More MOCO Upzoning - Starting in Silver Spring

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

They're right. Why don't we have 15 mph speed limits on the beltway or 270? Because eventually we make the determination that some risk is appropriate so that people can get to where they're going. Similarly, there are some jobs with a significant risk of death (https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states); we don't abolish those jobs, though I suppose that's what you'd prefer. Why do we insist on vision zero so that people can jaywalk rampantly, but allow the professions of roofing and garbage collecting to continue?

You should take a law school torts class, where they teach that we put a value on human life in basically everything we do.

Normal people: we should do what we can to reduce hazards that kill people.
People who have taken a law school torts class, apparently: well ACKSHUALLY sometimes it's acceptable for some people to die so that other people can have what they want.

Because of the risk of death to garbage collectors, would you support making every county resident drive their garbage to a landfill and eliminating all curbside pickup?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course they never do this kinda upzoning in Takoma Park historic district, Chevy Chase, or Bethesda.

This will inevitably mean giant apartment complexes right along the highways. Then of course all of the cheap residents in them won't want to pay for garage parking, which means 2000 cars all parked in neighborhoods.

Can't stand progressive morons that want to ruin SFH neighborhoods. They almost always propose these for neighborhoods other than where they live, or they simply have this disgusting attitude that no one deserves anything nice and that after they import poverty into the county that anything good has to be spread around equally.

Communist morons are driving the county into a cesspit. MoCo is turning into Baltimore and will be a trashole soon.

You, also, have the opportunity to provide your input at the Planning Department's community meetings, just like everybody else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good. I’m a YIMBY. We need more housing.

Go move to a city then. I moved to the suburbs for a reason.

and the reason is?

Because I like having space and not living on top of people. Let people who want to live in SFH do that in peace. Stop pretending you know what's best for everyone.

+1000

All of the jealous idiots who can't afford a home get mad at those whom can. Their solution is to ruin it for everyone if they can't have the same.

I moved to the burbs to have space. I moved to the burbs specifically because living in apartments and townhomes blows. I don't want to live like a sardine. Stop trying to take from everyone just because you can't have it and feel like you're entitled or deserve. If you want density go move to goddamn DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

They're right. Why don't we have 15 mph speed limits on the beltway or 270? Because eventually we make the determination that some risk is appropriate so that people can get to where they're going. Similarly, there are some jobs with a significant risk of death (https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states); we don't abolish those jobs, though I suppose that's what you'd prefer. Why do we insist on vision zero so that people can jaywalk rampantly, but allow the professions of roofing and garbage collecting to continue?

You should take a law school torts class, where they teach that we put a value on human life in basically everything we do.

Normal people: we should do what we can to reduce hazards that kill people.
People who have taken a law school torts class, apparently: well ACKSHUALLY sometimes it's acceptable for some people to die so that other people can have what they want.

Because of the risk of death to garbage collectors, would you support making every county resident drive their garbage to a landfill and eliminating all curbside pickup?

Is this supposed to be an analogy to "ban cars"? Vision Zero is not ban cars. No, I don't support eliminating curbside garbage collection. I support eliminating hazards that threaten the safety and lives of people who do curbside garbage collection. I hope you're not going to tell me that's impossible, because it's not. And actually, you know what's one of the main hazards that threaten the safety and lives of people who do curbside garbage collection? Car drivers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good. I’m a YIMBY. We need more housing.

Go move to a city then. I moved to the suburbs for a reason.

and the reason is?

Because I like having space and not living on top of people. Let people who want to live in SFH do that in peace. Stop pretending you know what's best for everyone.

+1000

All of the jealous idiots who can't afford a home get mad at those whom can. Their solution is to ruin it for everyone if they can't have the same.

I moved to the burbs to have space. I moved to the burbs specifically because living in apartments and townhomes blows. I don't want to live like a sardine. Stop trying to take from everyone just because you can't have it and feel like you're entitled or deserve. If you want density go move to goddamn DC.

Is that what you say to your neighbors who support these plans?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good. I’m a YIMBY. We need more housing.

