Reply to Connecticut Ave bike lanes are back!

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Connecticut Ave bike lanes are back!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think everyone is losing sight of what are the two options:

1.  Some bike lanes or
2.  Parking 24/7 on CT Avenue with no restrictions vs. rush hour restrictions right now.

In both options, you will have the same traffic problems with delivery trucks now idling in one of the 4 lanes of traffic.

Yes, in option #2 you may have traffic issues only 80% of the time vs. Option #1...but they both stink.

[b]BTW...both of these options are designed to make your car commute miserable so that perhaps you won't make it at all or take metro or something.  That is the goal.[/b]

[/quote]

The assumptions here are that

1. driving to work by car is what everybody would choose if they had their druthers
2. all of the other transportation modes for getting to work are worse for everyone than driving to work by car
3. the only way to get people to use the other, non-car transportation modes for getting to work is to make driving miserable

All three assumptions are false.[/quote]

They may not be 100% true. But they are mostly true, especially 1 and 3.[/quote]

No. They may be true FOR YOU. But as general assumptions? No.[/quote]

Yeah, you’re right. That’s why a large majority drive, driving is up, and metro and bus rides are down. [b]And also why you so rarely hear anyone talk about how happy they are to take the metro and bus or how great of an experience it is. [/b]

Yep, you got me. Everyone is just itching to hop on those other modes daily if given the opportunity.[/quote]

I [u]never[/u] hear anyone talk about how happy they are to drive and how great an experience it is. Also when I'm driving during commuting hours and look around at my fellow drivers, nobody looks particularly happy. There's also a lot of aggressive driving and road rage. Study after study shows that driving commuters are the most stressed commuters.[/quote]

Yet it’s up, not down. And this was my point. They only way to force people out of their cars is to make it more miserable (your “false” assumption #3) and that left to their own devices, people would choose to drive (your “false” assumption #1).[/quote]

So driving is miserable, but the only way to get people to start taking transportation modes where they would be [u]less miserable[/u] (compared to driving) is to make driving [u]even more miserable[/u]?

Wow.[/quote]

There is a podcast that features someone from UCLA who studies urban congestion and traffic flows.  Supposedly, they are known as being leaders in the field.

In fact, their conclusion as to the best way to get people to take public transit is you have to make car travel either extremely expensive (i.e., impose expensive congestion pricing like they do in London and are trying to do in NYC) or extremely inconvenient (i.e., install bike lanes or 24-hour parking or whatever to make your commute so onerous you stop).

When they ask car commuters how they feel about free public transit...they are majority in favor.  When asked if they will use the free public transit, the answer is "of course not", however, they hope all the other commuters use it so that their car commute will now be much easier.  Free public transit is only effective in low-income communities where nobody can afford to own a car, but free public transit now opens job opportunities in better areas they can reach by free transit.

So, yes...that is why no matter what is suggested for CT Avenue, they have the same goal...make driving miserable.[/quote]

I mean, if you think driving is the center of the universe, then yes, you will think that the point of everything that benefits not-driving is to make driving miserable. But sometimes it really isn't about you.[/quote]

It’s not that people think that driving is the center of the universe. It’s that they recognize reality, which is that it is how the majority of people commute in this country, in the DMV, and even a plurality of DC itself. And that’s often because it is the most convenient and direct way to get between A and B, not because they have some car fetish. Yet local officials seem to only want to make the experience worse, not better.
[/quote]

Local officials focused entirely on making the driving experience better gets you the metropolis of Houston. If that's the kind of city you want to live in, you are welcome to it.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics