this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Fuck Cars

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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

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[–] reallynotnick 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm struggling with this average vs potential. If I stand on a 3.5m wide sidewalk on average I'm going to see 15,000 people pass me by? And there is no room for potential improvement as the sidewalks are completely full on average? And how are we figuring cars can potentially be improved by 33%? Are all cars 3/4ths full already?

I'm very pro public transit, I'm just unclear what is being shown in this chart.

[–] Fried_out_Kombi 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're showing capacity, i.e., a 3.5m sidewalk can move about 15k people per direction per hour. I'm guessing there's leeway for cars depending on intersection types/design, speed, etc., whereas there is much less variation in average speed for pedestrians.

[–] reallynotnick 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Average should be a measured real world quantity. A max theoretical value should never be average unless it's literally always at the max... on average.

[–] Fried_out_Kombi 4 points 1 year ago

The wording on the chart isn't the best, but I'm presuming they mean average capacity, not average ridership, because every city and every system will have its own factors that can impact the specific capacity of their transit modes. E.g., one system may have double-decker suburban rail vs another's single-decker, or one system may have articulated buses vs another's non-articulated. These differences would result in differing capacities, but the purpose of the chart is to show a ballpark number for what the typical capacity of a 3.5m corridor of each type would be, based on averaging system capacities in presumably many different cities.