7 ms·

While I don't know of the safety impact of removing left turns, the actual trip time impact in a busy city is severely understated. In my city (700k people), an

by jakubp 5y ago

While I don't know of the safety impact of removing left turns, the actual trip time impact in a busy city is severely understated. In my city (700k people), an old European town, city center has seen the removal of a few key left turns in the past few years. Consequences for traffic outside city center: probably none. Consequences if you want to drive from within the city center to the outside (e.g. go back from a shopping mall / restaurant / business meeting): walk further (many places to park are inaccessible) back to the car, drive a block or two more than you normally would. Extra time: +5 minutes to walk, +10 minutes for those 1-2 blocks (traffic is heavy). Now the "best" part: Consequences if you want to drive into the city center: you need to make a sequence of correct turns 1-2 kilometers before your target, and if you don't, you are punished with extra 20 minutes in traffic at least (and still won't land where you wanted) - there is simply no route to where you wanted to go unless you pick 1 specific ideal route which many drivers don't know. Results: if you know the city / have good gps (Google Maps sometimes gets it wrong) +10 minutes in traffic, if you don't - + 20-30 minutes in traffic. [edit] You may ask "why you can't do a triple-right-turn?" that's because the city center is not a grid. Many streets are don't have cross-paths for long stretches around historical part of the city. Now the really painful part... Your trip outside the city center is only 5-10 minutes. Losing an EXTRA 20 minutes is a huge loss, it makes the ttrip almost as bad as walking - but inside a car. Bad for everyone really. My main beef is with the fact that many places in the city become almost inaccessible due to a huge reduction in possible routes. E.g. 7 years ago I could get to a large mall / parking area next to the town square maybe in 5-6 diffferent ways (allowing me to balance the traffic out). Now there's 1 way only from my side of the city, and I can't balance anything out by going where others aren't. Guess the "grid" street network is really a hard prerequisite. As for safety, safety records in the city haven't moved at all in the past 10 years so I don't know. (But traffic has grown so maybe it's ok?)

disantlor 5y ago
I am biased but why do we even need cars in the city center, or at the very least why should they be convenient? Could there not be a situation where you walk to the edges of the city center to pick up your car and leave from there? There are specific accessibility concerns that certainly need to be accounted for, but the idea that the average driver loses 20 minutes on a trip that should be 5-10 minutes doesn't seem like inherently an issue in this context. edit-add: biased in the sense that I really dislike cars and live in NYC in large part because you do not need one here
- tw04 5y ago
  I was waiting for this response. As someone who doesn’t live in the city center, and has no easy means of mass transportation to get there, my response is: fine I just won’t go then. You lose my money. In NYC or Chicago that’s probably not a big deal. In the vast majority of the rest of the US, that’s how you kill a city center. I can tell you in my case, given the homelessness issue that’s been getting worse the last decade, if you make it harder to get to the downtown area it will become a ghost town.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    You could replace cars with public transport rather than just moving the cars. If you don't want to build too much infrastructure then buses and bus lanes work well.
    - alacombe 5y ago
      Very convenient to haul 60lb of stuff in public transport...
  - lg 5y ago
    One thing to remember about NYC's crazy tolls and congestion pricing plans is that there are not many reasons why visitors should need to drive in. There's NJTransit, PATH, light rail to Hudson valley and CT, LIRR, Amtrak, so many regional bus routes and frequent shuttles to EWR and other popular places, where most of these have park-and-ride options. And then of course once in the city there are subway and buses. Other cities that want to copy the car-discouraging policies should think about what the alternatives are.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      It was cheaper and faster for me to drive 25 miles into Manhattan than take the train in from a walkable station. Then getting back out doesn't have to be at the mercy of the train schedule which is often every two hours for the line in question.
  - 5y ago
gruez 5y ago
>Extra time: +5 minutes to walk why does removing left turns make it longer to walk? Can pedestrians even make "left" turns?
- cyberbanjo 5y ago
  It's because they have to take a different longer route to a different parking space.
- tw04 5y ago
  A lot of times when they pull left turns it means they’re pulling out the stoplights, putting barriers of some kind down the middle and you can’t cross at that spot at all anymore on foot or in a car. If you have to park on the opposite side of the street from where you’re going you may be walking blocks just to cross. Sure you could try jaywalking but that’s probably not a bright move in a lot of cities. I’ll be honest I have no idea why you all are downvoting. This literally happened in a city near where I grew up and it is a giant pain. I presume he was actually asking the question because he didn’t understand why it would require more time.
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    Seems like an argument for more pedestrian priority crossings.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    I think the downvotes are probably because none of what you write makes sense in the "old European city" the ancestor comment suggested. Although the article is about America, so shrug
loloquwowndueo 5y ago
Usual car-oriented person rant about how this measure affects you personally and harms your convenience. Complaining about traffic in the center of an “Old European town” tells me you might be doing things wrong from the get go.
- jakubp 5y ago
  I am presenting a counterpoint to the claim in the article that "it's just 1 more block" in a real world scenario (under somewhat different condition though: non-grid street network). Do you think the phenomenon I described does not exist, or are you saying it's not relevant?
  - loloquwowndueo 5y ago
    I’ve driven in places that forbid left turns and the impact is nowhere near what you say it is - your example appears very specific to your town where things seem particularly bad but also your phrasing (“punished” by traffic - guess what, if you’re driving, you are traffic) is not very objective for a rational, general counterpoint.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
scythe 5y ago
I think the trilemma is something like: improve traffic capacity, reduce conflict points, forgive wrong turns — pick two. The increasing popularity of GPS makes it easier to drop the last item. Of course, it's going to take some getting used to.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> if you want to drive from within the city center to the outside (e.g. go back from a shopping mall / restaurant / business meeting) But I don't know if being able to do this is a reasonable expectation in the first place. Why do you have a car in the centre of a city? They aren't designed for cars. Live in the suburbs or countryside if you want a personal car.
scatters 5y ago
> almost as bad as walking What's bad about walking? It's good for your health, good for the economy, good for the environment.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  If you are in a car, chances are the goal was to get there more quickly than you could by walking. If you are getting there more slowly by taking a car then it was "worse than walking" by this metric. No one is criticizing walking as a general means of transportation.

