Nice to see more countries adopting this practice

… and he calls some random people after he mows down the cyclists, but not 911? How is he only facing misdemeanor charges?!?

I think the developers of this satirical game could be subscribed to this community:

> The car industry has identified a few places on earth that do not know THE FREEDOM OF CAR DEPENDENCY.

> So they hired you to increase car sales and oil consumption.

> How? By building the greatest car parks ever!

> Turn neighborhoods into car parks, create the need for car commuting and parking. Use propaganda to inform people on why they need it.

> Learn to become a real tycoon.. Asphalt means freedom, right?

I’m not sure if an opinion piece is appropriate here, so please let me know if this doesn’t fit the theme of the community, and I’ll avoid sharing such thoughts in the future.

I’m extremely frustrated with the car centric culture in my area. I live about 25 miles west of a quarry. Every day I watch trains go up and down the railroad mostly carrying gravel. This railroad stretches for several hours by car in each direction, connecting several large cities and even passing a few tourist attractions, and despite our traffic congestion problems there is little interest in trying to use this rail for actual people.

One company moved in and started running a new passenger rail service. Within a few weeks, we had protesters at the railroads complaining that drivers don’t understand railroad crossings. I saw posters about how trains were killing residents when drivers park on the tracks and get hit. I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere. They follow the tracks! And we’ve always had trains passing through our town before. At a later local election a candidate ran on the premise that they’re going to protect home values and our children by reducing or eliminating the number of trains passing through our town. This candidate did win our local election and sadly they succeeded in cutting down on rail investment.

Fast-forward a couple years later. Passenger rail stations were built at the endpoints of this rail to ferry tourists. I drive parallel to this rail on the way to work several times per week for almost 45 minutes each way, 20 minutes of which is heavy traffic. I get to enjoy watching people ride the train while there’s no stop anywhere near my house because our local government has sided with homeowners that a passenger rail station is “simply too dangerous.” I would have to drive over an hour to the nearest passenger rail station to ride the train, and I can literally see the tracks from my apartment.

Every time I see that train I feel bitter. I could save so much money if these boneheads would have let them build a train station in our town. Absolutely ridiculous! The train is there. The rail is there. I don’t understand why a train is such a personal, existential threat to your way of life.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/12940955 >People are lonely. Is it because we are addicted to our phones, or is that a symptom of larger design choices we made when building our places? We cover some of the general concepts related to social infrastructure an try to evaluate what to do next.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10212084

> Never wait in the school car line again. Here’s how. For the first time in decades, a small but critical mass of children are riding their bikes safely to school again in the US.

With so much of left-adjacent urbanist youtube borrowing terms from conservatives like "third places", I think this video does a good job of questioning the notion of "third places" in favor of a more radical critique about the way we use our cities.

Alternative link: https://archive.ph/BxMKZ

https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/112535649882421445

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16028585

> cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10092805 > > > > In Colorado, that new vision was catalyzed by climate change. In 2019, Gov. Jared Polis signed a law that required the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent within 30 years. As the state tried to figure out how it would get there, it zeroed in on drivers. Transportation is the largest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, accounting for about 30 percent of the total; 60 percent of that comes from cars and trucks. To reduce emissions, Coloradans would have to drive less.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/9992203

> Source: https://norden.social/@hart/112513927064083221

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16133154

> Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898

Milan has 51 cars for 100 inhabitants, which is the double of other big cities in Europe, like Madrid (291,3) o Paris (225,2). One of the consequences is that traffic is terrible, and Milan is, for example, one of the worst cities on TomTom traffic index

Another big consequence is that motorists will park cars everywhere, because the number of legal on-street parking spots much lower than needed (the number of on-street parking spots is already much higher than other similar European cities) . If you have ever been in Milan, you would know that you can find cars parked on the sidewalks, on the bike lanes, between the trees at the side of the road, on zebra crossings, at the corners of intersections, at the bus stops, double parked (take a look at the pictures in this article to get an idea). This is a big issue, because people with reduced mobility, parents with strollers, people with sight issues are strongly impaired by this situation. Moreover an average of 5 times every day, public transit (trams and buses) gets stuck because of some really badly parked car, causing delays for tens or hundreds of people.

The administration is not willing to help and tolerates the status without doing much except the worst situations. They fear that this will impact their popularity, and may lose next elections. It is a well known fact that getting a ticket for illegal parking is so rare, that it costs less than a legal payed parking spot!

