Delvin4519
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2022
- Messages
- 795
- Reaction score
- 1,449
Don't forget that Boston also has MUCH WORSE public transportation than any European city, due to the horrendously low gas prices and gas taxes in Boston, plus the highways in the Boston city center and the waterfront.Welcome to reality. Humans aren't robots that perfectly follow rules and react to external stimuli in the same predictable way every time. The thing is, not following rules or acting unpredictably has far more serious consequences in only one of these; being behind the wheel of an automobile. A car is heavy machinery and there is a local/cultural problem that we let just about anyone and everyone drive with next to zero training here. That's a big difference with the rest of the world.
It is very true that individualism and the idea of freedom promote a culture here where everyone feels they should be free to inconvenience others, and that is a problem, but there's a huge difference between inconveniencing people and endangering the lives of others.
If someone is operating something that can so easily cause death or destruction then that needs to be handled with the utmost responsibility. If there were no cars or bikes, a pedestrian not paying attention or making a bad judgment and colliding with another person or structure would result in some scrapes and bruises and only in the most freak of circumstances, death. Add bikes and things become slightly more dangerous. Bikes colliding with each other or pedestrians can result in occasional instances of broken bones but again in only freak instances, death. So bikes should always yield to pedestrians and be more mindful than they currently are, but it's still fine to have bikes and pedestrians mix somewhat. It's still preferred to have separated cycle tracks and pathways to reduce conflict points. Bikes also don't have the mass to cause more property damage than a person can. Now introduce automobiles into the equation. The consequences of collisions between automobiles and anything are drastic. Even at the same speeds that a person or bike can travel, the mass of a vehicle means property can be destroyed and people can be seriously injured. Yet on our city streets where there are people and things not also protected by a metal box, we allow them to travel at speeds that can result in certain death and destruction. Not getting seriously injured at minimum when in a collision with a vehicle is "being lucky." That's not something normally said about collisions with other modes. None of this even includes how when in a vehicle your senses are reduced or how vehicles can experience sudden mechanical failures. Reintroduce natural human unpredictability into the equation and the obvious and most reasonable course of action should be to do everything possible to protect from potential unpredictability and reduce serious consequences right? Be we don't do that. That would mean making things a little less convenient for drivers. Instead, we put the weight of safety and inconvenience when trying to freely move about the world on the most vulnerable who should have the most right to be unpredictable humans. Trying to go to the shop directly across the street 60' away? Sorry, you have to go 200' to the nearest crosswalk, wait to cross the 60' there, and backtrack another 200' because if you try to cross the 4-lane, 30mph road here, drivers have no obligation to yield and if they hit you it'll likely result in at least serious injury and it'll be entirely your fault. It's ridiculous to put every precaution on one party especially when it's not the one that would be the sole cause of any damage. I'm not saying everyone should be always crossing the middle of the street wherever and whenever. I'm describing a normal, common, regular human behavior scenario that happens and was the norm for all human civilization until about 60 years ago. Obviously, times change and this is the modern age where automobiles exist and are in the hands of most adults. Safety is good, but safety doesn't only go one way where the pedestrian has to check off a list of boxes and go well out of their way while a driver only needs to follow colored lights and somewhat obey a number on a sign to be absolved of any responsibility in a collision. Creating a properly safe and equitable modern urban environment means taking precautions for human behaviors and other externalities that will require inconveniences for all parties involved at differing levels depending on the severity of responsibility they hold in safety. This means that yes, pedestrians should cross at crosswalks on their walk phase where present, but since not all will, roads, where people are around, should be designed to force lower speeds and more attentiveness to surroundings so that in the event of someone crossing where there isn't a crosswalk they will be much more easily seen and the driver will be able to make a sudden stop if need be. Yeah, it's annoying that people can just cross the street making you stop your car but it's only that; annoying. They have not endangered the driver or caused any damage to anything. A driver disobeying rules or lapsing in judgment or focus has potentially serious consequences for everything around them. Therefore disobeying said rules and not being attentive should be treated as such. In a private, protected, climate-controlled machine is the short delay more important than a person's life? And should a person be at great risk of being seriously injured or killed for a decision that doesn't have consequences for anyone else?
London is unique in the UK for its public transit and low car ownership. The rest of the UK's cities seriously lag behind. Rotterdam is known for being the car-centric city of the Netherlands but it still doesn't have a limited access highway to the city center and neither does Berlin.
Boston's downtown and neighborhood centers aren't much different from European counterparts except we still have limited access highways through the city. In that regard, we have far more car-focused downtown access than any European counterpart especially when factoring in the geographic barriers of downtown being a peninsula with random hills and only a mile-wide isthmus connecting back to the rest of the city. Route 1, 1A, 28 (North), I-93, I-90, Storrow, all serve this purpose. There's nothing to compare in most European cities.
In modern Europe and around the world, cities are removing car lanes to reduce car capacity and speed to encourage alternative transportation and create safer streets because that's what's better for the human environment.
Here are some varying arterial transformations:
View attachment 45523View attachment 45524
View attachment 45525View attachment 45526
View attachment 45527View attachment 45528
View attachment 45529View attachment 45530
I've said my peace and I'm no longer going to continue with this. I came here for buses and that's what I'm gonna get back to.
There is an entire neighborhood in Boston only 0.5 miles from DOWNTOWN with WORSE bus service than INTERCITY rail in a European country. It doesn't even come close.