Fuck Cars
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
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Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
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No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
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Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
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No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
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No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
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No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
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No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
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@WaxedWookie @AvonVilla When the prime minister, the state premier, and the transport Minister all hype up an infrastructure project by promising less traffic to the city, many people will make transport decisions accordingly.
That's the big picture here.
Here's an example of the hype the federal and state governments were building for *years* around WestConnex and the Rozelle Interchange:
"Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the $16.8 billion project was cutting travel times and supporting thousands of families with work as Sydney and Australia were reopening from COVID lockdowns.
"“This breakthrough isn’t just for a tunnel, but it’s a breakthrough for getting people home sooner and safer and helping workers to move around,” the Prime Minister said.
"“As well as the 9,000 jobs this project has been delivering, the tunnel is going to make it easier for people across Sydney to pick up work and jobs that just wouldn’t have been possible before with traffic.
"“As we reopen Sydney and Australia, projects like this bypass and our record $110 billion infrastructure investment are going to give our economy even more of a boost.”
"New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said the third stage of WestConnex is now another step closer to forming a western bypass of the Sydney CBD.
"“This project will change the lives of thousands of people, bypassing dozens of sets of traffic lights and allowing an uninterrupted drive from the Blue Mountains to Rozelle,” the Premier said.
"“As part of the New South Wales Government’s record $108.5 billion investment pipeline, WestConnex is already easing congestion, creating jobs and connecting communities, right across our city.
"“Our Government has its eye to the future and this breakthrough will complete a ‘missing link’ between the new M4 Tunnels at Haberfield and the M8 at St Peters.”
"Federal Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts Paul Fletcher said the Commonwealth Government had co-funded WestConnex from the outset with a grant of $1.5 billion and a concessional loan of $2 billion.
"“This is a major milestone in what is one of the most significant road infrastructure projects in the country, which is already delivering major benefits for Sydney commuters by reducing travel times, easing congestion and improving safety,” Minister Fletcher said.
"“When opened to traffic in 2023, the M4-M4 Link Tunnels and Rozelle Interchange will complete the WestConnex project, providing improved links between key employment hubs and local communities.”
"NSW Minister for Transport and Roads Rob Stokes said 22 of the 33 kilometres of WestConnex would be underground, including the 7.5 kilometres that make up the M4-M5 Link Tunnels.
...
"“The M4-M5 Link Tunnels will remove tens of thousands of vehicles from surrounding streets, including Parramatta Road, and will help slash up to 40 minutes from an average peak journey between Parramatta and the Sydney Airport.”"
https://www.acciona.com.au/updates/news/westconnex-m4-m5-link-tunnels-the-final-breakthrough/?_adin=02021864894
Brevity isn't your strong suit. I'll keep this simple.
I assume you wouldn't argue that the current delays will sustain for the foreseeable future. The induction drivers won't disappear for the foreseeable future. With those 2 things being true, how could you say these delays are induced demand rather than temporary teething issues with opening?
@WaxedWookie @AvonVilla
Because it's the same story we have seen 1000 times all over the world for 70 Years. You have to look at the problem holistically. Simply thinking about cars and roads, in isolation to the whole city, how people behave, how we live and work, is a recipe for failure. I think this explains the issue well enough.
I've been clear I think induced demand will be an issue here. There's no dispute on that, but you're refusing to bite the bullet on whether these more extreme teething issues (which I'm asserting aren't induced demand) will stay.
If you say the delays will stay, I'm confident you'll be proven wrong in fairly short order - the traffic will ease, proving it's not induced demand. The scale of the induceed demand can be fairly measured at that point.
If you don't think the delays will stay when the induction factors remain unchanged, you have to concede this isn't induced demand - it's short term teething, which is my position.
@WaxedWookie @MrLee I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think traffic is likely to remain awful during peak hours on the Anzac Bridge and Victoria Rd. (It's likely to ease up temporarily over the Christmas break, but will worsen again after Australia Day.)
Even before WestConnex, the Anzac Bridge already wasn't exactly great during peak hour from all the traffic heading through Drummoyne along Victoria Road.
The new WestConnex motorways have made that worse.
If you're on the M4 extension, how do you get to the CBD? Either you take the Parramatta Rd turnoff at Ashfield, or you go through the spaghetti intersection to the Anzac Bridge.
If you're heading from the airport on the new M8, how do you get to the CBD? You go through the spaghetti intersection to the Anzac Bridge.
And if you're on the M5, how do you get to the CBD? Well, you can take Southern Cross Drive under the airport to the Eastern Distributor, or you take the M8 to the spaghetti intersection to the Anzac Bridge.