People was so fed up with the situation that and association called "Sai che puoi?" was able to organize an event to count and map illegally parked cars during the night of May 16th. It took a long time and effort, with some tests on a few blocks performed in the past. They also did a great social campaign with posts and videos like this one , and developed a web app on purpose.

The results were astonishing: 2000 people took part, and were able to walk all the 1700 km of the 3780 streets in the city and count illegally parked cars, divided by parking location (on the street, on the sidewalks, between the trees)

!the streets of Milan turned green because all of them were part of the count at the end

Results:

• 64000 illegally parked cars (during the day the situation gets even worse, with people coming from outside the city!)
  • 37000 on the street
  • 15000 on the sidewalks
  • 11000 on the grass or between the trees

This means that the city administration could get 5.3 million euros of tickets in one night, which means the equivalent of 134000 public transit month tickets.

The final aim is to force the administration to act and do something. The idea is that neglecting the issue with such numbers should be more difficult.

I think this is a great story, and I never heard of something like this from anywhere else. I want to say thank you to the organizers and I would love to get this event known outside Italy

Thread to vent about the dangerous and inefficient infrastructure you have to deal with.

The person on the left is carrying bags, the one in orange is a delivery driver and a couple of people are wearing backpacks. Aside from car brained, Damaris is also blind.

> https://xkcd.com/2932 > > Alt text: > > This PSA brought to you by several would-be assassins who tried to wave me in front of speeding cars in the last month and who will have to try harder next time.

> It’s weird how when the Department of Transportation is using the bike lane, they give themselves an entire car lane for protection.

• https://mastodon.world/@davidho/112428592341621424

Saw this comment on a local news post about the mayor's state of the city address and the mayor mentioned some of the new public transportation initiatives including adding another line to the train, I was under the impression that Amtrak was a success until the rails became denationalized and corporate greed limited the railways and pushed passenger trains to the sides

>Dear Friends, Thanks for reporting about transportation, a favorite of mine. So, as with previous editions at the mayor’s spot, what is the cost of a bus ride? train ride? Bullet Train ride? and how much of the cost will the passenger pay, and how much of it will the taxpayers pay? Dejavu all over again, Yogi. When is socialism a better transportation solution than the private sector? Why don’t our leaders follow their own experts’ advice about transport funding? They concluded “user fees” is best; but we reject that advice, and add a 1/4 cent here, and a 1/2 cent there, here, there, and everywhere, and what do we get in the end? Lousy public sector transit, where only the public sector union employees win, while the rest of us pay higher, higher, and higher gas taxes, and other taxes. Why don’t we cut spending instead of raising taxes, fees, fines, assessments, mandates, etc.? Why did we denationalize the railroads after they were nationalized during the Wilson Administration? Why did Lincoln say “no” to Gen. Granville Dodge, at the White House in 1864, when Dodge, who was later UPRR top civil engineer, told the President that the transcontinental railroad should be owned by the government. Dodge recites his interview with Lincoln in his seminal “How We Built the Transcontinental Railroad.” During the debate in 1970 on creation of the National Railroad Passenger Act (a/k/a Amtrak), advocates promised that it would be “self-sufficient in three years.” How’d that work out? By 9/11/01, taxpayers’ subsidies to Amtrak, in hundred dollar bill stacked together, reached higher than the World Trade Centers had stood. We had Amtrak, but our airport security didn’t serve us well. In 2009 Mark Derry published a letter in which I predicted that the price of a gallon of gas would rise to $10.00 to fund the bankrupt-from-conception Bullet Train. Looks like I was too optimistic. Today, I’d venture to say it will be closer to $20/gallon. History teaches us that public sector “services” come with a fatal price tag. Today’s leaders have us on the Road to Serfdom, same route taken by the USSR.

So despite climate change, Australia's federal government has just committed an extra $3.25 billion into building a toll road and a 20-lane freeway widening.

For those who wonder why Aussies think toll roads are a scam (https://aus.social/@[email protected]/112405373613706682), here's a great example of why.

"Pouring an extra $3.25 billion worth of federal funds into Melbourne’s North East Link is a good use of taxpayer money, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has insisted, despite the project’s cost doubling just a few months ago.

...

"The North East Link – which includes 6½ kilometres of tunnels – will stretch from Bulleen to Greensborough. It will widen the Eastern Freeway by up to 20 lanes.