Go move to a city then. I moved to the suburbs for a reason.

and the reason is?

Because I like having space and not living on top of people. Let people who want to live in SFH do that in peace. Stop pretending you know what's best for everyone.

+1000

All of the jealous idiots who can't afford a home get mad at those whom can. Their solution is to ruin it for everyone if they can't have the same.

I moved to the burbs to have space. I moved to the burbs specifically because living in apartments and townhomes blows. I don't want to live like a sardine. Stop trying to take from everyone just because you can't have it and feel like you're entitled or deserve. If you want density go move to goddamn DC.

agree - life ain't fair. let me enjoy my life. I worked hard for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

They're right. Why don't we have 15 mph speed limits on the beltway or 270? Because eventually we make the determination that some risk is appropriate so that people can get to where they're going. Similarly, there are some jobs with a significant risk of death (https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states); we don't abolish those jobs, though I suppose that's what you'd prefer. Why do we insist on vision zero so that people can jaywalk rampantly, but allow the professions of roofing and garbage collecting to continue?

You should take a law school torts class, where they teach that we put a value on human life in basically everything we do.

Normal people: we should do what we can to reduce hazards that kill people.
People who have taken a law school torts class, apparently: well ACKSHUALLY sometimes it's acceptable for some people to die so that other people can have what they want.

So we should just ban cars entirely so we can reduce traffic deaths to zero?? Most Americans do not want this and and they accept on some fundamental level that there will be some level of traffic deaths that is unavoidable. It can definitely be reduced from where it is now, but zero deaths is both unrealistic and undesirable due to tradeoffs.

But it's not necessary to ban cars in order to reduce traffic deaths to zero.

https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762

And as you say, it's also a desirable goal to simply reduce the number of people killed in car crashes. For example, by building transit-accessible housing, bikeways, and bus rapid transit (BRT), as well as creating a complete street with wider sidewalks, comfortable public transportation stops, and safe access.

Hoboken is an example that is not particularly replicable in most of the US. Only 20% of resident there own a car and most Americans do not want to live in an area with that level of density. The maximum speed limit for the entire city of Hoboken is only 20 mph, so you are actually proving my point that you need to reduce the speed limit to extremely low speeds everywhere to make vision zero possible. This may be workable in Hoboken, but reducing the speed limit everywhere to some ridiculously low speed will have terrible consequences for overall quality of life and the economy in MOCO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

This is a common fallacy when discussing urban traffic. Higher speed limits don't always equal higher average speeds. Right now that stretch of University has a posted 35 MPH limit, but traffic actually moves between an of 10-25 MPH depending on the time of day. That's actually only slightly faster than the stretch of Connecticut Ave. with a posted 25 MPH that was the focus of another thread. That's mostly because of lights and the back ups they cause.

Why are there so many lights on University? Because drivers off the side streets can't get onto University safely when you have six lanes of traffic moving at 35+. So they demand a stop light. Now every dinky road has a light with a minute+ cycle time.

So what happens when you reduce peak speeds? You can remove traffic controls, down grade them, use traffic circles, etc. Your average travel time remains largely the same while everything gets safer and more pleasant.

There are large parts of MOCO that are not urban or high density and this policy has negative consequences in these areas where people will suffer from much longer commutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

This is a common fallacy when discussing urban traffic. Higher speed limits don't always equal higher average speeds. Right now that stretch of University has a posted 35 MPH limit, but traffic actually moves between an of 10-25 MPH depending on the time of day. That's actually only slightly faster than the stretch of Connecticut Ave. with a posted 25 MPH that was the focus of another thread. That's mostly because of lights and the back ups they cause.

Why are there so many lights on University? Because drivers off the side streets can't get onto University safely when you have six lanes of traffic moving at 35+. So they demand a stop light. Now every dinky road has a light with a minute+ cycle time.

So what happens when you reduce peak speeds? You can remove traffic controls, down grade them, use traffic circles, etc. Your average travel time remains largely the same while everything gets safer and more pleasant.

There are large parts of MOCO that are not urban or high density and this policy has negative consequences in these areas where people will suffer from much longer commutes.

