Magiccupcake
I dont mean throw out zoning entirely, but reducing the way they promote single family housing only. I live in a county with a million people and 84% of the land is single family zoning only, I want to throw that bit out.
Also if done right you dont need to zoning for all those things. Transit development will drive denser, walkable areas all on its own if its legal to build those kinds of areas. All the city has to do it manage transit as these areas develop.
I agree, it seems like it should be easy to convince libertarians and conservatives with deregulations, but exactly how to frame that argument is tricky.
He talks about the intersection a lot, but the main problem with this intersection has nothing to do with the intersection itself. It's the surrounding area that backs up into and causes it to fail.
Driving requires courtesy and attention, but overreliance on cars make people the opposite.
People get frustrated driving in traffic, causing them to be rude and agressive.
Meanwhile if driving is the only way to get around, even for easily distracted people or busy or whatever, they are not going to pay proper attention. Safety features like blind spot detection and automatic crash avoidance just make people pay even less attention.
You say the problem isn't cars, but it is because in america cars are the only way to get around for most trips.
If you make other options more conpelling or faster, than these problems are less severe for those left on the road.
You can always count on people to be irresponsible, selfish, and reckless. So yeah its bad road design to count on people to be safe, when they just aren't.
Drivers don't t have to look left on right in green, so should naturally look in the direction they're going, and thus see pedestrians and cyclists.
They also have time to spot them while waiting.
In the Netherlands they use bike lanes.
A two way bike lane is wide enough for emergency vehicles like an ambulance, and bikers get out of the way.
Do really need need 4?
If you cant get by on 2, you might have less power, but you can get better efficiency. With better efficiency you can have a smaller battery for the same range and reduce some of your increased cost that way.
If you're gonna go through all this trouble, why not put motors directly into the wheels? Then you can bypass the drivetrain all together and directly power the wheels.
The newer technology at that time was cars and roads, and many European countries did try the American system of roads and suburbs.
Its just that most of them realized it wad a bad idea around 20 years ago and started rethinking their cities.
Many city centers were even turned into parking lots like American ones.
Again cities arent supposed to be static, and normally they grow denser, rather than sprawling.
The problem with American cities is partly zoning, and partly nimbyism, where people don't want their places to change.
And sprawl sucks for pretty much everyone. Less arable land for farming, poorer anmeties, longer travel times, and finally huge transportation costs. Cars are by far the most costly method of travel, both personally and for governments.
The stupid thing is that fixing it isn't even that hard.
Step one Get rid stupid zoning laws like single family housing and reduce parking minimums.
Step 2 Modify existing roads piece by piece to include alternative transit methods. Add bike lanes, if you can't slow down roads and people will bike.
Actually run decent buses where peoole want to go, not oversized 50 person buses on 3 routes that nobody uses becasue it doesn't go anywhere, and has an hour between the next bus.
That's it, the market will build more housing in areas that need it if its profitable, then use that new tax money to drive transit infrastructure.
There's a lot of fine details, but we're bankrupting cities with cars right now.