God, the alt-right messaging network are desperate to find some messaging to fight urbanism on. In my experience, good urban design is an issue that really resonates with people across the spectrum in the US. That's why they tried to spin the 15-minute city conspiracy. The sad thing is that I know they're eventually going to find one that sticks.
Conservatives want to retvrn to trvdition but want everything to be 20 minutes away and stay inside their house all day because there's nothing to do in your neighborhood
Don’t forget they’ve been taught since birth that their neighbors are dangerous and untrustworthy and that there can never be any sense of community beyond the nuclear family
The 15 minute spin has got to be the most effective pro-car propaganda I've ever heard. Somehow convenience and sidewalks got spun as concentration camps.
Oh, so you want walkable cities? Do you know where people also walked instead of driving? Auschwitz. Really makes you think.
the trans of traffic
A group promoting change that will have life-saving impacts for a vulnerable community, and positive effects for society as a whole, being thwarted because reactionary dipshits can't bear the thought that saving others' lives is a worthy trade for a vanishingly small change for themselves? I guess so...
Turns on reds fucking suck as a pedestrian. Makes it feel so dangerous sometimes.
honestly I haven't been almost killed by turning right on red as often as people whipping through a left turn at high speed to beat the light or oncoming traffic
Goes along the same lines of "working class" (doesn't include jet ski dealership owners, does include blue hair starbucks barista)
Which is to say: We will ruin everything you love, we will get you, we will prevail!
Anyway here's a post of his about how pedophilia should be celebrated https://nitter.x86-64-unknown-linux-gnu.zip/RichardHanania/status/1728482721998258283#m
Linking a blog post supporting Hitler. I think this might be bait but it's funny as fuck so idrc
tbh if your commute is so fucking tight that you can't spare a few extra seconds at a stop light, something is wrong.
it's America, everything is wrong.
Right on red keeps traffic moving, but hte traffic is only there because a giant century long conspiracy against public transit, bikes, and pedestrians. But Idk what would even happen without right on red, because it'd fuck with the whole rest of an already not well built traffic system that was shoved in to cities it has no place being.
Right on red keeps traffic moving,
Debatable in a lot of cases because the underlying presumption is it allows cars to slip in when nobody else is inconvenienced (as that would be illegal), which is the sort of thought that underlies a lot of especially car brained traffic planning and also has 0 answer as to why the outcome of that design fails constantly everywhere
Strong agree. I perceive it as allowing traffic to keep moving despite poorly timed lights but I can acknowledge that my perception is not data or evidence!
Both making driving worse and making bike and transit better are good to do people should be actively punished for driving
Both are wrong. We must unmake this wretched reality and construct a new, glorious paradigm built around moving walkways that go very, very fast.
In some cases you'd be right. In others, since the city didn't plan for it, there would be massive extra traffic in a lot of places because people can't turn right on red. We're not talking about an extra 3 minutes at a light. We're talking about a lane that is usually semi-steadily moving coming to a standstill multiplied by however many lights allow that in the city. So either millions of people in cities like Houston, New York, LA, and Chicago need to leave half an hour earlier (adding 130 hours a year to their commute) or be late.
A lot of that could be solved by not forcing people who don't need to be in an office back into the office, put in proper bicycle lanes, and redesigning city centers as places to eat, walk, experience a city, and live rather than just office buildings. But the last one is a little ambitious on the short term scale.
Edit: and transit. I fucking forgot transit because it's so garbage here that I never remember it's a thing.
Literally no traffic reduction scheme has ever worked. Making driving easier only ever leads to more driving. Therefore, making driving worse and slower may well lead to less driving.
If they'd fix transit here I'd be all over it. I think a lot of others would be as well.
Doesn't really matter to me because I do work from home. No right on red? Not my problem. Buti do care about others. So the fact that the average commute loses working folks almost a week every year hurts my heart. Losing almost another week without a transit plan (or any kind of fucking plan.....I may be a little angry) in place hurts my heart. So does injuring or killing cyclists.
I think there's probably a nuanced and thoughtful answer that would reduce the time folks are on the road (costing both time and money, plus a lot of them have to find off hours child care) for work while not killing cyclists. I don't have that answer. I just don't think making things more terrible is it. I think there's got to be a way to offer an incentive not to be on the road, protecting everyone and not stealing money and time from workers.
