Court_H0701 | 1 points | May 10 2022 20:20:22

奇文共赏 一句左逼引发的血案

“When I moved to Ontario, there was a period when I could only walk or take the buses, it was truly miserable, the determination of which bank, post office, or grocery store I used was solely based on whether they are reachable by bus.”

I feel you there, but that’s simply the reality of life, and it’s not just for you, but it’s the same for everyone. You either buy a car and go anywhere you like, or you just go to places that are within walking distance or accessible by public transit. And before some kind of next gen techs that can teleport people to anywhere they like are invented, commuting distance will always be a factor to consider when people are finding jobs. But let’s talk about that later. Please forgive me for making assumptions about you, I should profile you thoroughly before I say anything stupid. NO, I’m just kidding, and please don’t reveal too much personal info in this discussion.

“He just simply said that we can see it as an example for potential conversion of current NA stroads”

Now I’ve watched that video twice, and we both know what he prefers and what he is suggesting. He praised Netherlands model and despised the so call “stroad”. The only thing I can agree with him is that “stroad” is a terrible name.

“I love how you listed two sets of numbers and didn’t even try to make an argument with them, not that they would make good arguments anyway.”

I brought up the population density and car ownership per household because those were some key factors he intentionally omitted in his video. To be fair, those points should be self explanatory. But you’re right, please allow me to explains why these numbers matter.

“National population density literally doesn’t mean shit,” and you are right in this context. But it does point to a simple fact, we have far more space available for potential growth in the future. That means we don’t have to make all things packed so tightly, we can afford the space and that’s why our cities are spread out over a wide area, aka suburbs. When we are comparing population densities, Toronto and Amsterdam are about the same, 4427/km2 and 4439/km2 respectively. However, GTA is about 3 times larger than Amsterdam metro area. This has a significant impact on how the infrastructures are planed and developed. Increasing the building density is very costly, and it is avoided in most places unless the demand for certain area far exceeds the available space in that defined area, like downtown area. With ample space available in NA, you rarely see high building density areas outside of the downtown core of major cities.

“Vancouver with its "lack of space" still mirrors the stroad solution in NA instead of something akin to the Netherlands? Besides, there is no significant difference in the space required for both NA and Dutch road systems, so what are you on about? ”

Higher population density does not necessarily translate into lack of space, and you should know this. Please don’t say that Waterloo is crowded, C’mon Man. I’ll talk about the space required for each road systems later. But for real, “road planning has very little to do with population density” ? I know you are better than this, you’re probably too tired when you wrote that down.

“As for cars owned per household, what is your argument with it? you just listed it as if it will prove something on its own. ”

Well, it kinda does. I won’t assume anything about you here, but if I have to I guess you know this already. China is a leader in non-motorized transportation system, cycling and walking infrastructure are well planed and implemented in most cities. Maybe this has something to do with very low numbers of car per capita when the first wave of urbanization started in China? Average Canadian household has 1.5 cars, I’d assume that “car-centered road-building philosophy” is kinda a logical conclusion from that stats? And it’s not just me, that is the reality in North America, ever heard of nation on wheels? The whole historical and cultural aspects of this can be discussed on another day. But you need to realized this, we’re not talking about a sim game here that you can build everything from scratch. In most cases, there’re reasons why things work the way they do. FINALLY, let’s talk about that video, “STRODES”. (I’ll admit this, I absolutely hate this word now)

“And please, share your wisdom with me as to where the guy mixed up terminologies and "redefined the meaning of road and street", ”

It seems that the definitions of ‘road’ and ‘street’ the guy in the video are referring to, are from a book, “Strong Towns”. I haven’t read that book and probably won’t , so I’ll leave no comment on that. My only source of info would be that video you posted. First things first, let’s make sure we are on the same page for those terms. When he says road, he means highway or expressway, and please let’s just call it highway. And when he says street, he means local road, and let’s call them street. According to him, stroads are highway and street hybrid, but in real life they are classified as major or minor arterial road. We call them avenue or drive way, but for the sake of discussion here, I’ll call them stroads. You see, they intentionally invented a new word to describe a existing road system that has existing classification systems. Why? To criticize the existing system and promote their own agenda, does that sounds familiar to you, my conservative friend?