"Allan revealed in December that the 10-kilometre toll road had more than doubled in cost since it was first announced.

"The toll road was initially budgeted at $10 billion and reassessed in 2019 at $15 billion. But the government revealed last year that the updated cost estimate was $26 billion."

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/federal-funding-to-boost-victorian-road-link-by-3-25-billion-20240509-p5ii7b.html

@fuck\_cars #Urbanism #Auspol #Vicpol #roads #UrbanPlanning #transport #cities #Melbourne #Naarm #Victoria #Australia

The toll road scam: A government-made monopoly you pay for.

Here's a funny-because-it's-true take on Transurban and the poor tax it imposes, from Punter's Politics:

https://youtu.be/FlKBakPAtiw?si=G39\_0GcJzSB0SSA8

\#cars #roads #fuckcars @fuck\_cars #tolls #tollroads #memes #funny #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #auspol #vicpol #nswpol

So the RTA's own modelling showed the Rozelle Interchange would be a traffic disaster—but generating more toll road trips for Transurban was more important.

"The [NSW Roads and Traffic Authority] finalised the first business case for the WestConnex tunnel project in June 2013, with the help of road designers from around the world.

"[Paul Forward, a former CEO of the RTA] said the initial concept did not include the Rozelle Interchange.

...

"In 2014, an expert review group was formed to assess these plans.

"Mr Forward said it was at this point that TfNSW bureaucrats began to question the connectivity provided by the design.

"The RTA's former director of traffic Chris Ford told the inquiry that 15 alternative designs were modelled.

"Mr Ford said the modelling found that another motorway leading to the Anzac Bridge would cause congestion.

"'The issues that we see today were very clearly established in the modelling in 2014,' he said.

"In November 2015, after Mr Forward and Mr Ford were dismissed, TfNSW updated the WestConnex business case to include the tunnel to the Anzac Bridge, despite the congestion concerns raised by the modelling.

"In 2016, Transport for NSW updated the business case a second time ... creating a tunnel linking the Iron Cove Bridge to the Anzac Bridge."

...

"In 2018, the NSW government sold its 51 per cent stake in the Sydney Motorway Corporation, the body responsible for operating WestConnex, to Transurban for $9 billion.

"Mr Forward said the final design would generate a larger number of toll trips than previous options."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-03/sydney-western-harbour-tunnel-warringah-freeway-traffic-disaster/103801818

@fuck\_cars #roads #cars #urbanism #nswpol #sydney #WestConnex #UrbanPlanning #transport

"It's going to be a bloody disaster": Tell me again about how the second road tunnel under Sydney Harbour won't make congestion worse?

"Civil engineer Les Wielinga, a former CEO at the now-defunct Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA), made the fiery comments at a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the bungled Rozelle Interchange.

"The Western Harbour Tunnel, which is under construction, will allow drivers travelling between the inner west and the North Shore to bypass the CBD.

"Entries and exits to the tunnel will lie at the Ernest Street interchange in Cammeray and near the Falcon Street interchange at North Sydney.

"'It's going to be a bloody disaster,' Mr Wielinga told the upper house committee on Friday.

"Paul Forward, another former CEO of the RTA, told the inquiry he was concerned about the project's design.

"'You've now got three motorways coming out into this short area, and whilst I would recognise there are some exit points, some off-ramps, those motorways are now all going into the Lane Cove Tunnel,' he said.

"'A large number of lanes are going into two lanes at the Lane Cove Tunnel. Sounds familiar?'"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-03/sydney-western-harbour-tunnel-warringah-freeway-traffic-disaster/103801818

@fuck\_cars #sydney #roads #planning #UrbanPlanning

> PICKERINGTON, Ohio (April 26, 2024) — In the wake of the most recent tragedy involving a fatal collision between a Tesla vehicle in autopilot mode and a motorcyclist in Washington state, the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) once again urges the Department of Transportation (DOT) to strengthen Automated Driving System (ADS) regulations.

> “Many autonomous vehicles on the road today have not been proven to detect all other road users in all situations before they have been allowed to be used on the road,” Dingman added. “Motorcyclists should not be used as guinea pigs for autonomous vehicle manufacturers. The continued allowance of untested autonomous vehicles on our nation’s roadways is unacceptable. The time for action is now!”

To add to that, you should see how these "accident avoidance systems" plow through dummies during tests. You'd have to have been paid off to allow these vehicles on public roads!