I think a lot of drivers tend to miss the point that most of what hey see as "annoying" in terms of traffic engineering in Cambridge and Somerville is really just the city's attempts to make things easier and safer for pedestrians at the expense of drivers so as to encourage more people to walk or take public transit instead of driving in the first place. IMHO people who say that pedestrians should suck it up so that drivers can drive through the city faster are barking up the wrong tree/living in the wrong city.
Additionally, there is a definite finite number of cars per hour that all cities can "process" on their streets. Walking and public transit have no such limitation (or at least in the case of PT, it is so much higher than our current usage that it is not worthwhile to consider), so engineering more efficient roads is not really in the best interest of the politicians of cities like Somerville and Cambridge because they are essentially fighting a losing battle. Say you re-engineer things so that the roads can handle 10 percent more cars per hour, so then the driving population goes up by 10 percent, but achieving the next 10 percent increase in roadway efficiency is 10 times as expensive as the last 10 percent increase, so that approach isn't really financially sustainable.
In other words, if you don't like driving in the city, why not explore alternate modes of transportation?
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Date: 2008-09-15 06:59 pm (UTC)I think a lot of drivers tend to miss the point that most of what hey see as "annoying" in terms of traffic engineering in Cambridge and Somerville is really just the city's attempts to make things easier and safer for pedestrians at the expense of drivers so as to encourage more people to walk or take public transit instead of driving in the first place. IMHO people who say that pedestrians should suck it up so that drivers can drive through the city faster are barking up the wrong tree/living in the wrong city.
Additionally, there is a definite finite number of cars per hour that all cities can "process" on their streets. Walking and public transit have no such limitation (or at least in the case of PT, it is so much higher than our current usage that it is not worthwhile to consider), so engineering more efficient roads is not really in the best interest of the politicians of cities like Somerville and Cambridge because they are essentially fighting a losing battle. Say you re-engineer things so that the roads can handle 10 percent more cars per hour, so then the driving population goes up by 10 percent, but achieving the next 10 percent increase in roadway efficiency is 10 times as expensive as the last 10 percent increase, so that approach isn't really financially sustainable.
In other words, if you don't like driving in the city, why not explore alternate modes of transportation?