Yes, there are, but this plan is not about those parts, it's about the three-mile stretch of University Boulevard (MD 193) from the edge of East Indian Spring Drive, just south of i-495, to Amherst Avenue in Wheaton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

They're right. Why don't we have 15 mph speed limits on the beltway or 270? Because eventually we make the determination that some risk is appropriate so that people can get to where they're going. Similarly, there are some jobs with a significant risk of death (https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states); we don't abolish those jobs, though I suppose that's what you'd prefer. Why do we insist on vision zero so that people can jaywalk rampantly, but allow the professions of roofing and garbage collecting to continue?

You should take a law school torts class, where they teach that we put a value on human life in basically everything we do.

Normal people: we should do what we can to reduce hazards that kill people.
People who have taken a law school torts class, apparently: well ACKSHUALLY sometimes it's acceptable for some people to die so that other people can have what they want.

So we should just ban cars entirely so we can reduce traffic deaths to zero?? Most Americans do not want this and and they accept on some fundamental level that there will be some level of traffic deaths that is unavoidable. It can definitely be reduced from where it is now, but zero deaths is both unrealistic and undesirable due to tradeoffs.

But it's not necessary to ban cars in order to reduce traffic deaths to zero.

https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762

And as you say, it's also a desirable goal to simply reduce the number of people killed in car crashes. For example, by building transit-accessible housing, bikeways, and bus rapid transit (BRT), as well as creating a complete street with wider sidewalks, comfortable public transportation stops, and safe access.

Hoboken is an example that is not particularly replicable in most of the US. Only 20% of resident there own a car and most Americans do not want to live in an area with that level of density. The maximum speed limit for the entire city of Hoboken is only 20 mph, so you are actually proving my point that you need to reduce the speed limit to extremely low speeds everywhere to make vision zero possible. This may be workable in Hoboken, but reducing the speed limit everywhere to some ridiculously low speed will have terrible consequences for overall quality of life and the economy in MOCO.

You: It's not possible to reach zero deaths from car crashes!
Me: Yes it is.
You: Well ok it actually is, but I don't want it to happen here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

They're right. Why don't we have 15 mph speed limits on the beltway or 270? Because eventually we make the determination that some risk is appropriate so that people can get to where they're going. Similarly, there are some jobs with a significant risk of death (https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states); we don't abolish those jobs, though I suppose that's what you'd prefer. Why do we insist on vision zero so that people can jaywalk rampantly, but allow the professions of roofing and garbage collecting to continue?

You should take a law school torts class, where they teach that we put a value on human life in basically everything we do.

Normal people: we should do what we can to reduce hazards that kill people.
People who have taken a law school torts class, apparently: well ACKSHUALLY sometimes it's acceptable for some people to die so that other people can have what they want.

So we should just ban cars entirely so we can reduce traffic deaths to zero?? Most Americans do not want this and and they accept on some fundamental level that there will be some level of traffic deaths that is unavoidable. It can definitely be reduced from where it is now, but zero deaths is both unrealistic and undesirable due to tradeoffs.

But it's not necessary to ban cars in order to reduce traffic deaths to zero.

https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762

And as you say, it's also a desirable goal to simply reduce the number of people killed in car crashes. For example, by building transit-accessible housing, bikeways, and bus rapid transit (BRT), as well as creating a complete street with wider sidewalks, comfortable public transportation stops, and safe access.

Hoboken is an example that is not particularly replicable in most of the US. Only 20% of resident there own a car and most Americans do not want to live in an area with that level of density. The maximum speed limit for the entire city of Hoboken is only 20 mph, so you are actually proving my point that you need to reduce the speed limit to extremely low speeds everywhere to make vision zero possible. This may be workable in Hoboken, but reducing the speed limit everywhere to some ridiculously low speed will have terrible consequences for overall quality of life and the economy in MOCO.

You: It's not possible to reach zero deaths from car crashes!
Me: Yes it is.
You: Well ok it actually is, but I don't want it to happen here.

