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0 pointsXylakant1y ago0 comments

2000 people per hour is really not that much. And reducing density will not buy you much - density itself doesn't mean anything. If you have a suburb with 50 000 people living there and an office park with 25 000 people working there (both not particularly high numbers), you get a traffic flow of 25 000 people moving both ways, during rush hour. That's grossly simplifying things, but you should be able to get the point.

What would buy you much is mixed neighborhoods (aka: the 15 minute city - everything you need for your daily life is within 15 minutes walking distance), because this will eliminate many trips. But mixed neighborhoods work better with higher density - because a supermarket in a low density place cannot be within 15 minutes walking distance.

Also: This is about NYC. How would you even go about reducing Manhattens density to a level where no road is used by less than 2000 (or 4000) people per hour during rush hour?

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cyberax1y ago

> That's grossly simplifying things, but you should be able to get the point.

No, that's called "lying by omission". A person working in an office park doesn't live in one particular housing area assigned to it. So you get a distributed flow instead.

And it's also why transit sucks (sucked, and will always suck): it's unlikely that there's a direct fast transit route between your house and your job. And each connection adds around 10 minutes on average to the commute.

> Also: This is about NYC. How would you even go about reducing Manhattens density to a level where no road is used by less than 2000 (or 4000) people per hour during rush hour?

Tax the dense office space like it's an industrial pollution.

sunshowers1y ago

I almost got into an accident today when a car swerved 4 lanes to the right because an absentminded driver wanted to take the exit at the last second. Like most attentive drivers, I don't like driving on public roads — it brings out the worst in us.

This is on top of the rather fundamental geometry problem that cars present.

cyberax1y ago

Thankfully, robots will save us. I wouldn't be pushing for cars, if it were not for the existence of Waymo.

> This is on top of the rather fundamental geometry problem that cars present.

Yeah. They are waaaaay too good at allowing people to move, so urbanists wage an all-out war on them.

Transit has this inherent problem: it HAS to suck. You can't realistically build a fast public transit network allowing easy arbitrary point-to-point trips. It's just mathematically impossible. So transit does what it can only kinda-sorta do well: move people to Downtowns from dense living residential areas.

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0 pointsXylakant1y ago0 comments

Also: This is about NYC. How would you even go about reducing Manhattens density to a level where no road is used by less than 2000 (or 4000) people per hour during rush hour?

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cyberax1y ago

> That's grossly simplifying things, but you should be able to get the point.

No, that's called "lying by omission". A person working in an office park doesn't live in one particular housing area assigned to it. So you get a distributed flow instead.

> Also: This is about NYC. How would you even go about reducing Manhattens density to a level where no road is used by less than 2000 (or 4000) people per hour during rush hour?

Tax the dense office space like it's an industrial pollution.

sunshowers1y ago

This is on top of the rather fundamental geometry problem that cars present.

cyberax1y ago

Thankfully, robots will save us. I wouldn't be pushing for cars, if it were not for the existence of Waymo.

> This is on top of the rather fundamental geometry problem that cars present.

Yeah. They are waaaaay too good at allowing people to move, so urbanists wage an all-out war on them.

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