mindstalk | Entries tagged with traffic

Yesterday I stood at a busy intersection with 4-way stop signs, and counted. 37 cars. 4 had cross traffic and made a full stop. 2 had cross traffic and did not make a full stop, instead creeping or rolling toward the pedestrian. The rest did not have cross traffic and did not make a full stop. Speeds varied: some were barely crawling, at a few inches per second; others maybe simply took their foot off the gas to slow down a bit.

I walked around further and did less precise counting, but I'm confident that in like 60 drivers, not a single one made an unforced full stop at a stop sign.

I don't entirely blame them, especially the ones who crawl with no cross traffic. But no justification in getting hung up over bicyclists making rolling stops when at least 98% of drivers do as well. (And maybe 1/3 of drivers do even with cross traffic, though I would want a much bigger sample size.)

On Strong Towns Facebook, there's discussion of breakaway light poles (so if a driver crashes into one, the pole breaks and car and pole keep moving on to any nearby pedestrians), vs. ones that would stand firm and act as protective bollards. I of course advocate for the latter. A driver objected "what about someone standing 3 feet further down? Should we just line the roads with impenetrable steel?" as if that was ridiculous and unthinkable.

Well, guess what. Lining fast roads with railings or bollards or hard planters is pretty common in Japan, e.g. 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8.

It's not perfect; there are often breaks for driveways, or just because, but far more often than not, there's both distance and barrier in between the cars and pedestrians.

Though, after a couple random drops into Nagoya and Sapporo, it may be that such barriers are more of a Tokyo and Osaka thing than a Japan thing; this place in Sapporo looks like any American stroad.

I watch this video about stop signs being bad, and one big argument was how they disrupted flow for cars and bicycles (assuming no Idaho/rolling stop for bikes). You move, you stop, you move again.

As a life-long pedestrian I've always thought stop signs were great, and this helped elucidate why: they don't hurt my flow. In fact, they optimize it, compared to North American alternatives anyway. No waiting 30-120 seconds for a walk signal to change. No waiting for a break in traffic at an uncontrolled intersection. At most, wait for a car already there to clear, then walk. Ideally, a walk with stop signs is very close to a walk without any cars around. Pretty neat!

I've talked a lot about my local baby stroad, San Pablo, enough that I should start tagging it. 4 lanes of traffic, with local median, meant to be busy and fast. My nearest intersection is a T, I think always green north-south unless the lights detect a westbound car or a pedestrian presses the beg button. It's not so bad. But, unexpectedly, today I didn't have to press the beg button.

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I've talked about Marin Avenue before. But today I'll compare it to Gilman.

Gilman: 4 "lanes" wide, 2 traffic and 2 parking.

Marin: maybe 6 wide: 2 traffic, 2 parking, 2 bike lanes and a turn lane. Widths are such that I can't rule out it being 7/4 of Gilman rather than 6/4.

Notably, both are ostensibly just two lanes of traffic, one in each direction. But Gilman, even when it has a lot of actual cars, feels like a sleepy slow street that can support a lot of (sometimes judicious) 'jaywalking'. While Marin feels like a fast dangerous street where I had better use the right intersection -- ones with at least a beg button if not a stop light.

Why the difference? Probably Marin's traffic really is faster. I'm pretty sure it has fewer stop signs and such. And, ignoring any possible difference in lane width, the travel lanes have different contexts. On Marin you're between a little-used bike lane and an even less-used (and very wide) turn lane. On Gilman you're between parked cars and unbuffered oncoming traffic. Presumably the latter induces slower driving.

There's also that there's simply less distance for the hapless pedestrian to cross. 50-100% more, depending on whether one measures from the curb or from the edge of the parking lane.

Nothing too surprising here, really, but I find it interesting to work it out, especially in this case where the streets have the same number of traffic lanes (vs. the more usual case of 4 traffic lanes on the wider stroad.)

They're so diverse!

Some do nothing, perhaps because they used to but have been disabled.