Let me explain to you how their logic works. Stroads are highway and local street hybrid, they are dangerous, expensive, and ineffective, therefore we need to change. But why are stroads bad? Because he is judging stroads based on criteria for both highway and street. “Stroad is dangerous and impossible for pedestrians to cross”, highway is the same and jaywalking is dangerous, pedestrians are not supposed to walk across stroad. Are you gonna complain that highways are not cyclist friendly? “High speed traffic not compatible with human activities”, please perform those activities at a safer location, and there’s plenty space for that, like along the local streets. “Stroads are hostile to people outside of a car”, and that’s because traffic movement is the primary function of stroads, not walking or cycling. “Stroads are ugly, with large signs on the road, no body wants to spend time there.’’ Depending on the surrounding environment, that’s not necessarily true. Plus most people likely just want to reach their destinations, and they’d prefer to spend more time on what they want to do other than on the road. “Stroads are slower than highway”, yes and it provides more accesses to nearby communities. “Traffic lights on stroads, no body is getting anywhere quickly on stroad”. Simply not true, stroads transfer far more vehicles per day than a street. Last but not least, let’s talk about the space. “Stroad is much bigger than ‘highway’ that would carry the same amount of traffic”, probably but it provides a lot more access to nearby buildings and streets. “Stroad is significantly larger than a street that would have the same number of businesses and houses along it”, again, it also moves a lot more vehicles and the traffic is significantly faster than local street.

I think that’s enough examples for you to get the point, a dog is not bad just because it’s not a cat. That guy is constantly using standards of local street to criticize the “highway aspect” of stroad, and using highway standards to disapprove the “street aspect” of stroad. It is not a hybrid to begin with, so called stroad serves its own purposes and are planed that way. When making city planning, so called stroads are “default setting for transportation design almost everywhere in the US and Canada.” That is probably due to the facts that I mentioned above, we have plenty of space and we have lots of cars. And it’s not necessary a bad thing when “everything is inherently spread out and low-density”. Again, we can afford that space in NA.

“You seem not to understand that most drivers, bikers, and pedestrians are all people that live where the stroad is, remember, stroads have businesses and infrastructure alongside them, they shouldn’t be used to commute to another area like the highways or freeways. if the environment for bikers and pedestrians is improved, it will reduce the traffic flow, making the travel time by all means faster, ”

He proposed two things as the alternative, basically eliminating stroads and converting them into either highway or street. That is to say, he wants to reduce the road classifications from 5 to 2 or 3, like what they have in Netherland. Apparently, you don’t think it’s a good idea to converte them into highways. Does changing stroad to local street improve the environment for bikers and pedestrians ? Yes, for sure, but at the same time it significantly lowers the volume of traffic it can transport per day, and travel by car will take longer to pass through. What you want here is more than a reclassification of road systems, but urban design that favors pedestrians and cyclists more than cars. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because that’s how all the cities were build before the early 20th century when cars became widely available. However, like I said in my previous post, this change is gonna impact how people live their life and it is taking away public space from drivers and giving that space to non drivers. In case you don’t know, this is already happening in urban centers. Reduding car lanes to make space for dedicated bike lanes, lowering speed limit for local street including stroads and increasing costs to own cars, just give you some examples here. But what that video is suggesting, is a lot more than this.

“It’s time to face the fact that designing stroads as both a high-speed thoroughfare and a destination simply does’t work. stroads, are dangerous and expensive. They destroy walkability, they make cycling dangerous and infeasible, and they don’t work for drivers either. The US and Canada need to change.”

The truth is, it’s not that stroads doesn’t work as both a high-speed thoroughfare and a destination, it’s simply not working for those who hates cars and prefers walking or cycling. For their intended functions, stroads are neither more dangerous than highways nor more expensive than high density local streets. They are simply designed to favor those who drive, and that’s why the leftist hate it so much. Remember, we are not talking about design a city from scratch, but converting existing systems by taking away public space from drivers. This fits perfectly with their larger agenda, promoting equality among all the people by taking away things from a group and give them to another.

“I love the liberating power of a car.” There’s no way for me to tell if you mean it wholeheartedly when you wrote that down. But trust me kid, guard that liberating power in your heart with all you have, cause that’s what those leftist bitches fear the most.