EDIT: since apparently a bunch of people woke up with the wrong foot this morning or forgot to check the group they’re in:
This is a joke. Do not steal or vandalize speed enforcement cameras (or anything else for that matter). That’s against the law and you will likely get arrested.
If you’re addicted to crack or any other drugs, please seek professional help.
I think people are intuitively understanding that it’s not really a possibility in a country as large as America. There are only 139,000 km of public roads in the Netherlands, compared to 6,743,151 km of roads in America. We also have different types of traffic compared to the Netherlands, more large vehicles and people without access to public transportation for daily commutes. Compounding all this with the fact that the federal government has no control of how most of these roads are built… It’s understandable why people don’t see this as realistic option.
Their cynical intuition is wrong, though, and the “large country” argument in particular falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. So what if we have more roads? We have commensurately more traffic engineers, too! There is no excuse not to design properly.
Anyway, NJB has an entire video debunking that, so I’m just going to cite it instead of wasting my time arguing the point myself.
Vehicle size is irrelevant. Lack of access to public transportation is indeed a problem; however, in general “we shouldn’t fix problem A because we also have problem B” is not a valid argument. It just means you should fix problems A and B.
Sigh… look, you’re not wrong to argue that that’s a popular perception; however, that’s much more a consequence of the shitty state of civics education than it is an accurate description of reality. There’s a bunch of different ways the Federal government exerts control, including things like taxation and funding (including for state- and local-maintained roads in a lot of cases, not just U.S. Highways) and collaboration between the FHWA (government) and AASHTO (industry) on design standards. It’s more complicated than just a unitary central government dictating things, but rest assured, roads are designed in a relatively standardized way nationwide.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
NJB has an entire video debunking that
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think we’re having a problem determining the difference of what is possible and what should be possible. Your argument is ignoring the most important aspect of any public project. There isn’t enough political will in this country to pass universal healthcare, something that would end up saving the country billions of dollars. In what world do you think American politicians are going to replace 4 million miles of working roads?
I don’t have the time ATM to watch this, I’ll give it a try after work. However, I doubt they’re going to be able to explain how they would get through the gridlock of our current government.
Traffic congestion won’t improve unless we improve public transportation. It doesn’t matter how well you build the roads, unless there is an alternative to driving there will be too many people on the roads. My argument is if we have to solve problem B before we work on problem A, there is no real reason to address problem A.
I think we’re just just getting into sematics now. Yes there is somewhat of a standardization of roads, but that does not mean they have the power to unilaterally create a new standard in which they could enforce with the power of the purse.
Your argument is ignoring the magnitude of funding and state and federal cooperation that would be required to revamp the entire transportation network of a huge country. Even if you could get a bill passed through our current Congress, how much money would it take, how much time?
Do I think we should be designing walkable cities with ample public transportation, of course. Do I think any politician in America would actually care about that…? No.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
NJB has an entire video debunking that
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Ah yes, “tHe UsA iS tOo BiG, wE cAnT sOlVe ThIs”
Yes you can fix this. The Dutch bicycle culture was started by municipal votes, where resolutions passed municipal governments with margins of single votes. If American politicians can pull their heads out of their asses and even only pass a resolution that:
Then in the next thirty odd years, I think that the worst offenders can be rebuilt.
Do note that few things are as good at destroying themselves in regular, correct use as car infrastructure.
This is my entire point… It is unrealistic to believe that American politicians would do something for the good of the people. Especially when a large portion of Americans themselves rarely vote for their own self interest.
What would be the cost of redesigning and paving 4.19 million miles of road? Well let’s do some real conservative napkin math. Let’s choose the cheapest type of road, a rural minor arterial on flat ground. The reconstruction for this single lane would be 915,000 per mile, per lane. Assuming every road is just rural and two lanes the cost would be around 7.7 trillion dollars. Roughly a third of America’s GDP.
That’s the absolute minimum according to The most recent estimate for road reconstruction and while using the least expensive options available.
No politician is ever going to ask for 7.7 trillion dollars for infrastructure.
yeah see that’s what I was talking about. you don’t have to ask for 7.7 trillion dollars all at once, because we already spend a pretty ludicrous amount on road maintenance already. you just redesign the road the next time the maintenance schedule comes around, which works out to be like. what you were already gonna spend, + the cost of paint you were already gonna use, + maybe some bollards, - the projected amount you would save by making it so people can take more trips by bikes and walking. which decreases car usage, which decreases the frequency with which you have to do road maintenance and upkeep, because cars weigh a lot and wear down the roads way more than any other use of roads.
That’s how every congressional budget is configured… When they run scare tactics about universal healthcare going to cost trillions of dollars they don’t mean all at once. When they pass something like an infrastructure bill they also have to explain how to pay for it and for how long.
That’s not how roads work… The maintenance schedule is just fixing the top layer of paving. The bulk of the cost is in reshaping land and pouring the concrete foundations. If all you’re doing is repaving the top layer it’s not going to make any significant changes.
more than you might think, again, even just with paint. a road diet can take a four lane road down to two lanes, and can add bike lanes and a turn lane, which cuts down on traffic accidents from lane changes, and potentially road speed. you can do a lot with on street parking, and then you can increase the width of bike lanes and increase their traffic separation even more, if you really want to encroach on the space cars are taking up. you can focus larger projects on given intersections, you can increase the size of curbs, once foot traffic increases, and it becomes easier to justify. I don’t have solutions for like a six lane fully stroaded out shithole, outside of maybe trying to make it into a boulevard with planters and trees and pedestrian islands in the middle, because the crossings are too long. you can also do that shit they did with covid and just cut off a street for a weekend and then see whatever the increase in foot traffic ends up being, and then present the results of that trial, which is a good way to get the idea across and raise support in the community.
if none of those, combined with changing zoning laws to allow more mixed-use development, and more built up development, if none of that strikes you as “significant changes”, then I don’t really know what to tell you. it takes a while to accomplish, and at this point in most places in america is a multi-generation effort, but I dunno, that’s just kind of the way it is. if you’re really cynical, I guess there’s caltrops? like I dunno, what’s your alternative here?
Shit like this is why I think the only thing that will save America is a complete purge of state and federal government, and a very clear and specific explanation why the US governments have been forcibly emptied and rebooted.
It should be governments’ jobs to act for the betterment of their subjects. The fact the US doesn’t, and happily marches the troops into places where they do “too well” if you’d ask them and read between the lines of their answers, is a crime against humanity.
I think we’re about 40-50 years too late for that option unfortunately. I think the whole world is going to be a little too busy addressing our rapidly deteriorating climate to do anything meaningfully good anytime soon.