> When humans are walking or driving, the flow of traffic usually begins to slow when occupancy reaches 40 percent. Argentine ants, on the other hand, show no signs of slowing, even when the bridge occupancy reached 80 percent.
Your point (which is a good one) can be made even more strongly by saying
“From the article ...”
I can easily move double the speed on an empty sidewalk as I can the average mid-day mess. Humans absolutely have traffic jams on sidewalks.
A corollary of the above fact is that autonomous cars won't save us. They might make traffic better by about 20%, but induced demand allows us to predict that speeds during rush hour won't actually get better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
EDIT: BuT WHaT abOuT DeLiVeRiEs?
Yes, I see a lot of abelism on NUMTOTs and the like. And I already get a ton of vitriol because my disability isn't very visible.
Yes, I do. I hope it is not shocking for you that people are treating you based on how you behave?
"We should make cities walkable and transport efficient and there are more efficient options than individual car travel" - probably someone smart and considerate.
"Cars were mistake from the beginning!!! Ban all death machines!!!!eleventy" - probably someone stupid and/or inconsiderate.
Not all of us are so enthralled with the rest of us. At some point in the last decade, I went from wanting to be constantly surrounded by others (youthful insecurity) to having my own life, doing my own thing, and not wanting to deal with other people’s bs.
The very wealthy can have a similar experience living in a city, but for everyone else, it means loss of independence and freedom. Plenty of people accept those tradeoffs, but please don’t shove it down the the rest of our throats.
Need something from the grocery store? 5 minute walk. Need something late at night? Store's still open, still a 5 minute walk. Need food late at night? I have the freedom of choice.
I feel no loss of independence by having city life all around me. If anything, living in a city has greatly improved my freedom. I don't need a car to get most places, I can do a variety of art and culture virtually every day of the week.
If I wanted to do large woodcrafts, access a tool library, access a laser cutter or a 3d printer, there's a maker's co-op about a 15 minute walk from my place with far more tools than I'd ever be able to amass even in a suburban house.
You may not prefer city life, but in no way does it represent a lack of independence or freedom.
Anyhow, I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to want to live in a city. I’m saying there are also good reasons not to want to, and I’m reacting to the suggestion that the means to do so be abolished.
That is a statement I do not understand at all.
(I've lived in suburbia, and rural America too, both in rich rural American and poor rural America. All of them are horrible for day-to-day living compared to anywhere I've ever lived in a city.)
My point is there is no solution fixing traffic jams in most cities or rush hours. If you've been to a poorer country with lax traffic law enforcement, you will see the extreme end of the situation play out where you can pretty much model all the vehicles as a fluid as they slowly ease by each other with whatever space they can find.
The amount of cortisol the human body releases in the average driving scenario is enough to make anybody far more irritable and prone to "selfishness" or anger on the road. Unlike on a sidewalk, one mistake on the road can and often does result in fatality and that tends to change one's attitude to something like potential collision.
Still, a lot of people don't do this, and it makes life harder for those who do. I'm amazed by how people will race to be the first one stopped at a red light.
Doing a greedy optimization for maximum instantaneous speed can reduce the overall traffic speed, and sometimes even the average speed of the driver in question, increasing their own trip time. But the greedy optimization is still common to see.