cross-posted from: https://feddit.it/post/28637207
Those who use the bike know this very well: in the city, speeding motorists overtaking other cars, only get one thing: they arrive first to the next red.
With a simple model, the author estimated the probability that one car that overtakes another, will then be reached again at a later red light. Then he estimated the probability that the same thing will happen when there are multiple successive traffic lights, as usual in the cities.
The result is that as fast as an aggressive driver goes, the presence of multiple traffic lights makes it virtually certain that a slower driver will catch up
So, if someone aggressively overcomes you, when you reach him at the next traffic light, you can tell him that it is mathematically proven that he/she is an idiot.
In addition, this study has implications for the 30 km/h city, demonstrating how in urban areas the traffic lights determine the travel times, not the maximum speed reachable between one traffic light and the next.
The original scientific article is here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/4/260310/481212/The-Voorhees-law-of-traffic-a-stochastic-model
crossposted from: https://poliversity.it/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/116419204210303856
But I have to get to the red light before you do! /s
The worst is when they cut me off for their pointless first at red because I’m turning right and would do so legally but it’s not a dedicated right turn lane so now I get to wait for green with this asshole who’s going straight.
Hell half the time in a dedicated right lane they cut me off and illegally go straight. It’s fucked. I’m just trying to drop off my kids, damnit.
I only overtake in the city when someone is driving like an idiot and I want to get away from them. Or if they’re driving like they don’t know where they’re going and keep slowing down to read every road sign.
The red light timings sometimes incentivizes to go faster as with 55-60km/h you can have a green wave and don’t need stop at any red light. for that it is totally worth it to drive faster. i hate when red light phase is longer than green phase. there are some really bad decisions on how red light timings work. Most do drive their path to work twice and know the timings and those do know when to drive faster/slower and will drive more aggressive to not wait at that one stupidly timed red light and have to wait and have like 25% more time to commute twice! (20->25min). It’s nice to calculate it with statistics but the way to work and back is better known and a slower driver might cause you to need to wait at multiple red lights while you could have driven a bit faster (and not always faster like in my first sentence but driving as fast as is allowed) and did not have to wait at any of that stupid red lights. I’m all for speed limits and better bike lanes etc. but driving slow when it’s stupid and stealing others precious time is fucking awful. What i also like are those that drive 60-70 constantly. Fuck man drive 100 if it is allowed and you can and drive 50 in the city but know, slow you down and than don’t even drive slower for the safety of entices in the city.
Yes! We need a 30 km/h green wave.
In my city they timed the green waves for bicycles. It is glorious
And this is one reason more to limit speeds in cities to 30 kilometers per hour (20 mph).
30 is awful. I like 40 and 60 so much more. 30 might be still better than awful timed red lights.
30 is great for bikes. The safer people feel, the more will use bikes - Paris or Copenhagen are great examples, or smaller German cities like Münster and Oldenburg.
The more people go by bike, the less car traffic you will have. A bike lane of 2,50 meters width can transport 7500 vehicles per hour - that’s equivalent to a mayor motorway. (A good example fir this is Copenhagens Cykleslangen which crosses the harbour to the South). As the comments here point out amply, the main obstacles for cars are other cars, so in a bike-friendly city, the cars that need to can travel with less obstructions. As well as ambulances, firefighters and so on (we have statistics from Paris that show the latter).
And an important consequential effect of freeing city streets for bikes is that scarce and comperatively expensive public transport capacity is freed for people which need to use it, because they either need to travel long distances, or are not healthy enough to use the bike.
Bikes and Cars do not work well together. You will never have car free cities, even in small towns in EU, if you can’t drive around it with a faster road. Cities should not be build around important short and fast traffic roads, but that is how they are grown historical. Situation in rural areas is also very different to bigger cities. I would also say 30 is far from great for bikes. Most normal people drive slower and some drive faster. Speed is not the answer. Cars and bikes need different lanes. Everything longer than ~25km to work will be for cars or public transport. A good transition to having better transport will take a long time and reducing speeds to 30 is not a good solution.
Bikes and Cars do not work well together.
You apparently have not seen Copenhagen. And yes, going 100% car-free is difficult. But in cities, you can get rid of 95% of cars. Myself, I never had one in 40 years, having lived in many different places, not only cities.
Copenhagen is big enough to have a good public transportation and obviously planned better.
Smaller cities cannot support or justify a public transportation system. True, in smaller cities you can walk or bike but you have not (for the same reasons) all the services you need near enough (schools, hospitals, malls, and others)But in cities, you can get rid of 95% of cars.
In cities you can get rid of 95% of the time the cars are used, not of the cars themself. People do not live only in the city and not everything can be done using a public transport (or it is convenient)
Myself, I never had one in 40 years, having lived in many different places, not only cities.
Good for you, but I am afraid that you are more an edge case than a common case.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Traffic is like the flow of water, you can absolutely be the one fucking it up for everybody else, be it by crashing, reordering the wait, or by making traffic out of sync with engineered timers to optimize flow.
If speed or order or rate doesn’t matter, then the science behind traffic engineers must be imaginary.
Be safe AND don’t be a fucking asshole. We are all in this together.
if people understood we are in this together we would have invested more in public transit and walkability
Imagine if you played factorio…
and some stuff on a belt was just like “You know what would make us get there faster? If I moved slower than everything else and made it hard or impossible to pass.”
And then another belt had an object that got irritated by always getting stuck behind the first one and tried to go super fast, but then crashed and outright stopped the belt.
Neither of these are good.
I hate it when people get in front of me just to slow me down. All the time.
Try driving an RV sometime. People have a moral obligation to pass you I guess, because you can be driving warp 8 and people will pass you angrily before slowing down.
I used to drive a full size van. On foggy days I can see better than most other cars due to me being much higher off the ground. A lot of times the person behind me thinks they can go faster because they can see my tail lights.
They will pass me and realize they can’t see ANYTHING and then go much slower than I was when they were behind me.
Same on rainy days. The cars kick up water off the road and make a haze that I sit above in my van. I can see better so I can go faster…until they pass me.
