(IEEE Spectrum) Your navigation app is making traffic unmanageable

Most kids in european cities go to school themselves from a certain age onwards, in my case that was after kindergarden, elswhere it might be a few years later, depending on the regional culture.

It works just fine in new-fashioned economies as well because good public transit is made of networks and criss cross.

As an example, even in the middle of the night, the majority of Toronto's population has public transit available just a short walk away:

> Then in 2005, several routes were added so that east–west service would run on every grid street instead of alternate ones in much of the city. This has brought the Blue Night Network up to a total of 24 routes, serving 97% of the city's population within a 15-minute walk.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Night_Network

Stumble out of a bar at 3 AM? You can take the bus/streetcar home.

During the day the network is much more extensive, with more routes operating, so most people probably have to walk <10 minutes to get to a route (some routes though having more frequent service than others).

Where? In France most people would take the train to travel a long distance (2h+ drive). I can be in Paris in 2 hours at 320km/h using the high-speed train whereas it would take me 6 hours at 130km/h using a car. Not counting the nightmare of going through the Parisian périphérique.

Public transit is also called mass transit, which gives a better idea of what the service is about. Traffic is a necessary evil. It's not valuable in itself but only as a means to an end. Mass transit works best in urban areas, where it maximizes throughput while minimizing the space wasted for traffic. The resulting urban topology is different from that arising from individual modes of transport. Instead of a grid of streets, you get a network of walkable neighborhoods. And much less traffic per person.

Why?? Cities like Berlin work perfectly fine with a massive public transport network, you get to almost anywhere in 30-45 minutes (except for the most far away places).

I don't need point-to-point on demand, I just need to be able to get into public transport in 5-10 minutes and get through the network to destination B in 30-45 minutes. That moves a lot of people efficiently, there's no need for this hyper-individualisation of transportation...

Useful systems have huge positive externalities that can't be captured by charging passengers at a rate that reflects those benefits (I'm not sure if this is due to a free-loader effect, irrationality on the passengers part or something else).

I think the only systems that have profited on scale commensurate with their benefits are those that were a real estate play, eg.: the Metropolitan Line[1] in London, Los Angeles trams, Hong Kong subways. I might be wrong about these examples, either due to misremembering or to falling to a just-so story.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-land

Edit: formatting.

Edit 2: The point, I think, is that if you rely on direct profits for the transport system you give up on huge benefits and accept huge costs across society.

walkable paths do not usually overlap with cars/bicycle lane/bus lanes.

but they are very effective to reduce the use of vehicles for routine activities (grocery, schools, catching public transport, meeting friends, going out for a drink, etc.)

Also traffic speed is actually not that relevant, in Rome, where I live, most of the time cars move at an average speed lower than 10 km/h, the real issue is avoiding congestions, not making cars move faster.

15-20 km/h is more than enough to do what you have to do in a reasonable time.

where I live in Rome to reach the station I can either take the subway (5 stops, 11 minutes), the bus (~20-25 minutes), a cab (~15-20 minutes) or my car ~30-35 minutes and forget about parking it.

fast tracks for cars can be moved outside of the city, like the great ring around Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Raccordo_Anulare

You don't understand. They see this as a feature.

They will not be happy until everyone (except them) is living in Kowloon and eating bugs. Individual mobility and autonomy is a problem to be solved, not a solution to be sought.

It’s apparently used to apply an additional routing penalty for “difficult intersections”, assigned by map editors, which provides a robust way to avoid these situations, including difficult left turns: https://www.reddit.com/r/waze/comments/ffypgb/avoid_difficul...