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DanSRedskins t1_iuib0p7 wrote

Reply to comment by Odd_Invite_5528 in Woman dead, 7 people sent to hospital after chain-reaction crash on I-95 by deathbeforeupvote

We really need to move past cars as a society. Isn't it crazy that we haven't come with something better yet? It's so dangerous.

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autotelica t1_iuijwp8 wrote

I am trying to make this happen by biking everywhere. But I feel like you kinda have to be crazy to make this choice, with the way people drive. I have had three near-misses with cars over the past couple of weeks. None of them have been my fault, but it doesn't matter who is right or wrong when two tons of metal is coming at you at 40 mph.

So I don't blame people for weighing the dangers of biking vs driving and electing to go with the latter.

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goosey65 t1_iuiqt2f wrote

For sure- when I see “we”, I mean elected officials and residents working together. It’s very scary to bike here, which sucks because in theory it’s a very bikeable city (mostly flat and grid system). I applaud anyone who does but wouldn’t fault anyone who doesn’t. I hope if we can get more protected bike lanes and driver enforcement, it will become safer.

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fluufhead t1_iuiy8wk wrote

Agreed, and this sub is great supporting evidence, there's like 5 threads every day about drivers having a bad time. Sounds aggravating and psychically damaging.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_iuizlsk wrote

It's not really "crazy" from an economic perspective.

In order to convert our past 60 to 100 years of suburban sprawl everywhere as a country into public transport you'd have to invest hundreds of billions of not trillions nationally into light rail and bus systems. It's also not clear where the land to run those lines would come from either because it's all privately owned and would have to be seized by eminent domain, if for example you wanted to build light rail through the Richmond metro area.

Stakeholders don't want to change anything. People driving mostly want to keep driving themselves, and business owners don't want to risk losing any volume because the parking or road outside their business has been taken away. We couldn't even convince a handful of places on Broad St to give up a small amount of 2 hour parking spots to have the Pulse run along the curb instead of in the middle of Broad.

It's also simply cheaper to maintain existing highway and road networks than it is to try to end those things or replace some of them. And COVID just fucked budgets everywhere, too, so it's not like there is a surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars sitting around.

So you'd have to essentially convince people to be taxed more to pay for this massive renovation, convince all the people who prefer driving to stop, convince business owners to go along with it, and convince politicians to risk being the ones advocating for this mostly unpopular stuff.

It's never happening. No one wants to hear this, but there is about zero chance cars are replaced to any degree in Richmond in the next 50 years let alone most of the country. This isn't to say we shouldn't try to get some of them off the road, but rather being realistic - the political will, voter will, and money isn't there for a magical massive public transportation conversion. We're mostly stuck with this.

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