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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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The traffic argument is so infuriating. When will American journalism, and Americans at large, realize the very simple truth: no large city in the US will ever exist without traffic, without a fundamental shift from our car-centric culture and development to transit-oriented?
Yeah, I hear you, but what if we add another 7 lane highway that cuts right through the center? I think that would solve the issue
-random US city response, probably
Not random. You just described Houston, Texas.
Atlanta as well. The frustrating thing is that Atlanta has MARTA, but the state refuses to fund it and MARTA's answer for everything is to divert funds away from rail to bus lines. But then the degraded rail service means more people drive than ride trains, thereby increasing gridlock, which causes bus service to suffer. So then MARTA diverts funds away from rail to bus lines...
Can't be Houston, he said 7 lane highway not pothole ridden, Mad Max hellscape
not just any rando city, literally Austin https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin
That's hard to do now since we've run out of affluent African-American neighborhoods to build them through.
It is not possible to explain the horribleness that is Austin road planning and the complete and utter lack of available transit. Exhibit 1 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin
Just consider what it must mean for an average Californian to say traffic is bad. These aren't people coming from rural Montana complaining about city traffic.
Even that headline image is Jesus Christ. Temporally closed ramp onto a packed full outer road from a freeway that's sitting squarely in the E rating. (Can't move without major effort)
City Beautiful also has a good video on the shitshow that is I-35. TX DOT must have a little shrine to Robert Moses in their lobby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcUx5r_ksk8
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To be fair, Austin has to be not far behind LA as some of the worst. Everything in Texas is made for cars only basically.
It's not all or nothing. Most people are willing to deal with a 30 or 40 minute commute If they're not already working from home. The reason people point out LA in Austin is because they are significantly worse than other cities like Atlanta Philly and Baltimore.
Wait. Atlanta resident here. There are cities worse than us?
You have bad traffic but your average commute times are actually kind of nominal. The MARTA could be better You're like right on that line where you have bad traffic but your public transportation hasn't been made effective yet.
You should check out San Francisco's problems. Half their commuters are coming ovary major bridge from Oakland or elsewhere in California and the city itself is a peninsula so everyone's squeezed coming up from the south. And the bart is hands down awful
There's traffic in NYC and Chicago. As long as there are roads people will drive. There will always be traffic. Public transit only affects how bad the traffic will be and limit growth of the city.
You are so close to understanding ... as long as there are roads ... there will be traffic ...
The solution isn't build more roads and enable car culture more, the solution is to stop catering to cars and build less roads. Instead build more public transit. Literally stop catering to cars, make cars less viable as a transportation method by limiting how much space is available to them. Cities can work just fine without cars.
I think there's something to be said for places like Houston vs Chicago though. In Chicago I can easily find and take public transit to get around. You don't necessarily need a car.
In Houston however you pretty much need it. It'll take you at least half an hour to get anywhere, no matter how close it may be geographically
And in NYC a car is a liability.
There are differences between cities though. It makes. A difference how they developed, what their geography is, and how concentrated their growth phase was. Austin is a place you can’t take a shit without driving to a bathroom. It’s not laid out for public transportation even if they could fund it. It is massively spread out with pockets of hills and rocks all over. The weather is hostile to walking and biking anyway.
I have many friends in Austin and visit often. People there obsess about traffic, working overtime to tune their day around finding low traffic windows and such. It’s not like that where I live, and I don’t live in some Amsterdam style utopia.