's widely accepted that less congestion will encourage people to travel by car more, which will soon eat up the gains

This is not only not widely accepted but extremely misleading. The nature of "induced demand" is really that congestion suppresses demand. Which behaves in an entirely different way than the name implies.

If demand was being induced then all attempts to relieve congestion would be permanently impossible, which is nonsense. There are empirically places with less traffic congestion. Whereas if demand is being suppressed then an apparent capacity shortfall in the amount of 0.5X may really be a shortfall of X. Adding 0.5X then doesn't work, because congestion will remain until you add X, with the suppressed demand filling back in to the extent that you satisfy it.

In order to relieve the congestion you have to add enough capacity to satisfy the demand that would exist in the absence of congestion, which is more than the amount that exists now, but not an infinite amount that unconditionally consumes all possible capacity or efficiency increases.

[inigyou]

There's a related paradox - I don't remember the name - that the speed of traffic is determined by the speed of public transit. Cities with less car congestion probably have faster public transit.

[AnthonyMouse]

That doesn't seem like a paradox at all. If you have more convenient public transit then more people use it. If more people use it then there is less traffic.

This is also why things like bus lanes are ridiculous. The theory is supposed to be that making the bus faster than cars will get more people to use it. But if that actually created a benefit that exceeds its cost, i.e. got more people to take the bus than the wasted capacity of not allowing cars to use that lane when a bus isn't, then it would reduce the traffic congestion that it inherently requires. It's a thing that can't even be part of the solution to the problem because any means of actually solving the problem would eliminate its mechanism of operation.

[inigyou]

It's a paradox because making car traffic faster doesn't make car traffic faster, but making metro trains faster makes car traffic faster.

[AnthonyMouse]

Except that they both make car traffic faster, with the result that cities with slower trains on average have more car traffic.

[hobofan]

In a situation like this, induced demand could "easily" (on a technical, not a political sustainable level) be combated by shifting subsidies from car -> public transport. Induced demand won't be taken up as readily if there is a significant monetary penalty for it.

[quantumwannabe]

If you believe that adding lanes doesn't reduce congestion, then you must also believe that adding transit doesn't reduce congestion.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

In many instances removing or repurposing lanes (road diet) decreases congestion much more effectively than just adding capacity.

Congestion occurs naturally regardless of capacity due to fluctuations in flow (jitter) more often than being over capacity (this is civil engineering 101). By repurposing lanes for dedicated turn lanes, bus lanes, bike lanes, and/or pedestrian walkways, you remove many of the triggers for jitter.

Synchronizing traffic (connected autodrive?) would do much more for removing congestion than just adding high over head capacity.

https://highways.dot.gov/safety/other/road-diets/road-diet-c...

[jahnu]

Induced demand is a real, observed phenomenon for both roads and public transport. However, because of density differences, it is generally easier to increase service frequency for public transport than to add lanes for low-density road traffic.

Empirically, this pattern is observed repeatedly.

[wolrah]

> If you believe that adding lanes doesn't reduce congestion, then you must also believe that adding transit doesn't reduce congestion.

The problem with road congestion is the number of personal vehicles inefficiently carrying 1-2 people while taking up a lot of space on the road.

In any situation where the roads would be clogged with personal vehicles an effective transit network will be carrying dozens or even hundreds of people per vehicle in vehicles that may not even be sharing the same lanes and thus can't contribute to road congestion.

[trymas]

1. Like others said - induced demand. You add one highway lane - more people will jump into cars to use it. You add tram/metro line instead - same people would like to use that instead of sitting in traffic jam, taking away traffic from the highway.

2. Continuing from first point - see linked graph in parent comment. Light rail has an order of magnitude capacity per lane compared to cars. For 20 lane highway you'll need 2 lines of light rail or 1 lane of "heavy rail" (as per graph). Insane difference!

3. There's a reason "one more lane" is a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-more-lane-bro-one-more-la...

[brikym]

I think most people get that non-car forms of transport is denser. The two main issues that stop people using it are:

1) Time: Taking a trip involving public transport is slower than a car. This is fixable in urban areas with some dedicated paths, modal filters, and very frequent schedules and that kind of thing but this takes up front resources.

2) Safety: It's not safe. Too much antisocial behaviour on public transport. Nobody wants to sit near loud or smelly people. In the worst case people get assaulted. Cyclists are more likely to get seriously hurt in a crash or have their vehicle stolen than cars. It's fixable but policing takes effort.

3) The demand paradox: "See public transport and bikes are unpopular" say the decision makers and don't put in the resources. The thing is the infra needs to be near 100% built for people to want to use it. It's no good if your cycle commute is 80% dedicated bike paths but 20% of it is riding next to trucks and parked cars opening their doors as most people would rather take a car. It's also no good if the trains run every 30mins, so on average your trip is 15min delayed. The politician would think "why would I double it if the trains are already under-utilised" but does not understand latent demand.

[aqme28]

You're completely wrong on safety. Driving is much much more dangerous than trains by orders of magnitude.

I know what you're getting at when you write safety, but I want to be clear that this is not the same thing as safety.

[sndgndgndgndy]

Assertions made without evidence can be disregarded without evidence, and your assertion does not match my personal experience. Public transit is dangerous, especially in cities like SF or Seattle.

[aqme28]

Oh don’t worry there is plenty of evidence

Deaths per billion miles via

car: 7.3 Train: 0.43

From https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8606195/train-safety-driving-c... but you can just google, there are tons of other studies.

[Someone]

It’s a safe bet that sndgndgndgndy isn’t referring to that metric, but to the (perceived) probability of getting shouted at, mugged, etc.

That, I have been told, is definitely a problem in the USA. I think that’s because they’ve painted themselves into a car-centric corner that it is very hard to get out of.

[hylaride]

Outside of a handful of American cities, public transit is mostly used by the poor, which can include a lot of "undesirables", and many people used to their "quiet, safe" suburbs feel deeply uncomfortable around the poor in general. In some cities, public transit is used as a du-facto shelter system by the homeless.

It's funny when people see celebrities use the subway in NYC. It's just accepted by New Yorkers that the subway is usually the best way to get around Manhattan and getting mixed in with the entire socioeconomic spectrum is normal. But the crowds of people is also a kind of security blanket if something does happen.

[aqme28]

Crime rates are actually lower on transit than in a car: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1077291X2...

The perception of crime and danger is strangely very inverted

[sndgndgndgndy]

Your data is for traffic accidents, not crimes. Public transit is dangerous because of crime.

[aqme28]

> Public transit is dangerous because of crime

What was it you said? Assertions made without evidence?

Edit: I looked into it and crime rates are actually lower on transit than in cars. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1077291X2...

You need to examine your assumptions

[brikym]

Perceived safety is exactly what I meant. It's a marketing problem.