Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah, we took some minor capabilities away from pedestrians:

1) Ability to enter the roadway at any time, rather than after checking that it's clear.

2) Ability to walk down the middle of the roadway instead of the sidewalk.

And in exchange, we vastly expanded the amount of commutable land per travel minute, resulting in more space for most people. Also affordable inter-city travel and the National Parks. I'd do it again.

Just as suburbia is seen by some contemporary progressives as a great social evil, the crowded conditions of urban tenements were the great problem of our time to progressive visionaries back then [0]. Walking as a primary form of transportation, and the extreme density it required of the working class, was not a scalable, long-term, or humane solution. We should have leaned into streetcars instead of personal cars in order to spread out, sure, but then it'd just be some other kind of vehicle making the streets dangerous for pedestrians.

No great social problem is solved by drones being welcome at low altitude over crowds. News and public safety organizations already knows how to use real helicopters in that context. There isn't some latent use case for aerial photography that we're all suffering without, it's a nice-to-have, and the decision that it isn't worth the tradeoffs is much more clear-cut.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Tenement_House_...

> Walking as a primary form of transportation, and the extreme density it required of the working class, was not a scalable, long-term, or humane solution.

What are you talking about? Walking is awesome, it's incredibly healthy and in the long term, as our cities reorganize around us better, walking will be the default. As a human being, you need to walk to be healthy anyway, so why not kill two birds with one stone? We'll use cars only for long distance travel, but food, work, and other basic daily necessities will all be within easy walking distance of your house. Surburbia is a horrible system because it guarantees density is so low that walking by default is impossible.

I would describe any system where it's difficult to choose walking alternatives for your various errands as a form of slow torture which turns peoples bodies into useless sacks.

>as our cities reorganize around us better

The average human walks about 3mph. Let's say you should be able to cross the city in an hour, so we want a radius of 1.5mi, which yields an area of 7.1 square miles.

Manhattan's daytime population is 3.9 million. Let's put them all in those 7.1 square miles: 549,000 people per square mile [0].

The densest city in the world is Manilla, at 107,562 per square mile [1]. You're asking for more than 5x the highest density level we've ever attempted.

Walking doesn't scale. To congregate in large population centers effectively, we need fast(er) transportation methods. Granted, personal cars don't scale too well either, which is why the correct solution probably involves trains, buses, two-wheeled vehicles with varying degrees of power (bicycles, e-bikes, electric scooters, etc), and traditional cars/trucks which are too expensive for mainstream daily use but still available when needed. All dangerous for pedestrians.

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.9+million+people+%2F+...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_d...

Why do you think high speed trains and designing our neighborhoods to provide walkable basics are incompatible ideas?

Yes, we need better public transit. But the cheapest, most ecological transit is the distance you just don't travel.

There is no reason, even at Manila densities, you can't have a green grocer within a few blocks of every city resident.

Trains are extremely dangerous for pedestrians, and they create spaces (train tracks) cutting up the city where pedestrians are unwelcome. We regularly and unabashedly victim-blame pedestrians who die after getting in the way of trains. We even do it in TV commercials set to catchy music. [0].

I agree that trains are a better idea than personal cars in general, and that cities should be designed for as much walkability as possible.

But walking alone doesn't cut it, and once you introduce trains, you have the same problem foxop pointed out: spaces that vehicles own and pedestrians must tread carefully in, where pedestrians will be blamed for their own deaths when killed by those vehicles. They are unavoidable. We just get to choose which kind of vehicle goes in them.

[0] http://www.dumbwaystodie.com/

> Ability to enter the roadway at any time, rather than after checking that it's clear.

Jaywalking doesn't depend on whether the road is clear or not. Try crossing an 8-lane stroad sometime even when it's "clear" for the moment. A car doing 50mph can get to that far lane way faster than I can, let alone someone who isn't young and in reasonable physical shape.

What we've really done is taken half of all land in every city and made it deadly to set foot on. A city that is supposedly built for people, but will kill you if you walk about 10 feet in most directions.

Your example is absurd. Where do you live that you ever have to cross an 8 lane highway on foot? City streets have crosswalks and stop lights. When used properly it's perfectly safe for everyone.

Yeah. 5000 pedestrians dead every year, just in the US, and another 25000 drivers. Perfectly safe for everyone.

And I didn't say highway. But that's a very good point. Stroads are difficult to cross, but highways carve a city up and are mostly impossible to cross except for a few places per mile.

8 lanes may be a bit rare, but it's easy to find 7. 2 travel lanes in each direction, a turn median, and a parking lane on each side. I was just in SoCal and saw plenty of examples with three travel lanes in each direction, making 9+ lanes in many places!

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