Some are necessary to get a walk signal, but they put you in your place as a second-class citizen: even if traffic has been streaming continuously, you get to wait another minute or two before you get a grudging 20 seconds to dash across the stroad.

But the one tonight... despite the fact that the light had changed fewer than 30 seconds before, it changed again instantly[1] for me. Pedestrians rule here, man!

Oh, I haven't posted in a while. "here" is currently Albany, California. Or maybe Berkeley, not sure where the borders are.

[1] To be precise, instantly turned yellow.

Decades ago cities started having lots of private cars, and lots of taxis. There was congestion. One approach could have been to cap the number of cars allowed in, and let the market move licenses to the most valuable users. Another could have been congestion charges, with a similar effect. Instead, cities like NYC capped the number of taxis, while doing nothing about private cars; congestion probably was barely abated; certainly modern cities achieved high congestion without the help of Uber.

(Induced demand tells us every taxi removed would have been replaced by a private car.)

Ridehail companies noticed that private cars weren't capped or charged for driving around, and provided a way to match drivers to passengers, successfully undermining taxi prices and supply limits. Traffic goes up again. Cities once again consider limiting the supply of ridehail cars, while remaining committed to allowing every non-commercial person to drive as they please for free.

See a problem, implement a bad solution that doesn't actually solve the problem, layer on another solution for someone's hack of your bad solution...

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/548527.html

So there's a kind of intersection I've been seeing a lot of in Australian cities. There's be a fast turn lane, then a pedestrian island, usually no light (let alone a stop sign) before the curve, and repeated. So to cross the intersection you go across the turn lane, press a light button on the island, wait, cross to the opposite island, then cross that turn lane.

I think I've seen this in the US -- one obnoxious intersection on the east side of Bloomington IN comes to mind -- but very rarely, not common enough to be a thing. Here it's definitely a thing.

In one of those odd moments of serendipity, I have very recently been reading about slip lanes, which is what these are, including a piece today on slip lanes, safety, and speed. Apparently they're pretty common in the USA; I guess I only live in older places where they're not. Even the parts of LA I'm familiar with (Pasadena, Glendale) don't have them much.

Wiki

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/547528.html

I'm told there's a reason for 'good behavior': "the rangers will lurk and fine you". I did find multiple articles about anti-jaywalking enforcement campaigns by Australian cities, with fines as high as $150 in the Northern Territory, which also includes vague clauses that make harassing and arresting aborigines easier.

Though I also learned it's explicitly legal to cross a street at least 20 meters away from a crosswalk. (I've been using jaywalking to specifically mean crossing a "don't walk" signal.) Given how long some of the signals are, it would almost be worth making the detour, if you were at a street with low enough traffic to make that safe but were still afraid of cops.

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/543116.html

In Osaka 1, I could reach a conbini, supermarket, several restaurants, a subway station, more shops, and maybe a large park, without even passing through a car-enabled intersection. Helps to live on a pedestrian arcade, with the subway station providing an underpass under the main road.

In Osaka 2, I could reach at least three supermarkets, 5 different train stations, multiple malls, countless shops, the same large park, without passing through a traffic light (or intersection that needed one.) This comes from lots of narrow calmed low-traffic roads, pedestrian overpasses, and subway underpasses. W lived 20 minutes way but I would need at most one traffic light to reach her.

(Though more commonly I took a main road sidewalk that did have a traffic light for a garage exit; avoiding lights meant taking sidewalk-less one lane roads with the occasional slow car to dodge.)

This isn't necessarily typical of Japan. My place in Tokyo couldn't really be escaped without traffic lights. And exploring various cities, I certainly had to wait at lights a lot. Still, the ubiquity of low traffic roads, and the fact that all neighborhoods are at least somewhat mixed, raises the chance that you can reach something without much interaction with cars.

Brisbane 1, despite being very different, was similar in this. I could reach a supermarket, pharmacy, handful of restaurants, and the busway station, without lights.

