You act like suburban commuters care. The more car unfriendly DC becomes, the more pressure there will be on DC employers to move to Virginia or Maryland |
"Induced demand" is a lie. It's a bullshit theory made up by car hating weirdos. The average new car now costs almost $50,000. You think if we make traffic run more smoothly, everybody is going to rush out to spend $50,000 on a new car? Give me a break. |
As the data shows, the majority of traffic deaths in Washington DC have nothing to do with excessive speed. |
but they ALL have to do with cars! shall I say it again? vision zero/traffic calming includes much more than speeding. |
"Traffic calming" |
One lesson we should all take from COVID is that some cures can be exponentially worse than the disease. |
No, they don't. There's traffic deaths all the time that don't involve cars. Didn't some e-bicyclist just kill another e-bicyclist in a crash? Besides who cares if they involve cars? That's like saying, because all traffic deaths happened outdoors, no one should be allowed to go outdoors. |
The government has very little influence over people's transportation choices. I mean, we've built more than 150 miles of bike lanes and bicycling is becoming *less* popular. |
That's because the availability of bike lanes does not actually overcome people's reluctance to bike which is actually due to discomfort with biking (including not knowing how) lack of access to bikes as well as safety concerns. The majority of bike lanes don't even address safety concerns because people who don't want to bike are not just worried about being hit by cars. Also many bike lanes don't actually protect bikes from cars (most are just painted lines and drivers disregard them) so they do not make someone who has never commuted by bike before to start doing so. But induced demand is real -- bike share programs have been enormously successful because they actually do provide non-bikers with a way to overcome a major obstacle to biking. And induced demand with regards to cars is definitely a real phenomenon. The easiest to measure is the impact on usage of turning a two-lane highway into a four-lane highway. Lots of studies on this. People see the four lane highway and think "I won't have to wait to pass people -- this will go much faster" and they make decisions on where to live and work and when to drive based on it. The effects are lesser with regards to widening existing multi-lane highways but are still there. There is also a science to this when it comes to toll lanes -- you need the toll to be high enough that few enough people will pay it so that it's actually faster to use the toll lanes. If you charge too little everyone will just pay it and then the toll lanes get backed up. This is just a different variation on the concept of induced demand. I am not even someone who cares much about bike infrastructure (I think in the US if you want to reduce cars on the road you should focus about 95% of your efforts on developing clean affordable convenient public transportation and about 5% on bikes) but induced demand is a basic principle of infrastructure planning. Saying "it's not real" reveals you to be a dilettante. It's a demonstrated and accepted phenomenon. |
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It’s a drop in the bucket, but at least someone in MPD realizes that there is a problem:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/08/27/dc-police-traffic-safety-unit/ |
Your fantasy world is a running joke to the rest of us. |
You and your “data” are a sick joke. |
| Honestly I think it’s too hot and hilly here for people to bike. The e-bikes have changed things but if you’d still be a hot mess at your destination a lot of the time. |
Do you have any actual evidence to back up that bold claim? A poll, referendum result, or such? |
It's the DC government's data. |