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Comment by lacampbell | Hacker News Reader

Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public transit" (mostly buses in the midwest).

I don't understand... you are saying they replace roads and freeways and replace them with buses?

That's like replacing a glass with water. It makes no sense.

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Yes. This is done either for public use (tearing out a lane of public travel, and replacing it with a lane for buses only) or privatizing the street altogether (tearing out a lane, and replacing it with front yards, or restaurant seating, or whatever).

I believe you but have never heard of cities anywhere removing roads or lanes, only adding more. Can you give any examples of cities that have actually done this?

There is a thing called road diet, take 4 lanes (2 each way), reduce it to 2 lane and add turn lanes and bike lane.

Car traffic hopefully slows and makes things safer for pedestrians crossing the road and much safer for cyclist.

The wikipedia only lists a few examples where it has been implemented:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet#Examples_of_implemen...

I believe the person means something like taking an existing 2 or 3 lane road and making one lane a bus lane. So you took away a lane in a way. In Seattle they have done that but the buses work really well when they don't get stuck in car traffic. Buses are often faster than cars here. There's a huge number of buses, they get good use out the special bus lanes. On the freeway it's carpool lanes than include cars and buses. In the city they do have bus only lanes.

If you didn't have buses that go places people need and lots of them then converting a lane to bus only might not be useful. People make exactly the same claims you do about seattle but the bus system here is really effective.

UT Knoxville did this on Cumberland ave and other roads around campus to push people into driving around the campus rather than through it.

Not sure if your question regards the US only, but this is how cities in the Netherlands became bike and pedestrian-friendly starting in the 70s, by removing a lot of roads.

Manhattan at last is turning lanes into bike lanes and returning some places to pedestrians, such as Times Square and some other squares.

Though the examples do show what I consider progress, the tiny amount of changes reinforces your point, like deafening silence.

I spent a lot of time this last weekend walking along such a reduction of road in NYC--Broadway near Times Square has undergone such a road diet.

One example is the conversion of the Embarcadero freeway into a pedestrian friendly waterfront zone, although that's not quite a fair example given that it took an earthquake destroying it to give it the oomph it needed to happen.

For a few years now, every road construction project near my Amsterdam home has removed car lanes. Also parking. Usually the freed space goes to protected cycle paths, but sidewalks, trees, and playgrounds sometimes win some new space as well.

(N.b. there is a plan to add a lane to portions of the outer ring highway, so "more car lanes to reduce traffic" still has some advocates.)

So what you meant to say was that they re-paint existing roads to make it harder for cars and easier for busses. Not that they pull out a road (a piece of infrastructure) and replace it with a bus (a vehicle).

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