Skip Navigation
jessta Jesse @aus.social

Musings on software development, bike infrastructure, public transport, and urban planning.

https://jessta.id.au

Posts 0
Comments 29
Planning for Melbourne's future 70 years ago
  • @notgold yeah, it's so easy to see it was bad with hindsight. But it also should have been easy to see at the time with some simple maths.

  • Planning for Melbourne's future 70 years ago
  • @notgold The classic second stage of the Car Ponzi scheme. They make a big list of the problems that cars created, ascribe them to population growth and then double down on cars as the solution.

  • What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
  • @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars

    I grew up in Collingwood, Melbourne and all of these things were within 20mins walk from my house.

    I'm on the other side of Melbourne now (Footscray) and the only thing I'm not walking distance from is 'sports arena'..unless you count horse racing.

  • In five years time, some CTO will review the mysterious outage or technical debt in their organisation.
  • @TootSweet @ajsadauskas They'll just completely rewrite it from scratch using a newer LLM and that will be considered normal. In those 5yrs the percentage of developers who remember the idea of code having longevity will be tiny.

  • One solution to fight climate change? Fewer parking spaces - Grist
  • @pathief @ProdigalFrog it's just physically not possible to build enough parking for everyone to always have a park. You have trouble finding a park because that's just the physical reality. Adding more parking (like adding more lanes) doesn't increase availability because of induced demand and the inherent inefficiency of cars.

    Reducing parking won't reduce the parking available to you. Just as reducing the number of car lanes won't reduce your ability to drive places.

  • 10000 passengers per hour
  • @themeatbridge @sexy_peach Commuter driving has the same 'last mile' problem, but it's parking.

    The photo doesn't include the $250 million worth of carparks for those 10,000 cars that has to exist at the other end of the highway.

  • How cities can stem the tide of pedestrian deaths from large cars and SUVs – Ars Technica
  • @blandy @frostbiker
    In Victoria (Australia), the fine for using your mobile phone while riding a bicycle is the same as when driving a 2.6 tonne ute.

  • [relevant xkcd] Urban Planning Opinion Progression
  • @JasSmith @cerement @lysol Density is the panacea. Cycling is just what makes it possible. You can't have nice livable density with cars.

  • I know this isn't fuck bad parking...
  • @Crazypartypony @glasgitarrewelt But if parking restrictions are enforced and people can't park and thus can't use cars then there will be political will for public transport. Public transport is cheaper to deploy than all the car infrastructure even for small townships.

  • It's time to replace urban delivery vans
  • @DLSchichtl @Iron_Lynx of course there are things that can't be delivered in bicycles and of course this only make sense with enough density.
    But density is a goal of urbanism.

    The places in the world that currently have success doing bicycle deliveries right now allow night time or off peak van/truck deliveries.
    Most deliveries are small packages, especially the deliveries that are time sensitive and so are ideal for cargo bike delivery.
    The 2-3 photocopier deliveries a week are done with a van at night.

  • Countering the argument of "but cars let me go wherever I want whenever I want!"
  • @ChicoSuave @HiddenLayer5 you've got it the wrong way around. The anti-car/pro public transport/urbanism movement always has the goal of reducing the cost of transport and the cost of housing to make places that are livable for people on lower incomes.

    Cars in rural areas aren't a concern because they're places where population density is so low that cars have fewer negative effects.

    But rural public transport between townships and major cities can also make getting places quicker, easier and safer.

    Building public transport in and to higher density areas doesn't stop you from driving your car in a rural area.

  • listen to patrick
  • @Yondoza @anewbeginning Parking is a huge tax on everything. Parking minimums means that the government forces every business to build the cost of parking in to all their prices. Every house and apartment has the cost of parking added to it. In the case of a highrise apartment this can be an extra $50K on to the price of the apartment.

    Governments could instead force businesses and housing developers to put that money toward public transport.

    The forced cost of parking in the USA is more than the entire national debt.

  • Cyclists Break Far Fewer Road Rules Than Motorists, Finds New Video Study
  • @zoe @frankPodmore Driving licences and traffic lights were invented because car drivers were too dangerous to safely mix with existing road traffic and we needed to restrain them. Bicycles have never been a significant danger to other road traffic. We don't require licences for people to ride bicycles for the same reason we don't require licences for pedestrians, it's a ridiculous idea that would do nothing useful.

  • 85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport
  • @nicklockwood @TDCN @Showroom7561 no, it's just politically impossible to mandate speed limiters. Governments tried 50yrs ago and haven't tried again since. Car manufacturers want people to know they can speed. It's all over their marketing.

  • 85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport
  • @nicklockwood @TDCN @Showroom7561 you're right. Mandatory speed limiters are a much better option. They're cheap, easy and avoid having to fine people.

  • 85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport
  • @TDCN @acs 5 out of 5 pedestrians will survive a collision with a car traveling at 20km/hr, only 4 out of 5 will survive a collision with a car traveling at 40km/h.
    This doesn't include the large difference in level of injury.

    So by speeding your taking a situation where nobody should die and making it a situation where someone might.

    A 20km/h area is an area where there will be lots of people to hit so it's even more important to stick to the speed limit in that situation

  • 85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport
  • @NuPNuA @SoGrumpy you're underestimating the noise of your tyres at higher speeds, which for a truck with a lot of tyres is considerable.

  • 85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport
  • @CorruptBuddha @emergencyfood A 20mph speed limit is based on momentum the human body can withstand without a high likelihood of death.
    Every mph over the limit increase the likelihood of a human being dying in a collision.

    Speeding in a 20mph zone is very specifically choosing to increase the likelihood of killing someone.