Brisbane 2 and 3, not so much. Brisbane 2 needed a long-wait traffic light to reach the market, my favorite restaurant, or either busway station. Brisbane 3 needs a long-wait traffic light to reach anything other than a ferry terminal or one cafe.

In terms of walking to the central area, Brisbane 1 might have been better, though it might be that the same number of traffic lights were spaced out better, rather than jammed up at one end.

So, this probably explains part of how I've been feeling the past 2+ weeks. I went from 14 weeks where interaction with heavy traffic was completely optional, to places where such interaction is mandatory to eat.

How about other places I've lived? Where I grew up in Chicago was pretty walkable. I think stop signs would allow reaching the supermarket and bank and maybe library without lights, but for the train station and other things you would need a light.

Where I lived in Cambridge... subway station and several restaurants without light. Maybe one of the supermarkets. Harvard probably technically needed lights, but on low traffic roads where it doesn't matter much. At Harvard itself the subway gives some underpass capability.

Where I lived in Somerville, not so much. Couldn't reach anything without lights or dangerous jaywalking. You could get to one supermarket without much of a light but it was a long walk. Getting to the subway station took two lights, though one of them was pretty responsive to pedestrian buttons.

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/542053.html

Today I did something I've thought of but never really done: do my own traffic count. Not super long or thorough, but something.

First I counted people coming off the SW end of the Goodwill Bridge, which is a non-car bridge. Only counted one way, to keep things simple. Finished at 16:42, was counting at least six minutes, probably more like ten. Bikes were in the lead for much of the period but I ended up at 80 pedestrians, 60 bikers. I didn't count scooters, and also didn't count children walking with their parents, which might have added another 10 to the peds.

Then at the nearest main street, I counted pedestrians and cars, for three traffic light cycles. 38 pedestrians, 159 cars (including a few motorcycles.) No idea about multiple people per car.

Given the nature of this intersection, largely pedestrians coming off the bridge or river, with little cross car traffic, it might be fair to count people who were crossing the street rather than going along the direction I was counting. I didn't, but if we assume it was equal to the pedestrians I did count, that would be 76:159.

I ignored bikers there, having been too lazy to get out the tools for a three-way count (pen and notebook, lots of tally marks to sum later). Not sure if I was actually seeing as many bikes as pedestrians there.

http://www.cityclock.org/urban-cycling-mode-share/ claims a mere 1% cycling mode share. Methodology unknown. https://chartingtransport.com/2017/10/24/trends-in-journey-to-work-mode-shares-in-australian-cities-to-2016/ has a similar number. (And also suggests Melborne and Sydney are notably better transit cities than Brisbane.)

Of course Brisbane is rather large, and I was counting in a fairly central area that's specifically geared to pedestrians and cyclists.

I regret not doing a count in Japan, though it could have been challenging. The first spot that comes to mind is along my main street to Tennouji, which was was high traffic and cars might have beaten pedestrians... but I also know that there was a perfectly good parallel route, along one-lane streets no one would drive without good reason, which I myself often took.

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/541683.html

https://transfersmagazine.org/longer-view-the-fairness-of-congestion-pricing/

Summary:

Some people object to road pricing on the grounds of it being regressive. But free roads help the rich more: the rich drive more, and the pollution from congestion hurts the poor (living more near freeways and boulevards) more.

In top congested cities, poor households are 14% of the population but only 4% of peak commute traffic.

You have to spend a fair bit of money to get on road in the first place; free roads are more like matching grants than progressive transfers.

Money circulates: what's paid by drivers can be used to help the poor. Time lost in congestion is just lost, no one benefits.

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/526730.html

Playing with Google's traffic layer and finding that rush hour traffic moves at 7.5-15 mph.

Actually I haven't checked before 8:55 am yet, so it might be even worse earlier.

"Fastest route despite slowdown of 45 minutes... 53 minutes.. 75 minutes..."