You are missing the point. Hoboken has a density level more than 22x that of MOCO. Most of the county will never have a density close to Hoboken and this solution is unworkable here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

They're right. Why don't we have 15 mph speed limits on the beltway or 270? Because eventually we make the determination that some risk is appropriate so that people can get to where they're going. Similarly, there are some jobs with a significant risk of death (https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states); we don't abolish those jobs, though I suppose that's what you'd prefer. Why do we insist on vision zero so that people can jaywalk rampantly, but allow the professions of roofing and garbage collecting to continue?

You should take a law school torts class, where they teach that we put a value on human life in basically everything we do.

Normal people: we should do what we can to reduce hazards that kill people.
People who have taken a law school torts class, apparently: well ACKSHUALLY sometimes it's acceptable for some people to die so that other people can have what they want.

So we should just ban cars entirely so we can reduce traffic deaths to zero?? Most Americans do not want this and and they accept on some fundamental level that there will be some level of traffic deaths that is unavoidable. It can definitely be reduced from where it is now, but zero deaths is both unrealistic and undesirable due to tradeoffs.

But it's not necessary to ban cars in order to reduce traffic deaths to zero.

https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762

And as you say, it's also a desirable goal to simply reduce the number of people killed in car crashes. For example, by building transit-accessible housing, bikeways, and bus rapid transit (BRT), as well as creating a complete street with wider sidewalks, comfortable public transportation stops, and safe access.

Hoboken is an example that is not particularly replicable in most of the US. Only 20% of resident there own a car and most Americans do not want to live in an area with that level of density. The maximum speed limit for the entire city of Hoboken is only 20 mph, so you are actually proving my point that you need to reduce the speed limit to extremely low speeds everywhere to make vision zero possible. This may be workable in Hoboken, but reducing the speed limit everywhere to some ridiculously low speed will have terrible consequences for overall quality of life and the economy in MOCO.

You: It's not possible to reach zero deaths from car crashes!
Me: Yes it is.
You: Well ok it actually is, but I don't want it to happen here.

You are missing the point. Hoboken has a density level more than 22x that of MOCO. Most of the county will never have a density close to Hoboken and this solution is unworkable here.

MOCO is advocating for vision zero for the entire county, not just here so this is absolutely relevant to the discussion. https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/visionzero/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

This is a common fallacy when discussing urban traffic. Higher speed limits don't always equal higher average speeds. Right now that stretch of University has a posted 35 MPH limit, but traffic actually moves between an of 10-25 MPH depending on the time of day. That's actually only slightly faster than the stretch of Connecticut Ave. with a posted 25 MPH that was the focus of another thread. That's mostly because of lights and the back ups they cause.

Why are there so many lights on University? Because drivers off the side streets can't get onto University safely when you have six lanes of traffic moving at 35+. So they demand a stop light. Now every dinky road has a light with a minute+ cycle time.

So what happens when you reduce peak speeds? You can remove traffic controls, down grade them, use traffic circles, etc. Your average travel time remains largely the same while everything gets safer and more pleasant.

There are large parts of MOCO that are not urban or high density and this policy has negative consequences in these areas where people will suffer from much longer commutes.

For these areas, the way to make those roads safer is to make them limited access divided roads. Stop letting every two-bit developer slap up a house or shopping center on them and immediately demand a light or three.

[Anonymous]

I don’t want to live in Hoboken, dimwits. If I wanted to live in a dense craphole like Hoboken then I would move to Hoboken. If you want Hoboken, go live there. Leave my home, yard, and neighborhood alone.

Ahhhhh Hoboken, where you get have the privilege of spending 45 minutes after work everyday trying to find somewhere to park after work. Just awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to live in Hoboken, dimwits. If I wanted to live in a dense craphole like Hoboken then I would move to Hoboken. If you want Hoboken, go live there. Leave my home, yard, and neighborhood alone.

Ahhhhh Hoboken, where you get have the privilege of spending 45 minutes after work everyday trying to find somewhere to park after work. Just awful.

Nobody is forcing you to live in Hoboken. Nobody is doing anything to your home or yard. You don't own your neighborhood.