Reply to More MOCO Upzoning - Starting in Silver Spring

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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?[/quote]

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. [/quote]

Are you listening to yourself? [/quote]

I am not the PP, but the PP is a realist.  Traffic deaths will NEVER be ZERO.  Not really possible.  Similarly, poverty will never be eliminated.  You can work on the edges, which we should of course do.  But ZERO is not humanly possible.  Welcome to the real world, where bad sh-t happens unfortunately.[/quote]

It is possible to have zero car crash deaths, though.

However, for the sake of argument: what do you consider an acceptable number of people killed in car crashes?[/quote]

The acceptable level is determine by how much the government can reasonably afford to spend to reduce it and the impact on overall commute time. This is no different than society determining that there is a maximum amount that is reasonable to spend on medical care to prevent one death. The government cannot afford to spend (and should not) spend 1 million dollars on medical care for a cancer therapy that boost a persons life expectancy by one year. Spending exorbitant amount of money for small gains it wasteful and it allocates resources to activities that provide minimal benefits to society. There is a absolutely a value that must be assigned to human life because no government has unlimited resources. We need to prioritize spending where it has the largest impact and benefit for society. [/quote]

Currently it's about 40 people killed in car crashes every year in Montgomery County. Is that an acceptable number for you? [/quote]

Lets get real.  Some of those 40 deaths are really due to pedestrian stupidity.  A few weeks ago, I witnessed several teenagers hot riding and waving their bikes through Bethesda.  I see pedestrians regularly cross major streets without really looking out for traffic.    I myself regularly j-walk in downtown DC.  Simple fact is some pedestrian deaths are due to the stupidity of those pedestrians.[/quote]

Ok, so 40 people killed in car crashes every year in Montgomery County is an acceptable number for you. You're good with that.[/quote]

I think that what they are saying is that some of the deaths are just casual suicides, and you can’t plan around those.[/quote]

Yes and some of them are too expensive to prevent so it’s a waste of money to try to eliminate them entirely unless a more cost effective solution becomes available. [/quote]

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