Of course PBOT is going to immediately launch operation "think about it for a while" after driverists cut down their signs they stuck in the street for telling cars what to do, not like they always send crews out ASAP removing any guerrilla devices that potentially obstruct cars (oh wait...) Department of Letting Cars Boss Us Around here needs a better acronym. #Vision60or70something#PBOT#Portland#transportation#LowTrafficNeighborhoods#CarSupremacy#pdxBikes
Oh wait, they DID immediately spring into action to remove stuff that threatened to slow cars down, it was gone the next day. Not like a wrecked car blocking the sidewalk that sat for a week. Fuckin weird how that works
Does nobody in PBOT leadership see the money we're dumping into maintaining asphalt? The transportation leaders in a city surrounded by suburbs need to default to an anti-car attitude in the same way that you would expect retail employees to not sell merchandise below cost. This is probably true for suburbs and small towns too, but Portland invites the burden of car traffic into itself from all sides.
@enobacon They already know that not maintaining roads mean people get mad about potholes. thus this is a sunk cost that they are not allowed to see. I don't know if they know, but they are not allowed to think about it.
@bluGill I think it's partly a blindness to the #InducedDemand, a mindset that these thousands of cars per day worth of thru traffic are going to be on some street anyway and that it costs the same whether they stay on the frequently-resurfaced arterial or the neglected side streets. The amount that could be saved in the long run by restricting car traffic to access-only is already invisible, besides being a long-term systemic drain on the budget, & many of the benefits are out of PBOT's scope.
@enobacon induced demand is a sign that people want to go someplace but the poor transportation options in your city stopped them. As such it is not worth talving about except in context of what you are going to do to get people where they want to be.
@bluGill no, Induced Demand is "you get the traffic that you build for" and a lot of trips can be made by multiple modes, so it becomes a question of what cost vs value people see in those choices. If you can cut through every neighborhood and park for free in your car, why would you choose biking or transit? PBOT is failing to account for the cost of this choice, and the extra car miles our streets are subjected to because of it. Plus, overall, many trips get made or not given the options.
@enobacon I did not specify how you solve the problem. I said you need to solve it. There are plenty of rural highways in the west that prove inducded demand is not 'you get the traffic you build for'. Now give people of your city the ability to do what they want.
@bluGill What exactly is it that you think people want that the city could give them? The failure to control cut-through car traffic is what makes other options unsuitable, and ultimately limits overall mobility for everyone.
@bluGill as for rural highways, yes economic failure (or lack of residents and destinations) is one of the two known solutions to traffic congestion. The other one is to make more geometrically efficient options be compelling enough that people get out of their cars. Of course, rural highways in the netherlands have a bikeway alongside them, or advisory lanes, so you don't always need a car to go a few miles into town.
@enobacon The city needs to give people the ability to get to the things they want to do in the city. This is both the things they want to do today but cannot because it is too painful, and also the things they will start doing in the future as the city grows. Induced demand covers both of those things, and both are good things for your city to work on not negatives. Everyone talks about induced demand like it is a negative, but it is not a negative things at all.
The only negative is choosing the wrong solution. Roads are very expensive in both $$$ and lives terms. Transit, bike lanes, and walking paths are much cheaper.
@bluGill increasing Induced Demand for cars is a negative. The phenomenon itself is simply a knob that can be turned to increase or decrease travel, which will increase and/or shift modes as a consequence of allowing a safe, easy, and convenient way to go by bike, transit, or whatever. Cut-through car traffic on neighborhood streets evaporates when it is consistently pushed back to arterials, despite commonly accepted traffic models and half-assed attempts to calm traffic on only one street.
@enobacon Only if you have replaced it with some other means of transport that is at least as good. I seem to live in Portland which has a reputation of okay transit, and so relatively small investments in transit can get rid of a lot of cars. However it is very important to keep the focus on making transit better.
@bluGill improvements to transit generally have to come out of the glut of lanes that have been allocated for cars (actually for "all modes", but cars ruin it for bus and bike.) There isn't going to be a "make biking and transit better" option that doesn't require blocking cars from some lanes and ways through the city. The trips can evaporate entirely, whether we get moving is down to whether or not they ever connect a citywide low-stress bike network & transit priority lanes, push cars aside
@enobacon we have standards for street construction. The same structure is used for driving lanes and parking lanes. Why? It's very expensive. Make the parking spaces open/permeable pavers, unsuitable to drive on.
The expensive stuff should be two lanes wide... or even one on residential streets where you can pull over to let an oncoming vehicle by. Imagine just one lane of asphalt!
@NewNordicNormal the Dutch use pavers for lower-traffic streets because they age better (asphalt deteriorates from time and exposure) but the wear to the foundation requires them to be re-bedded too often which makes asphalt a better deal if traffic is above a certain threshold. The way PBOT is looking at revenue streams vs potential funding sources for capital projects or operations, makes it very difficult for them to account for the long term debt or savings, and completely misses health etc
@NewNordicNormal we do have some streets like that in sellwood south of bybee. In both that case and the general case, the traffic volumes are too high without some purposeful diversion or chokepoints. There are some smart things we could do with parking but only if we can get past the thing where everyone drives but the plan is for "someone else" to ride a bike.
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