The nuanced answer is ban cars immediately with no transition at the federal level. That will instantly cut commute times.
Fuck your heart, the person who hit me with their car last week hurts my legs. Make driving worse.
Doesn't really matter to me because I do work from home. No right on red? Not my problem. Buti do care about others. So the fact that the average commute loses working folks almost a week every year hurts my heart.
Everytime nature evaporates some critical road there's like 0 long term discernible rise in traffic.
People who commute really do need to do that, aye? Like, that's not an optional trip, right?
Roads don't really discern for reason on any basis. If you make it easier, shit just fills up with people going for cross-city donut runs or whatever until you're left back at where you started as per traffic.
Virtually everyone outside of certain cities drives, though. Without infrastructure to provide an alternative to driving - at a minimum, a bus route, which not even that will happen near here - people are going to drive even if it sucks. It already sucks and people are still spending a plurality of their income maintaining their car.
I'd be curious to see the math bc given how badly a lot of the streets are laid out in this country it could be 30s or 30 minutes depending on how the light intervals worked out, traffic, whatever.
That’s a 50/50 big/small bicycle, averaging out to normal bicycle
Now that's a bike. I love the video of him riding it. It's so slow it's amazing
Wait, yanks turn when the light is red?!? What kind of backwards shit is that?!
Just remember this simple rule and you can generally predict all of America's traffic laws.
Cars>Pedestrians
Badly designed roads, badly designed traffic systems, badly designed everything means it's pretty much the only reason anything can move here. Idk how the traffic system would even function without right on red. Or, rather, it would fail to function even more than it already does. Fuck this country.
Urban planning here is ridiculous. Every single petty land owner has to be fairly compensated at the market rate for their 30m wide parcel of land before any authority can build a road across it. If they're a minority their land just gets seized and they're given a pittance, if they're white it's a decade long process in the courts that is hilariously expensive and may or may not result in a city or state getting access to the land. It's a big part of why we can't build rail - Every single fucking landowner has to be sued for the land, in separate lawsuits, that take years and years and years.
Isn't there like at least municipalities where this is already illegal?
Apparently there are but I've never encountered one. Plus traffic laws in the US are very vibe-based. It's more of a set of cultural norms than actual rules. You do what everyone else does, regardless of the law, or you get hit by another vehicle.
inconsistent traffic laws make you safer by keeping you on your toes
in practice we just have "no right on red" signs or specific right turn signals at intersections where it would be problematic. out where everything is so spread out there isn't any pedestrian traffic and bikes act like vehicles (and so are not alllowed to cut past cars on their right where they are liable to get hit).
as typical, american imagination about change is based on the assumption there will be no infrastructure to support it. no turn on red wouldn't make sense as a blanket rule given current infrastructure due to a lack of bike or pedestrian infrastructure to take advantage of it and the obvious congestion problems that come from cars idling at a traffic light. actually create that infrastructure and the time lost to needing to sit at a red light so non car traffic can cross safely will be less than the time saved due to there being fewer cars on the road to begin with. imagine if the light wasn't red to begin with because there weren't other cars. imagine not having to drive at all.
creating pedestrian and cycling infrastructure while not abolishing right on reds is like a few steps removed from just randomly killing people
iirc most states(?) allow a right turn on a red light as it doesn't involve disturbing the flow of traffic too much
i still think it's bad to be clear, but i think that's the reasoningThe original reasoning was that letting people turn right on red saved the gas they would have burned sitting idle at the red light, it was legalized in the US during the 70s oil crisis. That reasoning is obviously nonsense.
It is, because they stare left watching the oncoming traffic while turning right so they're not actually looking where they're going.
Every state allows it I think. There's a view cities that don't allow it or are outlawing it. And there's always random intersections that don't allow it.
I am a fan of Americans turning right on red on Australian (and UK) roads. Preferably when there's an oncoming roadtrain.
I once saw an American turn right on a red light into a one way lane going the opposite direction
As a biker I assume that every single car is actively trying to kill me at all times. This is one of those reasons.
I'm a bike commuter and I'm scared to carry a gun here because I'd probably have shot a driver by now.