During the morning and evening peak, a lot of commuters want to travel to or from the city at the same time. And that traffic is being funnelled from the M4, M5 and M8 on to the Anzac Bridge, and then to the CBD offramps.
The claim was that these new WestConnex motorways were going to take traffic off other roads. So for example the M4 was going to take traffic off Parramatta Road.
What it's ended up doing is inducing more traffic demand, and that additional demand is being dumped on to the Anzac Bridge.
Parramatta Road is still terrible during peak hour, and there's now even more cars travelling along the M4.
People have also made housing and long-term travel decisions based on the claims that WestConnex would make car travel quicker to the CBD from western and southern Sydney.
Are there people driving slowly while they figure out which lane to take through the spaghetti intersection? Yes there are.
But. The bigger issue is that the new WestConnex motorways have induced additional traffic demand, and a lot of it is trying to cross the Anzac Bridge.
It's been reported that the travel times are already dropping by 10%+ in the few days since opening... That sure points to these delays being mostly due to teething that's beginning to ease already.
@WaxedWookie It was also deliberately opened at the end of the year because there's less traffic demand:
"But the government and motorway operator Transurban – who have a contract to run WestConnex until 2060 – say the traffic peak won’t come until February."
So the real test won't be how it performs on a Friday or weekend. It's how it will do once everyone's back at work in February.
Again, the underlying issue seems to be extra traffic that wouldn't be there if the M4/M5/M8 motorway extensions hadn't opened.
There's a lot of traffic being funnelled on to a bridge that was already at capacity.
"Since the project opened on 19 November, morning drivers have headed into the city and found three lanes on two of the main arterial roads abruptly merging into one. Feeder streets from nearby suburbs were jammed, with movement slowing to barely one block an hour at the worst of the crunch times."
The Inner West Council is claiming that department officials were concerned behind closed doors in the months before the interchange opened:
"Darcy Byrne, the mayor of Inner West Council, oversees a region that has endured a decade of dusty and noisy construction. He says Transport for New South Wales officials 'were very concerned' in briefings three months ago about how WestConnex was going to perform.
"'We have warned for a very long time [that] when you tried to funnel such a greatly expanded amount of traffic into the same number of lanes at the Anzac Bridge at Victoria Road, it was going to be a tsunami of traffic chaos,' he said."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/02/a-tsunami-of-traffic-chaos-the-new-sydney-motorway-prompting-calls-for-a-royal-commission
I guess we can just revisit this in February then. If the time to get through the mess remains around 90 minutes, we'll call that one for induced demand. I think a meaningful reduction from that mark toward the actual baseline with induced demand is going to prove otherwise.
@WaxedWookie The baseline was around 20 minutes, according to The Guardian: "Frustrations ran high as some commuters reported only being able to move 50m every 15 minutes, and others said their usual 20-minute commutes took them more than an hour." https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/27/rozelle-interchange-traffic-issues-premier-chris-minns
By February, all regular commuters should be familiar with which lane to use. Any quick fixes should be in place by then too.
So we should see how by then, much was induced by the new motorways or fundamental design flaws, versus teething issues.
If it's closer to 20 minutes, then most of the issue was driver confusion and poor signage. If it's closer to 90, it's more down to induced demand and structural problems.
@WaxedWookie So it's now February, and the traffic through the Rozelle Interchange is flowing perfectly — just some teething problems and confused motorists.
Just kidding.
No, the Rozelle Interchange is still an absolute urban planning and infrastructure disasterpiece.
Premier Chris Minns is still blaming the previous government, and Transport NSW is telling people to avoid the interchange:
https://youtu.be/GKppoVurTGo?si=aYukI691jnUH3t-d
From the SMH:
"Transport officials have been forced into making further adjustments to ease traffic congestion in Sydney’s inner west after the NSW roads minister conceded tweaks made to the troubled Rozelle interchange had transferred the gridlock further up Victoria Road.
"City-bound motorists were reduced to a crawl along Victoria Road in Drummoyne and Gladesville on Thursday morning due to traffic light phasing and higher back-to-school traffic, sparking claims that Transport for NSW is shifting the problem caused by the new $3.9 billion interchange from one local road to another."
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/worse-than-before-christmas-commuters-vent-as-rozelle-returns-to-gridlock-20240201-p5f1j9.html
#transport #cars #planning #UrbanPlanning #sydney #nsw #roads #nswpol #FucksCars #urbanism #Australia
@ajsadauskas @WaxedWookie @AvonVilla The Anzac bridge has been close to capacity in peak as long as I can remember and I’ve lived here 15 years. Even if there were two Anzac bridges, then what? You’d need two CBDs for all those cars to enter.