by jakubp 5y ago

disantlor 5y ago

I am biased but why do we even need cars in the city center, or at the very least why should they be convenient? Could there not be a situation where you walk to the edges of the city center to pick up your car and leave from there? There are specific accessibility concerns that certainly need to be accounted for, but the idea that the average driver loses 20 minutes on a trip that should be 5-10 minutes doesn't seem like inherently an issue in this context. edit-add: biased in the sense that I really dislike cars and live in NYC in large part because you do not need one here

tw04 5y ago
I was waiting for this response. As someone who doesn’t live in the city center, and has no easy means of mass transportation to get there, my response is: fine I just won’t go then. You lose my money. In NYC or Chicago that’s probably not a big deal. In the vast majority of the rest of the US, that’s how you kill a city center. I can tell you in my case, given the homelessness issue that’s been getting worse the last decade, if you make it harder to get to the downtown area it will become a ghost town.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  You could replace cars with public transport rather than just moving the cars. If you don't want to build too much infrastructure then buses and bus lanes work well.
  - alacombe 5y ago
    Very convenient to haul 60lb of stuff in public transport...
- lg 5y ago
  One thing to remember about NYC's crazy tolls and congestion pricing plans is that there are not many reasons why visitors should need to drive in. There's NJTransit, PATH, light rail to Hudson valley and CT, LIRR, Amtrak, so many regional bus routes and frequent shuttles to EWR and other popular places, where most of these have park-and-ride options. And then of course once in the city there are subway and buses. Other cities that want to copy the car-discouraging policies should think about what the alternatives are.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    It was cheaper and faster for me to drive 25 miles into Manhattan than take the train in from a walkable station. Then getting back out doesn't have to be at the mercy of the train schedule which is often every two hours for the line in question.
- 5y ago

gruez 5y ago

>Extra time: +5 minutes to walk why does removing left turns make it longer to walk? Can pedestrians even make "left" turns?

cyberbanjo 5y ago
It's because they have to take a different longer route to a different parking space.
tw04 5y ago
A lot of times when they pull left turns it means they’re pulling out the stoplights, putting barriers of some kind down the middle and you can’t cross at that spot at all anymore on foot or in a car. If you have to park on the opposite side of the street from where you’re going you may be walking blocks just to cross. Sure you could try jaywalking but that’s probably not a bright move in a lot of cities. I’ll be honest I have no idea why you all are downvoting. This literally happened in a city near where I grew up and it is a giant pain. I presume he was actually asking the question because he didn’t understand why it would require more time.
- pharmakom 5y ago
  Seems like an argument for more pedestrian priority crossings.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  I think the downvotes are probably because none of what you write makes sense in the "old European city" the ancestor comment suggested. Although the article is about America, so shrug

loloquwowndueo 5y ago

Usual car-oriented person rant about how this measure affects you personally and harms your convenience. Complaining about traffic in the center of an “Old European town” tells me you might be doing things wrong from the get go.

jakubp 5y ago
I am presenting a counterpoint to the claim in the article that "it's just 1 more block" in a real world scenario (under somewhat different condition though: non-grid street network). Do you think the phenomenon I described does not exist, or are you saying it's not relevant?
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  I’ve driven in places that forbid left turns and the impact is nowhere near what you say it is - your example appears very specific to your town where things seem particularly bad but also your phrasing (“punished” by traffic - guess what, if you’re driving, you are traffic) is not very objective for a rational, general counterpoint.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

scythe 5y ago

I think the trilemma is something like: improve traffic capacity, reduce conflict points, forgive wrong turns — pick two. The increasing popularity of GPS makes it easier to drop the last item. Of course, it's going to take some getting used to.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> if you want to drive from within the city center to the outside (e.g. go back from a shopping mall / restaurant / business meeting) But I don't know if being able to do this is a reasonable expectation in the first place. Why do you have a car in the centre of a city? They aren't designed for cars. Live in the suburbs or countryside if you want a personal car.

scatters 5y ago

> almost as bad as walking What's bad about walking? It's good for your health, good for the economy, good for the environment.

DangitBobby 5y ago
If you are in a car, chances are the goal was to get there more quickly than you could by walking. If you are getting there more slowly by taking a car then it was "worse than walking" by this metric. No one is criticizing walking as a general means of transportation.